In a tale of woe, sadness, shame and intrigue as old as the institution of agriculture itself, the current simmering cultural conflict between the small, struggling, store-less, disturbingly dysfunctional Town of Lamont and the vibrant, lively, energetic and extremely well-managed City of Long Beach appears to follow the natural course of historical human cultural development, says Dr. Winston Peabody III, a renowned cultural anthropologist from BSU. According to Dr. Peabody, as far back as the human record goes, small, isolated, inward-looking, shockingly self-absorbed agricultural communities have traditionally fallen prey to societies that either had too much energy, brains, talent, social prowess and/or general martial gumption to stay tied to the same piece of land year after year. And, of course, given that everyone does have to eat on a regular basis, if you, as a society, could make some dramatic raid once a year, preferably right after harvest, and abscond with someone else's vittles that you didn't have to work in the hot sun for, that was a pretty sweet deal, assuming you didn't get stabbed in the gut with a pitchfork or something. (The farmer types never really warmed to this quite necessary although somewhat limiting (for them!) cultural development, needless to say!)"Anyway, if you think of all of the most dynamic cultures in the history of mankind, the ones we tend to admire and venerate were the ones who tended to bonk their neighbors on the head, take their food, and move on to repeat the process on some other hapless victim down the road or whatever" said Dr. Peabody III. "If you think of those exciting Vikings, the amazingly organized Romans, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan - you could just go right down the list - all of them didn't just sit around the place watching the wheat grow and worrying if the cow was going to have a normal birth! Heck no! They were men and women of action - the builders and shapers of all the things that we hold in high regard, even today. I mean, who wants a hero who is well known for getting up at 3:30 AM every morning to milk a cow and, as an after thought, scoop manure out of a stall? Where is the glamour in that? Look at those doggone British. They come from a relatively small island off the coast of Europe and they conquered the whole dern world, almost. How can you sail around the world, thumping other cultures on the head and swiping their stuff if you have to be home in time for the 2nd milking of the day? It just doesn't make any sense! So yes, there are winners and losers in this world, and history has favored those who can break out of tradition, embrace change and adapt to evolving circumstances. So, if you look at this whole Lamont/Long Beach dust-up in that light, this really goes a long way to explaining those tensions. Oh yeah, and if I were you, I would put my money on Long Beach. The smart money is always on the pirate-personality types versus those who just want to poke around the barn, milking and shoveling manure and watching the wheat grow. That is just the natural order of things, that's all! Don't blame me! I am just the messenger of the obvious, for Pete's sake!" he concluded sagely.
(Editorial Note: Well, we at the Lamont Blog, especially since we live in an agrarian portion of the Great State of Washington, cannot endorse bonking anyone on the head, unless, of course, that somehow excludes bonking people from Idaho on the head. Bonking Idahoans on the head is a healthy, rewarding pastime, and if we somehow inadvertently happen to bring home a few potatoes in the process, that is completely different from some Viking warship docking on our shores and going berserk all over the place or some stupid pirate galleon pillaging us on the high seas and making everyone walk the plank!! When it comes to bonking someone on the head, as the Good Book says, it is indeed better to give than to receive! As long as it is not Long Beach bonking us on the head. That is just wrong on just about every conceivable level. Thank you!)
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