Current favourite jokes

[Stanfordian]

I awoke this morning to a message from one of my French family: "Your King is in hospital..." !!!

It is on the face of it strange why the husband of a Queen is not called a King.

[P. G. Tipps]

It is on the face of it strange why the husband of a Queen is not called a King.

Yes, it's all a bit sexist, isn't it?

Any common-or-garden woman can become a Queen simply by marrying a King but it doesn't seem to work the other way around?

Shameful ... ban the monarchy!

[ahinton]

Capitalism moves in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform.

...paid for by...?...

(It has always to be paid for by someone)...

[Serial_Apologist]

...paid for by...?...

(It has always to be paid for by someone)...

The labour put in from the birth of humankind, progressively expropriated and since the Industrial Revolution (before that the aristocracy) perpetuated by a top minority of capitalists who amass ever increasing amounts of its associated value to maintain their own position, power and control over the rest, aided and abetted by various ideological and political hangers-on and a populace rendered compliant by the so-called freedom to choose, whether in the commodity markets or once every few years who their rulers will be by placing a cross on a piece of paper.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Paul Sinha on R4 this evening:

The Emperor Nero: murdered his mother; murdered his pregnant wife by kicking her in the stomach; castrated his male lover and insisted on calling him by his dead wife's name.

Now, if I wanted to name an international coffee chain ...

[MrGongGong]

[Serial_Apologist]

Where on earth did you find that, Gongers?

[ahinton]

The labour put in from the birth of humankind, progressively expropriated and since the Industrial Revolution (before that the aristocracy) perpetuated by a top minority of capitalists who amass ever increasing amounts of its associated value to maintain their own position, power and control over the rest, aided and abetted by various ideological and political hangers-on and a populace rendered compliant by the so-called freedom to choose, whether in the commodity markets or once every few years who their rulers will be by placing a cross on a piece of paper.

Many thanks for the short answer; what's the longer one? - and might it embrace the possibility that greater equality would bestow upon the hoi polloi the opportunity to do the same as the "ruling classes" are thereby accused of having done since time immoral (deliberate terminological misuse, of course)?

[ahinton]

Paul Sinha on R4 this evening:

The Emperor Nero: murdered his mother; murdered his pregnant wife by kicking her in the stomach; castrated his male lover and insisted on calling him by his dead wife's name.

Now, if I wanted to name an international coffee chain ...

!!!

Didn't mention fiddling while the coffee burns or waking up and smelling the coffee, I suppose?...

[ahinton]

Mon Dieu, is THAT why I do it? I had no idea. Many thanks for drawing it to my attention and thereby giving me pause for thought...

[Bryn]

Where on earth did you find that, Gongers?

Don't ask such classically boring questions.

[MrGongGong]

Don't ask such classically boring questions.

One of my favourite sites

[Serial_Apologist]

Many thanks for the short answer; what's the longer one? - and might it embrace the possibility that greater equality would bestwo upon the hoi polloi the opportunity to do the same as the "ruling classes" are thereby accused of having done since time immoral (deliberate terminological misuse, of course)?

Without resort to religious models exculpatory of human weakness unredeemed by one of the self-proclaimed truth purveyors, all of which claim supernatural authority, personal let-downs wold not be sufficient an excuse to generalise in order to justify such cynicism, because we've all "been there"; you would need to explain:

1) How it can be possible to mistrust people (including presumably yourself) when, unless there exists some internal policing (for which science has no evidence (as far as I know)) whereby the organism can divide against itself in other than descriptive terms, the source of the mistrust must remain in question.

2) From the above, if such self-mistrust cannot without mistrusting its own reliability be an innate attribute, it can only logically be deduced that the idea that we are, regardless of circumstances, predisposed to treat our fellow beings exploitatively, must come from elsewhere - the question being where.

3) It seems irrefutable that only those with an interest in maintaining a mythical view of human fallibility do so - other causations and conditions aside or eliminated - and do so for purposes of control, based on mainting power and influence over how the majority can be misled into to seeing themselves and their situation ultimately as unchangeable, or only changeable for the worse, unless they continue to act in self-interest as dictated by the system, which perpetuates itself by appeal to the isolated individual, connected through the social pressures specifically associated with this perpetuation - these including conformism (acting how and doing what our elders and betters tell us is best for ouselves), consumerism ("keeping up with the Joneses") and "knuckling under" when, having complied, we've been told not to be so greedy, succumbing to our "baser instincts" at the expense of others, the planet etc.

