Jean-Jacques Pasti: The Declaration of Rational Absurdity (1900)

Jean-Jacques Pasti was born in 1879 in Dingleberry, New York.  The only son of  French immigrant farmers,  Pasti moved to Manhattan at 19 to find fame and fortune.  He earned a living selling suitcases while trying to make a name for himself among the growing circles of New York's artists and intelligentsia.  Pasti was largely a self-educated man, his parents unable to afford higher education.  Without wealth and connections, Pasti was repeatedly turned down by publishing houses, universities and lecture tours.  Embittered and angry, he wrote The Declaration during a lunch break at his workplace.  He spent five months of savings to self-publish the pamphlet, and distributed it to newspapers, universities and other centers of art and learning.  It gained a few followers, but was largely ignored.  The few followers he did gain, however, worked with Pasti to lay the groundwork for Rational Absurdist nonscholarship.  Together they published The Counterfeit Duck, a monthly Rational Absurdist newsletter.  Pasti wrote feverishly for 20 years, creating many antitexts, nonpoems, artwarps and monographs until finally committing suicide in 1920.

The Declaration of Rational Absurdity

July 21st, 1900

When in the course of its life the Human Animal finds itself bereft of the basic essentials of existence, and is forced to to cower in a rat-hole for fear of ridicule and the sharp blows of disgust and disapproval, when the fruits of its hands are destined for the tables and bellies of others, when the gems of its mind are devalued and mocked openly, when its countenance brings nothing but repulsion and fear, when the very existence of the Human Animal is cast into question, where can this Animal find solace?

In the arms of Religion, the Kind Priest who consoles with one hand and thieves with the other?

In the arms of Science, the Caring Doctor who invents new maladies for his scalpel to cure?

In the arms of Philosophy, the Learned Scholar who can find a hundred pretty words for murder?

In the arms of Eros, the Beautiful Lover made of smoke and ill-cast shadow?

The Human Animal will turn to these, and in all cases find nothing but emptiness, fraud and disappointment.  It leaves each of these embraces lighter in purse, sicker, more confused and broken hearted.  And it will be rebuked for finding their solace wanting, for calling them to task for their lies.

Where then can The Human Animal find itself an answer?

Perhaps in Art, but even that has become a tool of the Liars, a celebration of pretty illusions.  A new kind of Art, perhaps? An Art that reflects back the absurdity of the world's institutions and thus cancels itself and them out once and for all.

Absurdity then, will be the warm bed in which this Human Animal finds shelter. Not the Absurdity of the world around it, but a carefully structured Absurdity.  A RATIONAL ABSURDITY.

The Priests, Doctors, Scholars and Lovers have all given us Meaning that is an empty skein, a drained bladder.  It beats us down, then calmly explains why the beating was necessary as we bleed in the dust. Their Meaning entices back on our feet with kindness and promises for the better to beat us down once again. 

This circle can only be broken through nonsense, unmeaning and obfuscation. Through RATIONAL ABSURDITY. If Meaning is a circuit, then RATIONAL ABSURDITY is the short.

Henceforth, Human Animals everywhere, seek not solace nor meaning in the pretty structures of glass the world has built around you with Words and Numbers. It is beautiful, yes, but you cannot see that it has hemmed you in, bound every limb, kept you still like a calf awaiting the hammer? Cultivate the hammer of Absurdity to free yourself from this prison.

SMASH ALL MEANING! BASTARD POTATOES! TRELLISES OF THE AUGMENTED SPINE!

SMASH ALL MEANING!

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