Bandar-log

    Here we go in a flung festoon,
    Half-way up to the jealous moon!
    Don't you envy our pranceful bands?
    Don't you wish you had extra hands?
    Wouldn't you like if your tails were--so--
    Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow?
        Now you're angry, but--never mind,
        Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!


    Here we sit in a branchy row,
    Thinking of beautiful things we know;
    Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
    All complete, in a minute or two--
    Something noble and wise and good,
    Done by merely wishing we could.
        We've forgotten, but--never mind,
        Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!


    All the talk we ever have heard
    Uttered by bat or beast or bird--
    Hide or fin or scale or feather--
    Jabber it quickly and all together!
    Excellent!  Wonderful!  Once again!


    Now we are talking just like men!
       Let's pretend we are ... never mind,
       Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
       This is the way of the Monkey-kind.


   Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,
   That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape swings.
   By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,
   Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things!

Rudyard Kipling,Road Song of the Bandar-log,1894

(Photographs after jump may be"NSFW")


"They have no law. They are outcasts.














They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait ...






Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs ... but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten"

Rudyard Kipling,Kaa's Hunting,1894

"What the Bandar-log think now the jungle will think later"

"But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
-John Maynard Keynes, THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY,1936.


"Communism, fascism, socialism, and any other "ism", purporting to demonstrate that someone else is more entitled to what you have than you are, are all based the idea, or ideal, that people are, generally,better off when people are, generally, not permitted to make themselves better off.Put this way the truth would seem to become painfully obvious.
And, after near a century of genocide, riots, famine and war, the obvious has, indeed, become that painful."