4) The idea of the isolated organism, behviourally observable in cut-off laboratory-modelled simulations of social patternings, may accord with religious traditions which preach a redemption telegraph lifeline to the Godhead but no longer conforms to scientific models of humanity rooted in nature raw in tooth and claw which have been supplanted by theories closer to more ancient philosophies whereby we are understood as interconnected with each other and the wider biosphere on which we depend, and are less able to control through species dominance than by the kind of co-operation language and conceptual understanding nature's intelligence confers.

1) Why, given such wisdom-based understanding, the hoi polloi would want to replicate the behaviour of the ruling orders in any new way of ordering society and sharing out its benefits sustainably, would, surely, be beyond the common understanding of such a society.

[ahinton]

Without resort to religious models exculpatory of human weakness unredeemed by one of the self-proclaimed truth purveyors, all of which claim supernatural authority, personal let-downs wold not be sufficient an excuse to generalise in order to justify such cynicism, because we've all "been there"; you would need to explain:

1) How it can be possible to mistrust people (including presumably yourself) when, unless there exists some internal policing (for which science has no evidence (as far as I know)) whereby the organism can divide against itself in other than descriptive terms, the source of the mistrust must remain in question.

2) From the above, if such self-mistrust cannot without mistrusting its own reliability be an innate attribute, it can only logically be deduced that the idea that we are, regardless of circumstances, predisposed to treat our fellow beings exploitatively, must come from elsewhere - the question being where.

3) It seems irrefutable that only those with an interest in maintaining a mythical view of human fallibility do so - other causations and conditions aside or eliminated - and do so for purposes of control, based on mainting power and influence over how the majority can be misled into to seeing themselves and their situation ultimately as unchangeable, or only changeable for the worse, unless they continue to act in self-interest as dictated by the system, which perpetuates itself by appeal to the isolated individual, connected through the social pressures specifically associated with this perpetuation - these including conformism (acting how and doing what our elders and betters tell us is best for ouselves), consumerism ("keeping up with the Joneses") and "knuckling under" when, having complied, we've been told not to be so greedy, succumbing to our "baser instincts" at the expense of others, the planet etc.

4) The idea of the isolated organism, behviourally observable in cut-off laboratory-modelled simulations of social patternings, may accord with religious traditions which preach a redemption telegraph lifeline to the Godhead but no longer conforms to scientific models of humanity rooted in nature raw in tooth and claw which have been supplanted by theories closer to more ancient philosophies whereby we are understood as interconnected with each other and the wider biosphere on which we depend, and are less able to control through species dominance than by the kind of co-operation language and conceptual understanding nature's intelligence confers.

1) Why, given such wisdom-based understanding, the hoi polloi would want to replicate the behaviour of the ruling orders in any new way of ordering society and sharing out its benefits sustainably, would, surely, be beyond the common understanding of such a society.

Very many thanks for your typically detailed, thought-provoking and deeply considered response which is much appreciated.

I fear that there is on your part a fundamental misunderstanding of what I sought to convey here but that the fault therein is mine in my shortcomings in clarity. If we agree to leave on one side for the time being and for the sake of argument the "religious" examples from "the self-proclaimed truth purveyors", all of whom you rightly state "claim supernatural authority", the purpose of what I wrote ws not to express the "cynicism" of which you write; I did not mean to suggest that greater equality of rights, opportunities, wealth &c. between humans would of its lead to all humans behaving as do what some term the "ruling class/es" - merely that some of them might feel tempted to take their increased new-found powers as an excuse to appropriate such conduct merely because they now can. That said, some people might find the liberating aspect of the lifting of some of the oppression that has beset them for generations to be such as to persuade them to believe that they can henceforward seek to mimic the way in which those "ruling classes" have habitually behaved towards them, although I am sure than many in such new-found circumstances would not succumb to this.

