I will no longer affiliate myself with
any of you bastards. I want no part of your nations or your systems or your beliefs. I refuse to passively endorse your willfully naive values, cosy hypocrisies and murderous ideologies. I am a deist, although often
doubting, and I worship at an alterless church with the sky for a roof
and sermons delivered on the breeze. I have created my own flag too and I speak a new
language that I have invented for my use alone. I have composed my own national
anthem and I have declared myself to be in an independent state of
one.
You do not fill me with wonder. You
just make me wonder what it's all for. You have broken my heart but
I'm not broken yet. My defences are up but I will continue to trade
and negotiate. I will participate in your customs but I will no
longer pretend to fully appreciate them. I'll just be there like a
visiting dignitary. That is, I will try to
be dignified but I can't guarantee
anything. I might get nervous and drink too much and there might be
an outburst. I might suddenly announce that this is a farce and that
I want to go home and then I will go home and there will be relief
all round. I might talk to a homeless man that I meet on my way back
to my sovereignty. I'll find him crouched in his cardboard kingdom
and bidding me welcome in exchange for some small token. I'll give
him a smoke if I have one. He'll tell me how you beat him and how you
fucked him and how you now fear him and he'll ask me my story and
I'll tell him that I just lost interest.
And he'll offer me a drink and I'll
take it without knowing what it is and he'll fall asleep but I'll
stay awake and watch the sun begin to seep through the clouds and the
litter running down the empty street and I'll see the best amongst
you, in high vis jackets, sweeping up your shit. Making the world
presentable again so you can continue to make it a mess. I'd consider
a complete trade blockade with you bastards but I know I'd starve to
death.
What I want you to imagine today is an
orchestra. An orchestra that doesn't know it's an orchestra. An
orchestra of competing sections: brass, woodwind, percussion and
strings. Each of these sections thinks the other sections are stupid
and doing everything wrong. The brass wonders why the string section
isn't blowing into its instruments and the percussion wonders why
everyone isn't just hitting their instruments with sticks. The
woodwind thinks the brass lacks decorum, a bit 'brassy' if you like,
and the brass thinks the woodwind is really 'stuck up'. As far as
each section is concerned, it is engaged in a sonic war against the
others. Each section attempts to assault the others with waves of
sound. The loudest is the victor and each section feels it is always
winning because, from where a given section's musicians are sitting,
they are the loudest. No one gets discouraged and the war goes on.
Kettledrums rumble like tanks. Violin bows are drawn
like arrows. Brass blunderbusses blast and clarinets, flutes, oboes
and bassoons are raised and fired like guns, rifles, mortars and
bazookas.
The conductor is there too of course,
on his podium. A stressed out secretary general of sorts, attempting
to maintain some kind of order. He waves his baton frantically,
favouring one section one moment and
another the next. He doesn't really know what's going on. He clumsily
turns sheets of notation as he mops his brow. He wishes the whole
zero-sum composition would just fucking end.
And the cruel joke is that from a
distance all this tumult and enmity harmonises into a single stirring
composition, the woodwind soaring over the strings and the percussion
and brass propelling things forward. From the seats in the
auditorium, the ominous score builds to an unnerving crescendo that
explodes and then lulls into the saddest adagio ever heard that then
fades before it all happens again but in a different order and with
some variations. It's such a tragic twist that those upon the stage
are unaware of this and labour in the mistaken belief that they are
separate competing entities and not,
simply, 'one'. The sections do not know that they are all playing the
same music and that the music could be joyful and celebratory instead
of frightening and heartbreaking.
But there is one musician who knows the
truth. An orchestra member who realises that every orchestra member,
no matter what section, is part of an indivisible
whole. One guy, sitting all by himself, down the back and to the side
a bit. One fella who knows it would be a waste of time to share his
wisdom with the others because he'd be laughed out of the concert
hall. One member of the orchestra who, quietly and in his own mind,
has it completely and utterly right.
He stands there, stoic, poised and
mindful. He understands the great cacophony as a symphony and bides
his time to prove this to the others. He waits and waits and waits
until a great musical swell rises and then crashes. As the crescendo
subsides he raises his instrument, holds out his wand and strikes
once. Only once and with a perfectly restrained amount of force. The
rage from the rest of the instruments dies out and silence rules but
for the fading resonance of his modest contribution. The triangle
goes ...DiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiNG!
