To Die For Your Ideas

This week I feel sick and sad and hopeless, and I'm trying to find a light at the end of the tunnel that is humanity. Why do we keep going backwards? Are we just destined to self-destruct? Why does violence continue to exist? Why do morally reprehensible leaders use impressionable young people and religion to terrorize and control innocent populations? Why don't we learn once and for all that war is total bullshit and violence is the cancer of our species? I have no answers.

We don't seem to learn from our mistakes as a species. Society is being destroyed by a toxic potion made of three elements: 1- Our willingness to accept and glorify violence. 2- Our inability to codify and cherish human morality and meaning outside of outdated expressions of authoritarian religion. 3- Our unwillingness to challenge, destroy, and shut down the military and weapons industries.

Here are the lyrics to a song by Georges Brassens called "Mourir Pour Des Idees" along with my English translation.  The song was released on the album "Fernande" which came out in 1972. It has never been more relevant than it is today. It's so fucking sad and pathetic that this song is still so relevant today, 44 years after it was written. Wake up, humanity.

To die for your ideas, an excellent idea

One time I almost died for lack of having it

When all the teeming hordes who had it before me

Ran screaming to my door in a murderous fit

My muse eventually caved in to their request

Lamenting her mistakes, she rallied to their cause

With just a whisper of regret giving her pause

Let’s die for our ideas, but make it a slow death

OK, make it a slow, slow death

Seeing as we are free to linger in this life

Let’s take our own sweet time reaching the afterglow

For, if we hurry up, we might actually die

For an idea that’s out of fashion tomorrow

Yet, if there’s one thing sure to make you feel depressed

It is to realize upon your dying day

That you took the wrong path, that you made a mistake

Let’s die for our ideas, but make it a slow death

OK, make it a slow, slow death

The fundamentalists who cry the martyr’s cry

Are usually the ones who linger on this earth

To die for their ideals, for whatever it’s worth

Is their main obsession, it motivates their life

In almost every camp, every holy domain

These are the ones who will outlive Methuselem

Which leads me to conclude their favorite refrain’s

Let’s die for our ideas, but make it a slow death

OK, make it a slow, slow death

Ideas which demand the famous sacrifice

Are endlessly revived by sects of every stripe

And every new victim wonders before he dies

To die for an idea is lovely, but which type?

And since they’re all about the same in most respects

The wise man, when he sees their mighty banners wave

Will always hesitate, as he sidesteps the grave

Let’s die for our ideas, but make it a slow death

OK, make it a slow, slow death

If a few killing fields, a few communal graves

Were all it took to do the trick once and for all

With all the nights of terror, all the heads that fall

You’d think by now the whole world would be saved

Alas, the golden age is constantly delayed

The gods are thirsty yet, they’re never satisfied

So death and death resumes, and still more people die

Let’s die for our ideas, but make it a slow death

OK, make it a slow, slow death

Oh all you firebrands, all you fishers of men

Please be the first to die, we’ll get out of your way

But, for the love of god, let the rest of us live

Life is the last luxury left us anyway

The reaper is a crafty type and needs no help

No need to speed his work by sharpening his blade

So stop your dance of death, you’re only giving aid

Let’s die for our ideas, but make it a slow death

OK, make it a slow, slow death