#10

“Esteem yourself,” the psychologists prate,

“Not for the products that you did create,

Not for your courage, nor for your skill,

Nor for your knowledge, nor effort of will,

Not for your morals, nor conduct by far.

Esteem yourself for just what you are.”

What am I, then? Do kindly state.

#11

“Ignore the thinkers of the past,”
The sociologist will tell you fast,

“For they are products of their times,

And with the shift of paradigms,
Their principles are no more sound.”

What does all paradigms, then, found?

#12

“Man’s greatest duty is to breed,”

Proclaims this era’s mainstream creed.

“One’s legacy need be preserved

Beyond one’s own demise.”

But he who’d but his children served,
Will in his great-grandchildren’s eyes

Be but a fleeting shadow of his days,

While heroes in the tomes of learning graze,

Whose procreation never was a need.

G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician and composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right and SoloHQ, writer for Objective Medicine, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator. He can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.