Fuck Plato

Fuck Plato

and his ideas

and fuck Aristotle too while you're at it

reifying reason

puffing us up with thought

thinking ourselves into

all kinds of entangled narcissisms

lulling us into the illusion

that we are greater than

the beasts

of the air and the earth

but

I could learn more about

life and living well

from watching the birds in the forest

or from the furry critters

that scramble around

in the autumn leaves,

than I could ever learn

from a beardy

navel-gazing

philosopher

of course

we can't blame them entirely

for our own shite,

our own disenchantments

they just spewed out ideas

that enough of us latched onto

something in the human

must have hungered

for a language that made us better,

the kind of better

that is less animal

and more divine,

less driven by impulse

and more ordained by god;

justified and set apart

holier than the rest of creation

more significant

more important

maybe that is the hunger

we all have locked within

to be more important

to be more significant

and all you need

is to stick a beardy philosopher

with big words and big ideas

into the same room

as a meaning-hungry human

with a few glasses of wine

for us to start believing

that we are more

significant

important

entitled

for us to start conjuring up

the audacities of colonialism

the civilising project

post-Plato

we felt civilised

no longer base and carnal

no longer primal and savage

and we saw that

disavowed animal-self

in those savage others

as we roamed

the earth that we thought was

now magically ours

unsurprisingly

we found them to be uncivilised

they had shamans

we had philosophers

they had paganisms

reverence and respect

we came loaded with disease:

smallpox, rationality and reason

and, if that's the kind of better

that western thought has given to the world

then you can shove it up Plato's arse sideways