Humpty Dumpty in a New Century
16/December/2009 11:00 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Volume 11, Issue 49
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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
We move from our fairy tale “A Christmas Hunt” between Teddy Roosevelt and Al Gore in our Monday post to a real for goodness sake nursery rhyme. Those people of the English language persuasion all learned this short stanza as young children. According to the Internet it has been with us over two centuries. Humpty Dumpty has been used in various times and places to make a point about society, but really has been pretty much accepted in its monarchial reality. For most of this history it has been assumed that Humpty Dumpty was an egg that would surely break if he/it fell off a wall, and the wall was – just a wall.
No matter how you spin the rhyme, there are dire consequences when something or someone falls off a wall. In the case of Humpty Dumpty the result of his fall was death. In the news of the world today there are a number of spins on the current state of Humpty Dumpty as it relates to current or pending realities. This is especially true in the United States, where a lot of people have too much time to analyze the past, report on the present, and prognosticate about the future. To name a few:
Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall during the presidency of George W. Bush.
President Obama is well on the way of putting Humpty Dumpy back together again.
President Obama attempted to take away the freedom of Humpty Dumpty to sit on his wall, he built through hard work and freedom and this resulted in Humpty’s death. This is definitely a Federal government attempt to acquire the Dumpty Wall for some sort of redistribution of wealth scheme.
What is never questioned in any of the above scenarios is that Humpty Dumpty reality exists today in what we would call a totally secular world or worldview.
As we pointed out in last week’s post asking, “God if you are real?” could that God reality change our and Humpty Dumpty’s worldview? In this respect Humpty Dumpty would only ask that question after he fell off the wall. But it also follows that if “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again,” then is the future hopeless for Humpty Dumpty, if he must rely only on a natural king; rather than the King of kings?
Of course the answers to the God question above echo pretty much the same theme, “Humpty Dumpty, the future is great if you don’t lie there in pieces, put your life together.”
And again in our secular world we get similar spin:
Humpty, can I call you the Hump Man? If you accept Jesus into your heart, He will put you back together, and you will own another wall and be a king, not with a capital K, just a small k.
Humpty Dumpty, it is the government’s responsibility to put you together, so we will provide you with the resources to be a good egg again, especially since all eggs look pretty much alike.
Mr. Dumpty you are on your own kid, you are just a coward, a real American is self-sufficient and “don’t need no help from no one.” (sic) Notice the triple negative, which seems to imply that resources will not be forthcoming, no matter how Humpty Dumpty asks for help.
So let us dissect old Humpty Dumpty in early twenty-first century terms and see if all the parts are sufficient to give us a real rhyme that may be applicable to those who have been, are now experiencing, or will soon be living a Humpty Dumpty life.
First of all we must look at Humpty Dumpty himself. While it has always been assumed the Humpty was an egg, eggs really are pretty thin skinned, any slight adverse happenstance and they fall all apart. Besides in the twenty-first century we have a better term “egghead” which gives Humpty sort of an elitist, but somewhat pejorative personality. That probably comes from the fact that he might not be all that stable mentally. He seems to be quite emotional in that his life is full of humpy highs and dumpy lows.
So for some reason Mr. Dumpty decided to go sit on a wall. As we pointed out earlier, Humpty could have built that wall. If that was the case sitting on a wall of your own description really doesn’t seem to be all that important. No, this wall must be associated with some deeper, or in this case a higher metaphysical application. We would have to assume the wall then is associated with the politically correct evolving progressive culture. That seems to be what we in the west are demanding in our current wall building enterprises, as we move onward and upward.
These walls are first and foremost a human definable and solvable need, like they are now working on in Copenhagen, to save the world from the soon coming catastrophe of global warming climate change. So in the metaphysical sense, the Humpty Wall could exist anywhere people are attempting to create a kinder and more gentile society, and help all those people who can’t help themselves; price is not a consideration. So Mr. Dumpty could mount an erected wall in Copenhagen, Chicago, Wall Street and/or Manhattan, Washington DC, Paris, London, Beijing, Singapore, pretty much in any of the world’s leading cities. Apologies to those world-class cities we left out.
Humpty could not mount a wall out in the wilderness, or even in the deep woods, because just like a tree falling in the forest, which makes no sound, Humpty falling off a wall outside a major media center would never be noticed. It would not be all that long and Humpty’s innards would feed the critters and the bugs and his nature would return to the earth from which it came. Furthermore in the context of the rhyme all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would not be available out in the forest, for they never venture to anywhere that the king’s authority can come into question.
In any construct, mounting the wall would give Humpty a wider view of life and the king’s subjects beneath his perusal. But sadly there is no explanation in the rhyme why Humpty fell off the wall. Therefore we are left to speculate.
