------ Forwarded Message > From: "dasg...@aol.com" <dasg...@aol.com> > Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:00:22 EDT > To: Robert Millegan <ramille...@aol.com> > Subject: Trust No One and Nothing (Except Maybe Cockroaches) >
> The very fabric of society is breaking down around us. > What the hell is there left to believe in? > * Charlie Brooker <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charliebrooker> > * The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian> , Monday 13 July 2009 > * > http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/13/charlie-brooker-corrupt-in > stitutions-faith > <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/13/charlie-brooker-corrupt-i > nstitutions-faith#history-byline> > It's all gone wrong. Our belief in everything has been shattered by a series > of shock revelations that have shaken our core to its core. You can't move for > toppling institutions. Television, the economy, the police, the House of > Commons, and, most recently, the press ... all revealed to be jam-packed with > liars and bastards and graspers and bullies and turds. > > And we knew. We knew. But we were deep in denial, like a cuckolded partner who > knows the sorry truth but tries their best to ignore it. > > Over the last 18 months the spotlight of truth has swung this way and that, > and one institution after another was suddenly exposed as being precisely as > rotten as we always thought it was. What's that? Phone-in TV quizzes might a > bit of con? The economic boom is an unsustainable fantasy? Riot police can be > a little "handy"? MPs are greedy? The News of the World might have used > underhand tactics to get a story? What next? Oxygen is flavourless? Cows stink > at water polo? Children are overrated? We knew all this stuff. We just didn't > have the details. > > ... This is just one small part of the ongoing, almighty detox of everything. > There's been such an immense purge, such an exhaustive ethical audit, no one's > come out clean. There's muck round every arse. But if the media's rotten and > the government's rotten and the police are rotten and the city's rotten and > the church is rotten - if life as we know it really is fundamentally rotten - > what the hell is there left to believe in? > > The internet <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet> . Can we trust in > that? Of course not. Give it six months and we'll probably discover Google's > sewn together by orphans in sweatshops. Or that Wi-Fi > <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/wifi> does something horrible to your > brain, like eating your fondest memories and replacing them with drawings of > cross-eyed bats and a strong smell of puke. There's surely a great dystopian > sci-fi novel yet to be written about a world in which it's suddenly discovered > that wireless broadband signals deaden the human brain, slowly robbing us of > all emotion, until after 10 years of exposure we're all either rutting in > stairwells or listlessly reversing our cars over our own offspring with nary > the merest glimmer of sympathy or pain on our faces. > > What about each other? Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. > > We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The > Matrix. That bloke next door? Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. > > You? One pixel. One measly pixel. You haven't even got shoes, for Christ's > sake. > > As the very fabric of life breaks down around us, even language itself seems > unreliable. These words don't make sense. The vowels and consonants you're > hearing in your mind's ear right now are being generated by mere squiggles on > a page or screen. Pointless hieroglyphics. Shapes. You're staring at shapes > and hearing them in your head. When you see the word "trust", can you even > trust that? Why? It's just shapes! > > Right now all our faith has poured out of the old institutions, and there's > nowhere left to put it. > > We need new institutions to believe in, and fast. Doesn't matter what they're > made of. Knit them out of string, wool, anything. Quickly, quickly. > > Before we start worshipping insects. > > > > Can love help you live longer? Find out now > <http://personals.aol.com/articles/2009/02/18/longer-lives-through-relationshi > ps/?ncid=emlweuslove00000001> . > ------ End of Forwarded Message
