We’ve said everything there is to say about corrupt politicians, callous technocrats, financial waterboarders and corporate scum.
Time to say a thing or two about the dumbness of the masses, the systemically corrupt agglomerates of people coming together in the name of society to form the knowledgeably idiotic body one calls the populus; that conveniently shifting ocean of opinions hiding behind the numbers, diffusing their responsibility in a sea of faces, being suicidally disorganized, stubbornly unruly, conveniently beyond reproach and above the law because they are The People: the body in whose name the world operates.
Call them sad royalty, people. Kings and queens who would be subjects and slaves on the flip of a coin, subordinate to their incurable whims, needs, cravings and weaknesses. Call them victims of their precious vices and obsessions. Mortals now and forevermore, tasting heaven only to lose it in a flash by having abused their own privileges, by their vast range of fancies, their stretched arrogance and their bottomless desires. Lost, confused, shouting so hard in so many directions for so many things at once, poor fucks, they don’t know what they stand for. A mighty circus of accidents hitting the road, pretending it’s a summit conference. The apex of the human condition.
The only thing in this arrangement resembling an apex of any kind is the X that marks the spot after the ape.
Let it sink in.
Moving on, one can safely argue that the sole achievement of the over-entitled, super-confused mass known as the voracious mouth AKA the populus, is that it loses the global initiative as fast as it gains it. It squanders its privileges by opting for too many things without knowing anything about anything, dragging the world down to the lowest common denominator, the result of which is either stagnancy and flatlining, or outright regression. Or maybe a crackdown by forces unwilling to waste their time negotiating the bog of chaos. Or good old revolution, either violent or encyclopedic, designed to shake up the system and kickstart something new and functional into operation.
Whatever the case, the mighty and dense populus is the unmistakable weight against which the forces of progress must sooner or later push if progress is to be made — sooner if the world is in a state of collective idleness, later if the world is in a state of flux.
The irony is that this ignorant and savage-noble corporation of people gets to live the rest of its self-devastated life knowing what deliverance tasted like, unsure of how it lost it, how it fell from grace, one step too far from ever regaining it.
It’s the tragic fate of all overzealous but ultimately disorganized agencies. Repeat offenders have a tendency to be smart idiots, clever on paper and limited practise only. The foundations are there for them to build something solid out of life’s ingredients but their emotions overwhelm them, sending them down the tracts that destroyed them the last time round. People of the vicious circle. Agents of the downturn, of repeated and recycled catastrophe, celebrated folly. Small-mindedness. Addiction. Pettiness. The future doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to those who face their fears and reservations.
It belongs to those who embrace organization and protect their allies. The future belongs to those who don’t make the same errors twice.
Failure to ward off the errors and avoid the vicious circles and Time’s trash bin is your next destination.
Not according to the feelgood allegories. The dogmas of the world instruct the populus that the world belongs to the meek, the compassionate, the committed to God and spiritually complete, maybe even the ruthlessly faithful and unrelenting, if the situation demands it.
God bless the dogmas and their feelgood allegories. That’s right, son! Hope belongs to those who believe. The stories are right. They make the world go round.
They also confuse those involved, sending them spinning into the headlights. They disorient the naive, providing fodder for the working machines, keeping the real world in operation. Fuel for the future. What truly makes the world go round.
If one looks at the world through the prism of my father, Time, one realizes that this is one hundred per cent true. The world operates on the remains of the ignorant and the fallen, the disorganized and confused. Dress it up as much as you want, paint it pretty, color it spiritual and profound, add a couple of layers of sage compassion and evocative allegory to it, spit-shine it and dub it divine, gloss it over as much as you want, but you can’t hide the truth. Everything you see around you, from the most obscure rock in space to the most bombastic idea on record, to the remotest person on earth, to the farthest star in the galaxy, has endured the tests of the ages. Everything you see is the result of organization, perseverance. Luck and adaptation. As simple as that. All other processes are derivative mind-candy designed to make the process look good. Focus on the glossy and sparkly ingredients instead of the basics and you have nothing at all. House of cards, men of straw, castles in Spain washed away in the rain, you know how it ends.
The sad, cold truth. Always unsettling, bitter and hard to digest, and far more offensive that any silk-soft, cloud-shrouded, chicken-soup take on morality. A cautionary tale that has withstood the tests of time, it stings like a scorpion dropped inside one’s soggy ear. At first anyway.
In reality it’s far more appealing than any of the soppy tales people love to hear, by any means, if results are what tickle your fancy. If the longterm is what turns you on. Results matter, they’re the only currency worth dealing in, Timewise. I wouldn’t invest in anything else, if I were you, if lasting legacy were what interested me. If I wanted to make a lasting impression for both my sake and, as one would expect, for my the sake of my loved ones.
Vexed? Watch this space for more.
From the collection of writings EON: THE ANGRY COMING OF AGE