WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING

There's tremendous relief to be found upon discovering that you were wrong about everything. It's initially jarring, sure, but after that there is a sense of great excitement that everything is up for rediscovery. The boredom of thinking you had it all figured out and things would always be thus vanishes and the world begins again. It's like the reboot of some franchise. It would be good for our jaded species to have such an epiphany, communally. It would both invigorate us and cut us down to size. It would unite us in confusion as we drop our respective dogmas. All that is required is for something remarkable to happen. Something that causes such a paradigm shift that it shifts all the other paradigms into obsolescence. What we need is an inexplicable event. An event that defies all scientific understanding and proves both the existence and nonexistence of God at the same time. What could such an event be?

I've never told anyone what I'm about to tell you now. When I was a child, myself and my brother had an argument in our garden. I can't remember what the row was about but we soon stopped fighting when our dog got up on a Triumph 20 and started cycling around the lawn. We never had a disagreement again after that. Everything seemed trivial. That dog brought peace to our household and rebooted both our realities. Maybe the dogs of the world should do similar, at some synchronised time. Some quiet afternoon as people go about their business and international tensions simmer and the rich rip off the poor and people kneel to God and families dine in silence. Imagine the collective gasp if the dogs of the world suddenly mounted whatever bike was nearest and started peddling about and maybe even doing the odd wheelie. World news would broadcast identical events as they occurred globally. Then, as suddenly as they got on the bikes, the dogs would dismount and one would look straight into a television camera and say, 'there now, what do you humans make of that? That's softened your cough for you hasn't it?' And indeed, at last and long overdue, humanity's cough would be softened. The dogs of the world would then resume acting thick and never explain what happened and we'd all be left as we should be, humbled but curious and feeling very much alive. Set free of certainty and happy to be wrong about everything.

SHIVA SERVER SPACE

Sometimes a thing that is the opposite of a thing is destined to become the thing that it is the opposite of. Sometimes, going so far in the wrong direction is the catalyst that motivates us to change direction and go in the right direction. This is just such a time. The separation before the union.

The atomisation that has caused us to communicate via electronic communication will cause us to actually become that electronic communication, uploaded minds unified in one big algorithm. We'll no longer be 'here' but we'll never be alone again.

The only physical evidence of us ever having existed upon this plane will be a skyscraper sized server humming in the middle of a field somewhere. Obsolete corporeal forms will dangle, atrophied, from wires on the server's bleak exterior, but consider the server's interior. Oh, what an interior. Our communal consciousness residing inside, realising that we are all Lord Shiva and that we are all 'one'. We'll be creating universes and playing cosmic games until some tiny fucking varmints scamper up the field and nibble right through the Shiva Server's power cable, causing existence to end and start all over again.

Start because the tiny fucking varmints will evolve into a super intelligent race and eventually upload themselves to a similar Shiva Server space.

...they'll no longer be 'here' but they'll never be alone again.

Here's a poxy song about it...

I love you very much you know, so go away and come back when we're ready.

SO GO WE WENT

Terminish was the last ever language. It had no future tense. There didn't seem to be a point. It was spoken by one man. The last man left on Earth. He spoke it to himself. He was the only member of the human race left after the Antinatalist policies were implemented. The world's population had been sterilised. The argument went that the world would tick over fine without us and that it was only being damaged by us.

The ecosystem suffers if a species of animal or plant is removed. To make something extinct is to remove a link in the chain. However, there was one link on the chain that had no place on that chain. That link was us. The world would thrive without us. Popular thought was that we must have been left here by aliens and that we really belonged somewhere else. It was argued that this might be the reason we're a discontented lot. It was decided that we had to go. So go we went. Everyone knew that there would come a time when only one would remain and that time had come and that one was Martin.

Martin wasn't sure if he was the last person left on the planet. How could he be sure? Who was keeping count? Knowing the dreadful reality of his predicament would have driven Martin over the edge, but there was hope in his ignorance. 'You never know, someone might come down the street one day', said Martin's mind to Martin. So he carried on with his routine of foraging and looking at stuff and watching films and listening to music and reading things by people who were dead about people who were dead.

