Erroneous Anonymous

A home play script for up to six actors

 

You: Hello everybody, welcome to our first meeting of Erroneous Anonymous, the conversation group which aims to make you admit to mistakes. We all know how difficult this is, the anxiety and pain you can go through when you feel pressed to acknowledge you may have been wrong. I believe I am correct when I say that most of you here have found it particularly hard to go this path, hence your presence in this room today. Perhaps you are aware this resistance to admitting can sprout from a variety of reasons. There is guilt, shame, loss of face, or simply fear of the consequences when what one has been trying to supress turns out to be true after all. These are common reactions and nothing to be afraid of. We are here to openly talk about our feelings and learn to manage them and hopefully one day we will all be able to stand up for what we have done wrong in the past. But let’s start in a simple manner, is anybody willing to tell us an innocent anecdote where they had difficulty conceding their mistake? Yes, Mr A?

 

Mr A: The other day I was at a petrol station where you have to pay before you fill up. So, I gave the number of the dispenser and paid and when I went to my car, the pump didn’t work. I checked my slip, it was the wrong pump number. I went back inside and got angry with the girl at the counter. Why did you type in the wrong number, I asked her, I happen to be in a hurry. She stayed calm and said it was my mistake, I had given her this number. Now I almost exploded, but she remained as cool as ice and told me she did this hundreds of times during a shift and she never made a mistake. I was about to hit at her for her arrogance, but then this voice inside me asked, what is the fuss all about? Isn’t solving the problem more important? So, I gave in and she changed the number and I filled up and was on my way.

 

You: Now isn’t that amazing, people? A voice told Mr A to calm down. That is the voice we are all looking for. Glad to hear it didn’t get so far as to have you do anything criminal, because it might have landed you in all sorts of trouble. Ms B?

 

Ms B: There was this insurance salesman at the door and I told him I wasn’t interested, which is something of an automatic response I have. He told me we’d been in contact over the phone and it had something to do with damage I had reported and he was here to see whether the insurance would cover or not. I knew at that instance he was right, that I had forgotten he was coming that day, but I just couldn’t admit it. I played all surprised and said I didn’t know him and in the end he went away, leaving me to pay up for repairs. It was so stupid of me, but I just couldn’t bring myself to admitting my bad.

 

You: Such a minor incident, but with major financial consequences perhaps. That’s why you are here with us at Erroneous Anonymous, B, to help you avoid such reactions in future. Ms C?

 

Ms C: This is a biggie, I’m afraid. It’s about those injections against Covid. You see, I was afraid, I’d heard so many stories, and when it was my time to come and get the shot I just didn’t go. I was alone at work for a few days, all my colleagues were sick at home with a bad reaction, and when they came back they wondered why I hadn’t had any problems and I told them I hadn’t had mine. They all freaked out and now they don’t want to talk to me anymore. They avoid me, even at the coffee machine, as if I were some kind of a leper. I could have come up for the second round and tell them, look, I’m one of you again, but somehow I couldn’t. I was afraid they might make fun of me and that seemed worse than them being angry. This is quite a big deal for me, as I have no relatives in this town and my co-workers are basically my family. Were, I should say.

 

You: Gosh, that is a big one indeed. Luckily, you are never alone at Erroneous Anonymous. Mr D?

 

Mr D: My situation is similar to C’s, though it’s just the other way around. I have had my shots, two boosters included, but my wife hasn’t. She’s got this girlfriend who’s been telling her stories, and she got all scared and then she backed out. I couldn’t, as my workplace left me no choice, and wouldn’t have anyway. I believed in collective guilt as a positive force, so I joined up with the programme. Then my wife didn’t want to have sex with me any longer. Soon we stopped being romantic. We are ready for divorce, but housing is expensive and our budgets are tight. I spend most of my time in the spare bedroom. We’d been consciously waiting to have children and I guess they’re out of the question now.

 

You: That’s a sad but well-told story, D. I think some people here will relate to that. What was it in the end you couldn’t admit you were wrong about?

 

Mr D: I still can’t. That’s why I’m here. You see, I have begun wondering myself, lately, that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to have all these shots of a new approach to immunisation, untested on humans and with poor results in mice. I wonder, will I be fine? I know some people who have fallen ill at the wrong stage of life, and it’s not a pretty thing. I am sorry, I don’t want to scare you all with my stories. But you see, I will have to tell my wife that she was right and I don’t know how to. I don’t want it to be true, I guess. I’m afraid to admit to this particular mistake.

 

You: That is an interesting take you present here, D, but I don’t think politics should be a topic to work with for all of us.

 

Ms C: I wouldn’t mind talking about it.

