Heart of the Original by Steve Aylett

Author:Steve Aylett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction, Philosophy
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2015-06-29T15:55:52+00:00

9

THE FUTURE IS OBVIOUS

“Lucifer is a black glove we wear to hide our own fingerprints.”

Humanity’s abhorrence of common sense has a similar quality to that afforded originality because it, too, is a departure from familiar circumstance. The relatively reasonable Greek statesman Solon let himself down by making it a crime to publicly express political neutrality and also a crime to publicly speak ill of the living or dead, in the great tradition of combinatory laws that do not allow people to quite exist. This squeezing forces a soul in one of several directions – suicide, a beleaguered almost-deadness under the law, or a freedom that walks behind the climate. A bust of Solon portrays a slightly dazed man with a beard of broccoli coral. Since those stricken days legislators have competed for our despair by passing hundreds of new laws each time we look away.

Society’s harassments are not always deterred by death – some of those guillotined in the late 19th century found their heads being hectored by scientists eager to see if the victim’s eyes would swivel at their tormentors. The eyes did respond, fixing the scientists with a stare of stony resolve as if at the last straw. Miscreants of disciplined character sought to bring enough air into the mouth before severance that when the detached head was raised triumphantly to the crowd it might utter a single word. A favourite was ‘And?’ The regime could no longer coherently deny that decapitation was a false economy or argue that it ‘made sure’, but the beheadings continued. The notion of it as a heartening public spectacle was not taken up by the Nazis, who performed the procedure in closed gymnasiums. They may have realised that targeting the head was a tacit admission that this was what dissidents were using. Pharaohs of ancient Egypt believed the heart was the seat of the intellect and had it wrapped separately.

Consequences always look inevitable in retrospect, and usually ahead of time too, as the same facts are available in both cases. It’s the old spycraft trick of following someone by walking in front of them while looking in a mirror or window reflections. The lucid subject ducks off course.

Repetition is ideal for inducing trance, whether over minutes or years, and consent is honoured less the greater the duration. You can tell time by the cry of ‘Never again’. But as knowledge retention is reduced, historical repetition threatens to catch up. If repetition intervals ever become shorter than mass memory, facts will be learned through being too constantly in-your-face to deny. It’s been questioned whether such a catch-up can ever happen to humanity, either because memory shrinkage is propelled by fear, or because after acknowledging the obvious we will no longer align with the definition of human beings.

Everyone I know anticipates each economic slump long in advance but it never makes a difference as they don’t have any money in the first place. Consequence is more visible to those who are not invested. But who would expect a government to be so cruel as to throw the non-wealthy under the bus? I would.

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