The desire to acquire and exert "control" of some kind over others is not the exclusive province of the wealthiest and/or those who rule as dictators or leaders of democracies or "democracies"; one has only to consider the "take back control" cliché that continues to beset certain aspects of some people's Brexiteering to the point of its having become something of a mantra, alongside the control-freakery of certain employers large and small and the disgraceful conduct of child abusers (for whom some sense of control is essential) to see that this kind of notion can manifest itself at all levels and on all scales. But lessons need to be learned (sorry for yet another even more well-worn cliché!) from all of this history and I am by no means trying to suggest that none of them will ever be learned by anyone. In the meantime, one problem that does concern me, as you might have noticed, is that of understganding who the so-called "ruling classes" really are; yes, we most of can recognise the more obvious control freaks, in governments and in various industries (not least large scale agriculture, pharmaceuticals, energy provision and journalism), but there are smaller ones that might not as easily or quickly be noticed for what they are.

Anyway, I realise that the above barely scratches the surface of a proper answer to your five points (of which the last should be numnbered 5)!), so forgive me my brevity as I thank you once again for what you write here.

In the meantime, I suspect that it we don't ensure a rapid return to Current favourite jokes here, some moderatorial adminition might be forthcoming!

[Serial_Apologist]

Very many thanks for your typically detailed, thought-provoking and deeply considered response which is much appreciated.

I fear that there is on your part a fundamental misunderstanding of what I sought to convey here but that the fault therein is mine in my shortcomings in clarity. If we agree to leave on one side for the time being and for the sake of argument the "religious" examples from "the self-proclaimed truth purveyors", all of whom you rightly state "claim supernatural authority", the purpose of what I wrote ws not to express the "cynicism" of which you write; I did not mean to suggest that greater equality of rights, opportunities, wealth &c. between humans would of its lead to all humans behaving as do what some term the "ruling class/es" - merely that some of them might feel tempted to take their increased new-found powers as an excuse to appropriate such conduct merely because they now can. That said, some people might find the liberating aspect of the lifting of some of the oppression that has beset them for generations to be such as to persuade them to believe that they can henceforward seek to mimic the way in which those "ruling classes" have habitually behaved towards them, although I am sure than many in such new-found circumstances would not succumb to this.[1]

The desire to acquire and exert "control" of some kind over others is not the exclusive province of the wealthiest and/or those who rule as dictators or leaders of democracies or "democracies"; one has only to consider the "take back control" cliché that continues to beset certain aspects of some people's Brexiteering to the point of its having become something of a mantra, alongside the control-freakery of certain employers large and small and the disgraceful conduct of child abusers (for whom some sense of control is essential) to see that this kind of notion can manifest itself at all levels and on all scales. But lessons need to be learned (sorry for yet another even more well-worn cliché!) from all of this history and I am by no means trying to suggest that none of them will ever be learned by anyone.[2] In the meantime, one problem that does concern me, as you might have noticed, is that of understganding who the so-called "ruling classes" really are; yes, we most of can recognise the more obvious control freaks, in governments and in various industries (not least large scale agriculture, pharmaceuticals, energy provision and journalism), but there are smaller ones that might not as easily or quickly be noticed for what they are.

Anyway, I realise that the above barely scratches the surface of a proper answer to your five points (of which the last should be numnbered 5)!), so forgive me my brevity as I thank you once again for what you write here.

In the meantime, I suspect that it we don't ensure a rapid return to Current favourite jokes here, some moderatorial adminition might be forthcoming!

The two points you raise might be considered under a heading of how, contrary to Friedrich Hayek's disproven "trickle down" economic theory of minimal state intervention, ("We told them so!!!") ideological dissemination (some might say insemination) percolates from the top social orders through compliant lower orders, the intellectual worker ants of the nest by multiple pathways that there is as yet no Higgs Boson theory devised for lining up the various interconnected disciplines by which we are able to understand how society and history work. This emblematises the fragmented nature of the whole; the cutting of subsidies in these disciplines a convenient default in times when the "readies" are not to hand, and education is rejigged to cater to the effective demise of careers whose longevity and hence vanishing prospects for a decent company/professional loyalty-securing pension at the end find expression in Corbyn's support among today's young. The decentralised character of the system overall makes putting the blame on the few difficult, since they can rightly claim an inability to be in and of every decision made in the operations thereof, and underlings are made to take the punishments when, usually far too late, the errors from which lessons might otherwise prove capable of permanent rectification enactment are uncovered.

It also occurs to me that "getting one's own back" would form part and parcel of the liberatory process of self-understanding that would show such motivation merely to be reproductive of an endless karmic game of tit-for-tat, the very obverse of the kind of inclusiveness which materially ameliorated circumstances for everyone would benefit all-around, offering the groundings for a different kind of motivation.

Who was it who said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"?