An Essay On The Modern World*

By Erwin Finker

Today, science makes everything possible that has been achieved.

For example, we are now masters of steam and eccentricity. We now know that the number of atoms in the Universe is infinite, namely 92. And Mars is a star so far off that it would take a million years to walk there in an express train.

We also know that people cannot live on the moon because it is getting smaller and smaller and therefore they would gradually get pushed off.

A relatively modern invention, television, now lets you see things you couldn’t see if you were there, such as the horse racing and important speeches.

Another invention, the telephone, has made marriage very cheap.

So even love is modern today.  For example, women now say what they mean instead of fainting. Hypnotism is now used for producing children. Some mothers recommend it from experience. And it is now possible for farmers to breed by artificial insinuation.

In medicine, tonsils are no longer regarded as essential to life and doctors incite them with impunity.

In finance, budgets are never balanced because money has no real value except to those who haven’t got it.

In criminal justice, many people are in jail for committing suicide while under the influence of drink.

As for religion, the prevailing religion nowadays is Hyprocrisy. Young people have turned away from religion. We don’t mean to be irrelevant in church, but we don’t believe anything unless we see it and then we look twice.

The pleasures of youth are indeed very great, but they are not to be compared with the pleasures of adultery. When you’re an adult you find out that the chief virtues of women are different from men. They are not easy to write about.

There will always be men and women in the world, so they must be taken for granted. If you want anything different you must go elsewhere, and then you won’t find it.

As for me, I want to be a banister at law, if I can, when I grow up. Although there are over a million unemployed in the country there seems reason to hope that in the near future there will be enough unemployment for everyone.

I will live until I’m a hundred years old, when I shall be called a centurion. I will live to see Halleys Comet, which comes around every hundred years. My teacher has seen it twice.