A plush toy I saw in a shop window back in the 20th century made me so angry that I became fully devoted to socialism.

To myself, I call this The Crocodile Epiphany.

1/

The shop was a “gift shop”, and there in the window was an little plush crocodile, a few inches high, wearing a T-shirt with a pun on it.

It was ugly, and the joke was bad.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

2/

Someone was going to buy this “toy”, and give it to someone as a gift. They would chuckle over the bad pun. It would sit on their desk for a week or a month or a year before getting tossed into a landfill.

This was its PURPOSE. That was the plan for it.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

3/

I had a vision of the meeting in which it was decided that I would see this crocodile.

A designer, with a drawing or a prototype. Some manufacturing expert, ready to consider the logistics. A manager with priorities to weigh.

Yes, let us MAKE this.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

4/

I envisioned all the people and machines which had put this crocodile before me. A factory with people making crocodiles all day. Crates full of ugly gift toys loaded onto container ships. Trucks. Distribution centers. Into and out of boxes. Onto shelves.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

5/

Before that crocodile had taken form, there had been labor and materials, too.

Steel made into the needles which sewed it. The people who had made those sewing machines. The petroleum wrung from the Earth to power all this.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

6/

I was awed by all of the human wit and effort, all of the materials and knowledge and infrastructure, devoted to this project.

I had an epiphany. As many have before.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

7/

Consider Ouspensky, who doubted Gurdjieff saying that most people are like robots unconsciously doing evil ... until he saw a truck full of prosthetic legs for people still whole who we were planning to mutilate on a battlefield.

https://www.paulwestonglastonbury.com/sleepwalking-into-war-gurdjieff-and-ouspensky/

Croc ’N’ Roll.

8/

Consider the god Moloch, its hungry maw revealed in the lights of Las Vegas.

“It is glorious that we can create something like this. It is shameful that we DID.”

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Croc ’N’ Roll.

9/

Consider Gil Scott-Heron’s brilliant, funny lament in the face of one of the greatest achievements of human history



Croc ’N’ Roll.

10/

Consider all the human capacity and effort which went into that trivial little toy, a bit of waste made to deliver a tepid joke, a trivial byproduct of the power we hold over the material world.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

11/

I gazed into plastic eyes and remembered every time someone said to me, “No, you naïve bleeding heart, we cannot provide for all! Some must live shoeless, hungry, and deprived because there is just NOT ENOUGH STUFF.”

Here was proof that they were wrong.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

12/

I would have vowed never to forget, but having had the Crocodile Epiphany I need no vow. I know it DEEP.

There is enough. There is so much that even our crumbs of crap are mighty.

We can provide for everyone’s needs. Everyone’s DIGNITY. So we MUST.

Croc ’N’ Roll.

13/

The Crocodile Epiphany and the case for socialism, now in blog post form

https://miniver.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-crocodile-epiphany-and-case-for.html