Last night I was bellyaching to my friend Zellyn about everyday workplace hypocrisies. Stuff like when we are invited into a safe space to speak our truth, as long as everything said harmonizes with official lies everyone officially believes with all our line-toeing little sleeve-hearts. And how the high-flying bullshit spouted by managerials, and all the procedural chickenshit they impose is all just trifling nonsense. On and on I went. I have been severely STFU challenged of late.
And suddenly an apparition of Fish appeared in our midst.
And this is what he said: “Staylo, how is it that you’ve made it past your 50th birthday, still expecting anyone to say anything resembling truth with anything resembling sincerity?”
“This is all a game,” he continued. “Nothing about it is real, except the penalties for losing and the rewards for winning. Those alone are real.”
“And do you know the most reliable way to lose this game?”
“You lose this game if you forget it is only a game.”
That is what the apparition of Fish said to us. It was right in the middle of a vegan Indian restaurant, and it was awkward. But we had to give it to him. He had a point.
It’s an option, at least in theory. I’m not sure I could pull it off and stick with it.
It does have a certain appeal. I am no stranger to contempt. When forced to interact with people who refuse to be real, I have been know to make AI crank out fake sincerity for me. I don’t even read it first. Such people deserve neither reality nor my energy. They deserve only slop.
I could imagine aiming this same contempt at that non-consensual hallucination we call the corporate world.
I could enter this simulation as a player intent on winning.
But who am I kidding? I hate that shit. This soulless soul-grinder runs on “cynical reason“.
But it would be both cooler and funnier to win. And moralism is always the mark of the mark.
Is this even a question of morality? Is it more a question of style?
If only I had only one ear to hear only one voice from one shoulder. An ironist is damned to stereo.