Jack Pelham

I believe I could get filthy rich
If I were willing to teach under-developed minds
To feel good about their under-development.

A thousand lessons pass the ears
And a hundred the lips
To the one that finds a home in the heart.

And hardly anyone knows that we could—
If we wanted—
Learn a thing the first time.

As he heads to the barn
The evening sun dips down
Beneath the western clouds
For one last look at the day
And washes warm where he may
Across the uncluttered earth
Casting long those evening shadows
Beyond the obstinate things
That refuse to clear the way.

He is a fool and brilliant!—

A fool for using his unreliable human mind
For drawing conclusions about this world—

And brilliant for learning how to do it better and better,
And for reassessing his conclusions from time to time,
Where most simply set it and forget it.

Watch that man who is
Unwilling to feel foolish
Even when he is.

We have the stupidest ideas among us—promoted in tandem, yet inconsistent in principle:

I. That those who choose a life of intellectual immaturity—who shun learning, morals, self-correction, and duty—make a respectable choice, and that it is the duty of the world to cater to such people, sheltering them from consequence—

II. That those who expect others to grow up are themselves negligent in learning, morals, and self-correction, and are shunning their duty to refashion the world, and ought to be punished for it.

Is it the nature of the other species
That they go to seed before
They have taken root themselves—
That they bear young
Before maturity?

Yet it is in the nature of humankind
That they may choose
To reproduce before
They are fit for
Parenthood.

The serpent promised that they could rise above
The nature into which they had been created
By performing beneath it—

They harden themselves against the realization
That they have done wrong—
As if this were good for them,
And not self-abuse—
As if they had something better to do
Than what is right—
As if they had something better to believe
Than what is true.

It is important to him
That you know—
Along with everybody else—
That your post was “TLDR”.