Ours – needless to say – is an age of lies and insincerity and I know this better than anyone. Ours is an age of monstrous insincerity and I know this better than most. I ought to because I am the most insincere person I know! They don’t come any more devious than me and that’s a fact. Not once in my life have I said what I mean, not once in my life have I said a true word. You can bank on that my friend, you can bank on that. Except of course I’m also a philosopher of sorts, and not entirely without renown. I am – you might say – a philosopher living in a world that values philosophy just about as much as it values genital herpes. They might even be more kudos in having genital herpes that there is in being a philosopher. Why not? Who’s to say after all – who’s to say?

Turn on any communications device anywhere in the world and straightaway the lies will start flowing out. The lies will come flowing out in infinite abundance at the flick of a switch. Instantaneously, on all channels. From all sides. At the drop of a hat. We have all the luxuries of course and there are plenty who would be jealous of us for that. Envious of the splendid situation that we have managed to create for ourselves. The fine, fine situation. They will turn on us if we give them a chance but it’s up to us to see that we don’t. It’s up to us to see that we don’t.

Even the good days are bad when you’ve been eaten up by the Machine and that’s a rather sobering thought, as I think you would agree. That’s a very sobering thought, in fact. Even the good days are bad because they are only good because the Machine says they are. They have been officially validated as being good and so we can celebrate. The Machine is pleased and so we are happy too – we are pleased if our master is pleased. We’re in good form because the Machine has said that everything is good, that everything is fine. But the Machine is only pleased because things are working out for it, because its plans are being realized; the Machine has triumphed and so we feel good too, not realising that it is US the Machine has triumphed over! This is our situation in a nutshell – we rejoice in the successes of the Machine even though these successes spell our utter defeat, our utter subjugation, our utter humiliation. That’s the kind of poor fools we are. We identify with the cruel inhuman oppressor and vicariously enjoy his sordid victories…

No indeed, this is not just a miserably insincere age but also a terribly, terribly degraded one. No one can know just how degraded an age this is because we have slid too far down the slope to know that. Our true condition is veiled from us and as a result we imagine ourselves to be enlightened beings. We imagine ourselves to be tantric masters, yogis and yoginis, shamans, healers, adepts of the esoteric path, initiates of the great mysteries. All these things and more we imagine ourselves to be, all these things and more. Attainments are cheap in this degraded age of ours, you see – we only have to think of something and we have attained it. We only have to hear of something and we are straightaway world renowned experts on it. Glory is easy to come by in this fractured world of ours but it is the glory of the shabbiest kind imaginable. Not that we are unduly worried by this of course – not that we are unduly worried by this…