 

You: Yes, but there are more of us.

 

Mr D: It’s okay, I’ll keep quiet. But I want to learn, see if I can come up with an idea. I’ll leave when I’ve seen enough.

 

You: That’ll be fine, thank you. Your entrance fee allows you four sessions. But we really mustn’t speak about such things. That would be erroneous. Let us continue, then. Ms E? What has brought you to Erroneous Anonymous? I hope it’s an honest character weakness this time.

 

Ms E: I fear I can’t help you either, ER. I have been campaigning for Ukraine, you know, bring refugees here and send weapons over there to resist the ghastly Russians. I felt good about myself and was cheered on by many. I was the it-girl of my town at forty. Forgive me for enjoying that.

 

You: Enjoyment is always encouraged here, my dear.

 

Ms E: But now I see the war dragging on, with those new weapons only prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people. The only way to fight this war is directly confronting Russia, but that is madness. There is no point to this war, apart from emptying up a nice piece of fertile land in the heart of the European peninsula. We need peace, but I’m afraid to say so. It’s not who my friends think I am, and I’m not known for changing my mind a lot, if ever.

 

You: Well, a strange first meeting it is. We are used to having stressed and anxious people, arrogant, stubborn and damaged people, a whole lot of those, as you all as well may be, but for the moment I sense a defiant anger here with little room for negotiating. It makes me wonder whether all of you have understood our lemma Erroneous Anonymous correctly. Perhaps I should change the name to Dickheads, as was suggested to me by a friend who is well-known for his ironic wisdom. Yet, let’s not talk about me. Back to our session. If you could all get one of those hand mirrors from the table and then look at yourself and say: I am wrong. Have a good look first and then say those painful words. Take your time. I will be passing round to assist you.

 

 

The iconification of Lionel Messi

He’s done it. Lionel Messi has won the world cup with Argentina. He can sit on his laurels next to Diego Maradona. Argentina’s first world cup, in 1978, was stolen on behest of the country’s military junta, the latter two, with all the dirty tricks Argentina needed to keep up with stronger teams, waiting for their stars to make the difference, were won on desire and belief. More than talent, it was faith in the opportunity they felt they had that saw Argentina through.

 

If Diego Maradona is God, and he is according to most Argentinian football fans, then Lionel Messi is his son, Jesus Christ. When God died, two years ago, Jesus was 33 years old. High time to make his star shine brightest for all to see. Their first chance, Messi and Argentina got at the Copa América, which they won last year, beating Brazil in the final. Now, in December 2022, he was going to put the crown on his career.

 

I felt so sure, thanks to Messi’s new role in the Argentinian team. Ever since he debuted as an international, Messi had to do everything alone, or at least he thought he had, obstructed as he felt by teammates, coaches and press. Young Jesus was on his own with his God given talent. He was so much better than anybody else in every aspect of the game, whether dribbling, passing, scoring, even defending, his bulging talent could at times seem like a form of doping that made fair competition impossible. Argentinian society didn’t know what to think of the Flea. Good, yes, very good, ridiculously good, but not magical, not as Diego, who was God because he had come first and showed elegance in everything he did. Barrilete cósmico, he was called during his famous rush over half the pitch during Mexico ’86, shortly after his equally famous hand goal: tiny cosmic barrel kite, what planet are you from?

 

Argentina has always been in love with God’s seducing style of play, how he caressed the leather, his dancing rhythm, the dramatic beauty of his goals, and on top of that his inability to stamp his authority on a top club. Diego’s football was too pure, his mind too depraved, to reign. His success was short-lived, explosive and sublime, as befits a god. Contrast Messi, who left his motherland as a child to win a never-ending string of titles with FC Barcelona. Above all, Leo Messi possesses otherworldly reactive powers. He seems to exist in another time reality which allows him to do everything he does at exactly the right moment. Jesus’ first touch is of almost digital precision, wrapped in seemingly chaotic movements to wrongfoot his opponents. He truly was exceptional, this son of God, but he couldn’t be cheered on too loudly, out of piety with Diego. And so, captained by Messi, Argentina lost four major finals. Until he found the solution.

 

In his years at FC Barcelona, his teammates became to rely so much on Leo Messi’s ability to break open a game with a quickfire run and a devasting shot, that they started suffering from what the local press coined Messi dependència. He had to literally solve every match they played, the rest reducing themselves to the dreaded tiki taka. When Neymar left for PSG, Messi could no longer drag all those pampered and overpaid losers around. He could be completely exhausted after only half an hour, and he started losing his shape somewhat. Lionel Messi was in danger of falling off the throne he had occupied for a good decade. And Cristiano, though two years his elder, was still around and scoring goals. Something had to be done.

