How much can a thing be cheapened and yet still command our respect? That’s the question that I ask myself a lot these days. That’s a question that’s on my mind an awful lot. How cheap can it get, how cheap can it get. How cheap and nasty. I’m talking about life of course. I’m talking about the shoddy lies that are perpetrated by society. To what extent can this collective life of ours be cheapened and yet still be presumed to be viable? How low can we sink?
That’s a question that’s been on my mind an awful lot recently, as I say. And enlightenment something too of course – enlightenment is very important too and we ought to remember that those. Folk want to be enlightened and we can hardly blame them for that. Indeed we can’t. They insist upon it as their right. Enlightenment is an issue and there’s no point in ignoring it. ‘What’s to be done about it?’ we ask. ‘What’s to be done about the Enlightenment Issue? Folk want to be enlightened and they won’t accept anything else. Laws have to be passed, legislation has to be drawn up. Committees have to meet. What else would they do?
You have become a sad, evil creature. You are the Lord of All Unclean Things. It’s a hollow victory, needless to say, but a victory all the same. Credit where credit is due, after all. The Lord of All Unclean Things – how bitter that title is to you now, and yet you are proud at the same time. Stubbornly proud. That’s life, after all. Life’s a very contradictory thing – we want to be good and yet we do evil, we yearn to be helpful to our fellow human beings, and yet we become vicious, untrustworthy parasites. We end up as the very lowest form of life, vile and repugnant to all right thinking people.
They said I was Captain Birdseye and that I couldn’t be beaten and I – like a fool – believed them. I took the bait and ran with it. My ego took a terrible hammering – it took a savage beating and no mistake. I was plunged into a state of total ignominy, and for those of you who have never had such an experience I can assure you right now that you don’t want it. Normally, you see, it is always possible to salvage something, some kind of a fig leaf, at least some shred of dignity or self-respect, no matter how bad the situation, but in the case of total ignominy you just can’t do that. No Sir – you just can’t do that at all.
Only the best can be served at the Captain’s Table, as well you know. Only the best, only the very best. There’s a time and a place for everything it’s true, but for some things there is no time and there is no place, and it is of those things of which I must now speak. I don’t want to, you understand, I most emphatically don’t want to, but nevertheless I must. The truth will out, after all. Things which have been covered up must be laid bare, things which have been concealed must be brought right out into the open, no matter how painful that may prove to be. Then, and only then, will we learn – to our regret – the true meaning of the word ‘ignominy’…