Be Normal and Fit In

  

Sir Roger’s close confidante writes:

My mother used to ask me if I wouldn’t prefer to work in a bank. In those days it was a safe occupation – safe as a bank, literally. A job for life with almost guaranteed promotion. I don’t think she was joking.

Both her brothers – my uncles – worked in banks and eventually became bank managers.

She married a doctor. His job was secure as long as people got sick or had babies.

Her father was an Anglican minister. He’d always have a job as long as there was a god – or as long as people believed there was.

I think my mother wanted me to be safe. She worried about my creative, artistic, unworldly temperament. If I relied on it, it might not lead to stability and security. The bank was safe if unexciting and the school system was the ideal training for future decades of boredom and repetition.

And that’s how parents tend to think.

First we want our children to be safe.

Second we want them to do well and succeed.

Third we want them to be normal and fit in.

And we want them to find someone ‘nice’ to settle down with and raise a family (for the most part).

We encourage our children to be reasonable and more or less ordinary; to be ‘realistic’. That’s the way it works, that’s the way things are, that’s the recipe for survival and success.

Mediocrity.

And that’s what schools are exceptional at producing.

Nothing important or worthwhile that has ever been achieved in the world has been achieved by reasonable, realistic, mediocre people. They have been achieved by people prepared to be unreasonable, to see beyond the realistic to the possibilities and to fight to achieve them.

And that’s who our children are before we school them.

Indeed, replied Sir Roger, schools are not only exceptional at producing these results. That is their primary function and the original purpose of the compulsory education system in Prussia to which all modern education more or less owes its tradition. Obedient hardworking bureaucrats, obedient unquestioning factory workers. Today’s office slaves.

Bruce Petty once somewhere said (or drew) something close to,

 

 

“ Having reproduced the species, efforts are made to have it employable as cheaply as possible. Through persistence and determination many survive these deformative years and go on to be average.”

Thank you for reading this far!  You might think producing a post like this takes a bit of work. 
It does! If you’ve appreciated it you might consider encouraging me. ( We all like validation! )   

Buy Me A Coffee

All posts

Categories

You might also like:

Let Us Prey

Sunday Sacrilege — Early Edition       Leader of the World’s Largest Organised Paedophile Ring Visits Britain he leader of the world’s largest organised ring of paedophiles has been greeted by Queen Elizabeth with all the courtesy...

Power

The Bit Biden Got Wrong (but not as wrong as @PsychoTrump) and the importance for Australian Values   J oe Biden said—on 14 December when the Electoral College anointed him President Elect—what everyone would think. Makes sense yeah?  "In America, politicians don't...

Migently Mountain Manifesto: 3

11.   Science is not a set of facts. Science is a process. The process is to — a) observe, b) speculate, c) propose an explanation (or “theory”), d) devise an experiment which i) can be repeated (“replicable”) and ii) can prove the theory false (“falsifiable”) e)...

Khamenei Swore and I Congaed

   yatollah Khamenei declared the result of the Iranian election today: The Iranian people have voted in favour of a fight against arrogance,” screamed the criminally-insane Ayatollah arrogantly, “and to confront destitution...

Dulce et decorum est

  (Hint: No it's not) atched The Einstein Factor this evening and the second contestant’s subject was the life and poetry of Wilfred Owen (more or less). One of the poems mentioned — which of course it had to be — was Dulce et Decorum Est. Everyone...

Mouldy Media Pop-Tart

    ust a question: Why do we have to keep putting up with fatuous, mouldy, media pop-tart, Gerard Henderson, spouting all over the place? This pompous irrelevance who ludicrously has laid claim to being in the political centre, whose...

Chateau Quelquechose

  Gone out the window   e were on the train this morning and for the first time in a long time noticed the truly stuffed in our society and how comprehensively invisible they are to most of us. “Stuffed” in the bad way, not 'stuffed' like...

Porter Loo

The GuardianWhen Christian Is a Dirty Word   This won't take long. The Department of Home Affairs ("the Potatocracy")  stirringly asserts that people love to come to Australia because:  " ​​​​​​​​Australian values are based on freedom, respect, fairness and...

WTF

What do we want? Freedom!   hen do we want it? When it's ok with the police! Mr Howard, to his cheer squad at the Sydney Institute:    Freedoms and rights, especially for women and children, are little more than cruel...

“Visa Bob”‘s Dept Ruins Yet Another Life

Oh Dear ... DIC's 'Very Bad Event'. Again Mr Bob Correll, Deputy Secretary, Department of Immigration, Citizenship and Wrongful Detention Shit, Bob, (You don’t mind me calling you 'Shit', do you Bob?) You and I go way back, Bob, and I know this will seem out of...

Now LOOK ….