Mr. Dumpty must have been a pretty important person to merit the king’s attention. He could have decided to commit suicide, but then the rhyme would have said Humpty jumped off the wall. No this must have been some sort of accident. The question must then be, “Did Humpty take some daring risk, or was something wrong with the wall itself?
The answer seems pretty straightforward, it must have been something wrong with the wall itself, for Humpty was sitting on the wall, not walking along the wall, or some other risky option. Furthermore it must have not been some so called act of God, because if this were the case, then there would have been some sort of Humpty bargain with God to plead for his salvation. Like in the life of Martin Luther, “God if you save me from this storm, I will go to the monastery to become a monk, and after that you can use me to start the Protestant Reformation.”
Our scientific analysis of the wall materials and the foundation shows that the foundation was built on sand, which contributed greatly to the total instability of the wall itself, but we also found that the rocks that were used to build the wall were not as well fitted together as the king himself had requested. Then the rocks themselves were suspect as far as it comes to their structural integrity. They just could not bear the weight of a humble egghead because of all those who used the wall to promote their agendas and had campaigned on both sides of the wall for a very long time. As a consequence the rocks fractured and fell apart just at the time poor Humpty decided to try to overcome his fears of being just a Humpty – Dumpty sort of a guy.
Finally, we come to the fault of all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, who could not put Mr. Dumpty together again. Now we have two possible explanations why this occurred that bear striking application to our day and why this rhyme is so important.
First of all the king’s men were called upon to do a job they were not all that qualified to do. They were advisors to the king and therefore knew a lot of very important things, or better yet a lot of things that were important to the king. Hence they never seemed to understand that Mr. Dumpty’s demise was not due to personal mistakes, but rather the king himself had and was trying to create a kingdom wall, without an understanding of the natural laws that govern all things. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that you can’t build a sustainable wall on sand, but it does take some common sense. In all their training to become a king’s horse or a king’s man, they somehow forgot that they too were subject to the eternal laws of nature and nature’s God.
In an effort to surround his kingdom so that his reputation would last forever, the king had decided to enact, with great support from his lords and governors, a massive wall-building stimulus. The problem was that all the shovel ready wall-building projects, really were not all that ready to be built and Humpty Dumpty was unfortunate enough to test his sitting ability on one of those early walls.
This brings us to the true moral of the story. In the moral both Humpty Dumpty and the king are at fault, sadly Humpty Dumpty paid for this moral with his life, and the king, well he was the king after all. Humpty Dumpty believed that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could build a wall on which he could sit securely and enjoy the view.
Readers, understand this is not at all like the current ObamaCare that the United States Congress is trying to force upon the American people. No it isn’t, because the king said that this had been the goal of generations of kings.
Furthermore Humpty Dumpty should have realized that all the kings horse’s and all the king’s men were vested and invested heavily in the success of all the king’s projects, not just building the king’s walls, but green energy, climate change, and a whole host of their other pet projects that the king also wanted to happen. These stimulus projects further eroded the foundation of not only the king’s wall projects, but also every structure in the king’s reign. The King’s Men were the movers and shakers of change they could believe in, and the phrase was so catchy Humpty Dumpty believed it until his death.
Soon after Humpty Dumpty died, the kings reign became greatly imperiled because of all the king’s pet projects. There was simply no money left for the king’s subjects to create jobs, and improve their lot in life. The king told his Fat Cat Bankers that they needed to lend more money to the small businesses that made the king’s land the most prosperous in history. They really did not refuse to lend, but again reevaluated their risk and understood that the king’s concepts were unsustainable.
In common sense terms the king did not realize that Fat Cat Bankers can’t make enough money doing their old fashion job description, namely loaning money on a narrow margins to those who say they need it. Not only that, the king had created a money trading scheme where those bad Fat Cats, could trade money with other Fat Cats, making money just on the trades themselves. In a process called investment banking, they could remain Fat Cats and still associate with the king’s own Fat Cats and they became more richer and richer until a time when a universal principles became self evident to the king’s subjects. In common terms these principles went something like this:
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by nature and nature’s God, with certain inalienable rights. Those rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but are expanded to the right to create lasting communities, and to defend all these God given rights to whatever extent required, the right to create wealth from financial liquidity and hard work, to die with dignity, and to worship their Creator within the universal blessing of human life itself.
In that true life story Humpty Dumpty is just no longer a nursery rhyme, but his life becomes a principle by which gumption was created in all citizens of the king’s land and in kingdom’s around the world. That determination was fused with a faith in God’s redeeming grace. Together they overcame all human obstacles to produce not an utopian heaven on earth, but a just society in which worldly racism disappeared within the remarkable diversity of the redeemed human family.
It was again celebrated in the land a festival called Christmas, where human darkness became subject to God’s plan for truth and illumination, and that light again miraculously changed misery into true prosperity.
