AN INDEPENDENT STATE OF ONE

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. 

Gone From Here...

THE FIRST WORD EVER

It's incredible what they can figure out about the past these days isn't it? Did you hear that they've discovered the first word ever? Just think, the first word ever used by our species. They found it plastered onto the walls of various troglodyte abodes. They carbon dated it and it predates the hell out of sanskrit. This first word was depicted by a single letter of sorts that was just a simple handprint. Seriously, the 'letter' looked like a basic outline of a hand. The troglodytes just had to daub their hands in pigment, slap them on the side of a cave, and they had written the word. They reckon that this handprint word was the only word used by early man for several generations. Early man never said anything else, just this first word, over and over. They've even figured out how the word was pronounced. Apparently it sounded like a bark. Just a big fuckin 'woof!'. Mad isn't it? Of course, this first word ever was eventually joined by other words, which led to sentences and grammar and a linguistic sophistication that allowed us to say complicated things to each other and drive each other crazy.

I've no idea how they know all this about the first word ever but the evidence has been peer reviewed and it all seems scientifically sound. It did take them a long time to figure out what the word meant but even that was eventually deciphered. For a long time it was assumed that the first word ever would mean something simple like 'danger' or 'hungry' or 'me' or even, as one sentimental anthropologist optimistically postulated, 'love'. But no, interestingly it turns out that the first word ever didn't mean any of these things. The first word ever meant 'pardon?'

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART THREE: WORDS FOR THINGS UNSEEN AND FORGOTTEN

I've invented a few words in my time. Words for unseeable conceptual things I've noticed or sensations I've felt that don't have names. Urnk, fweelt, huphtink, and schwelpt - that's just four of them. There are lot more. I have them all listed in a journal. Sometimes I forget to write down what they mean and when I make that mistake it inevitably leads me to forget the thing I invented the name for even exists in the first place. I'll try and make myself clearer: Imagine you noticed the sensation of feeling at ease. You noticed that everyone seems to undergo this sensation at times. You start to recognise it in others, a gentle smile and unguarded body posture. So, imagine you decide to name this sensation of feeling at ease. For the sake of simplicity, let's imagine you call this sensation 'comfort', a word that, along with any possible synonyms for the same sensation, has heretofore not existed. Now imagine you write the word down. Now imagine that you return some time later to discover the word 'comfort' in the place you wrote it but you have forgotten what it relates to, what it means, and you have forgotten that 'comfort' ever existed. Can you imagine something like that? Well, that kind of thing happens to me all the time. Unseen things only exist when named. If you forget the names of unseen things they vanish from your mind. I mean to say, they are still there, it's just that you can no longer perceive them.

If we all forgot what the word 'comfort' meant we would forget we even feel it or have a need to feel it. We would live in near perpetual discomfort, only occasionally experiencing the unrecognised sensation of 'comfort' quite by chance. We wouldn't discuss it or anything. We'd probably never mention it. You might doubt this. You might say that we would eventually put a name to a sensation if it was something we felt. 'After all', you might say, 'we do have names for unseeable sensations and concepts'. You might apply this logic and say that it proves my postulation invalid. However, if you were to do such a thing I would be forced to point out that you seem decidedly underschwelpt. This would make you confused. You would not know what I meant but this would only be because you would not recognise the unseeable truth I would have described. You'd have no idea what I am talking about but believe me, your obvious lack of schwelptness would be showing and you would be risking absolute huphtink.

So you see, a great many unseeable things have yet to be named. A great many others have been named but those names forgotten or what they mean has been forgotten. We should really keep an archive so we don't become unaware of more of these unseeable sensations and concepts. Some may be of great significance. Some may define fundamental aspects of human experience. It would be a tragedy to lose more of them. For example, can you remember what it is to chizzet? No, I thought not. Sad really. I think it is high time we catalogued these words in journals - perhaps in alphabetical order with the meanings of the words written next to each entry. We could call these journals Lexiconicons or Wordadoriums. What do you think? Really? I think the idea is pretty fweelty myself.

