If I could survive the process, the insults, the censure, and the divorce, I would gladly run through the centre of the city, climb atop of some dead man's statue and shout Ireland's insanity at the top of my voice, until the police might come and put both myself and my bemused compatriots out of our misery.
If perhaps there were a group of like minded, of similarly awake (or perhaps insane, the distinction becomes less clear with time), who had made the next deduction, that reality (when considered) insists upon. If perhaps these mad men and women were actively planning to overthrow the state (to save us from ourselves), to establish a government that is unashamedly based upon rational principles; a rejection of the idiocy of materialism, a desire to protect the vulnerable, to promote the ideal of an acquisition of intelligence, learning, enlightenment, art, music etc., above that of of chattel, profligacy and market-worship? Forget about the distant and fading hope of freedom from the invisible prison, the misery of ill health and unhappiness. If I could be a part of a movement that is willing to simply 'speak out' in order that Ireland might even become aware of its imprisonment: I would sign that covenant in my own blood, as some Ulster Unionists are believed to have signed their own declaration of intent.
I am convinced that the next era in the sad history of our race (if we are to survive the catastrophes we are presently constructing) the next era will not be one of enlightenment, but rather one of an awakening that might at least contain the potential for such an enlightenment.
I would sign and join, and declare my allegiance to the 'insanity' that must end the tyranny. My treason my devotion to the new anarchy, will purchase a piece of what the poets and the revolutionaries of the past have called hope. Hope that is each day eroded by global warming, by materialism, by our blind worship of the markets, and the contraction in our capacity for an independence of thought. The contraction that has made our imprisonment possible, that leads us to be convinced of our happiness and our freedom, convinced beyond the point of suicide and self destruction and a million medicalised pains and anxieties. We boast of our happiness and our best of all possible words, to the point where the fantasy has become more real than the real itself. Life has become a television programme and we are all actors grinning at the surface of our social exchange and social networks and tiring from the weight of the façade. The only choices are self destruction, imagined illness, self-delusion or madness.
That same precious hope might yet illuminate my delusion that Ireland will awake one Sunday morning and prepare for a visit to the library, the temple, the oratory of the arboretum, the thundering symphony of the sea., rather than the shopping-mall or the Cathedrals of modern capitalism. And yet, there is no group, there is no secret society, there is no underground movement, there is no alternative thinking, no new vision, there is only the name for these things and behind those names there is the ignorance of the masses and the worship of reality in its present and terrible form. When the future looks back upon the holocaust of today, of the markets the incineration of children and extermination of species, they will say of us that we did not simply permit the evil but rather that we worshipped first and then became the evil itself.
I would gladly offer a secret society my immortal soul in exchange for membership, for a share of that extinguished hope. To sit about in a sweet sweet-shop, a Marxist book store and by night to discuss by candle light the candle light incineration of the state. By Christ I would do it, and would feel my life invigorated by a purpose and meaning beyond that of parenthood or profession. I would feel my soul revived, resuscitated, reclaimed . I would kiss my children and my wife and bid them farewell if I thought there was a chance that Ireland might be free to see, and perhaps serve as a catalyst towards the liberation of humanity. Freedom from the same oppression, and the same confinement to the same pathway, that leads towards what Zizek and what intuition itself refers to as the approaching 'catastrophic' endpoints.
I would take up my position outside the biscuit factory, or outside the entrance to Dublin Zoo, and be the first to hang a padlock upon its gates, to send the idiot-gawkers home and bid them repent. Repent and consider on what side of the bars the real brutes reside. I would sit with right thinking biologists and zoologists and to try to decide upon how best to treat, to euthanise the majestic and exotic creatures that are confined and brutalised into the voyeuristic playthings of this macabre menagerie. On then we would march to the prisons and fling open the gates in amnesty to all but those who are guilty of violence or cruelty. To the banks, to the halls of state, we would sound that roll call of ignominy and round them up the suited criminals of that generation, poisoned by Dallas and their material perversion of the dream; politicians, bankers enjoying a guilt, and freedom proportionate to their mountains of material frivolity. We would march then to the ivory towers of local government, and the planners who presided over the despoliation of this land, and then we would fill the prisons with the real criminals.
