My name is EON. I’m here to facilitate a crucial process in the system.
Before I tell you more about it, let me share a few thoughts with you about the state of the world.
For all the development and progress currently observed, the standards of the world keep falling. Never mind the technological upgrades and innovation, the glitz and glamor. They’re hollow and misleading and don’t count for much when the bigger picture is taken into account. They provide inspiration in certain areas, pushing the envelope in a number of ways, while everything else is downgraded, discounted, tweaked and relegated to a fickle and barely functional state of operation. The masses become confused and disjointed. They become accustomed to subpar ways of dealing with life. They embrace the cheap versions of products, the lousy service, the broken down material, the cluelessness of an entitled culture and the expectations that come with it. Average becomes the norm and life is diluted and cheapened with every passing day. The degradation of politics, business, education and privacy continues. The erosion of critical thinking, freedom of expression and common sense becomes normal, accepted, internalized and sought out, and the vicious circle persists.
Everywhere.
It takes place round the clock, ceaseless, by the power of the collective hand. En masse and unabated. People contribute to the dilution of life’s standards by opting for the easier choice. The adulterated choice.
It’s hard to climb out of such a hole. Once democracy and public opinion’s most abused platform, the free market, latch on to something, whatever it is — technology, fashion, food tastes, entertainment, economic paradigms, religion — it’s hard to turn things around. How can you argue against the majority of people and their chosen preferences? How can you object to them? They represent the norm. Oppose them and you’re a sinister villain. A dictator. A monster bigot. An agent provocateur who deserves to be crucified and cast out, even if you’re making sense, explaining how The Apprentice is a shit show that brings out the worst in everyone, or that the reason the market is flooded with mindless and terribly written superhero movies is because the public responds well to them.
Point that stuff out, call the majority’s preferences unfortunate, sad, bad, poorly handled and ill-informed, or anything that describes their downgrading potential, their eroding nature, pointing out the accountability of the people involved, the role they play in degrading the world they live in, and you’re a misanthropic cynic who ought to pipe down and let life get on with living.
Even when people are downright wrong — supporting the Cleveland Browns, for example, and drinking Cola on a regular basis, and fracking, and wearing three-piece suits in glorious pastel blue with shoulder pads, and daily makeup — you’re not supposed to go against them, especially once they achieve critical mass. When they stick their dicks where they shouldn’t, en masse. When they shun reason as a rule, giving way to rampant emotions, losing their shit and calling it their protected right — the right to act any way they wish, be ‘themselves,’ do their thing and reason be damned. You’re not supposed to antagonize them. Be they misinformed, misgiven, indulgent, carried away, or otherwise not up to standard, the choices of the majority and the individuals that constitute it are sacred, and can’t be touched.
You’d think that was a good thing. It was, until the notion of majority rule got abused, then shafted, then stretched to the point of utter dysfunction.
Unsustainability. Not just the environment’s problem, or an economic setback alone. It’s an all-around liability, plaguing everyday life at large.
Lately it’s gotten to the point where no one can be challenged, not even if they’re in the minority. Especially when they’re in the minority. Watch what you say about anyone, it can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, if not in a court of law. You’re not supposed to be critical or confrontational. You have to be tolerant and extra careful. If someone claims something, anything, you can’t slam it down. You must allow it to play out, even if it’s utter nonsense.
Philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge are built on slamming down opposing opinions. Too much fretting over what one says and how one says it, what one thinks about what one said and how one said it — he said, she said; I’m offended! Oh My God! Shut him up! etc — well, it’s quite the opposite of progress.
Yet the need to protect nonsense has taken over, and the debate goes on without much reason. Plenty of mouths flapping, yakking, people rushing to protect other people’s opinions whatever they may be, the progress of life qualified not by the content of what is being said but by the ability to say whatever one wants, whenever one wants, and screw logic, screw validity and rationale. The privilege to speak nonsense is more important than the ability to make sense.
It’s gotten so bad, the majorities of the world are now rushing to claim minority rights, ripping a page out of the offended book and calling everything they disagree with a direct attack on their way of life.
In other words, everyone is talking nonsense because they can. It’s their privilege.
The term ‘nonsense’ is debatable, of course, or so people claim. I don’t have any interest in proving them wrong, or right. I don’t care. Endless debate has reached its limit and needs to be dismantled because it has turned vicious and dysfunctional. Because it opposes life.
My name is EON. Like I already mentioned, I’m here to facilitate a crucial process in the system, substantiating everything I do and say. Every once in a while life on Earth needs to have its dried and caked inadequacies shaken off its battered body; something to wash away the grime, scrub the skin clean and let the spirit of life breathe again.
Some people call this process a watershed event.
Others call it a cataclysmic event.
Some, they call this process a revolution. Deliverance. Providence. They call it divine intervention, or destiny.
I call it by its real name: fun.
It most certainly will be. Lots of fun. I’ve had five of these sessions so far, and every one of them has been spectacular.
This one, the one I’m currently preparing, is going to take the cake, so brace yourselves. There’s TV and cameras and smartphones and planes and a shitload of technology to go with it, a tsunami of media to cover what is taking place. Everyone will be recording and rehearsing and performing live for the cameras. Everyone will have an opinion about what’s going on, fighting over how to fix it, making things worse. It’s going to be a fantastic meltdown. The blockbuster of blockbusters. Not even the dinosaurs with their tiny brains and their awesome jaws and their frightfully dramatic apocalypse can compare.
I’m feeling so good about it, I might organize a little gathering — invite a few friends over, you know, a few relatives and acquaintances, some key Temporal players, maybe even my horrible sisters. It’s that kind of occasion. We can all sit together and watch the show. Even that highhanded Eternity, Father’s highbrow mistress (dreadful creature!), and her stuck-up entourage of Suspensions, I’ll extend an invitation to them, too. Just this once. Even sinister beings have the right to be entertained.
I lie, of course. The real reason I’m inviting them over is to see their expressions when my latest achievement unfolds before their stunned countenances. They’ve been denigrating my endeavors from the start, bitterly, with great malice. Which will make the event all the more enjoyable. Time to see the glare of my success reflected on their paltry faces.
By the way, those of you who noted to themselves that contrary to what I claimed, I don’t substantiate everything I do and say — ‘the term nonsense is debatable, or so people claim,’ I said earlier, ‘but I don’t have any interest in proving them wrong’ — you got me!
See, I’ve decided to play the card myself, have a little laugh. Say what I want, when I want, how I want, and damn everything else. My interests come first, self-righteous and self-indulgent as royal fuck, laying claim to everything under the sun.
In fact, I was the one who first injected this idea in people’s minds in the first place. Self-centered psychopathy and histrionics mixed with idealism and righteousness. A little trick I learned from Age, my youngest sister, who has been screwing with people’s minds since the beginning of civilization, making them imagine they’re they alpha and omega of progress, or piety, or whatever quality they measure life by.
Have a nice debate, a rowdy transition from the cradle to the brave new world surrounding you, and from there to the glorious sixth session I’ve been helping you prepare for yourselves.
Intrigued? Watch this space for more.
From the collection of writings EON: THE ANGRY COMING OF AGE