Page 72 - The Irony Board

Into the World

Greener pastures

The barren point
Of departure
Revealed by a
Movement of sheep

Is prophetic
Of the fate of
Their intended
Destination.

The masses, despite their inertia, do represent a political position:
hunger. They are manipulated primarily by promises aimed at their
baser appetites; when one means of satisfying them is exhausted,
another is found. Like sheep destroying pasture, the human herd
maintains itself by following its shepherd from resource to resource,
leaving behind nothing renewable for the future. Thus the prophecy
is self-fulfilling and predictable.
But another less literal meaning lurks in these words. “Point of
departure” and “movement of sheep” also stand for the political or
philosophical assumptions held by a group of unthinking followers.
The conclusions at which they will arrive are inevitably as devoid of
value as their premises. This is the irony of “greener pastures”:
perceiving ends more attractive than their beginnings, people
suppose they can move from one to the other without altering either
themselves or their goals.

70