I'll conclude by making a prediction. Have you noticed how the word 'morality' is being used less and less these days? It is, really. You tend to find other words in its place. Words like 'practicality' or 'realpolitik'. Soon we'll stop considering the concept of morality altogether and quit discussing it or aspiring to it. We'll forget that morality ever existed but, you know, maybe it never did. Maybe this is one case of a word that is best left to oblivion. Maybe 'morality' is just used as an abstract excuse for other things or maybe it's too vague and subjective and impossible to objectively quantify. Maybe we never should have believed in it in the first place. Maybe this word is a word for an unseeable thing that actually doesn't exist. Yes, maybe we should forget it. Maybe it's just a silly word. Maybe it's just a load of urnk.

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART TWO: WORDS WITHOUT MEANING

In the future, everyone will continue to use words even though they will have forgotten their meaning. This will be thanks to innovations like Facebook and superficial people taking over culture and and things like that. It's already beginning to happen. People are using words without knowing what they really mean. Take the word 'awesome' for example. 'Awesome' used to refer to things that inspired a feeling of awe, like seeing an eighty tonne blue whale surface next to your boat or watching the aurora borealis streak and shimmer across the night sky. These days however, the word 'awesome' is employed as an expression of approval, often mild, as in:

Man: 'There's a two for one on bottles of ketchup in Lidl until the end of the week.'

Woman: 'Awesome.'

'Like' is another example. Instead of being something you feel, 'like' is now something you do. You do it on your computer. It just takes a fraction of a second. It's a thing you do to oblige others in the hopes that they will oblige you in return by 'liking' something of yours. It's a kind of conditional quid pro quo transaction. You contribute 'likes' and collect 'likes'. It's similar to philately, only less interesting. Liking things, on an emotional level, is no longer relevant. 'Liking' is now an activity. Everyone is gradually forgetting what it actually is to like something but no one has forgotten that it is important to be 'liked'.

Despite the excellence of the above examples, you still mightn't think that people have forgotten what some words mean. You mightn't have noticed because, despite having forgotten what certain words mean, people still remember the facial expressions and mannerisms that go with these words. Take 'happy' for example. 'Happy' has the smiley emoticon face. Likewise, 'angry' has a frowning emoticon. People use these emoticons when they are online and facially imitate them in the offline world. The protocol associated with certain words is retained but the actual meaning of them, the feeling of them, what they represent on an emotional or visceral level, is long gone.

Now that I've pointed it out, you'll notice this phenomenon more and more. You'll get that 'in the uncanny valley' sensation. It's the feeling you get when you see a creepy mannequin or android that is just about lifelike but not quite. Near human but inhuman. Seemingly alive but obviously dead. It looks happy. It looks sad. It smiles at you. There is something deeply chilling and repulsive about the attempted emulation. You'll get this same feeling when you notice people using words they no longer know the meaning of – a deeply chilling repulsion.

Has a psychopath ever told you that they love you? If this happened you would know that the psychopath does not love you. You would know that the psychopath just needs you for some reason and that is why the psychopath is claiming to love you. The psychopath says they love you in the hopes that you will love them back. Like anyone, the psychopath needs love but, unlike almost everyone, the psychopath cannot return the love. The psychopath does not want the love of someone the psychopath loves, no, the psychopath wants the love of someone the psychopath needs – so they can feel validated, or progress in some way, or survive, or maybe even destroy. The psychopath is an ego without real emotions. The psychopath knows the protocols but has no real idea what they represent. The psychopath is just making use of these things. The psychopath is leading the way. Don't forget to give the psychopath 'likes'. You should subscribe to the psychopath's channel. Why not follow the psychopath on Twitter @psychopath #pretending. 

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART ONE: THE LONG WORD

(pictured: an extract from The Long Word)

I've invented a new word. It is an unsayable word. It is actually impossible for a human to say the word. This is because the word is very long. So long that I can't type it here, it would hog up loads of the blog. While saying this word you need to inhale but you can't because you are saying the word. You die from lack of oxygen before you get to the end of the word. Even if you somehow devised a means by which you could take in breath whilst saying the word it wouldn't help because it takes longer than the average lifetime to say the word. This is ironic. The irony being that this long word I've invented is a synonym for 'why'. You never get the answer. You never even get to finish asking the question. You may as well not bother and that's probably the point.