 

Messi understood he could only continue being Messi as long as the team he was in were playing well enough, and to have so, he had better let them to it and analyse the opponent’s weaknesses a bit. When they got their nerves together and began passing the ball around somewhat confidently, he would make his first move. This could take up to half an hour, depending on his teammates willingness to work for their money. Messi entra en el partido, the commentators would remark incredulously. It might be some easy doubles with his closest associates, or if luck had it an immediate rush. No longer used to scoring at the first opportunity, the aim was to be close enough to get the crowd going; the Messi, Messi coral working as speed on his aging legs and calculating brain.

 

That was Barcelona. To get his compatriots accept his new role, something extra was needed. For Argentinians to understand that Messi was no longer young Jesus whose talent reaped him scorn, he needed to move on to the saviour’s next phase, that is to get himself crucified. In his role as bearer of everybody’s sins, he could give the team the spiritual impulse they lacked to rise above themselves. Argentina rescata a Messi, the local sports paper got it all wrong. Of course, this new style, with ten smoothly operating players around a fading star, can in only one way be provided with a match winning intervention, and that is when the old hero resurrects himself and leads his team to no longer believed victory. Even the most loyal Maradona fans would love such a story.

 

In this world cup, Argentina needed time to get going. The opening match against Saudi Arabia was typically lost, to emphasise the need for faith. Against Netherland in the quarter finals, they did not yet feel up to an opponent of Dutch calibre, so they chose to steal the match with typical Argentinian trickery. They thought they’d done it, but defence gave two late goals away, so they had to win the damned penalties. The semis were much better. The team were playing well from the start and Lionel needed only a good fifteen minutes to get going a bit. He shot them ahead with a Harry Kane penalty (Kane’s first one) and then he had a nice little run around the outside of Joshko Gvardiol to assist the game off. So, it was France after all in the final, as many pundits had predicted. It could have been Morocco, who had reason to bemoan the referee’s officiating. They were like street footballers forced by their coach to work their socks of for each other, or else. They were admirable in both spirit and technical mastery and will have made a lot of friends in bars around the globe. Yet, in the end the big boys always win. Ask the Dutch and the Croats.

 

I saw the match in a nearby bar. The first penalty was easily given, but the counter goal was beautifully executed, and Argentina were generally outplaying France, so all looked well at half time. Whereas Deschamps had brought in some early substitutes, Scaloni felt he couldn’t trust their second tier to be up to the task. The choice team would have to stick it out. As so often when faith in mortals outdoes the trust in football’s righteousness, disaster soon struck. An equally dubious penalty was converted by Kylian Mbappé, who not even two minutes later finished off a fine team move with a bullet of a volley. Argentina were shell-shocked and dragged themselves to extra time, though at the dead Messi delivered a rocket from outside the box that Hugo Lloris narrowly tipped over the bar. Then in the added thirty minutes, both Messi and Mbappé had another one, a tap in and another lousy penalty, so a shootout had to break the tie.

 

As effective as they both were, more than either Mssrs. Messi or Mbappé the final itself seemed divinely inspired. Luck and skill were evenly distributed, and an interventionist approach effectively helped the story play out as intended. Messi had to win it, there was no other Arabian tale for Infantino to sell the neutrals. Yet, there needed be suffering. So, the best final whatever was born. I was glad Argentina won the shootout decisively, so it could feel a bit as if they’d scored one more. After that, I dropped out.

 

 

Intelligent design

Music to listen to while reading: Anarchic System - Popcorn

“Our system is meant for intelligent beings that can scan their environment and make decisions on where to go and how to get there, including dealing with their energy needs. They were originally nanomachines, tiny robots if you like, well-stocked with energy to hold out for a long while. We wanted more, though. We didn’t like the idea of losing a well-going experiment because of energy problems. In fact, we had been there before. The generation we were working with hadn’t been quite ripe yet to use the extra energy they were scheduled to be injected with to their advantage. Some of our team said we needed a perpetual internal energy provider, and it had to be something natural, as technology will fall apart in the end. We opted for a digestive system, a nanosized greenhouse, or womb, where a simulation of mammal insides performs the necessary tasks to turn food into energy. All this under strict control of the machine, to make sure mother nature can’t play one of her decay and destroy tricks on us. There are regular DNA updates available to keep elements of our tiny pee and pooh factory in perfect shape. Such to the discretion of the machine, of course. Isn’t that a clever little arrangement?

