by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Note: (This post comes complete with a ‘fake editors’ comments i.e. me)
This is the magician trick that’s done on everyone. [Don’t be silly it can’t be everyone! -Ed ]
And this is why at forty most people have nothing behind their eyes. [That’s not very nice is it? – Ed]
It a tragedy, an exercise in skullduggery, an evil game and completely culturally normalized. [Shh don’t tell everyone – Ed]
Of course it starts at school (although in theory the unborn listens to empty platitudes of their office crank-parents in the womb) .
[Bloody schools! – I’m still getting over Mr McKnuckle-Rapp the Mats Teacher! -Ed]
The teachers are invariably ‘middle class upward striving types’, [Yet the used to be Poor! – Ed]
So they fawn over the kids whose parents have money, houses on hills, and job titles.
Obviously this ‘new money’ ‘low brow ‘ tendency gets worse as the schools supposedly get ‘better’ and suburbs become greener and leafier.
[Those poor kids in the private schools – that’s where bullying reaches dizzy heights -Ed]
You see I am convinced all the ‘good jobs’ in the cities that give ‘status’ will all kill you.
It is off course an individual thing in terms of the degree of punishment.
But only the clinically insane can avoid the metaphorical and sometimes literal grim reaper of the dark mega cities. [Isn’t it weird that being ‘clinically insane’ is now a great thing to put on you CV! – Ed]
They’ll either kill you literally (happens sometimes) or figuritively (is the norm).
So if you end up with a salaried job that all your old two-bit teachers fawned over.
Odds are you’re probably gonna end up quickly hating your life & the light will certainly drain from your eyes. [Oh you are being overly dramatic again – but then again you are an aging drama kid! – Ed]
You see the teachers & their kind (‘Professionals’ & I use that term loosely) are too wedded to the idea of ‘The Status Machine’.
‘The Status Machine’ can also be called ‘The Career Machine’ or just ‘The Machine’ they are the same thing.
This beasts natural habitat is naturally the mega-city with its many millions of inhabitants (that become its zombies). [Isn’t it odd how many people their are on Earth these days – no wonder it’s impossible to get a parking space! -Ed]
They (the two bit teacher/copycat professional types) reckon if you do a job that gives you ‘status’ then therefore this must make you happy.
This is absolutely horse shit. [Yet to a Tomato Gardener some ‘Horseshit’ is gold – Go figure! – Ed]
You see let me explain via an analogy. [We do love an analogy! – Ed]
I go by the ‘hobby thesis’ If you like something, then you have to like doing it minute to minute, hour to hour. [And where do you go these days to be assigned a hobby? – Ed]
In ‘The machine’ in the mega-city there are only jobs that have very bad minute to minute physical and mental realities.
The exception of course proves the rule (maybe someone romantically inclined working in a flower kiosk is having a blast). [Wouldn’t it be an interesting job – I’m sure they know which men and which lesbians are having the affairs – Ed]
They (Dark forces?) design it this way – “The Career Machine’s” main task is to confuse you into totally wasting your life.
And when this works thr result is illustrated perfectly by that great line of Bukowski’s: [Oh wait that’s dangerous to mention him! The third wave feminists don’t like him! -Ed]
“People are strange, about something insignificant they care very much about, yet something very big like the fact they are wasting their entire life barely registers in their minds at all (paraphrased)”.
The genius ‘Poet of Gutters’ was completely correct.
Of course everyone knows that a badly paid job in a mega city is usually a terrible mind-numbing thing.
That’s kinda obvias.
But the insanity really kicks in on the ‘seemingly well paid’ job in the mega-cities.
When someone is ‘well paid & has status’ this is just the hook and also the reward of The Machine.
The Hook part is because the people in The Machine never usually admit they hate their lives. [Note to self: Never admit to someone you hate your life – I did it once and got a nasty promotion! – Ed]
So some teacher (two-bit) can say ‘Look at Larry The Lawyer – he’s on 300K, be like him Timmy go to Law school’.
Meanwhile Larry the Lawyer each night gets home and drinks a twelve pack, smokes like a train and cries into his hands all night.
The Reward part (called a salary) is simply the Machine paying the person for giving the output of ‘Wasting their lives’. [OMG – I’ve been wasting my life, but at least I can buy the extra malty ‘Editors Ale’ to numb the pain! – Ed].
You could call it all part of the ‘soul contract’ – don’t you think it’s weird you have to sign your name to get a job?.
You may find it hard to believe that The Machine, aka The Career Macine, aka The Status Machine functions this way.
I’m sorry to burst your large kaleidoscope colored bubble – but it does. [I notice Kaleidoscopes are very pricey these days – Ed]
This is why when you have a Job-slot in ‘The Machine’ they work you into the ground.
The ‘work you into the ground’ part is not a accidental thing.
It IS the point.
Why do you think someone came up with the term ‘being worked into the ground’ in the first place?
This is because a Job in The Machine (in a mega city) is willingly joining up to a ‘Death Cult’. [Oh dear boy, you are once again being overly dramatic – I knew you should have been on a stage instead of holding a pen! – Ed]
This is why these Career Machine jobs happen and thrive the most in cities and more so in big (mega) cities.
Learn this: The Mega Cities are a celebration of The Dead.
The ground is covered in concrete.
Lighting is fake.
You stare like a Zombie at screens all day.
Water comes from taps or water coolers, there is no fresh water lake for miles.
