SHEEP: The western condition, or Human condition?

The human condition, mark. Everything should be interpreted in the light of the setting event. I was reminded of Saroyan's Our Town and The Human Comedy.

I understand your inspiration, you (just as I) are searching, and asking "Why?"

The flock is all of us; the sheep is the leader of the lambs. This was a powerful poem, my friend. It doesn't need imagery nor interpretation. It speaks for itself.

Hi Letty,
Thank you for your comments, and time spent.
I must add that this is an old verse, I am the opposite of what I was then, and I search no longer. As future verses I add to this forum (publishers allowing) will show. I hope you will take a peek once in a while and throw your constructive criticisms my way.
Thank you again, Letty - Have a lovely day!!!
Mark...

In Our Mutual Friend, Dicken's Mr. Rayburn stares at a sheep in a field and says:

"You're stupid enough, that's to be sure. But if you're able to make it tolerably through life... you've got the better of me."

Do you think that the young man you mentioned died for lack of learning how to be a proper sheep? It's our sheep side that gets married, rears children, stands in line to vote, doesn't care about the evening news because a little one is in a school play...

Maybe it's easy to forget that being a sheep is made up of a million precious moments. Maybe the goat consoles itself by calling them stupid. Maybe they talk about that in the goat forum?

Thanks Mark, you're the greatest.

Hi Arjuna,

Alas, a sheep did wander
From it's reverential plot.

I'm not allowed to post anymore because of copyright requirements.

But "NOTHING CAN SILENCE ME", off the tab.

The lamb strolls out through a gate ajar. The farmer's on his mobile, not paying attention, as usual. The lamb encounters all things new and finds ripe pastures up a nearby hillock.
From the hillock he can see the field from whence he came. He'd never known it was so small. He'd always thought it was the whole world (don't we all?). Anyway, he sees his friends and relatives going about their daily routines, grazing on the sunnyside, attending the trough at the base, some courting/some playing and a few of the elders having a nap under the tree. He misses being with them, but is too caught up in his new, and only, adventure... Then he spies another field, then another, then several. He sees sheep, just like him, with similar routines in similar fields. All of them tending their own in similar, but variable, fashion.
He sees a farmer giving orders to some wolves (sheepdogs) to scare that field's inhabitants into submission. "So the shepherd controls the wolves" he says to himself. Back in his field he sees his friends and playmates being frogmarched into a big container (Truck), and wonders why? He watches further - The truck drives around the hillock to a big building (slaughterhouse).
He sees his friends exit the truck, enter the building...... Then he hears their screams.
There's no going back for this guy!!!

Anyway, we are all sheep! Even the shepherds are someone/thing's flock.
I hope you got the gist of my poem? even if I can't write it here, in full, yet, I will, when able.

Craig (my colleague, and friend) died because he couldn't deal with the harsh reality of what most people are really like (inconsiderate and self-centred). Even me, for I couldn't see his misery, through my own self-interest. Now, if I see the onset of misery in anyone I happen to percieve as vulnerable, I act! I work among hundreds of people, and their have been no more suicides.

To exist as a sheep... is to feel things. To exist as a sheep of many fields... is to know things. To exist on the hillock... is to understand things. To return from the hillock... is to forgive.

Thank you Arjuna, and have a fantastic day.
Mark...

I don't understand the copyright requirements.

But I so understand the rest of what you said. I've been in that state: more vulnerable than I realized, and someone cut a hole in the net I was standing on... they didn't mean to do that... actually they didn't... it was me... I'd let the straw pile up on my back and I wasn't ready for the last one.

It's also made me more aware of how important kindness can be.

It doesn't make it right, it's simply true: through adversity, I learn compassion.

And it's right to say his name: Craig.

Hi Arjuna,
I own the copyright to all my publications, but when I allow them to be published I am required to not re-publish in any way until a specific time-period has elapsed (usually one year) It allows the publication a reasonable period of sale, I guess. I only publish in a contibutary fashion. I receive no profit for my contributions, nor wish to either. But I sign the dotted line - and must therefore oblige.

OH, I don't nor ever have felt responsible for what happened to Craig, I was just impacted by the lack of consideration by his closer friends and colleagues thereafter. We were more mates than FRIENDS. So don't go thinking I was. Death has no meaning to me, it's just a doorway. Que sera.

Mark...

I also believe he was responsible for himself.

If he wasn't ready to die, he wouldn't have.

The term "sheep" relating to humans, are a basic human condition, it's how we can form a society, form groups that can specialize themselves.

Not in my view, by and large I think of persons individuality as running no more than veneer deep, and that the sense we have for being an individual as being largely an add on. Most of what we are for most of the time is collectively programmed. How many girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty are capable to bridge their father`s age in prolonged time and place friendship with a guy? - Other than should they be psychologically compromised the answer may be as few as none. Nothing of course is actually known for certain of any individual merely on account to the passage of time, including their age, how much they have changed/aged. This is just one of many examples of collective state. It is actually present in virtually everything which we say and do.

The analogy "sheep" is not concerned with selective groups, but rather, it is one single group which makes but few significant contributions outside and beyond expected norms of thinking and behavior. The vast majority of us for the vast majority of the time, intellect aside, are in fact sheep.

Herd psychology is a weapon against equality. Equality means no reality, and therefore herd psychology protects reality