   Not this bloody time   W e have held it in for a very long time but today was the last straw. For seeming ages journalists have been describing people who defend themselves against legal allegations, or who mount arguments against legal charges, as...

Pinter

Study of Pinter by Reginald Gray, 2007Vale! you grumpy old genius 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008   An enormous loss to literature, the stage, the arts, to humanity and to breaking all the rules. We think the best way we can to express our gratitude and to...

Only Thus?

  Let’s get one or two things clear: We are not against Jewish people in general. We are opposed to the actions of some individuals in particular. We are not opposed to their religion in particular. We are opposed to all religious belief (except, of course, the...

Sir Roger Gets Ogd

  es. It’s true! After everything he has said, Sir Roger’s scepticism has been swept away by his discovery of a new, an alien, religion. And who would not want to be part of such powerful theatre, such wondrous ceremony, gorgeous ritual and...

Dawkins For Tony Blair

Richard Loves Tony   ichard Dawkins, in the New Statesman finds himself supporting war criminal Tony Blair who had recently written of his hopes and plans for the eponymous foundation based on his evidence-free beliefs....

Lynton Crosby Outed

  . . . as Dutton’s Mews Muse (probably)   ir Roger has it on authority from multiple sources that the “Dead Cat on the Table” ploy, most recently fed to and trotted out by Peter Dutton, is the signature work of one Lynton Crosby....

Black Breath of the Nazgûl

AKA Phillip Ruddock  AKA 'Dock Vader How dare ordinary 'people' have "views!"    sked on Southern Cross radio whether the case was a mess, he replied: "No, what I think has happened is that people who have views about the nature of the law are...

What is Arpa Narpa Narp?

A guide to Federal Electioneering     Q: What is “Arpa Narpa Narp“?   Where everyone’s bills are going, according to folksy, down with the biddies, Tony Abbott today.  Strangely enough Sir Roger don’t recall his bills ever going...

‘Sub-Prime’ Explained as Never Before

  "Too stupid to be real..."   f you only watch one online comedy sketch this year, (as we used to say (almost) at ABC Promos) this should be it. We promise. You will laugh…and perhaps cry at the same time, If you ever wondered what was...

The Next Big “Sorry”

Sorry Bastards   ant a long-range heads-up? The question we should be asking Abbott and Gillard and all of their various immigration spokespeople right now is this:   How do you feel about the inevitability that — possibly in your lifetime — a...

Pardon Us – We Missed the Logic

We’re just a bit confused    r Haneef has been charged with recklessly providing resources to a terrorist organisation (to wit, a sim card). The alleged recklessness occurred in the UK. It did not take place in Australia. There is no...

The Whoredom of Philip Ruddock

An Unfinished Canvas hey had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them… Between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes… And they became forever invisible and they entered...

Every Cloud Has a Saliva Lining

    After Pavlov [Apologies to the source of the original of this image whose provenance we do not know.]

Guantánamo Career Suicide

 Guantánamo Policy Chief Pulls Plug on Career: Spills Government Beans in Radio Interview     eputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Guantánamo Policy, Charles “Cully” Stimson, resigned following uproar over a 12 January interview on...

Australian Value #1

Values Australia's Aussie Values T-Shirt on display and immortalised in Museums VictoriaEllen Sludge Breaks the Cardinal Law Many moons ago, Sir Roger wrote the First Law of Australian Values.  Australian Value #1:   Politicians do NOT own Australian Values...

B’Bye

EXEAT - The Planet's Narrow EscapeKnock! Knock! Who's there? B'bye! When I was a young lad in an English-style boarding school (of course!) we were permitted, once a term, to leave our prison to spend a day with our parents. In order to do so we had to complete a...

Trump – Can He Lose?

Snake Oil & Fury  T here's no argument amongst Trump's enemies, his grovelling enablers, and even among millions of his supporters, that Trump is a professional liar, and that"liar"  defines almost the entirety of Trump's persona. It is not possible to listen...

Who is DIC’s Grima Wormtongue?

Polishing your arse on a public service seat   leading defence lawyer and close follower of the Haneef case, barrister Greg Barns, last night said the emails showed that “the AFP in conjunction with the Government were essentially completely...

Sack Keelty

  Sack the Bastard   …and DIC Senior Management, particularly the Deputy Secretary in charge of borders, compliance, and detention, the avowed expert in the use of the visa as a tool for enforcing (at the time) Liberal Party policy. Yes, it’s our old friend,...

The Next Big “Sorry”

Sorry Bastards   ant a long-range heads-up? The question we should be asking Abbott and Gillard and all of their various immigration spokespeople right now is this:   How do you feel about the inevitability that — possibly in your lifetime — a...

0 Comments