 

Let’s move on now to our experiment. We were interested in seeing what forms of organisation will shape under a range of circumstances. What then is the most workable organisational model? What levels of order would have to be pre-imposed? It is easy enough to equip our tiny machines with a variety of capabilities. While discussing the best approach, aware there were inevitably political similarities to be drawn from our initial choices, we came up with the idea to first perform an a-political benchmark to test our programming on, in other words pure anarchy. Set the machines free and see if some form of order ensues, and when. If chaos persisted, we would cut this part of the experiment cold and move on with our preconceived circumstances. I may say here that the results have been rather surprising. Of course, the inevitability of anarchic systems developing some form of organisation out of an implicit understanding that collaboration bears better fruit than individuality, is well-known in game theory. What shocked us, though, is how fast rudimentary order was established and how far it would go in the end.

 

Once our organic machines started organising on the basic level I have just described, very soon larger entities were created. These were without a clear need but were the result of a special feature we had added late on in the preparation phase. You see, our tiny organisms are capable of reciprocating if they manage to clone their digestive system and then build a robot around it. This is certainly not something easy, but they are programmed to perform this task collectively. They also have a clear incentive to multiply, as it extends their life cycle. While any nanomachine can in theory live forever, thanks to its digestive system, the chances of success improve with every next copy they create of themselves. The danger of sudden extinction diminishes, clearly. So, we saw many organisms making clones in numbers to create what we dubbed clans to protect themselves. We made sure to feed them enough materials to facilitate this frenetic activity, and then, to our surprise, we noticed how some of them started mounting different machines for new tasks. Apparently, they were able to go beyond the capacities they were programmed with and create something new. They were inventing, they were showing signs of intelligent behaviour. This was a defining moment in the evolution of our system, and it is to my horror and deception that I have to tell you these new machines they invented were meant to attack each other. They were seeing each other as rivals in their quest for endless copies. There was a lot of nasty infighting going on and we more than once felt tempted to interfere, but we also knew we shouldn’t. Our psychological team suggested it was fear of death that drove our beautiful tiny robots to destroy the other. The digestive system was to blame, according to these luminaries, as it was living matter and therefore likely possessed a soul. The soul being the problem here. Whatever the deeper grounds of their malfunctioning, we decided any fear of death or other forms of suspension must be considered a design mistake that we should deal with before initiating the next phase of our investigation. For now, we kept to our present arrangements, fascinated as we all were by developments.

 

As mentioned before, the clan forming soon aggregated to a higher level. The last loners were briskly dealt with, and certain lineages (clones of clones) - the shorter the better - were given preferential treatment - better bodies for one - while other clones only worked and then died. There was originally no difference between them, though we did use machines from various manufacturers, so minor appreciations may always have existed. Yet we never had the intuition it was down to a technical issue, as our miniature friends’ behaviour was clearly driven by that bit of nature inside of them, that manifestation of will. There is no reason for this system, this colony if you like, to exist. Its constituents have no clear idea what they should be doing, apart from perfecting their duplication methods. It’s in themselves, this desire to live, and as I said before, that’s an error. Our smart machines should be working better without conscious awareness. Because that is what will produces, awareness. Those without will are like zombies. They work and they disappear. Meanwhile, the favoured lines don’t do much more than keeping themselves alive, often with great success. We have seen transplants of partial clones, with the clear intention of maintaining the essence of the original clone. As I mentioned, they are quite clever, our little robots. They show the ability to reach sophistication through collective effort. What’s funny, though, or maybe it’s tragic, is that many, in order to keep the system going, work below their capacities. Only those in the core of a clan are free to use their machinery to its abilities. Ironically enough, they tend to use it on idle activities. This has led to sport, if one may call it so. Art, would be another interpretation. How ever their movements should be qualified, they are useless and often beautiful. In fact, this is the essence of beauty, useless behaviour. Only a power so strong as love can manifest in failure.

 

We don’t know yet where our benchmark experiment with anarchy will lead. It is well possible the end result will be total tyranny. We are already seeing prematurely induced deaths to keep numbers manageable. You see, our basement is quite big, but it does have its limits. We clearly notice these population control measures in certain quarters. In a way, this talk has come too early. We aren’t sure yet how far the madness will go, though we do fear the worst. Voices have been raised to terminate the project and move on. I hesitate. I don’t feel prepared to end this promising, exciting experiment, as I am sure I will be able to bring you better news next time we meet. We will then also be bringing you the latest proposals for our deliberate set-ups, as we have decided to name them, something most of our team are more than ready to get going with. We are quite excited about the progress we have recently booked in cancelling out the digestive system’s will to live without jeopardising its ability to stay healthy for a sustained period of time. She’s the perfect farm animal, if you allow me the comparison. As you might imagine, the concept of anarchic development in a controlled environment as an effective tool for pain free tyranny is being readied for human size life, I mean the animals we are used to be dealing with. But isn’t it a beautiful thought that we can have these nano organisms prototyping ideas to be later used on us. I mean, it’s a testing ground, it’s a green house garden, it’s science anyone can follow. Thank you.”

