Imagine if you had a friend who had the following characteristics and personality traits and behaved in the ways described below. 

Suppose that this friend considered it his sacred duty to visit you daily at your home and make a report to you of the day’s events, regardless of whether you asked for them or not. Out of the billion things that happen in the world each day, he would choose a minuscule number to tell you about. He would always be the one to decide, according to his own subjective preferences and whims, what are the most important stories of the day, and you would have no say whatsoever in those decisions. Inevitably, the stories would always be those that show the worst side of things, the worst side of life, the worst side of humanity. He would be determined to always discover and report back to you the lowest, vilest, most despicable acts of human behaviour and the most harrowing, most tragic, most horrible events that occurred that day.

In his reports, he would always interpret things in the most negative and alarmist way possible, not unlike a paranoiac who sees dire threats and perils everywhere. Not satisfied with indulging in his own paranoia, he would be intent on inculcating and infecting you too with his deranged fears and anxieties, thereby hoping that in such a way he would appear as sane. For in a world in which everyone has gone mad, it is the sane who would be considered insane.

He would pry, without any reservations, hesitations or scruples, into anyone and everyone’s business, and especially into every tragedy, every calamity, every catastrophe that befalls humanity, whether that tragedy be on an intimate, personal scale or on a larger scale. He would be fascinated and driven into raptures by natural and man-caused disasters, atrocities, massacres, explosions, crimes, fatal accidents, car crashes, murders, and fires. The more catastrophic the event and the greater the number of fatalities, the more excited he would become, the more frenetically he would talk about it, and with more enthusiasm he would pry into it. In his fascination and preoccupation with death and sufferings, his reports would bear a striking resemblance to the way Roman emperors entertained the masses with gladiator games. 

He would lack any morality or decency and would not think for one moment that he may be invading the privacy and exacerbating the suffering of those stricken by misfortune; there’d be no limits as to what he would do in order to sate his insatiable morbid curiosity. Indeed, if challenged about this, he would strongly insist that it is his God-given right to intrude into other people’s tragedies. He would then go as far as to claim that he is, in fact, providing you with a great and unique service that you should be grateful for, as otherwise you would have no idea what is happening in the world. 

Furthermore, he would be irresistibly drawn to and intrigued by power, wealth and fame, and, when not talking about the calamities and the tragedies, he would give much of his time and attention to telling you about the words and deeds of politicians, the very wealthy and the very powerful, the upper classes, royalty and celebrities.  Through the unceasing favouritism that he would show towards them in his reports, he would create an ambience of celebrity worship. Celebrities and their ilk would be portrayed by him as deities for ordinary mortals to look up to and revere, demigods whose every word and every action are heard and seen across the world.

Common people and their deeds and lives would be of little interest to him, except perhaps when they are struck by some great misfortune or when their lives end in unnatural circumstances, in which case he would condescend to giving them a few minutes of his time and attention, while displaying feigned sympathy and compassion. He would then quickly forget about them and never mention them again in his reports. If questioned about this approach, he would justify it by asserting that, no matter how cynical it may sound, the brutal reality is that it is only the deaths of ordinary people that merit mention in his reports, whereas the everyday lives of the common people are of no particular interest or importance to anyone.

If you were ever to ask him to not tell you about the doom and the gloom, the celebrities and the politicians, he would self-righteously retort that those are the important stories that must be told, adding as an emphatic argument clincher that in any case that’s what you really want and need to hear, even if you haven’t realized it yet. He would then accuse you of not caring about the humanity and characterize you as an egotistical, self-absorbed misfit who is out of touch with society and its values and morals.

In his reports, everything would be oversimplified and presented in dumbed-down terms. He would always depict reality in black and white terms and portray people as either heroes or villains, or as either victims or culprits, with no alternatives in between. He would never have the time nor the inclination to analyse the nuances of the events or to explore the complexities of people’s characters. His aim would never be to make you think or to make you question things; rather, it would always be just to make you accept as gospel truth the things he is telling you, to make you agree unquestioningly with his simplistic, binary views and judgements of people and events and to make you feel whatever feelings he is feeling—be it outrage, hatred, fear, anger. There would be no room left for any disagreement with his views; indeed, eventually, he would even go as far as to take it for granted that you must feel and think the same way as he does.

