I used to have this goose that laid golden eggs once. This isn’t a joke by the way. I’m not trying to have a laugh here. It’s not a metaphor either – I bloody hate metaphors. I’m just saying it like it is. Or rather, like it was. My goose didn’t lay very often but when she did it was great because I got an awful lot of money from those solid gold eggs. I had a good life and everything was pretty cool. I was happy and so was the goose! Then one day I got to thinking about how many golden eggs there must be inside the goose and that thought tormented me. I got greedy I’m afraid to say, and so one day I grabbed my axe and I chopped that goose clean in two. Needless to say there were no golden eggs inside – just a lot of blood and yuck. Now I’m broke and definitely not happy and – as for the goose – maybe it’s happy in the next life but I have no way of knowing about that. It’s none of my business, I guess. But can you imagine what a complete dick I feel like? Can you imagine how completely stupid I feel? Particularly when everyone knows very well you should never kill the goose that lays the golden eggs! Christ, everyone knows that. Even small kids know that. Can you imagine what a twat that makes me feel like?
We project all these things on the outside of us that can supposedly save us, don’t we? Then we place our trust in them. The things will save us, we say. The things are going to protect us from all the scary stuff, all the frightening possibilities that are out there in big bad world. We go down on our knees and pray to them. We build giant statues, we create vast multinational corporations. ‘Save us’, we beg, ‘save us with your splendid products. Tell us how to live our lives that we might find salvation.’ We made the great machine that is to provide us with happiness and it has done. Many forms and shades of pleasure and delight it has provided us with, and much pain and degradation has it brought us too, but there’s no need to go into that side of things. There’s no need to go into that…
People are such uncharitable creatures aren’t they? They’ll condemn you without a second thought. They’re so complacent and self-absorbed. Obnoxious and judgemental too – the slightest thing goes against them and they become ugly. Their pretty little faces become obscenely distorted with rage. They’re narcissists, I suppose, that must be what it is. The human race has turned into a toxic swarm of narcissists, or swarm of toxic narcissists, if you prefer. You can see it so easily in their faces, can’t you? There is this immense blank stupidity – the immense blank stupidity of a person who thinks that everything is all about them! Imagine that, if you will – you are completely useless, completely and profoundly blank in yourself, and yet at the same time you think that you are the centre of everything! It would be funny if it weren’t so appalling. That’s the human race for you; that’s what we have become and there’s no use in trying to say otherwise. That’s what the marketing companies wanted and that’s what they have got. Someone must be happy, anyway…
‘So how’s life now’, you ask, ‘now that you have killed the goose that lays the golden eggs?’ I fancy I can hear a somewhat unsympathetic tone in your voice, but that’s only to be expected. I’m not doing so well, needless to say. Life’s a bit of an uphill struggle – nothing comes easy anymore. Every day I scrape by and then the next day it’s the same thing all over again. I’m stuck on the old merry-go-round and all my enjoyment in life is gone. I’ve no inspiration anymore. I’m suffering from what psychiatrists like to call chronic anhedonia. I just don’t know what the point of it is any more – this isn’t life, it’s just some kind of farce, it’s just some kind of bad joke. So no – I’m not having a great time of it really. But I suspect you knew that very well when you asked me the question – you just wanted to hear me say it.
Image: #axecop, from pinterest.ie