The Purpose Or Function Of Society

Clearly, the purpose or function of society is to damp out all fluctuations from the equilibrium value. Or if we may put this another way, the purpose or function of society is to eliminate consciousness wherever it may arise! To keep actual consciousness out of the picture so as to keep everything neat and tidy, so as to keep everything nice and reliable and straightforward. I think we can all agree on that! I feel pretty safe in saying that we can all agree on this point…

 

That’s a kind of a joke of course. It’s a joke because the only people who won’t agree with that point are those people who have had their consciousness neatly mopped up by the social system and so what they say doesn’t really count. Naturally it doesn’t count – they don’t have any consciousness left to them. They’ve had it all stolen away by the great magnet. They know only what society allows them to know and that isn’t anything. When the machine talks it’s just a sort of noise, just some sort of a mechanical squawk. It’s just the grinding of machinery, it’s just a discordant screech like the noise your gearbox might make when you don’t change the gears right. It’s like the whining of some hidden electric motor. It’s like the crashing and grinding of gears, like a crashing and grinding of gears. Or it’s like a resounding gong or clashing cymbal. Isn’t that what St Paul says? It’s just a painful noise.

 

What I’m trying to say is that it’s only the machine talking through the mouths of people. It’s a form of demonic possession really. I’m not being dismissive or insulting about people here you understand. It would be insulting to say that the opinions and views which people generally come out with really are their own. It would be very insulting and disrespectful to say that – people don’t come out with machine talk when they are themselves. They don’t come out with clunky machine-like noises when they are in their right minds, when they aren’t being possessed. Of course they don’t. I’m not slating human beings here, I’m slating the system. I’m slating the machine.

 

I’m not even ‘against the machine’ really – that would be ridiculous. The machine isn’t anything so how can you be against it? The machines is simply an absence. There’s nothing there. Of course there’s nothing there! There is no god in the machine – it’s empty, hollow. There’s only the machinery. This is no driver behind the wheel and that’s the whole point. Are you going to get angry with an absence – what kind of a fool would that make you? That would make you into an absence too by my reckoning! One absence getting angry with another.

 

What the machine really is is a simulation – it simulates real people! It simulates most of the people you know in all probability. It simulates everyone in the street, everyone in that shopping centre. It probably simulates you too… That’s how good at ‘simulating’ it is! Come to think of it, what the simulation really does is that it simulates presence. It is an absence but it simulates presence and that its trick That’s the only trick it’s got but its a good one.

 

So that’s the nub of it, I guess you could say! That’s the nub of my argument if I could be said to have one. An argument that is, not a nub. Maybe I’ve got neither. Someone is shouting right next to me in the park in the square. People can shout awfully loud can’t they? My whole head is hurting, not just my ears. I’m starting to get tired now. Fatigue is setting in. I fancy I can notice a few wispy tendrils of brain fog creeping in. The old brain fog. On a bad day it gets so you can hardly see a few feet ahead of you. You have to inch forward in case you bump into anything. You have to feel your way as you walk, slowly and painfully, disconcertingly aware of how very little it is that you are aware of. Uncomfortably aware of your own lack of awareness. Today isn’t a bad day though, just a little bit bad. Just a tiny bit bad. I kind of feel that I’ll be okay, just as long as no one comes up next to me and shouts in my ear.

 

I’ve pretty much lost the gist of my argument though. I’ve lost the momentum, anyway. ‘It’d be funny any other day’, the person on the other side of me is saying. She is on the phone. I don’t mind just as long as she doesn’t suddenly shout out like the other one. I don’t mind as long as she doesn’t suddenly let out a roar. My sense of humour feels somewhat frail today, it’s not as robust as it might be. I’m feeling a touch irritable, a touch out of sorts. It’d be funny any other day, it would be funny any other day. That line is reverberating around in my head. Sure it would, it’d be hysterical any other day! You’d piss yourself laughing. You’d literally wet yourself! But not today, definitely not today…

 

 

 

 

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