The Philosophical Phollies

(Prepared 5/20/95; ctw; compiled from Internet, Lena Rotenberg, a Brazilian source)

One of the oldest pseudo-philosophical questions of the ages might have been answered by sages around the world as follows:

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

ANSWER—

Everyman: To get to the other side.

Plato: For the greatest good.

Karl Marx: It was a dialectical, historical inevitability.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view the chicken with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road; but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken’s dominion maintained.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn’t cross the road—it transcended it!

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately....and to suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of the chicken’s crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across at you. And because the chicken had the Will to cross the Road.

B. F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to de-velop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Timothy Leary: Because that’s the only kind of trip the Establishment would let the chicken take, man.

Oliver North: National Security was at stake.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Gloria Steinem: To sexually harass the hens!

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith so as to be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road. To do less would have been to decide not to decide, a choice not possible for chickens, or anyone else.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an Herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Louis Farrakhan: It’s a chicken thang; pullets and crackers wouldn’t understand!

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of “crossing” was encoded into the objects “chicken” and “road,” and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Buddha: To find a better Karma, and to reach the Pure Land.

Jacques Derrida (Deconstructionist): Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, Dammit, DEAD!

Charles Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Epicurus: For fun, of course.

Jack Nicholson: ‘Cause it f¬¬¬¬_____ (censored) wanted to! That’s the f_____ (censored) reason.

Pyrrho, the Skeptic: What road? What chicken?

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George Carlin’s
Theory of Life

     Whatever you think of George Carlin, it must be admitted that his take on life is sometimes worth noting. Outside the box, yes—but worth our notice. You don’t have to appreciate his style to understand that he has, at various times, found a way of succinctly putting his finger on some of those human dilemmas which perennially plague humankind.

     I think that is the case in this very short piece about life. It is Carlin’s theory about the great mystery of life. And like his predecessor Mark Twain who said that we should start life at 80 and work our way back to 18, Carlin also puts things in reverse, as follows...

     “The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends,” laments comedian George Carlin. “I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. And what do you get in the end? A Death! What’s that, a bonus?

     “I think,” he continues, that “the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you could live in an old age home. You then get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, and then you go to work.

     “You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do some drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play a lot, you have no responsibilities.

     “You become a little baby; you go back to the womb. You spend your last nine months floating in a warm, pleasant place.... and you finish off with an orgasm!”

     Now, that’s living!!

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(Adapted from the InterNet, 4/15/2000; ctw)