"Everybody goes / Leaving those / Who Fall Behind"
These lines, written by the great Alex Chilton and recorded in Ardent Studios, Memphis (where I visited three weeks ago) used to be signs of great pessimism to me in my communitarian, SanFran-inspired youth. The music of San Francisco in the mid/late sixties inspired me to believe that people could get together to resolve all of our mutual problems (cf. "Get Together" by the Youngbloods, a beautifully sad song). So when I first heard these lines they seemed terribly pessimistic in terms of the world view I then had.
As I listen again, however, I see that they are simply factual. We are "caught in the devil's bargain" (Joni Mitchell), animals who have the capability to think we are better than we are. A wolf pack does not attempt to be "nice" - if a member is unproductive in terms of the survival of the pack it is killed. We expect better than that; yet as animals ourselves we naturally live the same way. Our laws are coded as if that isn't the case, yet their practical execution, inevitably, encapsulates that truth in the way it is played out.
Which is why all human progress is only achieved through the very highest level of abstract mathematics. Only at that point of highly-codified and detached thought can the very highest notions of which we are capable be expressed in an incorruptible form. As we have found in the physical realm, so we will in the moral; the discoveries expressed in pure abstract mathematical algorithms will flow through into perceived everyday "reality". That is the only thing that separates us from our fellow-species. Aside from that, we should not be surprised by the harshness of the lines at the top of this entry.
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