Podcast
>>PDF copy
>>Print view
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
We move from our fairy tale “A Christmas Hunt” between Teddy Roosevelt and Al Gore in our Monday post to a real for goodness sake nursery rhyme. Those people of the English language persuasion all learned this short stanza as young children. According to the Internet it has been with us over two centuries. Humpty Dumpty has been used in various times and places to make a point about society, but really has been pretty much accepted in its monarchial reality. For most of this history it has been assumed that Humpty Dumpty was an egg that would surely break if he/it fell off a wall, and the wall was – just a wall.
No matter how you spin the rhyme, there are dire consequences when something or someone falls off a wall. In the case of Humpty Dumpty the result of his fall was death. In the news of the world today there are a number of spins on the current state of Humpty Dumpty as it relates to current or pending realities. This is especially true in the United States, where a lot of people have too much time to analyze the past, report on the present, and prognosticate about the future. To name a few:
Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall during the presidency of George W. Bush.
President Obama is well on the way of putting Humpty Dumpy back together again.
President Obama attempted to take away the freedom of Humpty Dumpty to sit on his wall, he built through hard work and freedom and this resulted in Humpty’s death. This is definitely a Federal government attempt to acquire the Dumpty Wall for some sort of redistribution of wealth scheme.
What is never questioned in any of the above scenarios is that Humpty Dumpty reality exists today in what we would call a totally secular world or worldview.
As we pointed out in last week’s post asking, “God if you are real?” could that God reality change our and Humpty Dumpty’s worldview? In this respect Humpty Dumpty would only ask that question after he fell off the wall. But it also follows that if “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again,” then is the future hopeless for Humpty Dumpty, if he must rely only on a natural king; rather than the King of kings?
Of course the answers to the God question above echo pretty much the same theme, “Humpty Dumpty, the future is great if you don’t lie there in pieces, put your life together.”
And again in our secular world we get similar spin:
Humpty, can I call you the Hump Man? If you accept Jesus into your heart, He will put you back together, and you will own another wall and be a king, not with a capital K, just a small k.
Humpty Dumpty, it is the government’s responsibility to put you together, so we will provide you with the resources to be a good egg again, especially since all eggs look pretty much alike.
Mr. Dumpty you are on your own kid, you are just a coward, a real American is self-sufficient and “don’t need no help from no one.” (sic) Notice the triple negative, which seems to imply that resources will not be forthcoming, no matter how Humpty Dumpty asks for help.
So let us dissect old Humpty Dumpty in early twenty-first century terms and see if all the parts are sufficient to give us a real rhyme that may be applicable to those who have been, are now experiencing, or will soon be living a Humpty Dumpty life.
First of all we must look at Humpty Dumpty himself. While it has always been assumed the Humpty was an egg, eggs really are pretty thin skinned, any slight adverse happenstance and they fall all apart. Besides in the twenty-first century we have a better term “egghead” which gives Humpty sort of an elitist, but somewhat pejorative personality. That probably comes from the fact that he might not be all that stable mentally. He seems to be quite emotional in that his life is full of humpy highs and dumpy lows.
So for some reason Mr. Dumpty decided to go sit on a wall. As we pointed out earlier, Humpty could have built that wall. If that was the case sitting on a wall of your own description really doesn’t seem to be all that important. No, this wall must be associated with some deeper, or in this case a higher metaphysical application. We would have to assume the wall then is associated with the politically correct evolving progressive culture. That seems to be what we in the west are demanding in our current wall building enterprises, as we move onward and upward.
These walls are first and foremost a human definable and solvable need, like they are now working on in Copenhagen, to save the world from the soon coming catastrophe of global warming climate change. So in the metaphysical sense, the Humpty Wall could exist anywhere people are attempting to create a kinder and more gentile society, and help all those people who can’t help themselves; price is not a consideration. So Mr. Dumpty could mount an erected wall in Copenhagen, Chicago, Wall Street and/or Manhattan, Washington DC, Paris, London, Beijing, Singapore, pretty much in any of the world’s leading cities. Apologies to those world-class cities we left out.
Humpty could not mount a wall out in the wilderness, or even in the deep woods, because just like a tree falling in the forest, which makes no sound, Humpty falling off a wall outside a major media center would never be noticed. It would not be all that long and Humpty’s innards would feed the critters and the bugs and his nature would return to the earth from which it came. Furthermore in the context of the rhyme all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would not be available out in the forest, for they never venture to anywhere that the king’s authority can come into question.
In any construct, mounting the wall would give Humpty a wider view of life and the king’s subjects beneath his perusal. But sadly there is no explanation in the rhyme why Humpty fell off the wall. Therefore we are left to speculate.
