Step right up and come on down. Get the latest brand new shiny thing that will for once fulfill all of your desires and make you feel stunningly complete. Don't worry if the feeling doesn't last. You can try and try again and again. Step right up onto the treadmill. You can have satisfaction guaranteed. Whether it's Jesus Christ, Jonnie Walker, or cigarettes and beer. Whether it's sex with supermodels, the person next door you secretly yearn for, or even with yourself. Whether you are a believer or a skeptic, our endless array of neat and shiny products and experiences will give you the exact sort of thing you need to fill in that emptiness you sometimes complain about. You know that feeling. The one that says you need this or that in order to finally be real, accomplished, successful, holy, or alive. The feeling that creeps up inside you when you are asleep to whisper a reminder that you must get up off your ass and buy more, buy new things, buy old things, buy anything so long as you are buying. Don't have much money? Well, you can buy into beliefs, religions, politics, philosophies. Don't even have enough money for that? Well, fear not. There are many cubicles and assembly lines in the global village at which you can earn more money...more of a stake...more control over your destiny. What? You already do this and still have no money and no control over your own destiny? Shut up, blasphemer! This is the way it works, ye of little faith.
Are you still troubled by that nagging doubt, that anxiety that slowly gnaws away at your bones and slips into your darkest warmest unconscious desires and instills in you the pernicious and foul idea that this wonderful market place is not enough? Never fear. We have weapons of mass distraction for your use in your war upon doubt. We have heavenly chemicals for you to digest which will make it all go away and give you the proper perspective so you can get back out there on the treadmill with endless cheer, a gleam in your eye, and no need for any awareness whatsoever. And hell, what do YOU need awareness for anyway? It's not like you're a Buddhist monk or some mystical weirdo. Besides, if you want spiritual fulfillment, we got programs and books and seminars which you can buy (with or without the incense) that will give just the rightly packaged sense of transcendence you'll crave during those dark nights of your "soul."
What? This isn't enough for you, you say? You think you can actually BE happy without all of our items, experiences, theories, and schemes? What do you think you are, the Dalai Lama or something? Of course you need a better and more marketable version of yourself and of your life in order to be happy. Of course you need our products and our slogans and our beliefs and our ideas. And as long as you are alive, you can have a lifetime subscription. Didn't you get the memo?
Now...
If you think that the above message is a figment of my overactive imagination, think again. It is the message you are bombarded with every day of your existence, regardless of the actual medium, words, and imagery used. Against this sort of inculcation, who can stand, besides the aforementioned Dalai Lama? We can stand and we do stand (when we are not falling over laughing). For good or for ill, that's the breaks. It's why your future children may surprise you in their insistence that you must allow them to overindulge themselves in shiny toys that will one day be forgotten (as they move on to other shiny things). We Erisians and other assorted free beings (or at least beings trying to get free) have a choice. We also have some shiny things of our own that we never need submit ourselves or any part of ourselves to create or enjoy. We need not slave away at the endless treadmill of desires that sucks the soul from everything and then offers us merest slivers of that soul back to us for a price. We can have some sense to know that shiny new things and experiences never last and thus it is foolish to latch onto them for happiness or fulfillment. And what is fulfillment anyway unless you yourself define it for yourself? Nothing but a buzzword to hook you back onto the treadmill. And your endless plodding along the treadmill is not going to stop until you wise up.
The endless dazzling torpor will lead you nowhere fast as it convinces you to tell yourself that you are in fact going places, seeing things, and learning. Yet it is nothing more than torpor..."busy laziness" as the Tibetans say. So during this solstice time, no matter what religion or lack thereof you claim to observe, as you extinguish the lights (or fires or candles) and relight them to honor the Sol Invictus, the unconquered light, think about yourself and your freedom in the same light. Pause a moment to reflect upon how truly amazingly screwed up things are in this global market society. And remember, you are lights unto yourselves. You are the Golden Apples. You are the one Eris has cajoled, beckoned, and persuaded to listen to Her tell you that you are free. Now own up to it. (Otherwise we may have to poke you.)
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
PMM Co-Episkopos, Pan-Goddess Diddling Witch of the Coven of Macha, Arch-Deacon and Rabbi of the International Great Discordian Jihad, spokesperson of slack, and covert cohort of the Church of Eris. (And a whole lot of other amusing titles and credentials which may or may not have any relevance, depending on who you are and what you want.)
December 20th, 2005