Wherein I dream of ruining a fellow's dinner

When the stock markets crash and the banks fail everything stops working. Factories fall idle, people become unemployed, and families struggle and fail with the three prime necessities of food, shelter, and health. Everyone's behaviour is suddenly transformed into a chaotic, counter-productive, mad scrabble. And all because a tiny percent of humanity conduct an organised arrangement pivoting on numbers and relationships. This being banking and the stockmarket, you understand.

Funnily enough, shortages or collapses of real world products or services (ie. tangible things that actually exist) we seem capable of coping with. With the current collapse in this system of assigning numbers to various people, it is clear that intangibles have got tangibles beat. Money is more important than, I don't know - water. Which is to say an intangible arrangement of thinking controls humans above and beyond pretty much anything. Even other arrangements of thinking, like religion say, cannot compete. This contrived system of numbers being attached to humans rules over all.

A power who possesses oil, or water, or a military power, or a power possessed of tremendous natural defences, or any power at all, must succumb to this ultimate power. That sounds god-like doesn't it? Imagine wielding that power. And wielded it will be. Power of this nature will always be striven for. Ambition exists and amongst those who are ambitious will be those who are ultimately ambitious. Everyone here understands perfectly the ceaseless, unrelenting nature of those who would control the money supply. Andrew Jackson described today's world very eloquently just a few short column inches earlier, which is to say a century and a half ago. But that's time for you - hundreds of years of same-as-it-ever-was.

Back to this god-like thing - if a bum like me gets it, imagine being them. I view it as a complete certainty that they have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time dwelling on it. What god would this controller-of-money imagine himself as? We need a metaphor that involves a god that distributes something amongst his worshippers and thereby controls them. How about Prometheus? He wasn't a god so much as a titan but never mind. He gave man fire. Certainly this was a curse and a blessing. That aside, I don't recall any part of that story that involved wealth, treasure and flesh flowing back to Prometheus. Nor the bit where he controlled the flow of fire to alternatively enrich and starve his minion humans. Okay, so much for that metaphor.

Perhaps this metaphor will never fly because all the gods of myth who distributed things amongst their subjects did so as an act of generosity. And besides, these born-of-women men-who-would-be-gods would have nothing but disdain for these false idols invented by fools. They would view themselves as above and beyond such silly stories. Either way, it's an interesting question. How do these people view themselves?

Caesar had a fellow at his shoulder whose job it was to whisper in his ear, 'Remember you are mortal.' Obviously the Romans spent time thinking about what it meant to possess such power. Well you would wouldn't you? It stands to reason. And I expect that the people who control whether humans live in chaos or harmony do too. Do they employ a fellow to stand behind them and whisper to them that they're human? Somehow I doubt it.

On a daydream now - 'If you could have any superpower what would it be?' Me, I would be that man who whispers in their ear, but unlike the Roman, I couldn't be dismissed. I would be some variety of untouchable apparition. I would dog them and never shut up. I would simply be present and see what they see, hear what they hear, and read what they read. They would have no secrets.

There would be no violence in this superhero mag. My power would merely consist of being beyond harm and confinement. Actually someone beat me to this idea already. He was an obscure fellow name of Bill Shakespeare. Some of you may have heard of him. Anyway his superhero was called Banquo's Ghost™ and he featured in a particularly bloody comic called Macbeth.


Imagine that power. There's our villain, the man who would be God, giving a great banquet and revelling in those who've come to pay homage to him. And there's me as Banquo's Ghost chattering in his ear. "Fraud. Imposter. Self-impressed bullshit artist. If you were truly great you would do good. Good for mankind. You could raise human consciousness, lead people to new heights of peace, love and understanding. Don't smirk you fuckwit. This vaunted power you possess is nothing. You're little more than a sneak-thief. No wonder you lurk in the shadows and nobody knows who you are. If they did they'd spit on you, tear you limb from limb, and piss on your grave. And that is the truth of you. You're merely a sneak writ large. You're a shit who thinks he's clever."

I would be nothing more than the man who'd ruin a fellow's dinner. That dinner and every other one. And that would be enough. As superhero movies go, it would be crummy one, sure. 'Too talky' say the critics. But bugger them and their thirst for violence. In the real world, with real people, the smashing of delusions would suffice. The sin of the villains of this world is that they have abandoned 'to thine own self be true'. Truth cannot be self-serving. If one's starting position is 'I am great' then everything that follows will be corrupt. 'To thine own self distort the facts until 'I am great' is true.' Ha ha ha ha, fuckwits. Self-impressed gits.

And sure, the above is just an adolescent daydream. There are no superheroes. I'm merely a tiny voice in a roaring cacophony. The cacophony of course is created and encouraged by these men who would be gods. Whether consciously or sub-consciously, they know that any voices speaking a counter-proposition would destroy their delusion. The Roman at their shoulder would have to be killed. Not least so that others might know fear. Do we know that fear? Turn on the TV. I could make a case that every goddamn thing on TV pivots around fear - even the sitcoms.

Above and beyond all other mundane concerns, the ultimate reason we are kept fearful is so that those who imagine themselves as gods do not have their delusions punctured. Well I ain't fearful. And yes, my voice (and yours too) amounts to nothing more than a lousy 0.0001% of a decibel. Pathetic. The men who would be gods sneer. Where's our voice who'll fill an opera hall? Where's our booming tenor? Actually we don't need him. Anyone who's ever heard a two hundred voice choir doing Carmina Burana knows that the tenor is superfluous. The choir blows a tenor, regardless of how great he is, to smithereens.

We are that choir. Each of us is a voice adding to the whole. And yes, it's shambolic, but never mind - the decibel count is slowly climbing. Eventually the bullshit cone-of-silence cum echo-chamber that the men who would be gods live in, will eventually start to fail. With enough true notes the glass will break and the delusions of the self-impressed false idols will be smashed.

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Did anyone notice in the last piece, violent though it was, that I wasn't actually proposing that we smash George Bush's brains all over the walls. It was merely imagery. Imagery as a sideways means of showing the aforementioned sock-puppet who he really is, ie. the fellow in the movie whose death we'd cheer. It was a back-handed means of puncturing delusion. Certainly I understand the appeal of insert-villain-here dangling from a lamp-post. But the truth of the matter is that even a piece of shit like our George could be rehabilitated. Honestly. The fellow that the voting public imagined as 'someone we'd like to have a beer with' could be that fellow. Him and anyone. I will never concede that rehabilitation is impossible. Unlikely, sure - impossible, never. And so it is here.