Your Life: Turnip, Business or Art ?

[Guest]

[Mr. Goldberg]

According to Dr. Beran Wolfe writing in his 1932 Pelican edition of - 'How to be Happy though Human' - life philosophies can be subdivided into 3 separate categories:

1) Turnips: 'in which case your life will consist in being born, eating,drinking, sleeping, maturing, mating, growing old and dying. Of human turnips there are no end and theirs is a calm contentment undisturbed by the problems of this world'....

2) Business types : 'What do I get out of it ? What is it worth to me ? Life becomes a matter of aggressive offence and successful defence...aggressive competition, personal efficiency the cause of many a human endeavour including slavery, war, class conflicts, despotism, serfdom, exploitation of smaller neighbours by more powerful nations...the belief that might is right. Applied to human life it maims, cripples, breeds crime, perversion, insanity...causes nervous breakdowns from rush hour to rat race to politics and warfare.'  Saddos to coin a phrase who somehow never graduated from the University of Flintstone.

3) The Artist who says 'What can I put into it ? applying co-operation and common sense contributing richly in some way to the benefit of their fellow (wo)men.

Of which of these three ways lies human happiness ? For indeed are we but as turnips, plumped in our furrows content with the the soil, the sun and rain as and when it should chance by us ? Are we of the destructive business breed  hell bent on self and gain and acquisition...i'm avin' that, gizzit here, you get stuffed.  Or are we as artists vibrant in our benevolence of giving as though we just cant seem to give enough or get enough love...just can't give enough...I said just can't give enough.

Make a pi chart of your life... to date...what's in your pie ? Is it the ill gotten gains  stripped with  loathsome gluttonous greed gleaned from the toil  of the handbags and the gladrags that your grandad had to sweat so you could buy ii-ii-it ( ohyeh...). Or are you on the Freelove Freeway of the Gaia Givin' and a Lovin' puttin into it watchya can, you do the hot give on the hotlove highway ya goin home cos your baby's go-o-n.. Hip. Yeh. Or are you just a crusty old stuffed turnip ?

Discuss.

[sinister_miss_nancy]

Would we not be a mixture of the three? People in general I mean...

[Will]

I definitely am a mixture of all three.  Calm contentment, when I turn off the TV and enjoy some herbal supplements.  Business-wise, I look at it like a game where I fairly low on the totem pole.  It's like a simulation where you win if you become a philanthropist.  Artistically, well, sometimes you just gotta pee in the sink.-CB       

[Mr. Goldberg]

Ah miss Nancy, Your rhetorical question form utilising the plural pronoun form 'we' indicates an inrerrogative attempt to have us men give you the answer for nothing. From this approach we can deduce that you either a woman or a turnip.

[sinister_miss_nancy]

And I would've gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

'Turnip' doesn't sound particularly flattering so I'll opt for the 'woman' option for now...

[Mr. Goldberg]

Forgive my foolish flippancy. It's Friday. So you think we're combinatons of all 3 ? at what points in your day or life do you change hats ? They do say that turnips - simple folk - are happiest. They don't think too much (not that I believe you can think too much). But they're happy.