ARSES

Who are you? How do you define yourself? If something, anything, happens do you respond to it based on the values and social norms that were downloaded onto your cranial hard drive as you were reared and socialised by family, school, religion, media, and all the rest? Is that really your response or just an instruction? Is your sense of 'self' merely a construct formed by external cultural and societal forces? What are you other than a range of predictable responses and a few personal memories and traumas that you have placed into a formalised context that depends on the aforementioned external influences? Is there a self there at all? Are you there at all? How free a thinker are you? Do you even really think and, if you do, do you ever find yourself thinking something and then stopping yourself thinking it because it seems disconcertingly transgressive or embarrassingly absurd?

Do you think you're a rebel because you dress like a rebel or are you actually a rebel? What is a rebel? What are you rebelling against? How are you rebelling? Is that really the best you can do? Is that actually rebelling? Are you just playing the part of the rebel in an agreed upon cultural game?

I went to art college. They asked me to make something and to give of myself so I shat on the floor. I was following instructions but interrogating those instructions and showing them up for what they were by carrying them out. Why? Because we must be constantly awake and make no lazy assumptions. Every moment of every day our true selves are smothered by the externally constructed selves imposed upon us by whatever culture presides at the time. We must remove the blinkers. We must reject and then we must reject rejection and learn to accept nothing. Does that make sense? Why not? What is sense? Ceci n'est pas une pipe!

Language too is blinkers. What is language but a way of placing boundaries on thought and expression? If we could ditch language and communicate telepathically we could say so much more. Dogs are more genuine when they snarl and whine and sniff each others' arses. We are just trading agreed assumptions and myths. Even when we're telling the truth we are lying.

Last week I held a protest against protesting. It turned into a riot against rioting so I threw a molotov cocktail at a molotov cocktail. Then I told a woman that I loved her but that I didn't know who she was or what love was and neither did she and she said that love was a feeling and I said that I didn't know what a feeling was and she said it was just a feeling and I said that I had a feeling she was just told that by someone who heard it from someone else. Later we got married and divorced at the same time and then I sniffed her arse and whined and then I snarled.

I am most awake when I am asleep. I will not sleep in a building. I will not live in a house. A house is a contract and a house is a series of assumptions. When I lived in a house I slept in the bath, I shat in the kitchen sink, and I ate my dinner from the toilet bowl. When it got dark I hung my pyjamas over the windows and I dressed in curtains. Then I sat in the fireplace and set fire to the rest of the place. I will not live in a house or an apartment. Apartment. Apart-meant. Where we are 'meant' to live 'apart'. Apart from others and ourselves. What is a roof but a blindfold?

I live in a forest. I eat nuts and berries and when I eat the wrong berries I get a sore tummy. I shout and roar as I endure the cramps but I do not call a doctor because a doctor will just say this is a stomach, this is poison, this is illness, and then it will be decided that my stomach is ill because I ate the wrong berries and that I ate the wrong berries because my head is ill and I am not adhering to the all powerful Adherable and I should be locked away. I only trust one type of doctor. I only trust the proctologist. The proctologist sniffs people's arses and so knows more than any other because up our arses is where our heads can be found.

We only think we are people in the same way that we think that there is a world and there is a universe. That is all just an idea. It's not even our idea, we were just told the idea. The truth is that there is nothing. The Big Bang was just an idea that got out of hand and spread out into the void. If we think about something else maybe it will all just go away. What will we think about? We will think about nothing. Nothing at all. We will think about nothing and it will be easy because even when we think that we are thinking about something we are thinking about nothing.

And now I must go. Using language has made me feel cheap and dishonest and besides, I've still got a pain in my stomach and it's really getting bad but maybe that too is all in my head and my head is up my arse and everything is a load of arse. Someone call a proctologist!

THE TWO WORD LANGUAGE

(pictured above: Iago-good with words)

Language has gotten out of hand. The main purpose of vocabulary and grammar is to manipulate and deceive, to give the irrational the pretence of rationality, to justify questionable actions with verbose exorcisms of cognitive dissonance and to propagate ideologies and dogmas that justify the persecution of others. It’s all just spin. Language has become a nasty thing and it’s time it was reined in.

