Older and Wiser?

"Memes" (in Dawkins' original sense) are important; two more completely different reasons not to watch the news on TV!

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I was surprised, recently, to find myself at a poetry reading. This was a first for me. My mother was a poet, but I suspect it’s a recessive gene!

Portrait of the Artist with a Gormless Young Man

We sat around in a large circle, and everyone was invited to read or recite a poem of theirs or someone else’s, or just to listen. The experience - perhaps aided by its novelty - was enjoyable and edifying. The people alone were impressive and interesting.

Now, with next month’s meeting looming, I’VE felt duty-bound to have a stab at writing one, on what’s uppermost in my mind - and has been for three years now - my kids and grandkids having to grow up in today’s corrupt world; and the difficulty of giving effective advice when you think you have had sufficient time and opportunity to be better informed than they about something. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that.

( You’ve been warned! but if poetry brings you out in hives, at least check out the link in the footnotes¹: it’s something that everyone should be aware of, and very few are).

Yes - it’s true: I’ve stupidly put the most important information in this post as a footnote! So make sure you read it!

I tried to warm up and get in the mood by reading some of my (late) mother’s poems, many of which (to my shame) I’d never read before. She definitely helped! Thanks mum!

First - here are two quotations for context.

• Many people know this “quotation of Mark Twain’s” (aka Samuel Clemens). Like so many, this one may well not actually have been said by him. But in December of 1915 (5 years after Clemens died) Fred N. Rindge definitely wrote this:

“It reminds one of something Mark Twain said to the effect that when he was seventeen he couldn’t bear to have his Father around while they were discussing important questions but when he was twenty-five it was wonderful how the old man had improved [in just 8 years]

The irony of pretending that it was the father who had learned a little - rather than the teenager-cum-young man - is right up Clemens’s street. And it’s a shrewd insight on the human condition that as we learn things, our views can change - sometimes 180 degrees - with us barely noticing it. In reality Clemens was not able to compare his father at seventeen and twenty-five, as his father died when Clemens was 11! Nevertheless, he may just have said it as a joke.

• And, since I have offspring and grandchildren, I’m haunted by this quotation by Adolf Hitler:

“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already...What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community’."

Our children are so vulnerable. Even at university age (and beyond) people can be influenced by the Woke nonsense.²

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Generations

To my sons

I’m minded to forgive myself, but quail
Reliving thoughtless words - without reprieve -
To patient parents - trees bent by the gale
Of my brash assertions which were so naïve.

They were, indeed, older and wiser.

And now our children pick their careful way
Through denser fogs of mis- and disinformation.
While movies and misguided teachers say
“No need to heed that moribund generation.”

To the young, those teachers do seem older and wiser, unfortunately.

Our warnings of ubiquitous mendacity
On climate, history, food, events and health
Compete with lies of such refined opacity,
That most will choose fake rhinestones for their wealth.

Could they see us as older and wiser?

The evening lures -“the opium of the people” -
(Not religion now, but flickering TV screens) -
Entrain³ their brains, proactive wills enfeeble,
En-trance with intravenous, vapid scenes.

Looking back, surely I’m older and a bit wiser now?

So go for long-term happiness over pleasure;
And touch warm real people, not your phones;
Constructive growth should fill your well-earned leisure,
May books and laughter fill your stable homes.

Please grow older and even wiser!

Teenagers! Huh?

The next generation

Evidence that we get wiser as we get older … assuming you believe in free speech!

If you like real poetry, here’s a better one, by my mother, written a good twenty-five years ago, but sounding far from dated.

__ Green Dream Sonnet __⁴

If God in His compassion and in kindness
Could clothe the worn-out World with trees,
Revive the starving deserts’ barren wildness;
Fulfil man’s innate attavistic needs

For cool green dappled shade, and earthy scents.
If immemorial stones and copses stoop
To share with us remembered reverence
For woods and nature’s ways, then we should sleep

To dream of elms and oaks and beach that breech
The sterile surfaced motorways of death.
We’d live in pillared tree-cathedrals⁵; preach
A gospel green; inspire the scented breath

Of leaves unsullied; then melt the stony city;
Placate our exploited planet with our pity.

Patricia Reece

• Thanks for reading “What Do I No”. Subscribing is free and always will be.

• I tend to write about things that are always true, rather than the latest developments; so if you got something from this I would encourage you to read or listen to my past posts, as they will be just as relevant today as when I wrote them.

• I would recommend “What’s Wrong with’The Greater Good’?” to start with, if you haven’t already; and “Coping with Disagreement and Being Wrong”.

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1. See footnote 3!

2. There’s a GREAT quotation and insight by Theodore Dalrymple (one of many) to the effect that after studying Communist countries closely for some years, he had come to the conclusion that the whole point of “political correctness” was that the lies should be transparent - the moreso, the better - as when people are forced to keep silent and go along with the lies, they lose their sense of self-respect and probity. The whole purpose is to demoralise people, who then lack the vision of themselves as people with the gumption to act, and resist. You can see this in action in the movie “The Killing Fields” (available on YouTube).

3. You REALLY need to know about brain entrainment! AND the effect of the last-thing-at-night news on your limited memory capacity. Watch and listen here: https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/the-indoctrinated-brain-with-dr-michael-nehls/

Or to listen only, use a podcast app (to subscribe to the Highwire podcast if you haven’t already) and search for the recent episode with Michael Nehls. The advantage of this is - for me - that you can download, save and keep it. I can’t see how to download anything in the Highwire website.

Or …
https://deezer.page.link/wmfQ42UUVNEeEsct7

4. The typical structure of the Italian sonnet is for the octave (first 8 lines) to contain what's called a "proposition," which establishes a problem (such as unrequited love) or a question (such as, "does she love me?"). The sestet (last 6 lines) is concerned with resolving the problem or question, and it almost always contains a "turn," which signals a shift in the poem's focus from problem to resolution. The turn usually comes at the very beginning of the sestet, in the sonnet's ninth line.

In the English sonnet the fourteen lines are all written in iambic pentameter [hence the pattern that emerged in my poem] and are taken up by three quatrains of four lines followed by a two-line couplet. The lines follow the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

In the English sonnet, the turn typically occurs in the third quatrain.

[Taken from https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/sonnet]

5. That’s a great line, eh?!