I Was A Different Person Last year…

Ed, all you ever blog or Tweet about is education. Ending this year, can’t you write about something else?

Okay, from 2013 here is something educational, but not about our schools:

When I was in college, I inherited old books from an Englishman’s library. One set of leather-bound books contained the complete works of Bulwer Litton. As I sorted the books, I made a major error. Reading the circular emblem stamped into the leather covers of the old books, I read: THE PENIS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD. I thought, “That makes sense.”

Bulwer’s quote stayed in my head for years – in fact, it is still there, next to the actual quote: THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD. I have a tinge of guilt that I thought the quote said something other than Bulwer intended. Sorry Bulwer, but the misreading has changed my insight into things.

Why the first reading made sense proves informative. For example, to understand that the rise of some cults started by male prophets were ways to get into the – let’s call it the genetic pool – of the population. In the case of several of the more recent cults, the leader used his penis instead of a pen or sword as a tool of communion. It proved to be ‘mightier’ with a cadre of women. Religions are maintained through the female side of families, thus the spreading of a cult depends on the spreading of legs.

When the penis is mightier than the sword, other men can become lax in their acceptance of the dogmas. In one instance, the men resented the leader’s access to their wives and daughters. There was particular resentment to pedophile attractions which they were told would lead to the enhancement of the congregation. The aggrieved males, bound together with what must be called penis envy, captured the cult leader with the intent of castrating him. They chickened out, and another solution was found. They could all use as many women as they could afford.

In a more recent enlightenment, a cult leader passed and the knowledge of his conquest by penis, not pen or sword, came to the public’s attention. He was actively spreading his message through the powers granted him by god, and mother nature. Once again, women spread the seed, making the cult viable.

The fact that a misreading of an emblem stamped on leather-bound books could create a whole new perspective on cults, must be the work of some devil, somewhere?  Of course, this is not new to the reader. Where cults are concerned, the penis is mightier than the sword, and the pen is used to prove it isn’t so.