He would have no sense of proportion: he would blow up trivial matters as if they had global significance and would treat matters of global importance as if they were trivial matters of no consequence, if not ignore them altogether. Nor would he have the ability to look at things from a historical perspective—he would make no effort to connect the current events to events of the past or to put the current events into any kind of context. His overriding interest would be in the things happening at the present moment or which happened that very day, and that would be all he would talk about in his daily reports to you.

Sport would be seen by him as an absolutely vital and crucial part of the human existence and, regardless of what else occurred in the world that day, he would be sure to devote a good portion of his report to telling you about the latest developments, no matter how minor, in the world of sports.

Sometimes he would end his report with some lighthearted and offbeat story about the whimsical side of life, as if trying to reassure you that, despite all the tragedies and calamities, everything is still all right with the world.

He would be blind to the horrible inappropriateness of including stories of atrocities and disasters in the same report as sports stories and droll, quirky stories, and eventually you would become blind to it as well, not thinking twice about the inherent appalling incongruity of it all.

From what has been described above, it can be seen that this person would lack any emotional or intellectual maturity; be exceedingly morbid; preoccupied and obsessed with death, crime, disasters, tragedies, scandals, wealth, power, fame and sex; have no conscience or sense of objectivity; have a short attention span; be quick to anger and judgement, but would just as quickly forget about the things that were angering and upsetting him, and would move on to new things to satisfy his curiosity and titillate his nosiness. Any morality or principles this person might display would be just an act put on for his own ulterior purposes.

It would not be an exaggeration to describe his behaviour patterns as those of a voyeuristic sadist, given the way he would get big kicks from witnessing other people’s tears, pain, sufferings. Yet, not content with feeding off the misfortunes, agonies and adversities of others, he would then revel in describing them to you in great detail, taking particular delight in making you feel shocked, alarmed, fearful, outraged, angry, distressed, anguished, as well as impotent and small due to your inability to do anything about those events.

Still, he would be astute enough to realize that he cannot just keep hitting you with a metaphorical stick, and that he also has to offer you, via his reports, a metaphorical carrot. He would be aware that the way most people judge their life’s quality is by comparing it to the lives of others. And so, no matter how much you might deny it and no matter how abhorrent and unacceptable it might be to your moral values, his reports of the sufferings and misfortunes of others would, deep down (perhaps as far down as on the unconscious level), reassure you that by comparison your life isn’t so bad and inevitably make you feel better about your own life. That would serve as a strong incentive for you to keep listening to him, day after day, regardless of whether you are consciously aware of that motivation.

Through the steady, relentless barrage of his daily reports and because of his unvarying predilections for particular types of stories he would, over time, instil in you a certain underlying view of the world and man’s nature, eventually making you believe that his subjective, highly skewed, paranoid portrayal of reality is how reality actually is. In fact, you would become doubly confused: not only would you be unable to distinguish whether it is just his interpretation of reality or if it’s how reality really is, but additionally, due to you becoming so deeply ingrained with his portrayal of things, you would be unable to distinguish whether it is his view of reality or your view of reality. Effectively, the boundary between reality and interpretation of reality would become just as blurred for you as the boundary between his view and your view of the world.

You would be ill-advised to take this friend of yours at all seriously; his opinions and beliefs should be scoffed at and scorned, if not ignored altogether. He should be considered to be a hysterical fear-monger and scandal-monger; someone who should be avoided at all costs because of his unalleviatingly gloomy, depressing, paranoid and even apocalyptic perspective of things; because of his shameless snooping into the sufferings of others; for being emotionally unstable and having no control over his emotions; for being judgemental and subjective about everything; for having no sense of balance, no sense of reason and no sense of boundaries; for having the concentration span of an infant, quickly becoming bored with one story and turning to another to occupy his attention; for his unbounded and absurd obsession with power, wealth and fame, and for hypocritically pretending to care about the common people.

You would never accept his portrayal of reality or regard him to be a trustworthy authority figure who should be listened to when it comes to finding out about the world and what goes on in it, for you would clearly see how completely irrational, non-objective, opinionated and narrow-minded he is, and what a thoroughly unpleasant and dishonourable character he is, without any  principles, morals or personal standards. You would never want to be around this person, let alone allow him to visit you daily in your home, giving you his report each and every day.