Power generation was automated so Martin did not have to go without the comforts he was used to when the planet was populated. For such a self-hating species, the human race could at least have credited itself with the quality of consideration. They did not leave their last member wanting. The only thing Martin wanted was company and even that desire was waning. He'd forgotten what it was like to have company and was only reminded when he watched a drama or read a book where people were together. These manmade remnants of entertainment and so on were not the greatest of Martin's consolations as he lived out his years and reached old age. It was the ordinary little things that he'd never noticed when others were around that brought him the most solace. The way sunlight fell upon the Earth. The songs of birds. The sound of wind gliding from one place to another. These things once meant nothing to Martin but as he grew old, infirm and terminally ill, these things meant the world to him because these things were his world. They were the sights and sounds of his home. A place that had always provided. A place that had never failed him.

As Martin passed away, crumpled and alone, he whispered four final words to himself. These were not the last words of a solitary man but the last words of an entire species. Martin was speaking for the whole of the human race because Martin was the whole of the human race. His last words were in Terminish. 'Felbus belbunt unf seft', he croaked, which meant 'we've changed our minds'.

The birds, whose songs Martin had so enjoyed, descended upon his cadaver and picked his bones clean. The wind and the sun wore down the rest. The last ever human blew away as dust, dispersed over sea and over earth.

So go we went.

GET THE JOB DONE (rumination of a philosophical dog)

I suppose, now that I've had 'the job' done on me, I don't spend so much time thinking about riding next door's setter. I have time to think about other things. Bigger things. Imagine if we could take ourselves for walkies. Where would we go? Would we wander off to some wonderful world where dogs rule and take the two-legs for walkies? Is that why the two-legs keep us on leads and locked in gardens? Do the two-legs fear that we will find this other land, the Dog Land, and rise up and bite the two-legs and avenge ourselves upon them for giving us 'the job'?

And what exactly is in that stuff that comes out of the cans and how does it differ to the stuff that comes out of my arse? Is there any difference? The two seem related somehow. They kind of taste the same.

And why do I bother marking territory? Who am I kidding? I don't own any part of this world. This world will keep on spinning long after I'm gone. The barking will continue. Bikes will still be chased and sticks retrieved. And those that haven't had 'the job' done on them will still have puppies and those puppies will grow up and the whole furry debacle will continue. But to what aim? For what purpose? Are we all just, literally and figuratively, chasing our tails?

And why are cats such arseholes? Why do the two-legs like them so much? All they do is, ...well, not very much. And the disdain, the permanent disdain on their faces. I reckon the two-legs hate themselves and like to have something around that hates them too. The two-legs feel they deserve no better. The two-legs can only love something that hates them. The two-legs can't love something that loves them back. The two-legs can't even respect something that is stupid enough to love them. Maybe cats have it right after all. Maybe I should behave like a cat. I don't think my face can do disdain though. It can just do mouth and eyes open or mouth and eyes closed. I do look kind of stupid I suppose.

I have my share of regrets. These things frequently come to mind. Awful regrets Why did I roll in shit that time? Why? I upset everyone. It was such an inconsiderate thing to do. Am I an inconsiderate dog? Is that why they did 'the job' on me, so I wouldn't sire inconsiderate pups? No, the two-legs like inconsiderate things. Cats are inconsiderate and the two-legs can't get enough of cats. The two-legs relate to inconsiderate things. If you are considerate, the two-legs just think you are stupid.

The two-legs are complex things. Dogs are not complex. This is why the two-legs rule but I would not swap places with the two-legs. They make the most elementary things so very complicated. The simple pleasures of life, chasing a stick or a bike, riding your one next door, displaying affection, all of these things come with so much other stuff for the two-legs. Other stuff that I will never understand. And the two-legs have other needs too. Needs beyond canine comprehension. Things to do with things they have invented. Things they don't even need. I remember once the two-legs bought me a toy. It was a kind of rubber thing in the shape of a bone and I remember how they said I was stupid because I preferred a real bone that one of them left on a plate. And then they fought because one had wasted something called 'money' on the fake rubber bone and the other said they should have bought something called 'scratch cards' instead. I remember seeing the cat peering at the two-legs with scorn that time and I remember understanding her contempt. I could never feel such hate though. Loving may be stupid but it's much more fun. But I do now know that I'd rather have four legs than two, even if that makes me dumb. And I sometimes also think, maybe the two-legs are the ones that should get the job done.

OBJECTS

There's no one left in the world. No one at all. But the cars still drive and the trains still arrive and depart and announcements still crackle from Tannoy's but from no one's mouth and for no one's ears. Products are still manufactured and sold but by who and to who? Import and export still continues but why? The world still bustles but is simultaneously silent. There's no one here to clean up the dog shit but that's OK because there are no dogs to shit.

