Tag Archives: benthamism

Reduction

If we reduce
It to the bare bone,
Man stands alone,
His purpose to produce.
He is a mere factor of production.
What a reduction
Of you and me
To a robot who can not be free.

The dull
Texts that Marx and Bentham wrote
Are full
Of such stuff.
I have had enough
Of the dreary theory
Produced by long dead sages.
Weighty pages
Read
By those who live too much in their own head
And try to force the world to conform
By reform
Or worse!

My verse
Will not halt the curse
Of those who too much water drink
And in think
Tanks construe
Ideas of varying hue
Which, no doubt, they believe to be true,
Then foist them on me and you.

Bentham’s Head

We are supposed to strive,
And arrive
At a goal.
The whole
Point of education
Is to generate wealth for the nation.
One must be constructive
And do something productive.
Making wigits
And counting digits
Keeps the wheels of commerce turning.

Gradgrind says we must always be learning
But I am discerning
He means
As a machine
That thinks not but performs.
He scorns
Arts for they have no goal
Other than the enrichment of the soul.

Bentham is dead
Yet his head
Calculates still,
While the poet on the hill
Takes delight
In the dark and starry night.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/jeremy-bentham/about/bentham-head