Friday, August 11, 2006

The Obscenity Of Neighbourliness


There are commonly thought to be only two kinds of neighbour; the 'good' neighbour and the bad neighbour.
Very little actual effort has gone into defining these protoypes specifically; instead we are expected, over time, to acquire by osmosis some sort of sub-notional notion of what constitutes these types.
This is most unsatisfactory.
In my experience the only good neighbour is the neighbour that leaves me the hell alone, while the bad neighbours are legion and legend.
Bad neighbourliness begins and ends with inappropriate concern for other people.
At its mildest, the concern is over welfare and is what we are supposed to regard as 'good' neighbourliness.
At the other extreme, and this is a common extreme, we have the obsessive concern with our status, health, mentality, every waking experience and all of our adjacent life, by the sorts of bad neighbour or whom normality means violating and occupying the private spaces of other people close by.
This type has no concept of life, either in itself or in others, which can be tolerated as such;as a result they try their hardest to suppress and pervert any spontaneous feeling, especially of joy, that they can possibly detect in the environments which are occupied by others.

This dead-hand imperialism can be a crude as turning up the volume on noise that even they hate, or a subtle as scratching around in the hope that someone, somewhere will momentarily lose track of their thoughts and have to start again.
Because they hate other people's thoughts.
Almost as much as they hate other people; yet they would seek out neighbours, people onto whom they can fasten.

Why do I say 'Imperialism'?
Well, they want to exert control over others, using their system of noisesome scurrying.
They realise that they cannot do this straight away, so they keep it up as a chronic environment in our homes, hoping not to make us angry, but to reach the time where we accept and don't notice.
Then, by degree, they will introduce 'control' to the equation, by making their noise at night, or in the morning before we plan to awake,seeking to govern when we sleep and when we wake without our even being aware.

If they perceive that there is nothing we can do about it, so much the quicker.
By these means they hope to achieve the day when they can 'lord' it over us and leave us no functioning self at any time we are in our own homes.

Say what you like about the French;at least they have 'Crime Passionel' as a defence.

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