Ethical Coffee

I was enjoying ethical coffee and freshly prepared food in my local cafe. It was an illusion but a good one. It was one of the good illusions and I like them. I’m very fond of them. It was a quality illusion, an illusion with a touch of class. ‘Excellent things are so excellent, aren’t they?’ I murmured appreciatively to myself as I took a sip of my latte. I was in an exalted state of mind and no mistake. Feeling high and feeling fine.

 

The Pseudo-Entity (or False Identity) was created purely to suffer, it has no future other than this. Its purpose is to suffer, nothing else, although the Pseudo-entity itself doesn’t know this. On the contrary, it imagines that all sorts of marvels, all sorts of wonders, lie in store for it. Nothing but good times, in other words, nothing but good times. The very best of times. Like you see on the adverts. The-one-who-was-created-only-to-suffer doesn’t have the faintest clue about its real situation – it has no clue at all. It’s got an entirely different view of things. It thinks it’s onto a winner!

 

It is a tragicomedy, you see. That’s what I’m trying to say here. It’s comedic because he-who-was-born-to-suffer is such a fool and has such idiotic notions, and because we know what’s really in store for him (which is not at all what he firmly believes to be the case) and it’s tragic for the very same reason. It cuts both ways, in other words. Alas for the poor old False Identity – I knew him well, you see. We were close. He really was a very nice guy, in fact. None nicer, you might say, none nicer. It brings a tear to my eye when I think about him, but then after a while I start chortling away. I can’t help it. That’s the comedic side of the equation cutting in, you see. It happens every time.

 

A rich and wonderful future had been created and everyone was a believer. True believers all around. The future’s so bright, etc., etc.  Everyone’s squinting. A rich and wonderful future had been cultivated and from that point onwards everything is bound to go downhill, everything just has to go to shit. That’s the Cosmic Law. And we all know it – that’s the amazing thing! We say it all the time, do we not? We’re always saying that everything is going to shit and we’re right too. We’re bloody right. It is all going to shit and everyone knows it and this only goes to illustrate my point. The only tactic left to the-one-who-was-born-to-suffer is a judicious mixture of positive thinking and inspired goal setting. Not to mention the obligatory visualisation techniques. It’s not easy, believe you me. Whatever else, it certainly isn’t easy.

 

The one thing we have to fight against is the learning process therefore and this has always been the way. No exceptions, in fact. Never any exceptions. Various ways of doing this have been proposed and some of them have been duly upheld. Colleges and universities, for example. There is a story, back in the old country from where my ancestors came from, that tells how a rich and powerful man once came across a poor woodsman on his lands and had him thrown into the river, where he was eaten by snapping turtles. The rich and powerful are like that, you see. The rich and powerful are always like that. ‘So what’s new?’ I hear you ask…

 

What we don’t learn about can’t hurt us, as most of us know very well, I think. Hence the remarkable edifice of contemporary civilisation, hence the remarkable achievements of modern technological society. ‘The world is what you make it’, as they say, but that’s not true. We are what the world makes us is more like it. We’re fodder for the machine. I was enjoying ethical coffee and freshly prepared food and as illusions go it wasn’t a bad one. Not too bad a one at all. Quite pleasant. My state of mind was exalted to the high heavens and my thoughts were restless. They scurried around the undergrowth like furtive forest creatures that stir from their burrows when night falls. You can’t actually ever see them, not ever ever, but you know that they’re there all the same. You know that they’re there because you can see the long grass waving and the bushes trembling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 thoughts on “Ethical Coffee

  1. Siobhan

    Thanks Nick Just have a question
    I believe that the word wants me to be constantly in fear and working like an ant so if I just stop and live on a small budget begin enjoying just breathing or walking feeling grateful for getting a bit further away from the machine
    am I deluded ? Am I kidding myself ???

    Reply
  2. zippypinhead1 Post author

    Hi Siobhan, thanks for your comment. That reminds me of the Terrible Trivium in The Phantom Tollbooth, the idea being that we are tricked into engaging in pointless, endless tasks until eventually we die. This is what the world wants for us but no matter how hard you work there is nothing real at the end of it so we are selling our souls for nothing, The machine will recruit us if it can. and everything seems so important, so meaningful at the time,

    https://nick251260.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/the-terrible-trivium/

    Reply
  3. zippypinhead1 Post author

    What you said also reminds me of the central myth of Zoroastrianism, which is subtler than the God versus the Devil myth of Christianity. Ahura Mazda, the God of Light and Truth, and Ahriman the Deceiver, compete – so to speak – in the lives of each human being and the drama is enacted afresh within their life. If Ahriman – who has a loud voice – manages to distract the person with red herrings and keep them tied up with bullshit then he wins this round. If the person hears the quiet, non-aggressive voice of Aruha Mazda, which we can’t normally hear at all, and see through the lies that surround us, then the game goes to the other side. Ahriman, so it is said, wins almost every match… It is not that we are guilty of ‘disobeying God’ – as the Christians would say – but simply that we are distracted from doing what really matters to us, and waste our time on meaningless tasks. This is what Philip K Dick calls ‘service

    https://nick251260.wordpress.com/2016/03/27/the-two-powers/

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