We
are a society founded upon failure. How many adverts have you seen
that say “you know what, we're all doing a pretty good job” or
“keep up the good work!”? Positive reinforcement is something
that we find offensive, and it makes us cagey. The only thing you see
is something that scares you: “Your children's high chair is
covered in bacteria”, “if you don't use this cream all the
girls will think you have a small dick”. We are frightened and
browbeaten into things. PPI been mis-sold? Had an accident anywhere
in the last decade? Want to not be a grotesque, flabby loser? Call
us. We can give you free money, but only if you can blame a stranger.
It boggles the mind at how easily we sell each other out and swindle
people we don't know so we can buy a bigger telly. I remember, two
years ago pranging a big Audi on the way to visit my mother. “Bugger”
I thought as the woman got out of the car and stepped to the side of
the road. She was on the phone, understandably so, so that she may
call an ambulance for her.. to maybe contact... wait. A taxi turns
up, and a huge tattooed traveller gets out of the driver's seat and
tries to threaten me.
Ignoring
him, because he was a stupid person, I spoke to his frail wife, who
in the end shook my hand and said that everything was fine, there's
no damage done and it was just a mistake, easily made.
Seven
months later I receive a letter from a solicitor stating that
I caused this fully mobile woman to suffer whiplash a few weeks
previously and that my insurance is now going to go up. There was
nothing I could do. I appreciate that people telling these stories,
usually slurring their words and spilling their beer, would
exaggerate the details to make them look the innocent party but I
swear to whatever Gods are listening that this is what happened. What
could I do? It was her and a strangely debilitated doctor versus me,
a schmuck in a weather beaten Aygo. But to think that this person
decided to cost me the best part of a thousand pounds in premiums so
she could spend a day (as stated in the letter) off work astounded
me. How have we become so callous to others? It is these experiences
that make a heart grow cold.
But
we as human beings are shaped by grief, and want, and tragedy: have
you met or otherwise encountered someone genuinely interesting
who have only experienced balance and happiness? I sure as hell
haven't. These people, few though they are, are nice. We label
things as nice because they are not bad, but not necessarily good. In
the heart-rate monitor of reality they are not the panicked spikes of
elation and sorrow but a flat line: no happiness, no sadness. No
height, and no depth. They are a totally neutral death-state of
existence. You imagine that they would react to a lottery win in much
the same way they would react to a death in the family: they would
just nod thoughtfully, and drive their silver Vauxhall Astra from
their new build Barratt home to the nearest Wetherspoons for a cold
pint of Carling, then maybe watch the football. They don't play, but
they follow that foreign guy who manages that team they like. They
would smile, and they would ask how you were, and they would nod
again with a thoughtful expression before asking about your day. They
are nice. And they are inoffensive, in much the same way as a
fridge does its job but does not cause you to explore its innermost
depths.
We
seek darkness in others. This contrast, this difference and in some
cases this misery makes a person titillating to be around.
Would you rather speak with Jordan or Hawking? Beckham or Lovecraft?
Andre or Fry? They are all humans, but that streak of difference
makes the man, not the suit.
And
you see these little grey people wandering about their torpid little
lives, and that moment strikes you and tells you that maybe, just
maybe, you're not actually that different. What makes you
different? How are we, at all, original in any way? We have life
experience, and a quirky place to live, and facial hair and a
penchant for weird trains of thought but how is that different to
anyone else? How can you know these people are as how you imagine?
You
can't. Your only choice is to swim on, and drink your designer beer
or your red wine and do those things that make you different enough
to not be drowned in the crushing tidal-wave of inequity that we
believe everyone else is floundering in. The only thing that makes
you different is that you express openly these strange thoughts and
feelings in an effort to infect those around you. To make you
seem different. To make you unique.
Just
like everyone else.