Mr. Dumpty must have been a pretty important person to merit the king’s attention. He could have decided to commit suicide, but then the rhyme would have said Humpty jumped off the wall. No this must have been some sort of accident. The question must then be, “Did Humpty take some daring risk, or was something wrong with the wall itself?
The answer seems pretty straightforward, it must have been something wrong with the wall itself, for Humpty was sitting on the wall, not walking along the wall, or some other risky option. Furthermore it must have not been some so called act of God, because if this were the case, then there would have been some sort of Humpty bargain with God to plead for his salvation. Like in the life of Martin Luther, “God if you save me from this storm, I will go to the monastery to become a monk, and after that you can use me to start the Protestant Reformation.”
Our scientific analysis of the wall materials and the foundation shows that the foundation was built on sand, which contributed greatly to the total instability of the wall itself, but we also found that the rocks that were used to build the wall were not as well fitted together as the king himself had requested. Then the rocks themselves were suspect as far as it comes to their structural integrity. They just could not bear the weight of a humble egghead because of all those who used the wall to promote their agendas and had campaigned on both sides of the wall for a very long time. As a consequence the rocks fractured and fell apart just at the time poor Humpty decided to try to overcome his fears of being just a Humpty – Dumpty sort of a guy.
Finally, we come to the fault of all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, who could not put Mr. Dumpty together again. Now we have two possible explanations why this occurred that bear striking application to our day and why this rhyme is so important.
First of all the king’s men were called upon to do a job they were not all that qualified to do. They were advisors to the king and therefore knew a lot of very important things, or better yet a lot of things that were important to the king. Hence they never seemed to understand that Mr. Dumpty’s demise was not due to personal mistakes, but rather the king himself had and was trying to create a kingdom wall, without an understanding of the natural laws that govern all things. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that you can’t build a sustainable wall on sand, but it does take some common sense. In all their training to become a king’s horse or a king’s man, they somehow forgot that they too were subject to the eternal laws of nature and nature’s God.
In an effort to surround his kingdom so that his reputation would last forever, the king had decided to enact, with great support from his lords and governors, a massive wall-building stimulus. The problem was that all the shovel ready wall-building projects, really were not all that ready to be built and Humpty Dumpty was unfortunate enough to test his sitting ability on one of those early walls.
This brings us to the true moral of the story. In the moral both Humpty Dumpty and the king are at fault, sadly Humpty Dumpty paid for this moral with his life, and the king, well he was the king after all. Humpty Dumpty believed that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could build a wall on which he could sit securely and enjoy the view.
Readers, understand this is not at all like the current ObamaCare that the United States Congress is trying to force upon the American people. No it isn’t, because the king said that this had been the goal of generations of kings.
Furthermore Humpty Dumpty should have realized that all the kings horse’s and all the king’s men were vested and invested heavily in the success of all the king’s projects, not just building the king’s walls, but green energy, climate change, and a whole host of their other pet projects that the king also wanted to happen. These stimulus projects further eroded the foundation of not only the king’s wall projects, but also every structure in the king’s reign. The King’s Men were the movers and shakers of change they could believe in, and the phrase was so catchy Humpty Dumpty believed it until his death.
Soon after Humpty Dumpty died, the kings reign became greatly imperiled because of all the king’s pet projects. There was simply no money left for the king’s subjects to create jobs, and improve their lot in life. The king told his Fat Cat Bankers that they needed to lend more money to the small businesses that made the king’s land the most prosperous in history. They really did not refuse to lend, but again reevaluated their risk and understood that the king’s concepts were unsustainable.
In common sense terms the king did not realize that Fat Cat Bankers can’t make enough money doing their old fashion job description, namely loaning money on a narrow margins to those who say they need it. Not only that, the king had created a money trading scheme where those bad Fat Cats, could trade money with other Fat Cats, making money just on the trades themselves. In a process called investment banking, they could remain Fat Cats and still associate with the king’s own Fat Cats and they became more richer and richer until a time when a universal principles became self evident to the king’s subjects. In common terms these principles went something like this:
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by nature and nature’s God, with certain inalienable rights. Those rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but are expanded to the right to create lasting communities, and to defend all these God given rights to whatever extent required, the right to create wealth from financial liquidity and hard work, to die with dignity, and to worship their Creator within the universal blessing of human life itself.
In that true life story Humpty Dumpty is just no longer a nursery rhyme, but his life becomes a principle by which gumption was created in all citizens of the king’s land and in kingdom’s around the world. That determination was fused with a faith in God’s redeeming grace. Together they overcame all human obstacles to produce not an utopian heaven on earth, but a just society in which worldly racism disappeared within the remarkable diversity of the redeemed human family.
It was again celebrated in the land a festival called Christmas, where human darkness became subject to God’s plan for truth and illumination, and that light again miraculously changed misery into true prosperity.
Podcast