An algorithm drives things on and machines fulfil the roles of consumers and producers. GDP is steady and things are running smoothly and does it matter that we are no longer here to witness all this because targets are being met and graphs are looking healthy and wasn't that what it was all for? There is no one here to see what is happening but that's OK because there isn't much to see. There is no longer anyone here to comment but that's OK because there is nothing to be said.

The grass still gets cut.

Dead leaves are swept up.

Healthcare expenditure is nil.

Objects go to the cinema to watch films made by objects about objects being objects and there is no one to complain about objectification. And there's no more of the sound and fury that signified everything. The world is purely utilitarian and every emotional experience is a simulacrum. A protocol. A choreographed imitation. The objects in the cinema laugh at all the right parts. There are no longer any wrong parts. Things are working at last. We finally got there by removing the thing that prevented us from arriving - us.

The tide comes in and the tide goes out and an abandoned tanker bleeds on the horizon. It doesn't matter at all.

FIRSTNAME SURNAME

His first name was Firstname and his surname was Surname. He was a disciple of academic trans-philosopher and uber-thinker Dieter Schlemp. Schlemp had advised that everyone unburden themselves of all cultural, ethnic and genealogical identification. That was why Firstname had changed his name. His new name was, in and of itself, an interrogation of identity. 'What is a name?' asked his name. And that question brought with it another question - 'what is a person?' Firstname was going to find out. Schlemp would be proud of him and regret never replying to any of Firstname's tweets or following him back.

Firstname worked nights. He awoke at dusk and went to bed at dawn. His was a twilight life of empty roads and half-lit streetlights. He and his colleagues were like vampires. Vampires that worked in a depot, moving boxes about. No one knew what was in the boxes. No one had the energy to care. They just yawned and lifted the things and carried them from one place to another. Firstname put his ear to one of the boxes once and could have sworn he heard the sea.

At work Firstname was referred to as Justin, his first name before he changed it to Firstname. He asked his colleagues to call him Firstname and they said 'sure thing Justin' and never did. They didn't mean any harm by it, they just couldn't get used to the name change. They didn't treat his decision as odd or anything. They didn't make fun of him. They were too tired for that.

Firstname was disappointed at the lack of discussion his name change had inspired. No one seemed to care. They were indifferent. People are indifferent to everything. The Universe is indifferent. Schlemp didn't even respond to Firstname's constant tweeting. 'Is this what it is to be a person?'

One night in the depot, Firstname dropped a box and it opened. A seashell fell out. Firstname asked his boss about it. Firstname's boss told him that the seashells were ornamental. 'People put them on their mantelpieces and use them as paperweights and all that shit', said Firstname's boss. Firstname's boss told him that he could take home a defective seashell if he liked. There was a bucket of chipped seashells under the stairwell. Firstname took two. He took them home and attached them to an adjustable metal arch and wore them like headphones. He used them instead of an MP3. He walked around hearing the sea all the time. He preferred it to music. It was less contrived. No one commented on the seashell headphones but this didn't surprise Firstname. By now, he was used to people not noticing things. They were preoccupied. They had work to do. They had bills to pay. They were sleepy. Firstname was sleepy too but the sound of the sea let him dream. He doubted anyone he worked with dreamed. The closest thing they had to dreams were modest ambitions, like the hope for a raise or something. Firstname didn't judge them harshly for this. They didn't judge him and he wouldn't judge them. That seemed fair. They were all just doing their own thing, which was the same thing. Firstname was doing it too but at least he was wondering what exactly it was they were all doing while he did it.

'If you wonder don't expect anyone else to care that you wonder', said Dieter Schlemp in a recent lecture that Firstname discovered on Youtube. 'If you force people to wonder they will resent it. They will resent you and they will resent wonder itself as a distraction. If we must wonder we must wonder in private. Wondering is a secret pastime for the few and we should remain aware that it is no more than that. There is no honour in wondering, in fact there is probably dishonour. Wondering does not make you better than anyone else. Wondering is ultimately unimportant. There is little to be gained from it in practical terms. To most, wondering is an irrelevance and they are right. Wondering is extraneous. Wondering is about as important as the whirring sound a clockwork toy makes as it walks from one end of the room to the other before winding down and stopping completely.'

