So the corporate mechanism supplies the package to everyone concerned and that is fine, that is perfect. Everything’s always perfect, isn’t it? Everything’s always perfect, as the man said. Perfect, perfect, perfect. The corporate mechanism was perfect and so too was the package that we were being provided with, as and when required. Which was always, whether you wanted it or not. The package was a perfect package whichever way you looked at it – the package was a perfect package and no one would argue about that. No one would ever argue about that because they were always far too busy looking at their own perfect reflection and their own perfect reflection was the product that they were being provided with. The corporate mechanism provides us with who we want to be. Who would argue with a perfect reflection? Who would want to?

The product the mechanism provides you with is yourself, only perfect. It’s been improved and enhanced. It’s been made unreal. We can’t argue with a perfect reflection and we don’t want to but there’s a problem here all the same. And it’s not just any old sort of problem either – it’s the biggest problem there ever could be! We’re being supplied with the package that is ourselves and we have to buy into it every day but the problem is that it isn’t really us at all. Of course it isn’t. Naturally it isn’t.  How could we think that it was? How could we think that it would be? It’s an empty image that’s being mass-produced by the corporate mechanism and it’s got nothing to do with us at all. How could the mechanism know about us, how could the mechanism care about us? How could we imagine that there’s anything at all personal about it?

So just to come back to the point again – the package we buy into is ourselves only it isn’t ourselves it’s a generic product of the machine and the machine neither knows about us nor cares. It’s incapable of knowing, it’s incapable of caring. It’s a machine. Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t this seem just the tiniest bit ‘off’ to you? Just a teeny-weeny bit ‘not-quite-right’? I mean, you’d be careful who you invited back home with you if you didn’t know them, you’d be careful about who you’d accept a lift from late at night on  a dark street, so why wouldn’t you also be a wee bit cautious about who you’d let construct your identity for you? You follow what I’m saying here I’m sure – the corporate mechanism is after all actively trying to exploit you for all you’re worth! That’s kind of what it does. That’s the type of relationship it has with us. I mean, we do know that for a fact, don’t we? These guys – the guys that go to make up the mechanism – don’t really care about your well-being. We can pretty much take that as read, right? I trust that we can all agree on this point. This is a fairly basic point, after all…

So let’s get this clear – we’re going to let some kind of predatory, exploitative entity define our identity for us, decide what we like and what we don’t like, decide what our world-view is, decide what we want to do with our lives, because WHY? Because that seems like a real smart idea? Because everyone else is doing it? Because it seems like ‘the thing to do’? OK. Fine. Alright. I can relate to that. I get all that. We could point at the nice shiny identity that we’ve bought and say “Yes but isn’t this cool?” It’s such a cool identity. It’s perfect, as we have already said. Perfect, perfect, perfect. What’s to question? What is there to argue with? You get to be a pretty little narcissist, a handsome little narcissist. You get to be all wrapped up in your own little world. Like the corporate mechanism tells you to be. You get to be all wrapped up in your own little world only it isn’t your own little world because it was designed for you by the mechanism. And it isn’t ‘you’ who is wrapped up in this perfect little manufactured world either because that so-called ‘you’ is also a product of the mechanism. That’s the thing isn’t it – a narcissist isn’t wrapped up in himself or herself. They’re not wrapped up in themselves at all (no matter what it may say in the psychology textbooks) – they’re ‘wrapped up’ in something else entirely, they’re wrapped up in a dream, they’re wrapped up in an illusion…