My own personal literary and philosophical theory

This is my own personal literary and philosophical theory. Years of higher education and practiced BS convinced me that to be a true intellectual I absolutely must have one. So here it is, complete with hypothetical example and strong bias:

“Science is an art;* art is a science. Everything is everything.”

There it is, guaranteed to explain and interpret any conceivable literary or philosophical ideas, past, present, or future. I like to explain it using the great wall example:

You are in a room with a great, blank wall. Someone hands you a marker and says, “please write your name on the white board,” indicating the wall in front of which you stand.

“That’s not a white board; that’s a wall,” you tell him. But you are wrong. If the wall has characteristics like those of a whiteboard, is it not a whiteboard? It is hard and upright and smoothly white. You can write on it with a marker. And, some way or another, you can wipe it off. If you want to split hairs you can call it a wall. If you want to be specific, pointed, descriptive. If you want to be picky, intellectual, uncompromising, you can call it a wall. If a behemoth, muscular giant approaches you and says walls are life and whiteboards are death and you value life, you may call it a wall. But really, it is just as much a whiteboard as a wall, a science as an art. Everything is everything.

P.S. Some people may tell you this is not a theory, but an anti-theory. Don’t believe them.

*Please note the semicolon, without which my own personal literary and philosophical theory is incomplete.

-R.A.

I woke up this morning and realized there were starving people all over the world

I woke up one morning and realized there were starving people all over the world. So I wrote the White House: “It has come to my attention that there are starving people all over the world and I find it outrageous that no one else has done something about it before this, particularly you, Mr. President, as you are the moral guardian of our nation. Please fix this problem.”

The White House wrote me back one line, “Where do we get the money?”

I found this response disappointing, irrelevant, and downright offensive. These are STARVING PEOPLE we’re talking about; what does money have to do with it? So I compiled a list of facts about starving people and sent it to the White House.

The White House wrote me back one line, “What is the solution?”

It seems surprising to me that a mere citizen like myself should be expected to have answers to problems. What, I ask, is the government for if not to help the unintelligent general public find enlightenment? But I compiled another list because it is my duty as a human to find ways that other people who are also human but less compassionate than I to help people who are also human but more victimized than I. I sent my list to the White House. It looked like this:

Solution to World Starvation

· Provide all starving people all around the world with a balanced diet.

· A balanced diet includes all known vitamins.

· Provide all starving people all around the world with kitchens in which to cook their food.

· Provide all starving people all around the world with good medical care.

This last bullet may seem like a different issue entirely, however I believe it is important so I included it in the list. If the government follows my list exactly, I will have solved not only the world starvation problem, but also the problem of subpar healthcare for all around the world.

The White House wrote me back one word, “How?”

I have spent my entire life dedicated to the belief that money is bad, making people greedy, heartless, and selfish. Marxist philosophy is the closest a human has ever come to truth. But I think you will agree that my Solution to World Starvation list makes it evident that the starvation problem requires money. Lots of it. So I made a list, cataloguing the many uses of money in saving the starving populations. “Take it all,” I prompted, “all the oppressive capitalistic money and give it to the starving populations and they will be fed and the money will be cleansed.”

The White House wrote me back one line, “There still won’t be enough.”

All I have left to say is this: I am fed up with the unambitious, nay saying, skepticism of our government. Apparently, as a private citizen, not only am I supposed to solve the problems of the world, I am also supposed to fund them. I find the government’s utter lack of understanding of the severity of this situation absurd. I have provided them with a clear answer to the WAY THINGS SHOULD BE. Why, I ask, should rationalism get in the way of it?