You're probably not aware of
Mediocrita. It's a little nation bordering a few other nations and
nothing much happens there. It's never been invaded or anything. It
has no raw materials to covet. It is of no strategic value. Its
indigenous population has never left and no one has ever arrived, at
least not for long. A few Vikings showed up at one stage but they got
bored and split after about fifteen minutes. The people there are
pleasant enough but a bit dull. They never really developed any kind
of unique culture so when the odd anthropologist does drop by they
soon give up on the hope of forming a decent thesis and leave.
The citizens of Mediocrita are proud
enough of their unremarkable nation. They find its unremarkability
the very thing that makes it remarkable. Nothing making the place
unique is what makes the place unique. Mediocritans are a people who
value stasis. They are an unambitious and sedentary crowd who do not
seek adventure and so never leave their shores. The people of
Mediocrita never have anything good to say about each other but they
never have anything bad to say about each other either. They think
each other are OK and they are united in their OKness.
Mediocrita has a national anthem, the
only piece of art of any sort that has ever originated on this land.
It goes like this:
It's OK here.
Yes it's OK here.
Nothing really bad happens,
Year after year.
It's OK here.
Yes it's OK here.
There's much worse places,
Or so we hear.
So it's OK here.
Yes it's OK here.
And on the weekends
We might go for a beer.
Coz it's OK here.
Yes it's OK here.
We have no volcanos or mad animals or
that
So there's not much to fear.
Sure it's OK here.
Yes it's OK here.
There's not much laughter
but there's rarely a tear.
Coz it's OK here.
Yes it's OK here.
So if you want an OK time
You'll be OK here.
(It is at this point that the anthem
ends and the Mediocritans fire their cannon. They have a cannon for
defence but they never need it for that
reason so it is only put to ceremonial use. Sometimes it doesn't
work. No one complains when it doesn't go off. They just shrug.)
What no one knows about Mediocrita is
that it has a secret. A big terrible secret. A secret I'm about to
share with you now. In the mid-nineteen seventies a spacecraft
arrived bearing an extraterrestrial ambassador carrying a message of
Universal peace and a cure to all known ills. The citizens of
Mediocrita were a bit put out. The status quo that provided them with
their valued cultural identity was obviously under threat. New
standards would be set by this saviour from
outer space and everyone would be expected to up their game. Worse
still, it was considered that if the little green man was to make
Mediocrita his base then that would attract global attention to the
Mediocritan homeland and they'd have loads of visitors and have to be
making heaps of sandwiches and that. So, after some modest debate,
the citizens of Mediocrita decided to bash the alien in the head with
a rock, place his body back on his craft, set the craft on fire, and
never speak of what took place again.
Indeed, no Mediocritan ever did mention
what took place again. However, the memory of the incident sometimes
does come into the heads of Mediocritans but they vanquish it by
closing their eyes, clenching their fists into balls, and singing
their national anthem to themselves – over and over. When the
anniversary of the outer space visitor's arrival occurs no one says a
word. They all just gather around the cannon and repeatedly fire the
thing which seems to do the trick as long as the cannon works, which
it sometimes doesn't but, you know, you can't have everything, so
that's OK and you don't get much better than OK. Mediocrita rules OK!
Tomorrow you’ll wake up and eat and leave your building and find the whole world, everyone in the world, standing outside your front door. We’ll all be there, everyone, from all over the globe, rich, poor, famous, infamous, anonymous, all the people who read this blog and all the people who don’t. We’ll all be there and we’ll all be laughing at you. We’ll be laughing and pointing at you because you fell for our trick. The big trick we were all playing on you, yeah you, and you alone.
‘What trick?’ I hear your trembling mind inquire. Well, all of it really, the whole thing. Take money for a start. You don’t think we really use money do you? Jesus no, that was just a trick we were playing on you since you were born. Why would we use money? Look at the problems it causes, all the inequality, the starving people exporting food, all that madness. We were a bit surprised you went along with it actually but what were you to do I suppose. I must say, you did seem to like money at times. Anyway, we don’t use it. We don’t spend money because we are just given things and we don’t earn money because we just do things for each other. It’s a lot less complicated. That money trick got out of hand. I mean the markets, did you really think that was for real? Ha! Not at all.
