A SHADOWLESS WORLD

 

Remember how we became afraid of our shadows? We started to wonder what they were. We knew they were dark shapes made by our bodies and other objects in light, but we started to wonder what they were on a deeper level. Do you remember? We started wondering what they were - really. We wondered why they were there. We wondered what they wanted. They must want something. Everything wants something. We started to wonder what they knew about us and realised that it must be everything – always there, watching and listening. Then we realised that night time was all of the shadows merged into a singular shadow that covered the Sun. 'What power!' we exclaimed. 'They can deny us the Sun!'

We became truly fearful then, remember? We built bunkers, remember? We took to the bunkers and never left. We communicated with each other via online forums and we delivered things to each other with drones that dropped parcels into chutes. We flooded the bunkers with light at every angle so there would be no place for a shadow to reside. The light was intense and we would have become blind if we didn't start wearing the blindfolds to protect our eyes.

Then came the naysayers. They wondered what use it was having eyes if we could not use them to see and they asked what harm the shadows had ever done to us in the first place. They eventually took off their blindfolds and turned off their lights and they even left their bunkers. The fools. The bloody fools.

We never heard from them again of course. I suppose the shadows must have gotten them. God knows what the shadows did to them. Maybe the shadows swallowed them up. Maybe they got turned into shadows too. Maybe that's what happens when you die, you become a shadow and then you follow the living and make plans for their demise so you can convert them into shadows, into night, into darkness and... God, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Anyway, those of us who were wise remained in our bunkers. We have adjusted to not seeing the world lest we become blind and we see a new world now, a better world, a shadowless world, through our VR headsets. We are safe from our shadows and we will survive, unlike the naysayers. Some say they hear the naysayers moving about on the ground above us, talking and sometimes even laughing. One person said they heard them playing music and maybe dancing, but that could not be. The naysayers have surely perished and there is no such thing as ghosts. Ghosts are just fearful superstition and we left fearful superstition behind us a long time ago. Fearful superstition belongs in the past, in the darkness, with the shadows. We live in the light now, even though it blinds us and the electricity bills are fucking astronomical.

9 11 + 20

'The spectacular nature of the event more than compensated for the tragedy. Traumatic, yes, but wonderfully so. A sad day for America, but an unprecedented, ratings triumph the world over. An atrocity that at least had the decency to leave a franchise in its wake. Personally, now that the dust has settled and the dead are laid to rest, I think I can finally admit to loving it. It's unreal! I’ve watched it again and again and again. It’s better than Hamilton.' 

WE ARE ALL LITTLE ALBERTS NOW

 

In 1920, the American psychologist John B. Watson of Johns Hopkins University embarked on a disturbing experiment to develop irrational phobias in human beings. He paid an impoverished mother one dollar so he could experiment on her infant son, who he renamed ‘Little Albert.’

Watson exposed Little Albert to rabbits and puppies. Little Albert happily played with the animals until Watson loudly clanged metal pots and pans to alarm the baby. A phobia of furry creatures was successfully installed and Little Albert was sent on his way to live with it for the rest of his one dollar life.

A delighted Johns Hopkins raised Watson’s salary by 50% to keep him at the university, but later fired him for sleeping with one of his students. Watson then went to work in… can you guess? I’ll give you a moment to guess what industry Watson went on to work in.

That’s right, advertising! 

Watson was employed by the J. Walter Thompson agency and tasked with scaring consumers into purchasing certain products. Watson made out, for example, that not using a particular brand of toilet roll would land your arse on an operating table.

In his advertising, Watson played upon what he termed the ‘fear response’, part of what was understood to be the ‘hypochondriac culture’ of the 20th century. Watson sought to appeal to readily malleable emotions rather than recalcitrant, rational intellects.

Watson claimed that he was able to do what he did because of a ‘lack of individuality in the emerging mass society’. In 1935 he wrote a book called ‘Influencing the Mind of Another’ where he boasted that he ‘could make any human being afraid of any object in the world.’

Watson famously viewed human beings as programmable machines. He said that we are ‘made’ and not ‘born.’ Maybe he thought this because he was a machine himself, a machine that could not pity a distressed infant. Maybe he thought we are all like him. Was he right?

Right or wrong, his approach was certainly effective. We are part conditioned by his methods and much of our culture is made in his image. Taking the baton from the holy men who preceded him, this machine man used fear to control us and he made us love it.

In his book, ‘Mechanical Man: John B. Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviourism’, Kerry Buckley wrote that Watson inspired a ‘progressive dream’ where science is ‘a new religion’ with ‘a binding faith for its practitioners.’  

Get on your knees. We are all Little Alberts now.

WHATEVER WUNGOS ARE

 

If celebrity something or other Ned Belleck was never certain what he was famous for, he was completely in the dark about what he was infamous for. He just woke up one day to find everyone online condemning him for being a 'wungo'. 'The signs were always there,' tweeted tweets. 'I always knew that about that guy,' opined people who Ned never knew and who never knew Ned.

Ned didn't know what a wungo was. He was not an old man or particularly out of touch, but everything moves so fast these days. Ned Googled the word. The only definition he found was in the urban dictionary. This definition wasn't very helpful though as it defined the word 'wungo' with other words Ned never heard of. The definition read - Wungo: Noun. A total sumper. Penchant for skellegy hents. “Oh man, Suzy's such a wungo, I bet she barbutts her fing.”

Ned decided not to worry about being a wungo. It'll all be forgotten about soon enough and everyone will move on to something else, he thought. But he thought wrong. The accusation made it into mainstream gossip columns and was mentioned on afternoon TV. Most shocking of all was when the police arrived at Ned's door to charge him for wungoisation. Ned contacted his lawyer, but even Ned's lawyer refused take a call from a wungo.

