AH, WE WERE ONLY CODDING YOU!

 (pictured above: the planning committee) 

Tomorrow you’ll wake up and eat and leave your building and find the whole world, everyone in the world, standing outside your front door. We’ll all be there, everyone, from all over the globe, rich, poor, famous, infamous, anonymous, all the people who read this blog and all the people who don’t. We’ll all be there and we’ll all be laughing at you. We’ll be laughing and pointing at you because you fell for our trick. The big trick we were all playing on you, yeah you, and you alone.

‘What trick?’ I hear your trembling mind inquire. Well, all of it really, the whole thing. Take money for a start. You don’t think we really use money do you? Jesus no, that was just a trick we were playing on you since you were born. Why would we use money? Look at the problems it causes, all the inequality, the starving people exporting food, all that madness. We were a bit surprised you went along with it actually but what were you to do I suppose. I must say, you did seem to like money at times. Anyway, we don’t use it. We don’t spend money because we are just given things and we don’t earn money because we just do things for each other. It’s a lot less complicated. That money trick got out of hand. I mean the markets, did you really think that was for real? Ha! Not at all.

Nationalism was just something we made up too. Why would people bother with that when you think about it? Patriotism? Good Lord, that would be absurd. What difference would it make where you’re from? Why would you base your identity on that? Why be so tetchy about it? And the violence! It’s nuts. It’d be like everyone with red hair having their own flags and marching about firing guns. Funny though, you seemed to get a bit patriotic yourself at times. You even stood up for that awful tune we decided to pretend was your national anthem. We used some of the worst musical compositions we could find as the anthems. For the laugh, y’know? Pompous dirges. Some of us were worried you’d cop on that the nationalism thing was all bullshit because the tunes were so bad but no, when you heard them you didn’t cop on, you stood up.

You stood up in church too. You stood up and sat down and knelt. Do I even have to tell you that religion was part of the gag? I mean, did you even look at the Pope and all the other crowd in the mad clothes, talking shite? How did you fall for that? I thought that part would be the giveaway myself. We took the idea of religion from a horror novel one of us wrote. He also came up with the idea of empires and wars and so on and we decided to trick you into thinking all that was history or the ‘news’. The news, Ha! The planning committee had some laugh coming up with that shite every day let me tell you.

I hope you’re not pissed off with us though. It was just a joke and you coped with it pretty well. I mean, considering the corner we painted you into and the world we forced you to endure, you didn’t crack up and behaved like quite a decent sort all things considered. I mean, you may not have done much to change things but you didn’t exactly endorse them either and you treated those close to you with decency and respect. Well, most of them. You were a bit of a shit to Chris Darcy while you were in school but besides that you were OK.

Yeah, I’m sorry. The joke went a bit far and we didn’t know how to stop it. It all got out of hand and we feel really bad about it now. I mean, we don’t really do bad things. Don’t get me wrong, the world isn’t perfect. There is still suffering. There is still illness and bereavement and lost love and jealousy and all that. People do disagree and fight and let each other down but we usually muddle through. Nothing ever ends in a war like we pretended. People usually make up and if they don’t well that’s a pity and they just agree to ignore each other but they don’t go killing each other or launching attack drones and all that. Ha! God, the stuff we came up with. What must you have been thinking at times? Anyway look, we’re sorry. We won’t do it again. Relax and have a beer. No, put your money away, it’s free. In fact you can throw that money in the bin. That’s all just pretend shite. You look a bit confused. You look a bit devastated. Sure, don’t worry about it anymore. It was all just joke. You may have got a bit attached to the way things were but it was all just a joke. Trust me, it’s much nicer in real life. You’ll find out tomorrow morning when you leave the house. We’ll all be there, all of us, pointing and laughing and all saying in unison ‘ah, we were only codding you’ and then you’ll see how things really are and how they should have been all along.