Nationalism was just something we made up too. Why would people bother with that when you think about it? Patriotism? Good Lord, that would be absurd. What difference would it make where you’re from? Why would you base your identity on that? Why be so tetchy about it? And the violence! It’s nuts. It’d be like everyone with red hair having their own flags and marching about firing guns. Funny though, you seemed to get a bit patriotic yourself at times. You even stood up for that awful tune we decided to pretend was your national anthem. We used some of the worst musical compositions we could find as the anthems. For the laugh, y’know? Pompous dirges. Some of us were worried you’d cop on that the nationalism thing was all bullshit because the tunes were so bad but no, when you heard them you didn’t cop on, you stood up.
You stood up in church too. You stood up and sat down and knelt. Do I even have to tell you that religion was part of the gag? I mean, did you even look at the Pope and all the other crowd in the mad clothes, talking shite? How did you fall for that? I thought that part would be the giveaway myself. We took the idea of religion from a horror novel one of us wrote. He also came up with the idea of empires and wars and so on and we decided to trick you into thinking all that was history or the ‘news’. The news, Ha! The planning committee had some laugh coming up with that shite every day let me tell you.
I hope you’re not pissed off with us though. It was just a joke and you coped with it pretty well. I mean, considering the corner we painted you into and the world we forced you to endure, you didn’t crack up and behaved like quite a decent sort all things considered. I mean, you may not have done much to change things but you didn’t exactly endorse them either and you treated those close to you with decency and respect. Well, most of them. You were a bit of a shit to Chris Darcy while you were in school but besides that you were OK.
Yeah, I’m sorry. The joke went a bit far and we didn’t know how to stop it. It all got out of hand and we feel really bad about it now. I mean, we don’t really do bad things. Don’t get me wrong, the world isn’t perfect. There is still suffering. There is still illness and bereavement and lost love and jealousy and all that. People do disagree and fight and let each other down but we usually muddle through. Nothing ever ends in a war like we pretended. People usually make up and if they don’t well that’s a pity and they just agree to ignore each other but they don’t go killing each other or launching attack drones and all that. Ha! God, the stuff we came up with. What must you have been thinking at times? Anyway look, we’re sorry. We won’t do it again. Relax and have a beer. No, put your money away, it’s free. In fact you can throw that money in the bin. That’s all just pretend shite. You look a bit confused. You look a bit devastated. Sure, don’t worry about it anymore. It was all just joke. You may have got a bit attached to the way things were but it was all just a joke. Trust me, it’s much nicer in real life. You’ll find out tomorrow morning when you leave the house. We’ll all be there, all of us, pointing and laughing and all saying in unison ‘ah, we were only codding you’ and then you’ll see how things really are and how they should have been all along.
Do you remember that Star Trek episode where the beautiful alien woman asked Captain Kirk, ‘What . . .is . . .love?’ Instead of answering, Kirk demonstrated with a passionate kiss. Today Fugger (the blog of truth, the people’s blog) is going to try and answer that alien lady’s question properly.
‘What Is Love?’ I’ll tell you what love is...
Love is a virus that downloads onto your cranial hard drive via Trojan malware. The Trojan malware in question is the object of your devotion, be it another human being or some notion of a God or a sense of nationality or whatever. Love is an emotion that endows you with positive feelings but these positive feelings have negative outcomes.
Love might probably inspire you to write poems but these poems will probably be awful. Love might inspire you to observe abstract and pointless rituals or to march about the place firing guns like a dangerous idiot. You’ll feel elated at the time but remember, a similar elation was felt by Chris de Burgh when he composed The Lady in Red. Yes, de Burgh may have been feeling over the moon but his inspiration caused abject misery for discerning listeners all over the globe. Ultimately, love causes suffering.
All love (especially the sexual kind) is doomed. Be it eventual betrayal or bereavement or a gradual lowering of rose tinted glasses, love will always end in tears. The joy of love is akin to the joy of a child digging in to a fifth bowl of jelly and ice cream. Now it’s yummy but later it’s ‘Mummy, my tummy feels funny’.