 

 

Davy Jones naked (not yet David Bowie)

Filmmaker Brett Morgen (with biopics of Kurt Cobain and Jane Goodall to his name) has made a highly impactful sound and vision spectacle in which he lets deceased rockstar David Bowie (1947-2016) talk about himself, and sometimes hush, as when he aimlessly walks the streets of Singapore on his 1983 Serious Moonlight tour, the one that got him worldwide popstar status. Moonage Daydream (2022) is an onslaught on the senses, a high-density query into the mind and soul of the self-invented artist David Bowie. Interestingly, we learn a lot about the figure behind the scenes, known as David Robert Jones, but Bowie the inventor, the one that mesmerised a percentile of 70s rock lovers into idolising every move he made, remains as aloof as he always was.

 

Times have changed. Back in the golden years, we fans marvelled at the future visions of a tortured performer who had read his Orwell, Huxley and Nietzsche (so that we wouldn’t have to), and a whole lot more. Bowie was weird intellect, let your mind freak out and see what the fruits are. He totally fitted and encumbered the mood of the days which since have widely been recognised as the best decade to grow up in ever. Bowie the freak, of course, was on the money. We would be owned, for sure, our children were to be of a different race (so to speak), our societies as corrupted as depicted in The Man Who Fell To Earth. Punk’s no future brand had already been well explored by Mr B and his contemporaries. Doors had been opened that would never close again. So, yeah, we knew what was coming. The truth being the future, it was equally conceivable not all of us would live to see the day. It was the one thing that gave us hope. Much of this has now changed dramatically.

 

The onset of covid and the dictatorial policies that followed in its wake have left us with a concept of reality that is eerily close to the one described by Bowie over the course of the nineteen seventies. See quotes above. This leaves us with the question: how could Bowie be so prescient? Was he that smart, or did he receive help from certain sources? It is well-known by now that the Beatles were mostly fake. Wherever their honest musical talents took them, they wouldn’t have got anywhere without the consent of the powers that controlled the impact of their marketability. And they knew it. So did the Rolling Stones, Hendrix, and others. It’s how the system works. Hit songs have always been considered effective purveyors of useful information, even before the onset of rock ‘n’ roll. The sixties heroes were still mostly implicit about the despair awaiting us, our seventies idols already a lot more opener and truer. But when Bowie started singing about Kether and Malkuth in his European Vision song Station to Station, he deliberately chose to chastise us with an overdose of bad news.

 

David Bowie’s remarkable insights could have easily been handed down to him, code words and messages that he would have to find a place for in his writing, appeasing the masters who run the popstar business with iron logic, while trying to maintain as much distance to the topic as possible. Bowie having a way with words, he usually succeeded. Oh! You Pretty Things is perhaps his most blatant cry for the present revolution, with our children belonging to the coming race: look out, you rock ‘n’ rollers. He sounds like he really means it. Time, on the other hand, is desperate enough in tone to make the one-liner we should be owned by now sound like a warning rather than a recommendation.

 

Bowie certainly wasn’t the first one. Mick Jagger famously wrote about the devil in Sympathy, or did he? He never gets closer than once mentioning the name Lucifer. Either way, the masters don’t care. They want their magic words to be spoken, the mantras supposedly brainwashing the public into preferring debauchery over decency. The artists may do as they like as long as the public can be convinced they should buy their product. And then there is the small business of one-eyed things and triple 6 signs. Could one please show them regularly? It’s kind of important to us, see. Bowie showed off his elegance with the upturned sixes finger mask (or spectacles). His eye-patched appearance on Dutch TV’s Toppop, which has become the preferred performance of Rebel Rebel on You Tube, had likely little to do with a minor eye infection, as B’s clarification went. There were gestures going on during live shows, at least from Ziggy’s farewell concert onwards, but it never became more than a silly nuisance. In those days few people were aware this was happening, and I wasn’t one of them. Nevertheless, the truth is out there. If you go looking for it, you’ll see it everywhere. All of them. Some managed to bail out and live independently on a sufficient fanbase from their popular days.