That is why I propose The Two Word Language, an international language that has only two words. One word is ‘Ooo’ and the other word is ‘Kah’. Ooo means ‘nice’, ‘like’ or ‘love’. You might say Ooo when contemplating a big bowl of custard or while getting your ears nibbled. Kah means ‘horrible’, ‘dislike’ or ‘hate’. You might say Kah when contemplating a big bowl of shite or while getting your ears nibbled by the parish priest. So, that’s it, now you can speak The Two Word Language. Two words. That is all. Ooo and Kah.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking a two word language will retard our progress as a species. You’re wrong. We will use diagrams to share complex instructions and therefore still be able to build machines and bake cakes etc. We don’t really need language for all that. ‘But Mr. Fugger, what about great works of literature and drama?’ I hear you plea. ‘Fuck em!’ is my response. What did great works of literature and drama ever give us? A heap of ‘to be or not to be’ angst and not much else. Forget all that stuff. That’s all part of the problem. Ooo and Kah are all we need. Them and the diagrams.

We may have to forget about literature and drama but we’ll still have music and images (but not films-the dialectic grammar of films is too emotive and propagandistic). We’ll even still have certain types of literature in the form of poems (but not the epic kind). Yes, there will still be poems. A love poem would go:

Ooo Ooo Ooo
Ooo
Ooo Ooo
Ooo Ooo Ooo
Ooo
Ooo Ooo

. . .and an anti-war poem or something would go:

Kah Kah
Kah Kah Kah
Kah Kah Kah Kah Kah Kah

The Two Word Language isn’t that limited at all really. Some intonation or volume variables in the annunciation of ‘Ooo’ and ‘Kah’ are also permitted, so as to express gradations in feeling (muttering Kah would not mean the same thing as roaring the word for example) or conveying uncertainty (saying Ooo with a questioning inflection at the end of the word). Actually, maybe we’ll have one more word. A phonetic word that means ‘OK’ or ‘whatever’. This word will be ‘Meh’. We already use it. You’re probably saying it to yourself right now.

So that’s it. Ooo, Kah and Meh. They are the only words we need. Anything more is just guff. We are fundamentally about likes and dislikes and that is all we need to express. We don’t have to explain ourselves to anybody, even if we did we’d just make up some bullshit anyway and others would probably only hear what they expected to hear. Language is so much wasted time. We just need to know if each other are happy or sad, pleased or displeased, and then we can get on with things. Ooo, Kah and Meh are all we need from now on. Yes, from now on, because I think we should get started right away. There’s no time like the present. THERE. IS. NO. TIME. LIKE. THE. PRESENT. That’s another good thing about The Two Word Language, it’ll stop us dragging up the past and disagreeing about the future. We’ll be forever in the present and the present is the only time that matters. The Two Word Language is a Zen tongue.

Don’t forget to return to Fugger later this week to see my next post. It should be easy enough to follow. Come to think of it, tagging posts is going to be a lot less hassle from now on too. OK, these are the last words I ever type in the old language. It’s all Ooos and Kahs from here on in. Ooo Ooo Ooo.

I've Invented a New Language

I’ve invented a new language. It sounds very nice. It slips off the tongue in a seductive and convincing way. Each word exudes gravitas and reassurance. It's lovely. The best thing about my new language is that it is grammatically structured so as to make it impossible to speak the truth. You can only lie in my language but it’s OK because when you lie it sounds like the truth. What is ‘truth’ anyway? Is my truth your truth? No, probably not, at least not entirely. It’s all a matter of perception so my language is all about the management of perception and the construction of consensus via elaborate and elegant verbal/literate untruths. With my new language, we will all know we are talking bullshit and therefore eschew the archaic concept of truth, opting instead for the bullshit we find most agreeable. It’s a bit like picking your favourite fairy story. Put short: through lies we will find a new truth. The new truth being the consensus we will reach once we realise we’re all full of it.

Does that make sense? I doubt it but that doesn’t matter because I made the whole thing up anyway. I have not invented a new language. The language I speak of already exists. It is called English. And if you believe that you’d believe anything. Although it may be true but, like I said, what is ‘truth’ anyway and where did it ever get us? Going forward. . . .Slowly. . . .In reverse.