Then at last we would return to the Customs house, to Lenister House or to the House of Keys, from the steps we would make our declaration of independence, and the first line would proudly declare an end to materialism and greed, not of the few but the materialism and greed within each and all of us, and a return to the worship of God in the place of the markets. Not the Christian God, nor the Hindu God, but the irrefutable God of the atheist and Christian alike, the God who stands before us each day in the guise of the weak, the vulnerable, the suffering. The old who see death linger and pass the foot of their bed.. The God who peers at us through the eyes of animals within cages, who roars at us with each wave that crashes upon the shore, the God who ripens our fruit and causes atoms to be and to behave as they do, the God who placed a pen in the hand of Joyce a pain in the heart of Nietzsche, a word in the mouth of Marx, a thought in the mind o Freud or a son before the firing squad or hung upon the cross.
And yet, beyond the self, beyond my friend Desmond and the few who see me, I can find no revolution there is only conformity, there is no God only the businesses of Charity, there are no rebellious sons and daughters there are only 'leftists' 'Marksists' or the "Greens". Ireland's intellectuals have been gagged, ignored, marginalised to the point of utter insignificance. As a nation we have been blinded by our new masters, we have been blinded in a manner that men have never been blinded by in the history of our species; we have surrendered our eyes, gouged them out with our own bloody fingers and presented them to the conquerors of our world and the murderers of our God.
I went to the book store the other day and there nowhere to be found, were the words of a new revolution, not even a book by Fennell. The shelves were crowded like escalators in the London Underground; The Pilots Lover, Footballers Wives, How to Become Rich, how to be happy, how to talk to your children, Trees of our heritage..., the afflatus of the afflicted. The book has killed the book, vision, revolution has been silenced beneath a cacophony of marketable idiocy.
Resistance is futile.
'Liberate me from what?' say my countrymen, those few who take the time to pause and read my sandwich-board as they hurry towards the evening train, towards home, fast-food, the hypnotic repetition that is our news and our nutrition. Day to day living, antidepressants, cigarettes drink, food, loneliness, emptiness the oppressions of modernity and the growing grumblings of self destruction.
In return for our new religion and for the Cathedral of the shopping mall, the markets ask only that we might blind ourselves to reality and to the self. They ask only that we should be unable to see the shit pipes that exit those cathedrals, and the effluent that is spilled upon the African, or the spotted owl. We must be blind to the consequence of the market, the consequence upon the self and upon the world. The Market depends more upon stupidity than it does upon money, how else can we be convinced to purchase that which we neither need nor have utility for? When we experience the unhappiness that is demanded of us by our new masters we must put a medical name upon that malaise and we must purchase the antibiotic or endure the test, the examination or the procedure that will apply an appropriate and fashionable delusion to our pain.
Inside the Church of the real find the 'Pandora' stall at your nearest department store and have a look inside. They have done it, they have confirmed the gullibility and mute stupidity of the nation, a profligacy and idiot vanity that is far beyond the chopping down of trees to adorn our sitting rooms. One bead for 'hope' another for 'prosperity' another for 'courage'. Taking candy from babies.
The Native American gave away much of North america for similarly coloured beads, 'prosperity' and 'hope', sixty euros each at all reputable retailers.
When I lived in California there were a group of idealists who would band together and vist the new Cathedrals at Christ's mass or during the sales to vomit upon the polished marble floors until they were ejected or arrested. Where are these dreamers?
Perhaps we get what we deserve? Despite the sandwich board and the ostracism, I am happy, happier than most. I write to Desmond and see through the window he has fashioned for my countrymen. It is a small window, there is not much t see on the other side; some trees, some birds, something left of the beautiful things perhaps, and of course there is a fleeting glimpse of that old hope. My children are intelligent and they can see the world for what its is, enjoy it, and and at the same time recognise that it, like their parents is getting old, is dying even. They can be happy without delusion, they dream of the future, its hope, and even its salvation.
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