When we extend the self, what exactly are we extending? That’s the question I’d like to put to you. When we promote the self what indeed are we promoting? When we are being brutally compelled to be what we aren’t (and what nobody can be) what kind of stupid lame-ass thing is this? What kind of a thing, what brand or species of a thing? We have to ask the question, you see.
When we extend the self, when we extend the jolly old self. It’s bloody great to extend the jolly old self, isn’t it? Doesn’t that just feel so wonderfully good? It feels good and at the same time it feels so bad. If the truth were told, it’s a horror beyond all limits. If the truth were known, if the truth were known. ‘Punish the evildoer…’ I cry out in a strangled shriek of toxic frustration and incoherent rage. ‘Punish the filthy dirty evildoer!’ But the evildoer is myself and the more I punish him the more powerful he becomes. He will destroy the world.
Even so however, I cannot refrain from doing so. I cannot refrain from punishing the evildoer. It’s like picking a scab. Picking a scab doesn’t make the scab go away (as we all know only too well) – it only makes the scab come back all the bigger and all the uglier. It comes back to taunt us; it comes back to tempt us all over again. ‘Pick me baby, pick me,’ it says. ‘You know you want to…’ Winking an eye at you, putting you in a quandary (only not really). There never really was any doubt in the first place – it was all a foregone conclusion and that’s the way it always is in the Deterministic Universe. All the freedom has been drained away from you and you’re condemned to a life of pointless repetition, coming out with the same lame-ass bullshit time and time again. Making out that is the first time you said it. Making out that it is the first time anyone said it. You’re just another spambot.
‘I can withstand anything apart from temptation’, isn’t that what your man said? Yes indeed, yes indeed. Never a truer word. Do you know that thing where you’re doing the bad thing and you think ‘Oh no. I’m doing a bad thing, I better stop it’, but you don’t stop. You don’t stop do you? You don’t stop because you love it too much. I’m sure you know the type of thing that I’m talking about, just like I’m sure you’re not going to own up to it! Never going to own up to it. We’re all such terrible liars when it comes down to it. We know no shame. We’re all such vile despicable liars.
We’re all such horrible appalling liars and that’s simply because we’re afraid. We’re basically shitting it, not to put too fine a point on it. Fear is controlling us. Fear is the Main Man – fear of the bad thing happening because we know that when this happens it’s guaranteed to be bad. It could be quite bad, might be quite bad. Possibly quite bad. It’s the Fear that puts the lies into our mouths, you see – we can’t lie fast enough, we can’t get those filthy dirty old lies out of our mouths quickly enough. By God we can’t. Sometimes we even burst out with a great big fat corker of a lie (rehearsed to death at this stage, rehearsed so many times that it’s worn to a frazzle) before anyone has even asked us anything. The tribunal hasn’t even started yet! ‘It wasn’t me’, you cry out in a wild voice, ‘I wasn’t there, I never did it…’
Image credit – Ron English, widewalls.ch