On Ignorance and Apathy

On Ignorance and Apathy
  

https://empathological.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/emotion-and-ignorance-and-anedotal-correlation/

Ah Ignorance, how sweet you taste!
It's said that you are bliss.
And Apathy, I sing you to you,
Though others boo and hiss.

We go to school and even go
To college, yet we are
As ignorant as one could be,
In matters such as war.

And truly, what can people know
Except the things they see?
So who knows what has happened in
A place across the sea?

And even in our cities, we
Now live secluded lives.
We're ignorant of what goes on
Within our busy hives.

We go to work, in offices,
But there, because we're busy,
We do not know what others do,
Unless we're types who're nosy.

And when we hear a worker is
In trouble, then we shun
That person—as, from insects, we
Now see our children run.

And as for other neighborhoods
Or regions far away—
We do not know. How can we know
Of such things, could you say?

******

I read, at work, the NY Post.
I’ve heard it’s Murdoch’s own.
I get my news from it, my friend.
The rest, I now disown.

The workers in the factories
Are surely useless bums.
They're lazy, like the migrants who
Now crowd the city's slums.

The workers in the government,
The teachers in the schools—
They’re feeding on our taxes and
They’re lazy, worthless fools.

And as for all those Hindus and
Those Muslims, Christians, Jews—
They're all a bunch of murderers,
According to the news.

And atheists? And socialists?
Do spare me those, my friend!
It's better that we're rid of those.
Let's pray their lives will end.

The world is full of primitives—
Not advanced, like you and me.
The others, they are jealous, so
We cannot let them be.

It's better that we take the wars
To them, than they to us.
The peaceniks, they are full of s**t.
To hell with all their fuss!

http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-ignorance-and-apathy/

We're doing well, we're doing well—
With gizmos, buildings tall…
This business about nature, well—
You're welcome to it all.

For might is right. That's how it is.
This world is ours to use.
It says so in our holy books.
To listen, we refuse!

The species rise, the species die.
And so it always is.
So if we’re killing more, why that
Is just the way it is.

We need resources, so to hell
With primitives resisting.
It’s time they got more civilized.
What’s obsolete, needs fixing.

The forests must be cleared. With tribes
And critters, they’re infested.
In timber and in mines, my friend,
It’s time you were invested.

I’ve heard that water now is hot.
Privatization, yay!
The world can’t run on rum and Coke.
It now is water’s day.

And climate change? Organic food?
The ocean turning acid?
They’re hoaxes!  So invest in Shell
And BP and Monsanto.

*******

It's all a fake—a ruse, you see,
To make us number two.
But we are number one, my friend.
And that is me and you.

And some may raise, at intervals,
An issue out of history.
But since we weren't there, the truth
Remains, for us, a mystery.

We went to school and learned that we
Have built a land of glory.
So what if, as they say, the start
Of this was rather gory?

Let whiners whine. It’s onward, ho!
See other countries learning!
So what, if there’s a bit of smog
And forests razed or burning?

Ah ignorance, how sweet you taste!
And apathy?  Why that
Is what you need, or else this world
Will leave you knocked out flat.

We’re all conditioned to believe
And to behave by those
Who flood us with their ads and more.
But now, it's time to close.

And if you find I've contradicted
Everything I've said,
It's all because I'm ignorant
And will be, till I'm dead.

2016 July 26th, Tue.
Brooklyn, New York