I was trying to validate my existence as I went along and it was gruelling work. No rest for the wicked says you. ‘You were quite right to think that thought,’ I said to myself, giving myself an approving pat on the back. Metaphorically speaking, of course. ‘You’re right to be walking down this street,’ I told myself, and then, ‘you are right to sit down and have a rest – it wouldn’t do to tire yourself out.’ After this it was of course only a matter of time before things turned ridiculous – when after a five minute rest I got back up off the bench and carried on walking down the street I found myself validating every single step I took. I had to walk ridiculously slowly in order to make sure that every step was being properly validated. Then the next thing was that I had to validate every breath I took and every grunt and groan that escaped my lips. Then I had to validate my validating and it was at this point that the whole show grew legs and started running away all by itself. It became a nightmare that I couldn’t escape from.

Suppose there could be such a thing as a stupid obnoxious made-up environment, I said to myself, a type of restrictive and narcotizing environment that made the people who lived in it completely incapable of questioning it or themselves. Or anything. Suppose that this restrictive and narcotizing environment wasn’t just torpor-inducing but actually hypnotic in the sense that it induced a type of trance in which we wouldn’t be able to prevent this environment from defining everything about us, our thoughts even, our aspirations and fears, our perceptions, our expectations of what life should be? Suppose that we are actually living in just such a controlling environment right now, without knowing that we are? Suppose we call this toxic controlling environment ‘society’ and we can’t see anything wrong with it? Suppose we’re proud of this narcotizing environment and protect it to the best of our ability? Suppose we get angry when someone tells us the truth about it and we make fun of them or bully them? Suppose we ritually humiliate them as a matter of course and get them to feel bad about themselves for daring to speak the truth? Suppose we put them in psychiatric hospitals and claim that they are suffering from some kind of illness? Suppose we systematically devalidate their perceptions and persuade them to doubt and feel ashamed of their own perceptions? Suppose we cause them to first distrust and then betray their own intuition and insights? Suppose we put a huge amount of effort into brainwashing them to believe that this made-up, ridiculously stupid obnoxiously artificial world of ours ISN’T stupid, but that actually the problem is that there’s something seriously wrong with them? What then? How would that be?

Reality’s a funny thing, I think to myself. Although now that I come to think about it I have to admit that I don’t know whether it’s a funny thing or not! I couldn’t tell you what sort of a thing it is. I have to admit that I don’t know anything at all about reality – I don’t know what it is or isn’t. I’m always far too busy validating my own bullshit to know anything about reality! I’m obsessed with validating my own bullshit, horribly obsessed. I’m dangerously addicted to my own horrifically insane lies, whilst at the same time fighting it out with all the other crazed addicts. If you ever dared to contradict me I’d probably spit in your eye!