USELESS

I am proud to be what I am and what I am is useless. I'm proud to be useless because a lot of 'useful' people out there seem pretty useless to me so I must be in good company. I admit that I'm surplus to requirements but, again, I don't actually require what is considered required and I don't think anyone really does require what is considered required, they just think they do because they were told they must. Do you follow me? I'm being playfully riddled, paradoxical and ambiguous but I am driving at something. Maybe it's not worth saying though. Maybe nothing is. I haven't figured that out yet. I find it hard to figure things out because once you figure something out you think you've figured it out but the truth is that you've just figured out one way of figuring it out from the infinite variables possible. It's like life in general. Let me put it this way, imagine a sum with an infinite amount of right answers and no wrong answers. Now, imagine that you can only do this sum once. You do the sum and you get it right. You think that you have figured out the sum and got the only right answer but you don't realise that you've only figured out one of the infinite ways to figure it out. You go around telling everyone else who gets other right answers that they have the wrong answer and they say the same to you and then there's trouble. Do you get what I mean there? I'm not sure I do myself. I've used that sum analogy before somewhere back there in the four plus years I've been keeping this blog. It's a good analogy, I think anyway. Or at least I think I think it is but can't be sure because I'm not. It's a fun analogy at least so I reckon it deserves another airing and this post seemed appropriate. Or maybe it wasn't. What do I know? I'm just typing this shit. It's you that's reading it so really it's all your fault.

But what was I talking about before I started talking about talking about it. Oh yeah, being useful. Well, it seems to me that a lot of people out there think of themselves as useful when in fact they aren't really. I mean, nurses and firemen and things like that are useful* but the rest of us are just suiting ourselves. We are not particularly useful just because we are employed in some possibly dubious way and contribute to an exchequer (going on about that really lacks class by the way) and we are not really required at all on a societal level. We are required and useful mainly in ways that remain uncelebrated. We are useful to those close to us and... christ, need I go on? This is so obvious to me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should quit defining yourself in the fiscal and labour unit terms that were culturally implemented for economic purposes before you were even fucking born and stop worrying about all your money being stolen by 'welfare scroungers' and just go out and dance around amongst the trees and the wind for a bit. No? Look out your window. Look at the trees in the wind. They want to dance with you. Will you not go out and dance with them? You probably would if they charged you for it. Then the activity would seem to have value right? It must be fun if it costs money, right? If it's free it's probably useless or a strange thing to do that will get you locked up in a hospital you can't afford, right?

Hmm. Are you still with me? Have you stopped reading yet? You can if you like. I don't even mind if you already have. If you haven't stopped reading but you'd like to stop then go ahead and stop. It's your life and you should do what you like with it. As long as you are doing what you like with it of course and not doing what others like you to do with it and thinking it's what you like to do with it. So, 'do what thou wilt' and that shall be the whole of the law. You may as well quit reading here in fact. This post is nearly over anyway and you won't be missing much. Seriously, log on to another site if you like. I'm only playing here anyway and as we have all been taught to know, playing is pretty useless, ...right? So you may as well go and do something more useful. Log on to politics.ie or that fucking journal thing or something. Go on, I really don't mind. I'm not going to coerce you into finishing this piece. It looks to me like you've been coerced enough. But what do I know? Like I said already, I'm just typing this shit. It's you that's reading it so really it's all your fault.

(* in fact, nurses and firemen are probably useless too because they save the lives of useless people and what's the use in that? ...right?)

THE CADAVERS OF THE FUTURE

The cadavers of the future rise from their beds, not yet dead, to face the day ahead. They wash their bodies and slide into their pants and skirts and blouses and shirts and slip on their shoes and eat something. They leave their homes and go out onto the streets of Ambivalence.

Ambivalence is an average sized town that resides on the borderline between the boroughs of Abominable and Abundant. There are a lot of things to like about Ambivalence but there is more than enough to hate. It is a town of contradictions and restrictions and no restrictions. In Ambivalence every good day is a bad day for someone and every bad day is a good day for someone else. It is a rare occasion when everyone is happy at once. So rare an occasion as to be non-existent and you don’t get much rarer than that. What Ambivalence has, it’s one constant, is a status quo. Ambivalence is as good and as bad at it gets and that is about the best the cadavers of the future can expect. 

Those that run Ambivalence are as crooked as crooked can be and those who complain about them are as crooked as they can manage to be without getting caught and going to prison. Not much makes sense and people rarely mean what they say. The cadavers of the future don’t worry too much about the future in which they’ll be cadavers. They leave a lot of messes for future generations to clean up, just as they have been left a lot of messes to clean up by their predecessors. Leaving messes and the required infrastructure to maintain these messes without turning the whole thing into a total mess is the Ambivalent way. That is the status quo. What more can you expect? It’s pretty good when you think about it, unless it seems really bad. It’s up to you really. An optimistic outlook is generally considered preferable but it isn’t compulsory. There is no rulebook here. Well, there is but those that adhere to it won’t be winning the game of Ambivalence. The rules of the game are to work around the rules whilst claiming to be sticking to them. To actually stick to the rules is naïve and naivety is the cardinal weakness in this town. The more naïve a cadaver of the future is the sooner in the future they are likely to become a cadaver.

When the cadavers of the future eventually become cadavers they are buried in a big cemetery on a hill overlooking Ambivalence. Tributes are paid to them and nice things are written on the stones that stand at the heads of their graves. The best of the worst is emphasised. A man who evaded paying his taxes his entire life is remembered as a good father and a man who was a bad father but paid his taxes all his life is remembered as someone who always paid his dues. This is the way it is in Ambivalence; most of the cadavers of the future prefer to look on the bright side and rarely acknowledge the dark. It is considered impolite to consider the dark so the dark goes unconsidered but everyone knows it is there. The cadavers of the future are both the bright and the dark and that is what makes Ambivalence tick. But you aren’t to go mentioning it. You aren’t to go saying as much. To point out that Ambivalence is a town that could only exist with good and bad in equal measure would be to point out that, although things will never get worse, things will never get better. Such an acknowledgement would lead the cadavers of the future to despair. Not many could handle the fact that they may as well change the name of Ambivalence to Limbo and that the only guaranteed progress is the progression toward a place up on the hill. Under a stone with a nice tribute to you written on it.