 

Lou Reed was one of those. After crashing out from the Bowie caravan in 1974, he returned to being an honest storyteller who moved people deeply with his gut-wrenching songs. Yet, when retirement loomed, his health betraying him (back in the seventies he had been number one on the first to die hitlist for a cool 33 months) Reed was forced into a declaration of Jewish power on his collaboration with Metallica, the hard rocking and sensationalist Lulu. Check what he screams (he can’t sing anymore) about revenge in The View, turning himself into a rather vicious and vitriolic promotor of Jewish primacy. The former he never was and the latter he used to reserve for worthier causes, such as asking attention for the many abandoned people in his city. Being a Reed fan, I bought the record, but stopped listening to it soon. A similar sensation captured me with Bowie’s last album Blackstar, as beautifully made as it is. Bowie’s expressed fear of death doesn’t suit him at all, to my mind. Or rather, it never suited David Robert Jones, the one who had created it all, the David Bowie character and its many fanciful disguises. Jones would never seek death, as he loved life too much, yet he neither seemed the cowardly type to me. Apparently, David Bowie was supposed to have a different point of view.

 

Amidst the chaos of Moonage Daydream’s audio-visual presentation, Mr Jones offers a coherent and insightful portrait of his inner sufferings. And suffer he did, in his own words. They are taken out of only a handful of interviews among the many hundreds Bowie must have given. We see a solitary man, a loner living in awe of his own exceptional abilities, as they constitute a fortune coming with the duty to make a difference. Jones was unable to maintain friendships and commitments as long as he hadn’t found untraceable peace with himself. Whether it was the fear he might be as crazy as his brother Terry, or he actually was, or he was mentally abused into accepting his role of, as he himself once phrased it when asked by another father at the posh boarding school he sent his son Duncan to about his line of business: (I’m) a rock god, David Bowie for a long while seemed pretty out of it. He was in fact much weirder than most of his characters, who were merely indulging in the latest future fancy.

 

I liked Moonage Daydream. It’s over the top, but it offers an interesting perspective on the boy from Brixton who grew up in Bromley and hung out in Swinging London until he had made it and then conquered America and the world, feeling ever lonelier along the way. Or so we are led to believe. And then he met Iman and got happy. He left all his vices behind him and became hooked on his wife. It’s a story we don’t get to know much about (who wants to hear about happy couples?), though his final musings, a handful of wisdoms spoken by an older Bowie, attest of his acquired ability to see himself with pity and love. That’s what life is all about for exceptional people: stop hating themselves. One does get the feeling Brett Morgen was working from a playbook handed down to him.

 

 

Are you ready for a brand new beat?

Summer is coming to an end and once more we haven’t changed the world, as summers seldom fulfil their promise. It’s just endless showing off and spending big, flirting and mating all around, and Barcelona has been hot and sweaty, causing many to drink too much. The mood is relaxed, sometimes dreamy or just sleepy. Summer, you are a wonderful intermezzo of little weight in human affairs. Come harvest, we start working again. Always have. Soon we will be ready for summer to end. But are we this time? Are we aware life is planned to become much harder in autumn, and even more so in winter? Are we ready for that? Or are we simply clinging on to what we still have left, while dreaming of it never going away?

 

It is rumoured covid measures are back on the agenda. Wearing non-protective masks, closing down public life, lining people up for random injections, the whole shebang. And if it isn’t for covid, then perhaps it is because some fools believe we should breathe less to keep temperatures down, or whatever it is these people are thinking. Meanwhile, they are threatening us with a freezing winter and runaway inflation. Is that getting you worried already? How are you going to live through that?

 

Perhaps we shouldn’t be bothered. Perhaps we should resist further compliance with senseless rules that are only leading our societies on the path to destruction. You’ll own nothing, yeah, sure, but not just earthly possessions. We are going to lose everything we have, all the human relations we have built in our neighbourhoods and at work. We are going to be atomised, isolated from each other. Even households are in danger. Are you ready for that as well? What continuing acceptance of ever more tyrannical nonsense produces is degeneration. Decadence, in the original Latin meaning of the word. People are losing their connection with decency, with logic and kindness. The ongoing stress, even easy summer is not completely without it, drives people to step into survival mode. In such a situation, many will choose the safety of the herd. If we do as most people do, then we should be okay in the end, is what they think.

 

Some dig their studs in the sand. They see things their own way and refuse to budge. Yet again others are actually reaching out to their neighbours in the hope of building some form of communal resistance. What these heroes cannot avoid, is that we will all go down together if this onslaught of tyranny isn’t halted collectively. We each have an incentive here. You know, being well-connected isn’t half the fun in a dictatorial system as it is in a humane society. So, why don’t we bond? Let’s leave our differences aside and accept that very few are going to have a nice winter if we do not stop our authorities. We cannot get at the ones at the top, because we do not know who they are, but we can take on the control system. It is filled with people like us, perhaps a tad more ambitious and talented, who are just doing their job. They will suffer as well in the end.