Ned called friends to ask what a wungo is and the few who picked up the phone answered him sharply. 'You know damn well what a wungo is, you Godamn wungo!' they said before hanging up and blocking his number. Ned didn't get any more public engagements. His agent dropped him as did the charities he worked with and boards and committees he sat on. His life was ruined.

Ned left his large, beachside property and moved into a small flat. He changed his name and appearance and took a job in a garden centre. He just got on with the rest of his life and kept his head down. Other than his employer and the customers at the garden centre, he spoke to no one. He never recovered his trust in humanity.

Ned never found out what the word 'wungo' meant and he spent the rest of his life wondering what wungos could be. 'Whatever they are, wungos must be pretty odious,' thought Ned to himself.

Ned often found himself keeping an eye out for wungos. He wondered if those around him were wungos and sometimes even suspected as much. He even found himself going online anonymously to accuse people of being wungos. I mean, maybe they were wungos. 'They sure seem like wungos,' said Ned to himself, 'whatever wungos are.'

THOSE MASKS

 

Well, those masks now. I'll wear them if that's what they say to do, but I've a line in the sand. I'll not wear them in the shop. Oh no. For me, you see, the shop is a place of freedom. Freedom of choice. It's where we get to practise our true autonomy. Think about it. It's where all the products are. Loads of products. And not just one type of each product either, but a choice of different types of the same product. That's freedom, you see. Freedom of choice. And what other kind of freedom is there but the freedom of choice? And where do you get the most to choose from? That's right, the shop!

A wide variety of choice. An expanse of choice. A plain. A wide open plain, like the Serengeti. Oh Jaysus, I loved it. You should have seen me, back in the day. Maskless. Frolicking and gambolling in the aisles. Like some creature off a David Attenborough thing. Up and down. Around the corner. It was beautiful. I was free. You should've seen me. You should have fucking seen me, man. Untamed abandon. I'm welling up thinking about it. There we were. All of us, like a load of flamingos or zebras or something, making our way to the checkout. Stocking up. Teeming out into the car park.

But it just feels like a mockery now, with the masks. It's like a collar. I feel like a chained beast. I'll put up with wearing the mask outdoors or at home or in the bath or wherever, but not in the shop. No. Not the shop. It's symbolic really. Donning the mask in the shop is a kind of surrender. You can't let them have us where they want us, in the true locus of freedom, the shop. And they're putting shit in the vax too. A micro-nano-thermite-chip. It's to keep an eye on us. Like tracked animals. If I want to be tracked like some animal, I'll get a Smartphone. And I do have a Smartphone. I bought it in the shop and you know what? I wasn't wearing a mask at the time.

Oh, and I've just dowloaded a cool new app. The Smartphone roars like a howler monkey if anyone with the virus comes within a fifteen metre radius of me.

ONCE UPON A TIME – DEATH!

 

Once upon a time, humanity ceased to be. Well, it didn’t really cease to be, but everyone thought it did because the news made a terrible mistake. Everyone in the world lay down around the place as if they were dead. They spread out their limbs at funny angles and shut their eyes.

Religious people waited to be taken to the afterlife, but no tunnel of light came for them. Atheists waited to be eaten by worms, but the worms showed no interest. Everyone just waited and waited and then they got hungry and they got cold and some had to take a piss.

After a while, a little boy jumped to his feet and said “let’s pretend we’re alive.” The little boy’s mammy told him to lay back down because he was dead, but the little boy said “I know I’m dead, I’m just playing that I’m alive.” Then a little girl stood up to play too.

Soon, all the children were on their feet and then most of the adults. It seemed that they had found a ‘get out’ clause in this death business. You could pretend to be alive. So, almost everyone went back to doing what they did before they thought they were dead.

However, some people remained on the ground as if dead and were very cross with those who had gotten up for not being dead properly. Some of those on the ground were tempted to join in the pretending to be alive game, but they dared not. It seemed naughty.

Eventually, the people who were pretending to be alive scooped up the people who thought they were dead and put them in caskets and put the caskets in the earth. The people who thought they were dead did not protest. They were happy enough under the soil. It seemed correct.

You see, even though the people who thought they were dead were about to be really dead, due to being buried alive, they felt they were coming out on top. The way they reasoned it, being dead is safer than being alive because being alive will get you killed one day. FIN!

BOURGEOISIE V BOURGEOISIE

One day, the bourgeoisie went to the cinema to see a savage indictment of the bourgeoisie made by a member of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie became very angry at the bourgeoisie and some bourgeoisie formed an organisation that put bombs under the bourgeoisie's cars and so on. Members of the bourgeoisie ended up killing a lot of members of the bourgeoisie. Eventually, when the bourgeoisie got tired of blowing up the bourgeoisie, a member of the bourgeoisie made a film about the bourgeoisie blowing up the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie went to the cinema to see the film, which was a savage indictment of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie became very angry at the bourgeoisie and some bourgeoisie formed an organisation that put bombs under the bourgeoisie's cars and so on.

It was all very exciting. It was all very important. It was really revolutionary. 

Some of the bourgeoisie were even sent to prison by the bourgeoisie, but all of the bourgeoisie eventually became bourgeoisie media pundits and went on TV shows where the bourgeoisie spoke to the bourgeoisie about the bourgeoisie in front of an audience of bourgeoisie watching from home and a few lucky members of the bourgeoisie who'd won tickets to be in the live studio audience.