PISH-POSH FROM MY VIRTUAL SPACE 

Idle Musings of the Hypothetical Citizen

In his moments of supreme happiness; when he contemplated along the riverbank in early summer, after a light and quick rain, the hypothetical citizen would think about living in another era, anther land, another civilization. It was the fill of a lot of popular movies and TV shows. But, unlike those fabrications he viewed his adventures as based on the firmest reality possible.

He was fortunate because he was not freed by wealth to get so bored of life that decline set in rapidly. And he wasn't so poor that he lived as the vast majority lived; without resource, in tiny circles, occasionally haunted by a pain or a pleasure. No. He could use himself in ways never before attempted in human history. And if he succeeded wouldn't he bring something new into the world?

He envied the poor yokels of the past who had one large stimulus pointed at them throughout life; one that grew dull and tasteless. He counted his fellow citizens as living a much more challenging life that beat down on any and all, without rhyme or reason at times so the mind, finally, turned against itself. "They don't study what they perceive," he thought to himself as he moved closer to the city, the freeway, the airport. A hazy sun that he hardly noticed began to slide beneath thin, wispy clouds. As he looked around himself he had a sudden realization. No, everything around him whether in nature or created by human beings was studied ad nausem somewhere, in some cubicle. The clod of dirt was studied beyond anyone's imagination for the few in the world who had to know what a clod of dirt was exactly. After all, a clod of dirt could contain a universe of things that would kick-start a new epoch just around the next bend. No one really knew.

Wasn't the nation like the wealthy man who got so sick and bored of life that he created his own delusions until they did him in? And if the wealthy nation was destroying itself did it not implicate himself and the small circle of things that he cared about?

The nation was like a corrupt father who had lost his dreams and was condemning his wife and children to a horror show.

And the corruption was so complete that everyone wanted to be the decaying father rather than the sons struggling from under his shadow.

When he thought these thoughts the hypothetical citizen began musing about Canada or Belize. "I don't want to be around when it falls."

There were, no doubt, men in bars at that moment saying the same things. He thought to himself, "I'm not an old man or in a bar so perhaps my thoughts are connected to something I should investigate further."

He heard the political figure declare that "democracy is us; it is self-rule." He felt like an upbraided boy in the hands of one of his elementary teachers who told him things he knew ten times over. It was a sublime truth, no doubt about it. But then all people are not good so that must mean that self-rule can be not good at times. And we are always taught that if we get too full of ourselves and the power we have over ourselves, we are simply setting things up for a great fall.

And behind the mask was another.

And often the people were overcome by powers inside them they had no clue about. It made them mad in a kind of rational way. And the people, sometimes, were barely restrained by law and only because they feared prison or the mental institution.

Where, then, was the person who, in a perfect replica of self-rule, got beyond the people? What would happen in that case? Eventually such a creature would surrender himself to the dictates of a larger self-rule since it would be the only way he would be permitted to actively pursue his simple dreams.

© 2006 David Eide. All rights reserved.