Some might argue that, beyond its temporary sensual, spiritual, and aesthetic pleasures, love serves pragmatic functions, the practical benefits of love being the propagation of the species and societal order. Well, let’s deal with the propagation of the species first shall we? The propagation of the species is initially down to lust. Lust is not love. It’s just related to it, like a sleazy uncle that always wants you to sit on his lap. Sure, once born, the survival of offspring is due to the protective love of mothers but mothers only love their children because they are an extension of their genetic information. That’s a kind of racism when you think about it. Racism is something that could cause the destruction of the species, not its propagation. I mean, it might seem all lovey dovey and oochie coochie coo but when you see a mother snuggling with her child it’s nothing more than a two person Nazi rally. I’m sorry if that sounds bleak or cynical but it is true. Familial love is clan love and the Ku Klux Klan is a clan. I rest my case.
Now to deal with the supposed societal cohesion brought about by love. Social Anarchists and some religious types might say that love is an innate currency that makes the world go around. ‘Give love and you will receive it’ they say but we all know that is rubbish. Give love and it will certainly be taken but there is no contract that guarantees its return. When love is not returned it turns into resentment and this becomes hate and hate leads to war. Yep, love is the cause of war. We build bombs out of love and fire guns for it. How oochie coochie coo is that?
Some of you will say that hate and war are caused by intolerance and greed but intolerance is motivated by a dislike of those different to you because you love those that are like you (see the ‘love is racism’ argument above). When it comes to greed, well, what is greed but an inevitable result of love? You love something so much you want more of it, even if it means taking it from someone else by force.
So that’s it, the truth about love in a single blog post. I’m sorry to shatter any illusions. Love might feel all nicey nice and elevating but that’s just mad chemicals going off in the brain. In truth, love is the insidious instigator of all human tragedy or, at the very least, a major and necessary ingredient of those tragedies. That’s why I’ve invented a new emotion. An emotion to replace love. Yes readers, the means of our liberation bubbling in a beaker at my laboratory right now. But this post has gone on long enough so you will have to come back to find out about my new emotion next time. Seriously, do come back, you’re going to love it.
Nationalism is great isn’t it? I think it is anyway. It’s cute. You have a bit of a fight and win your land and give it a little name like something-land or something-ania or just something. You make a little flag with a picture on it or maybe just a few colours or maybe a barcode and you put it up a pole and salute it in your little military outfits with the buttons all polished and you invent a little march you can do and blow a trumpet and sing a little song about your nation with little words about how great everything is and how good you are at fighting and how God likes you the best and all that. It really is very sweet the whole nationalism thing and practical too.
The practical element is the morale boosting that nationalism provides. I mean, if you didn’t have nationalism how could you muster the will to go off killing wogs just because they threaten your sweet deal on hot water bottle imports? (Oh dear, I’ve just realised I typed ‘wogs’ out loud. Please forgive me. I’m not racist or anything, it’s just the nationalist fervour.) If you didn’t have nationalism you might find yourself on a battlefield wondering just what the Hell you’re doing ramming a bayonet into a complete stranger. Where would your hot water bottle imports be then? I’ll tell you where, at the mercy of Wogland that’s where! The wogs would be exporting hot water bottles to you for top dollar and using the money to buy bayonets so they can stick them into you.
Of course, seeing as there would be a demand, you could always start making bayonets and selling them to the wogs. This might actually start good trade relations. Some important wog nation dignitaries might visit your nation and exchange gifts with your nation’s dignitaries, little tokens like a tasty cabbage or a fancy ornament or a fancy ornament of a tasty cabbage. And the wog nation’s dignitaries could stay for a few days and go see a few important statues or something and it would be on the telly and then the wog nation’s dignitaries would invite your nation’s dignitaries to Wogland and you’d be glad because the wog nation’s dignitaries liked your nation’s dignitaries.
National dignitaries are so called because they are dignified enough to represent their nations, unlike the rest of you. You’re not dignified like national dignitaries at all. You’re just normal undignitaries, shuffling around the place, blowing your noses and stuffing used tissues into pockets filled with old bus tickets. Jesus, when I think of it, the state of you. Really! All you’re good for is getting bayonets stuck into you. At least that way you’re doing your nation some service. Going forward.