 

Come on, people, the show is over. The consumer society has reached its conclusion. It’s been a long while coming, and we always knew it couldn’t last because it is simply unnatural to throw packaging away, to buy a new TV set every few years, to suffer in traffic jams to get to work each day, to fly around the world only to expand your tacky souvenir collection. Clearly, the elites have pulled to plug on us, and we will have to accept their decision because there is no way back. The days of stupidity are over. Yet, we can seize the moment that was created for us and turn the planned disaster into a brand new start. It’s like judo, you wait for the other to move and then you use that energy to your benefit.

 

We humans are the salt of the Earth. What our rulers pretend to be, I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t need to understand them to want to get rid of them. Their actions speak for themselves. It is a clever scheme. All who reach the top in their field are in on the game, whether they realise it or not, because only their actions are taken seriously (being expert and all), so they help create the havoc our friend Yuval Harari is so enthusiastic about. “We shall destroy ourselves because we can.” It is the western way of thinking. Yet, the world is so much bigger. Plenty of cleverer solutions available.

 

The idea that people should come together in one system where we are all thinking the same to keep us from fighting each other, is a dangerous one. Who in such a system are your leaders going to be? Who is making decisions for you? Can you trust these unknown entities? Covid has shown us that the wrong decisions can quickly spread through the ranks and do sudden harm on a worldwide scale. Cutting off the patient-GP relation was a horrendous idea, inspired only by megalomanic thinking, that must have cost many thousands of lives in any given country. It was so stupid, in fact, that it became shameless. That authorities subsequently refused to adapt their murderous policies to new insights is simply scandalous. While admitting that covid wasn’t worse than any other flu, they keep pressing for the same senseless mandates that have brought us nothing but trouble. I know, people have died from covid, whatever it is, but many more have fallen victim to the absurd fear campaign, this state of psychosis that has become the ground which all further decision making is vested on. I don’t know about you, but I believe love and trust are a healthier basis for responsible care than psychosis, a condition that in individual cases is treated with lifelong medication. Patients are not supposed to be carrying any kind of responsibility during bouts of madness.

 

So, now you have taken the jab. Many got one or two, some three or even more. That was pretty stupid, pretty psychotic. No, you’re not all going to die. The system would rather have you sick, so it can extract money from you. Some will die, though, just enough to keep you fearful and come back for more. That’s weird, isn’t it? You cling to what scares you. It’s like being a drug addict. With every fix there is the awareness you don’t know what you were sold and you may not get through this one alive. It is sickening, but such is the life of a junkie. I sometimes wonder whether some addictive shit was put in the mix that we are not allowed to know the ingredients of as we are still in the experimental phase, so as to make you come back for more sooner. Sorry, this is conspiracy thinking. My bad. Have you noticed how any attempt at understanding the world amounts to conspiracy thinking? You are only allowed to read up on today’s official opinions, presented to you by TV and papers.

 

It is not in our interest to continue with this medical programme of endless gene-altering injections. Sure, the theory says it can be done, how wonderful, but do we need to fall into this trap again? That something is possible doesn’t make it a good idea. We are losing ourselves on the road to technocracy. I wonder if we will ever be able to get happy this way. We are giving up our God-connection. For many people that is a very heavy price to pay, as it should be.

 

I can go on about tyranny and control for quite a while. I’ve written seven novels on the topic. But let’s finish this rant on a high. Lokalize it.

Once again, the idea of worldwide unity paints a beautiful picture, but it hasn’t been showing its worth so far. Are we to believe that the same people who got rich by abusing us will now come up with the benign solutions they promise us? That is why I plea for local control. The smaller the unit, the easier its members can successfully protest unjust and stupid laws.

 

 

It’s the madness in their eyes

Everybody is going crazy, the subterranean traveller complained. I can’t have a normal, reasonably intelligent conversation with anybody anymore. It doesn’t matter what we are talking about, people say the stupidest and most trifling things. Even the weather. I mean, people can’t talk about the weather anymore. Can you imagine? After weeks of rain there is finally a clear day, and people go, oh, it’s so hot. And when I say, aren’t you glad after all those grey days, they look at me with glazy eyes and don’t know what I’m talking about. I mean, it’s like they haven’t got any memory anymore. Not even the slightest. I find that scary. It makes me sometimes wonder, have I got it wrong? I can’t be the only one who remembers yesterday, so perhaps I am mistaken, but then I hear them say other ridiculous things and I know it’s them. It’s just there are so many. It’s an absolute plague.