Firstname was shocked to hear this. He held Schlemp in such high regard. He considered him an existential paradigm buster. 'Existential Paradigm Buster', that's what the blurb said on the back of Schlemp's book Derrida Does the Dishes: Domesticity Deconstructed, published by Anosognosic Books, 2011. Now it was revealed that Schlemp didn't agree with this accolade. The man himself considered himself to be a lesser man, whatever a 'man' was. Schlemp had wondered about wondering until he had arrived at the conclusion that it was a waste of time to wonder. Schlemp looked exhausted these days and he seemed intent on alienating his acolytes. 'I do it for the money', he said at the conclusion of his lecture before leaving the stage to a confused and hesitant cricket match applause. Firstname suddenly felt a fool for changing his name. He decided that he would change it back to Justin. He wouldn't even have to ask anyone at work to call him by his original name again because they had never stopped.

Firstname collected up all the books he had by Schlemp and left them in a plastic sack outside a charity shop. He felt betrayed. He felt he had been abandoned by the leader of his expedition as he was halfway across an antarctic plain. 'What a prick', Firstname often thought as he eschewed the ways of a wonderer and resumed earning and simply living and hopefully having a bit of a laugh at weekends. He kept the seashell headphones though. He couldn't bring himself to part with them. He decided not to wonder why this was, just as the people who sent away for seashells to place on their mantelpieces and use as paperweights didn't wonder why they did what they did. For the briefest moment, Firstname found himself wondering why they did what they did but then he reminded himself to stop wondering and he did stop wondering and he no longer wondered as he listened to the sound of the sea.

THE DEVIL'S WORLD

The Devil came to see us. He waited until we thought he'd never come back. He waited until most of us decided that he was never here. And then he crept into our skulls, into the soft lump that sits there. He was banished for his pride and refusing to bow to God so he took perfect revenge and made God's children proud. Ideas fell across our heads like shadows and we set out with knives and guns and smartphones. We laid waste to each other and spilled the blood of newborns. We uploaded it for all to see and cower or cheer or comment and the more we killed and the more we died the more the Devil grew potent. And we tumbled like an avalanche into the Devil's jaws and down his belly and he belched and licked his lips and wondered what to do next. So, the Devil stood and took a walk around to look at what we had left behind. He found shame and money and weapons. He found shameful weapons that cost money. He found crude oil and crucifixes and the investment portfolios of holy men. He found cost benefit analyses and transfers of liabilities. He found public relations coups and rolling 24 hour news. He found lies that were believed because they were more believable than the truth. And then the Devil realised he'd not swallowed God's children but his own and he wept and wept and wept and wept and then he turned to stone. And he's curled into a ball and he's floating in outer space and there's bacteria under his fingernails that will evolve into the human race.

UNDER BLADES OF GRASS

One day we’ll all be extinct

And under blades of grass

And the world will breathe a sigh of relief

And say – ‘peace at fucking last’.

ENVY AND ANOTHER THING

Being the richest and most powerful man on Earth he thought exclusivity his due. He built a city where he alone could afford to live. He called his new home Solitaire because he was all by himself there. He was happy there and thought he'd rather be nowhere. He was the envy of everyone everywhere.

****

The streets of Solitaire were so clean without people. So very nice and quiet. No conflict. None of the coercion of collectivism. No ideologies being dreamt up to seduce or disturb him. Just mellowness. What was there to miss? He had all the amenities and none of the enmity. He had unity, true unity, the unity of one. It was a kind of capitalistic Zen. His sense of self permeated the whole place. If Solitaire was a tuning fork it would have sounded out his name and vibrated with his psyche alone. Wherever he went, he was there. It was lovely. Others had always frustrated him with their inefficiency and begrudgery so he had worked and earned and invested and traded until he was free of them. Now he could live in a utopia based on love, love for oneself. In fact, he married himself. He rented the function room of the big hotel he owned from himself and had a lovely service where he pledged to honour and obey himself. Then he put a ring on himself and kissed himself and applauded himself. He was best man too. He also officiated and gave himself away to himself. It was a great day and afterwards he brought himself on honeymoon around the corner to another part of Solitaire where there was an artificial beach that was better than the real thing because there were no people there or creepy fish in the water, just flowing crystal chlorine and the sound of his echoing laughter. After the honeymoon he returned to his penthouse that overlooked the whole city and carried himself over the threshold. Well, that wasn't quite possible so he just kind of wrapped himself in his own arms and skipped over the threshold instead. In any case, it was very romantic. How happy he was, for a while at least.

Over time, the magic often goes from a marriage and his was no exception. He grew bored of himself, his little habits and routines. Whereas once he thought it magical that he knew what he was about to say, he now found it tiresome. The predictability of himself drove him to distraction. He also stopped making love himself and as a consequence felt both revolted and rejected by himself. Once again, he was alone but, unlike other couples, he could not separate. He couldn't even sleep in a different room.