You work in a chicken cubical made from factory produced artificial materials. [Hey hey now I will not have you disparaging the office cubicle – the doctors have made a lot of money out of people getting flus every week ya’know! Ahh Chooo! – Ed]
The social life (getting drunk doing drugs talking to fellow ‘Machine Losers’ in a dingy room) is artificial.
Your so called ‘friends’ all secretly hate you and would ‘knife you’ (dump you) in a second. [Yes that happened to me once – but I was able to buy some new AI friends at bargain basement prices – it was a ein win for all concerned other than the poor AI friend who had to put up with me and never complain – Ed]
If it’s a smaller (non-mega) city, you might be able to bludge a form of neutrality – neither happy or sad.
But you cannot cannot cannot indulge in The Machine AND be happy in the Mega-city.
It’s like saying you can jump in the sea and not get wet and salty.
This is a misnomer of the Teachers, The Professionals The ‘City Dwellers’ that are in a cognitive dissonance daze. [Poor humans – always in a daze these days – their is only one solution – sell them stuff before they get smarter! – Ed]
Victims of brainwashing.
The Machine likes to get people to build their own prisons around them (e.g. mega mortgage, snob-wife-husbands, weirdo kids that can’t throw or fish).
But their is some light that often breaks through:
It is called (propagandized) by The Machine as the famed ‘mid-life crisis’. [Oooh yes I had a bad one of those – I ended up getting married to another mid-life crisis person needless to say we both wished we were twenty years younger – Ed]
But it is in truth an ‘mid life awakening’.
But The Machine must by neccesity invert this into something bad (else the mega city life-stealer would die).
This is because The Machine wants the person to think their ‘spiritual awakening’ is a disease.
They (dark forces?) push the ‘death cult’ solution to the mid life crisis/awakening:
Sports cars, Sleeping with someone twenty years your junior, Cocaine, Marathon running etc (escapism).
This unfortunately usually works all too well for The Machine.
I mean the Mega-City broadcast media – the cultural brainwashing dragnet – helps makes it so.
Yes friends, it takes a special spiritual warrior who chooses to stay in the mid life crisis i.e. awakening. [Good god man! You wan’t to stay in the mid life crisis? That’s some courageous stuff akin to the D Day landings! – Don’t do it! – Ed]
That warrior says F YOU to The Machine, says F YOU to the Mega-City Says F YOU to the City Career Zombies.
And returns to the countryside, where the ‘Life Cult’ still (albeit imperfectly) exists.
Where the fresh water pools in lakes and rivers, where unconcreted ground is walked upon, and where green abounds.
Where the people are ‘backward’ (mostly in a good way) and helpful and will give you the benefit of the doubt.
In these Life Cults you can actually be ‘poor and happy’ (the term here is not a scammy call to action).
So what do you Lawyers, Doctors, Executives, General Managers, Office Consultants, Town-Planners think?
Am I right?
Will you be happier if you leave the Death Cult in the Mega City and move to the Life Cults in the countryside? [Wait do joining ‘life cults’ mean you need to act like a old hippy all over again?]
Think about it – even the very ‘death culty’ Adolf Hitler had his Berghof hideaway in the Bavarian Alps. [I can’t believe you put his name to print! The Germans won’t like that at all! – Ed]
If he’d stayed in Linz and worked as a farm hand, then a carpenters laborer, The War (& Gas Chambers) would have never happened.
Hitler is a very good worse case scenario – this is what happens if you join the Death Cults, The Machine, The Career Machines.
So I say to all you salaried ‘cog-diss’ Zombies in the mega cities – stop being like Hitler ya’ here!
Quit the mega-city-death-cults, embrace the mid-life crisis and move to the countryside!
Get any job.
Watch the light in your eyes return. [Yes I’m feeling my eyes brighten up after reading all this positivity – Ed]
Your wrinkles abate.
Your smile widen.
Kind new friends will in time appear. [I need some new friends – why else would I be here doing this dross for a blog no one reads? Ier I mean ‘keep up the good work Anton! (if that is your real name) – Ed]
Or if you really want to just stay dead, and keep getting paid poorly to human sacrifice yourself.
The choice is yours my mega-city friends.
Oh and I should say that it (quit thuh mega city death cult & move to the city) has worked for me – I’m as happy as I can be.
P.s. Of course this ‘move to the country’ kick is nothing new. The 19th Century’s Thoureau (He wrote ‘Walden’ 1854) did it and built his cabin in Walden Pond, ‘lived deliberately’ and sucked the marrow out of life. [You bloody name dropper – I bey you haven’t read his book and just asked for a 300 word summary of it from Grok! Lazy Bastard! – Ed]
(P.s.s This is the part where I could say ‘now buy my book for only $39.99’ but I won’t do that – my book isn’t published yet and the (rough?) drafts are freely readable on this site).
P.s.s.s This is beside the point and self indulgent BUT – I wonder if ‘History’ will see me as a ‘crank’ or not. I guess if the mega cities continue to win the culture wars, I guess I’ll be ‘completely erased’ in true ‘burn the books fascist fashion’. Better to be a crank than erased I guess. But who knows, maybe I will reach the dizzy heights of ‘cult kiwi complainer slash barely known backwater philosopher’. NB: I guess if they do burn all the books the bragging rights are about which one they burn first – the ‘oldest ashes’ if you will.
[Yes that was self indulgent – as I have the last word here I must tell you this is the worst thing you’ve ever posted here – just as well I am here to be your Editor in chief @ keep you in line. Now get me a cup of Tea will you? this has been exhausting! – Ed]
Anton Martin Smith Writer 