I would ask you, gentle reader, to
compare the two lists below:
List A
|
List B
|
Charles Darwin
|
Caligula
|
William Shakespeare
|
Elizabeth Bathory
|
Charles Dickens
| Robespierre |
Saint Peter
|
Adolf Hitler
|
Obi Wan Kenobi (Episode
II onwards)
|
Joseph Stalin
|
Me
|
Nero
|
Francis of Assisi
|
Pol Pot
|
Socrates
|
Emperor Palpatine
|
William Booth
|
Napoleon Bonaparte
|
Charlemagne
|
Myra Hindley
|
The conclusions that we
can draw from the scientific and wholly representative study above should be so
obvious as to be hardly worth expanding on, and I imagine that you will all be
taking action accordingly. However, that
would make for a very short blog post, so I’m afraid that I must insult your
intelligence and act as though the above were not self-evident.
Obviously List A consists
of paragons of humanity and over-achievers in their respective fields, be that
writing, discovering evolution, philosophy, feeding the poor, fighting the
Sith, blogging about writing and/or theology, forming the Holy Roman Empire etc.
etc.
List B consists of
murderers, dictators and Sith lords; all, it must be admitted, over-achievers
in their fields, but one might wish that they’d tried less hard and been
distracted more easily.
The common factor is, I
hope, instantaneously obvious: beards.
The occupants of List A are all bearded, while the denizens of List B
are all unbearded. At most they might
have a moustache.
Now, as we all know,
correlation does not necessarily equal causation. No reasonable person would actually suggest
(despite the overwhelming weight of evidence in support of the hypothesis) that
beards make one good, wise, witty, and modest.
Nonetheless, it does allow one to make some generalisations that can be
assumed to hold true. If you don’t have
a beard, you’re probably a murderer. You
may well have attempted, at some point in the past, to conquer Europe. You’ve most likely tried, probably unsuccessfully,
to shoot lightning from your hands and/or crush the rebel alliance. You’ve almost certainly had numerous people
executed. Unbearded people are generally
and as a rule of thumb, evil.
If you, dear reader, are
yourself unbearded, please do not take offence.
Of course the above is not true of all your kind; there are, or at least
there must be, somewhere, unbearded people who are good, upright individuals,
even if they cannot aspire to the heights of achievement catalogued by the
inhabitants of List A. You may even be
one of them, or at least it is not totally beyond the realms of possibility. I myself don’t have anything against
unbearded people; many of my best friends don’t have beards, indeed I am
married to an unbearded person.
I imagine that if one
were to google ‘Unbearded People’, there would be a wide variety of websites,
sound-bites and memes pointing out and mocking the many shortcomings of the
breed. This is unkind, but hardly
unexpected.
In the same way that one
can talk about bearded people, generalisations may be made about other
groups. Religious people for
example. Although there may be a little
variety within the group, nonetheless what holds true for a Taliban suicide
bomber can be assumed to also apply to the denizens of your local parish
church. What can be fairly said of a
Young Earth creationist can equally be said of an Oxford theology
professor. More so, what can be said of
a sixteenth century inquisitor can be said of the staff of the nearest Salvation
Army soup kitchen or your local food bank.
Across time and space, ‘religious people’ are as homogenous and
unchanging as ‘unbearded people’ (if the latter can really be called ‘people’
at all). By and large, they (religious
people that is, not unbearded people) are ignorant, anti-intellectual and
potentially violent, extremely close-minded and hostile (often violently so) to
change or any suggestion that their beliefs might not be accurate.
It is extremely useful to
us that such generalisations hold true.
We live in a world of convenient clumps, clearly divided into distinct
colours and types. A world of nuance and
change would be far too complicated for the human mind to encompass. I mean, yes public discourse suffers
somewhat, and the divisions between groups remain the same, if not growing ever
wider, like continental plates slowly and inexorably drifting apart, but what
can we do but shrug and wait for our continent to take us somewhere sunny? Not only that, but the fact that all groups
are monolithic and homogenous also allows far greater accountability than would
otherwise be possible, a factor which we can all agree if of the utmost benefit
to the world.
After all, since
unbearded people can be classed as a distinct and cohesive whole, the actions
of any one unbearded person can be fairly laid at the door of any other
unbearded person. You, humble and
bare-chinned reader, no matter how innocent you may assume yourself to be, bear
the weight of Napoleon’s conquests, the blood of Elizabeth Bathory’s hot-tub
stains your skin, the stench of Caligula’s orgies clings to your clothes. We more fortunate people can ask you to get
your house in order and discipline your more fractious elements, and we are
able to justify our mistreatment of you because, after all, many innocent bearded
people suffered the depredations of Napoleon’s armies, many were oppressed by
Nero’s persecutions, a great many killed during Robespierre’s reign of
terror. It is only fair, right and just
that you accept responsibility for the sins of your co-barefacers and at least
offer a grovelling apology, even if you can’t necessarily offer physical
reparations of any kind.
I hope that you now
understand, tragic and whiskerless reader, why it is that you receive so much
unkindness and abuse, and accept that although it is by no means your fault per se, it is nonetheless just, fair and
reasonable, and that you should accept it graciously, humbly, maybe even
gratefully. Ultimately, you have no-one
but yourself and those millions of other unbearded people throughout time and
space, almost entirely identical to you in all essentials, to blame.
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