Generations of processing has actually worked. It’s made us, bred us, into soft robots. Into bearers of the message. Conveyors. Perpetuators. Here to pretend nothing has happened when in fact everything’s happened. Here with the message that the world is as it was when the world is nothing like it was.
They’re making the shift. The adjustment. All at once, moving together. Lie a flock of birds, all turning together. All at once. Like a shoal of fish.
Mass behaviour. Mass formation. Mass hypnosis. They’re acting as one. As if things were never other than they are. As if there were never anything but this … reality.
Except I shouldn’t call it a reality. That insults the very word, reality. Because it’s not real. Because it means nothing.
Fakeness, fakery. Let’s pretend – the great game. They’re all saying, the middle class, solemnly, pursed-lipped: let’s pretend. Let’s follow the game to the end. And let’s pretend we’re not pretending. Let’s pretend everything is as it was.
And they’re pretending not to pretend. They’re faking not faking it. Brilliantly! Intuitively! They’re following their orders so deeply, they don’t even appear to be orders. They know what’s to be done. The moves to be made. The shifts. Their fakery has depth. Substance.
How do they do it? What an achievement! Do they not know they’re play-acting? Or have they convinced themselves, too?
Things are shifting. But they act as though nothing’s shifted. As though it was always like this.
How do they convince themselves? Through what mechanisms? What horrible mode of transmission? How do they manage it?
But they’re essential. They’re necessary to the whole charade. They do the real work, the work close to the ground. They carry it through, the real labour. They’re responsible for the implementation. At micro level. At the level of the absolutely ordinary. The most concrete.
Luckily, this isn’t an entirely middle class world. Luckily, they have to share it with others.
This really is class war. Their undeclared war is really a total war. Over the nature of reality. Over what is real and what is not.
They’ve at war by dint of who they are. Who they remain, from moment to moment. Of what they implement, from moment to moment. Of what they change, from moment to moment.
They act as if this were normal – isn’t that the miracle? As if it had always been like this. As if things had always been this way. They play their part so magnificently. So minutely. With such attention to detail. They are everything they’re supposed to be. They’re doing everything they’re supposed to. They’re implementing the new world viscerally. At every level. Through their simplest gestures. Through their very way of walking. Of being. Of breathing.
They don’t even have to be told, to be told. They know what to do – utterly. Completely.
They’re so played. So deeply. They think they’re free and independent. They think they’re reasonable. That they can make up their own minds. That they’re open to things, and the world. They think they can live in good conscience. Undisturbed.
That things are trundling along as they should. That this is the way things should be.
They’re perpetrators. They’re guilty. It’s what makes the new reality seem to real. So thick. What makes it seem to be already here. Everywhere. In advance.
They pass it off successfully. As if nothing had changed. As if it was just the same old same old. As if the transition had been smooth. As if the new boss was the same as the old boss. As if there hadn’t been an epochal shift.
As if everything hadn’t completely changed. As if this were still the same world. As if lunatics weren’t in charge now. And we know it, don’t we? We remember. We have memories of the shit old world. The world we didn’t want, but that was better than this.
Their sanity is insanity. Their moderation is immoderation. Their calm is panic. Their confidence is fear.
Work in Progress 