Be Brave

I honestly think this song is just comparing humans to ants. We are ants to the earth, and the earth obviously does not give one shit about us. To the earth, we are the ants crawling around the Parthenon.

We continuously screw as much as we can and our corpses litter the earth, filling cracks and crevices, and despite everything we keep doing it over and over and over.

Be brave because you will die, as ants do die and by the droves.

To me this is another song on the self destructive nature of humans. This time Isaac seems to point to the growing problem of overpopulation specifically.

"As sharks in sheep's clothing, pumping with our hips Filling every single corner with our soft little gifts of ourselves Getting carried, so, so carried away"

We as a species tend to view children as a wonderful gift, rather than a danger. We are unwittingly overpopulating the earth and filling every little nook and cranny with too many human beings.

"I am not afraid to be dead but it's scary for me to stay From day to day, from day to day to today Be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave, and be brave Be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave, and be brave"

To Isaac or the narrator dying today is not nearly as scary as the prospect of living in some unspecified future time when things have gotten really dicey. A time in which overpopulation has resulted in the depletion of resources, and perhaps lead to unspeakable wars over water, food, and land.

"At the Parthenon Ants were climbing 'round Every head of bronze At the Parthenon"

Comparing humans to ants covering everything....

"Well the Earth doesn't care and we hardly even matter We're just a bit more piss to push out its full bladder And as our bodies float down onto all their rocky little bits Piled up under mountains of dirt and silt And still, the world, it don't give a shit"

To hear some people describe it today humans are going to bring about the end of the world, but this could not be further from the truth. The earth will live on long after human beings have wiped ourselves out, or rendered the earth incapable of sustaining us. Can we bring about our own destruction? Absolutely. However, to think we will bring about the end of the world itself is perhaps thinking a bit too highly of ourselves.

Love this song and the album theme in general. I'm a big fan of the HBO news show VICE, or as I like to call it "the most depressing half our on television". I'm also fairly pessimistic about our chance of survival as a species, so this really speaks to me.