by The Doors
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
Ill never look into your eyes...again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...strangers hand
In a...desperate land
Lost in a roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
Theres danger on the edge of town
Ride the kings highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby
Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...hes old, and his skin is cold
The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and well do the rest
The blue bus is callin us
The blue bus is callin us
Driver, where you taken us
The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...i want to...fuck you
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin a blue rock
Cmon, yeah
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
It hurts to set you free
But youll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end
I first heard the song while watching Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now as part of my Literature S Paper revision.
Francis Ford Coppola was the dude who did The Godfather films, and Apocalypse Now was his film rendition of perhaps the greatest novel ever written- Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
An interesting chap, Joseph Conrad. Born in Poland, worked in the American merchant marine, then lived in Britain. A brilliant writer, on par with Dickens at the least.
But this is not about book-writers or film-makers.
The song was the background soundtrack to the preamble of the film. It played while USMC helicopters circled over the jungles of Vietnam, with napalm bombs from F-4 Phantoms showering all over the dense vegetation, crimson flowers blossoming, their deadly petals germinating death.
The song and the setting- the sheer moral chaos of the Vietnam war- brought to mind the ideas of Hobbes.
The chaos and bestial anarchy that resides in the pysche of every human being. I believe the madness and insanity in the lyrics speak for themselves, without need for superlatives. There is no describing the revulsion I have for the human condition as portrayed by the song. It represents the limitless madness of humanity.
No matter how hard it's controlled by will-power and self-discipline or how deeply it is concealed by the facades of society and the rules of interpersonal conduct, bestial, brutal, horrific, chaos is the very heart of humanity.
Only force and iron coercion is effective in restoring order to such disorder.
And thus the other alternative in the Hobbesian dilemna is logically totalitarianism. The cults of Hitler and Stalin and Mao and Kim Il Sung. The venerating to the point of deification of fellow human beings and their ideas, no matter their flaws, no matter the costs, no matter the morality (or lack thereof). Dictatorship, despotism, force, naked, absolute force.
Total, unquestioning, obedience to the authority.
The only true safeguard against the Vietnams of the world and pyschosis of The Doors, then, is found in Nazi Germany and Khmer Rouge Cambodia.
This is not just limited to extreme cases. Look how everybody in Iraq is looking with nostalgia to the brutal reign of Saddam Hussein when confronted with the chaos and anarchy unleashed by Bush's experiment in Middle East democracy.
Or how Singaporeans worship their Benefactors the Party without paying the slightest attention to political and civil rights.
This is the damned if we do, damned if we dont choice that characterises life as a human being.
Between the abyssal chaos of our nature, and a life under the cruellest and most brutal regimes imagineable.
That is our choice, barring choosing God.
I must admit, though, that this sounds more Nietszche than Hobbes, as Hobbes went on to develop a kind of social contract form of liberal democracy, whereas Nietszche went on to become nihilistic pessimism incarnate.
But then, Nietszche did not have God.
