All I know is the perpetual hunger to be different from the way I actually am. To be better than that. The perpetual hunger, the perpetual hunger. All I know, all I know. It’s the only thing that drives me; it’s the root of all my activity – the hunger to be different, the hunger to be otherwise. Please let me be otherwise, please let me be otherwise, please let me be otherwise. This is the prayer that I have in my heart. It’s the prayer I always have. It is a constant unrelenting pressure. Please let me not be the way that I am, please let me not be the way I am. Please let me not stay that way. That would be a genuinely awful thing, would it not? That is the fate we all strive to avoid – the fate that is too ignominious even to imagine. The fate of not being able to ever redeem ourselves…
The machine allows us the fantasy of being alive – it does that much for us. That’s the only consolation we got so it’s important to make the most of it. It’s the only consolation we’ve got but it always leaves you feeling hungrier than ever afterwards. There is nothing in the world so frighteningly blank and dead then a TV set when it switches off mid-broadcast. Isn’t that what Baudrillard says? It’s terrifying. It sucks the life out of you. It sucks at your very soul. That’s the hunger I’m talking about – the hunger you feel when the TV set switches off mid-broadcast. The machine allows us the fantasy of having a life and we make the most of it. Really though, this just accentuates the underlying hunger and makes it more unbearable than ever. So if there’s a hidden desperation to our living, then this is the reason. And if there is an overt desperation to our living, then this is the reason for that too.
We constantly make that special effort to be different from the way we actually are, and when it gets too much for us and we give up trying and stop making the effort that we know we should be making then we feel guilty. We feel guilty about not making the effort and this guilt causes us as much pain as making the effort did in the first place. That’s the kind of predicament we are in – the kind of predicament that just can’t be solved. The kind of predicament we just have put up with. The only constant is that we know that we have to strain to be different; we know we have to keep on trying. At least if we’re trying the shame won’t be so bad. It’ll be there for sure, but not quite so intense. It’s all about escaping shame; that’s what the special effort is all about – it’s all about running away from the shame.
Sometimes you might even think that you’ve made it. That’s the funny thing right there, you might even think that you’ve made it! Imagine that. Won’t that be good? Won’t that feel great? Wow – you’re not a piece of shit anymore! Now you can look down on all those assholes who didn’t make the effort successfully. You can have a really good laugh about them. Maybe they have some kind of moral defect that prevented them from ever making it good like you did. Maybe they’re lazy. Probably they’re lazy. It’s not simply enough to win, is it? Others must lose. Others must lose and have their faces rubbed in it, to make their shame worse, to accentuate it. The more shame they can feel the better it is for you. But that’s all just make-believe really of course. You are only fooling yourself, you are only pretending. You’re the exact same as they are and you’re only fooling yourself that you’re not. You don’t want to know that you’re only fooling yourself and that’s what makes you so vicious. That’s what makes you as ugly as you are…
