I want to start off this discussion by saying a few words on the subject of machines. Machines are very purposeful, of course. That’s the thing about them. That goes without saying, really. They know what they’re at – they always know what they’re at. ‘Do the thing,’ they say to themselves with their characteristic mechanical earnestness, ‘do the thing!’ Yes indeed, that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? It’s all about doing the jolly old thing. To be sure it is. What else could it possibly be about, anyway? This is how it is with machines you see – they’re awful single-minded when it comes down to it. You can’t dent their single-mindedness. ‘Do the thing lads, do the thing…’ they sing merrily as they work. They know what they’re about for sure – no one can say that they don’t. We couldn’t blame all those folk who say that they want to be machines, could we? No Sir, we couldn’t blame them at all for that, not with this confused, mixed-up, crazy old world that we live in…
You were born to be the next Messiah of the human race and nobody can tell you otherwise. You know it in your water, you know it in your very bones. Your bones know it well, your bones know it instinctively. You yourself are very far from wanting this particular burden however. Very far indeed. It’s too onerous – nobody wants that. None of us want to take up that mantle. It frightens the bejesus out of us and that’s a fact! We’d put up with any ignominy rather than going down this particular road. We would rather have pins poked under our fingernails, we would rather have a great big handful of angry scorpions let loose in our underpants. To be sure we would. We’d consider ourselves to be getting off lightly, in such a case. We’d be thanking our lucky stars….
The days come and go in rapid succession and no one knows what to say about it. What do you say? What can anyone say? The best thing is simply to shut up and keep on with whatever it is you’re doing. Keep on pretending to be a machine! Pretend for all you’re worth. Keep your head down and don’t upset the boat. You have to learn to play the game of course and that’s the important thing. Your colleague comes up to you and gives you a meaningful look. ‘Play the game, old boy’, he says (without actually saying it). ‘Keep on playing the game, there’s a good chap. Keep on playing the jolly old game and you won’t go far wrong…’
Underneath your pretence you’re deeply unhappy however, the same as us all. We let on that we’re having a great time, but we aren’t. We’re actually as miserable as sin. Boy, are we ever miserable! You’d wonder what was wrong with us, wouldn’t you? How do we bloody manage it? How do we manage to screw things up so much every single time? Some people blame the devil, of course. ‘It was the devil’s fault,’ we say – ‘nothing to do with us!’ We were just minding our own business, doing all that stuff that is so important to do, doing the stuff that we’re supposed to be doing, when along comes the devil to create a whole lot of badness out of nowhere. For no reason at all! Just for the fun of screwing things up. Just for the fun of spoiling some poor bastard’s day. Satan’s like that, you see. You bet he is! That’s just the sort of thing he likes to do. He’s a bad ‘un and no mistake…