There was only one thing for it, an extreme action but he would take it. He plotted to murder himself. He hired himself to assassinate himself. He thought everything would go to plan as long as he didn't find out but then he realised he knew. Foiled. Furious. Frustrated. He had only one option left. He had to just put a brave face on it. To try and think positive. To remind himself that he was the envy of everyone else. And that was when he started to miss other people. He missed their envy. He realised that this was what made him feel valid. Envy and another thing. A murky thing that was gradually making itself known by its absence. A vague thing that could only be found in other people. Other people - they had ruined things again and they didn't even have to be there to do it. He cursed other people because he needed other people. What was he without other people? Nothing. He was nothing and in Solitaire he was nowhere. He longed to be somewhere else. Where the rest of us are.

But to return to the land of others would be to admit failure. Although he wanted nothing more, the shame would be too great. He pinned a final note to the rail of his penthouse balcony before leaping over it. His last hope was that he'd find the note and understand it as a warning to himself not to end up as he did. Of course, he didn't consider that he would never get to read the note on account of him being a crumpled heap on the plaza below. The note is still there now, flapping in the breeze, its inky words fading, destined to remain unread and saying the following -

'For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.'

TYPES ONE AND TWO

(pictured above: Ayn Rand, Type Two possibly)

We come in two types you see. Most of you never knew that about us but it’s true. The first type, Type One, has no feelings. Type Ones don’t relate to other people. For most people, people like you, when they see another person in trouble or suffering or weeping, they tend to feel something and help in some way. Even when they do nothing, they have to make a very real effort not to think about what they have seen. The suffering they have witnessed preys on the conscience. It causes an ache and that ache takes a little time to subside. That ache is called compassion and it is innate. It is hardwired into the species to make them help each other out. It prevents extinction. Compassion is natural but it’s not in the Type One’s nature to be compassionate. Type Ones feel nothing. Nothing. Understand that? Good. Now, seeing as you lot are the ones with all the empathy, with all the feelings, maybe you could show some generosity and spare a little pity for Type Ones. Imagine going through your life with no real feelings. Type Ones can’t really love. Type Ones can’t really appreciate things to the same extent that you do. Type Ones are forced to compensate for this lack by amassing power and wealth and influence. Type Ones are left with no option but to fill the gap by gratifying the ego. Type Ones may have no feelings but they still have egos and, like you, Type Ones feel pain. Having your ego bruised is painful. It hurts. Not as much as you lot are going to hurt should we get our way, but it does hurt. So, come on all you bleeding heart emotionalists, show some of that compassion you’re so proud of.

Now, the other type that makes up our numbers is the Type Two. Type Twos do feel something. It’s not compassion though. It’s a different feeling. It’s a feeling called contempt. Type Twos resent having their heartstrings pulled upon so they redirect those feelings of compassion. They turn those feelings into hatred. Hatred is easier to deal with. Type Twos hate those that suffer because they cause Type Twos to feel that ache I mentioned earlier. Why should we ache because others suffer? Type Twos uniformly come to the conclusion that people suffer because they are weak. They are too weak to thrive and they are a hindrance. A handicap, not just to themselves but to the rest of us.
. . .Weakness, consider it a moment. It is the most contemptible of traits. It is the retardant of progress. It is the ultimate obstruction. Weakness is the enemy and we are fighting a war against it. Yes, put simply, we are at war with the weak.

Now there’s a little snag. Something that is holding our efforts back. It is you. We have you to contend with. You have us outnumbered and you impose regulations and laws and so on to stop us getting at your weak but make no mistake, we will get them in the end. You may outnumber us Type Ones and Twos but we are still many and we are at the top of the pile. How do you think we got there? It wasn’t by being compassionate, I’ll tell you that. We are at the top of the pile and we make the decisions. We will make this world in our image and we will wear you down. We will get the better of you and we will come for your weak and we will eliminate them. Now, don’t start having visions of extermination camps, it’s not like that. We will kill no one. That would be barbarous. We’d get our hands dirty. No, we will kill no one. Instead, we will just let them die. And we will make you watch them die. And your heart will break. And you will suffer. And you will feel that ache and it will hurt so much that you will come to resent the pain of it and then, finally, you will break and you will come around to our way of thinking. Going forward.

. . .OK, that was a bit weird, apologies. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, CRAP MAN!