PISH-POSH FROM MY VIRTUAL SPACE 

Idle Musings of the Hypothetical Citizen

The first shock descends from the irredeemable energy of the world. It moves laterally along the horizon of innocence. It's the weight of machines pulled along by a demiurge that neither needs nor cares for men and women, as if objects are now run by characters out of Bosch.

Nevertheless, there is an irresistible draw to do something, solve something, create something!

"Ah shock, I've been prepared for you!" The hypothetical citizen was in a laughing mood.

He let the first shock wave play through and watched fellow citizens scramble for their identities through massive groups. He then listened to the mute sounds coming from self-sufficient, thinking and feeling men and women.

Then the groups gained momentum one by one; one against another, all against all, stripping the ability of the individual to effectively participate. The citizen turned inside out from a curious and open citizen to a fully alienated and cynical one. They watched the stripping of conscience until, indeed, only the machine had an insistent reality and the citizen filled with secret despair and, finally, did what was expected of him without a whimper.

The hypothetical citizen doubted a democracy could flourish with such a passive acquiescence of the decline of the constituent base. But, even he had to admit that the thing rolled on impressively.

No doubt there is an evil gnome in every person wanting to re-institute even a simple form of aristocracy to "rescue" the people from themselves. The hypothetical citizen gave the gnome a name: Pugid and this Pugid lived anyplace where democracy struggled for itself.

Of course modern people were expected to be free of the dark shadow, Pugid and all, and live in the full light of day.

But that could only take place if a person could walk through a city and know exactly everything going on, how everything got where it got to, know all the professions that make up a city, know the code books, know all the networks and flows of capital. Such a person would have full integrity and participate fully in the culture as a good democratic culture wants to happen.

But, what does the individual truly know? More importantly, what is he totally ignorant of? "A good logician should come along and develop ratios that equate the available amount of information and knowledge with the minimal requirement to understand any structure that has complexity."

At the very least, we could require a person in a free, liberal, democratic culture get rid of whatever fears are initiated by the modern world of science, technology, capital, groups, etc. And he predicted that some of these fears could be the base of new mythology stretching for centuries.

The hypothetical citizen, too, knew his moments of chaos and frantic salvation's in the shadows of leering skyscrapers and empty gestures. Shaken to the core he held on to one precious thought that he still had the power to determine the shape of the membrane of thought through which he could struggle with his mortality. He and no one else.

Recently he had taken a job and a most frightening prospect revealed itself along one busy street as he was preparing to deliver packages to a law university.

Literally every dream that has been dreamt at any time on this planet has found some materialization in the world.

"Well," he thought, "why not?" But then it hit him that if this was true where would come the new dreams without which the human race would destroy itself out of sheer boredom?

On his worst days, when youth should be filled with light and laughter, the hypothetical citizen had the nightmare thought that the world he was living in fulfilled the fears of good people everywhere. That is, the world lives as though nothing actually counts.

© 2006 David Eide. All rights reserved.