 

When I try talking some serious stuff, say, the war going on in Eastern Ukraine, people say, war is no good, it must stop. And I say, sure, but if you just keep poking and threatening someone, at some point they will hit out at you. The same goes for countries. And they say, what are you talking about? And I go, US has been at Russia’s throat for a couple of decades now, and people say, what do you mean? They just don’t know what’s going down there, they haven’t got a clue. War is bad. Yeah, sure, war is bad, that’s why we call it war. We don’t call it fun and games. But there’s something like karma, you know, there is getting your comeuppance. You can’t just have it your way all the time and expect other people to swallow whatever you throw at them. That’s not how the world works. And people say, we are peaceful, our countries haven’t fought each other for I don’t know how long. And I go, then tell me why your country is one of the richest in the world? How did you manage to pull that off? And they don’t have an answer. It’s like it is, they say. And they say, that’s why we should always let other people come and live here if they want to. I go, so, it’s not because we destroy their economies, and they have little choice but to come and live among their enemies? Then their eyes glaze over once again. They just don’t know anything. It’s madness.

 

The worst is perhaps the whole covid thing. I say, do you realise your leaders have been trying to kill you with their idiotic policies? I give the usual examples, the masks that don’t protect, the tests that can’t detect how bad you’ve got it and whether you should consider yourself a danger to other people, like actually feeling sick, you know, and the murderous lock-ups and the torture of our poor children, refusing to treat people who really are sick and who then die because nobody wants to help them, and the few doctors who do reach out have their licence revoked. And then to top it off they push everybody into taking a completely useless and at the same time very dangerous injection which they call a vaccine, but which is something completely else. You know, the whole shebang. And people say, what are you talking about? Covid is dangerous and we are being protected. I say, no, covid is not dangerous at all for most people, and you’re being robbed blind. Do you even remember what life looked like before all this madness took off? And I see those eyes again and I know, no, they do not remember. They have forgotten pretty much everything. Whatever the reason, people are losing their minds. I find that very scary, but I believe I already said that.

 

People seem to have stopped caring, the subterranean continued. You know, putting personal relationships first. Now it is fear ruling their decisions, fear of non-compliance and the inevitable consequences it might bring. Many people seem to be losing their personality, not caring because they somehow have lost the ability to tell real from fake. They think everything they see is real, not realising the gripping, sensational stories the entertainment machine is providing them with are completely untrue. And you live in this lie and the lie offers the opportunity to be heroic while promoting the lie simultaneously. And you accept, because everybody is doing it, it’s like a new normal.

 

I don’t think we should be taking this road which is controlled by ambition and power projection. It’s ugly and it’s senseless and it produces no Earth value. There’s nothing there that Earth might be profiting from, apart from a few deliberate restoration projects. I believe we are close to extinguishing ourselves as a species. So many people seem to be going to disappear or get modified into an externally controlled version of themselves, like street theatre puppets. The richness of human existence, the many cultures and challenges people face, is going to be mortally wounded. Human culture is disappearing, and our various ways of life will be utterly forgotten. You own nothing and you’ll be happy, remember that one? Whatever we whisper in your ear, dear.

 

I don’t want to stop this fight until it’s over, the traveller concluded, even if I may at times seem a lonely fool to be resisting all the laughable yet equally demeaning measures so many people obediently put up with. No, we’re not saving anyone by agreeing with our governments which have over the years become entrenched in conducting people’s lives – so many things you can’t or must do, so many rules that didn’t exist twenty years ago. And the last two years have seen a particularly sharp increase in behavioural dictatorship, or should that be dictatorial behaviourism? It is how it is, and don’t you dare whisper it ain’t true, so as not to be cancelled for indecent infringement. I say, please, people, let’s free ourselves from this madness. It is not necessary, it is not inevitable. We make it so, yes, that’s true, but we always have our free will – some say God given, others say nature deriven – to do things in a different way from what we are told, creating a different situation in which other types of decisions are prone to be made, which then will further stimulate ongoing promotion of the idea that nothing has to be like our self-appointed superiors tell us it is. We are human beings still, I hope, we possess a soul, we have a will, we are energy hidden inside an energy consuming machine called body. We continuously feel the need to express ourselves. Shall I tell you something funny? I see in fact a lot of expression of free will in people’s behaviour these days. The endangered mask free status, for one, makes people find new ways of showing their teeth and smiles. After all, you want to be remembered well when they lock up your face again. Don’t do it any longer, please. Let’s not get sucked into this monkey business. Resist. Be healthy. Don’t get diagnosed. Don’t get tested. Please. It would make all the difference. We can save ourselves by simple behavioural adjustment, pretty much like quitting smoking. Bit tough for a few days, but soon enough you start noticing the benefits. And no, there are no patches for mental strength, but rest assured that someone somewhere is working on a synthetic version.