Yet we all have just such a “friend” whom we welcome to our homes each and every day. We rely on this “person” for the vital information that informs our daily lives; information that influences our important decisions; information that determines our views of the world and of other people, cultures and countries, and indeed even our perception of ourselves. By willingly letting “him” tell us what to think and how to live, by readily swallowing up all that “he” tosses to us, we allow this “person” to turn us into bloodthirsty or indifferent voyeurs of tragedies and sufferings, we allow “him” to compromise our integrity and morality, and we let “him” shape our reality. It could even be said that we trust this “person” with our very lives, never seeing how blind we are to “his” methods and never realizing that “he” has us all fooled.

Part II

In this section the issues discussed in the previous section are explored in more detail, and further questions are raised about the way mainstream mass media operates.

The first question that must be asked is: How does the media determine which stories to report to its audience? How does the media decide, out of a myriad of events that happen in the world every day, which are the important, newsworthy stories that must be told, and which stories can be ignored? What is the reasoning behind their decisions?

Given that the media either has a limited time span (in case of TV news programs) or a limited page span (in case of newspapers), the thousands of news stories that take place every day around the world need to be culled down to just a small number, so that the remaining news stories will fit exactly into a half-hour or one-hour news program, or into a newspaper of X number of pages. A very thorough elimination process must take place, during which the great majority of news is discarded; thus, the media must obviously have a method through which it winnows out the unnewsworthy stories from the newsworthy stories.

Yet has this method ever been made transparent by the media and shared with its audience? Or have its details been purposely kept secret, out of the concern that if the public were informed of it, they would find it completely unacceptable? Or could it indeed be that the media chooses which stories to report in an erratic and arbitrary manner, and that there is no rhyme or reason to its decisions, other than its own subjective, idiosyncratic criteria as to what constitutes an important story?

The next question that needs to be asked is: Does the media actually give its audience what the audience want to see and read about? Does the media provide the audience with what the audience believes to be the important stories, or is it the case that the media convinces its audience that what it provides are the important stories the audience wants and needs to see? Is it the case that it is the media that makes its audience become interested in and concerned about those issues in the first place, so that the audience now believes that the media only reflects their views as to what are the important and interesting stories, whereas it is the media that originally created those views in the audience? Has the media, through its unchanging, persistent preference for a particular type of material, made its audience believe that those are the issues that are important, vital, and fascinating? Consequently, does the audience accept without question that those are the stories the media must report and that they, the public must watch and read? Or perhaps it is a two-way process, with both media and audience influencing, reflecting, and reinforcing each other’s views?

The third question that needs to be asked is: What kind of message does the media send when it treats only the deaths of ordinary people as newsworthy, but not their lives? What view of humanity does the media convey when it devotes most of its time to the lives of the wealthy, the powerful and the famous, and only becomes interested in ordinary people’s lives when those lives end tragically or unnaturally? Surely this is an extremely elitist, harsh and unjust perspective on the worth of human life, and it seems obvious that such an attitude would never be accepted or tolerated in our ostensibly egalitarian society, yet the media gets away scot-free with propagating just such a view each and every day.

Another question that needs to be considered is: What does the media expect to achieve by repeatedly and incessantly thrusting reports of deaths, tragedies, and disasters into our faces? Why are they so intent on reporting those kinds of stories? What is it that we are supposed to feel, think, and do when confronted by stories of tragedies and deaths of people of whose existence we weren’t aware until that point? What can we do? How can we help? How can we change death? There are a number of possible answers to these questions.

The bleakest and most radical, yet not an entirely implausible, explanation is that the media is possibly doing it for its own twisted, sadistic purposes in order to induce pain, panic and sorrow in the audience, while hypocritically pretending to feel sadness. Yet surely the only thing the media feels is faux sorrow, because for the media it is just another news story, part of their job, and they quickly forget all about that story and shift their attention to another story. So, bizarrely, in that potential scenario, the media would try to make its audience feel authentic emotions, while media itself would only feel fake feelings.

An equally bleak and extreme, yet also not an entirely implausible, explanation is that the media is possibly doing it in order to allow its audience to indulge in sadistic schadenfreude at others’ misfortunes and pain, and in order for the audience to be reassured that their lives are not so bad by comparison. If this seems to be an overly dark and cynical view of human nature, it should be pointed out that even though a person might not evince such callous behaviour publicly, it is entirely possible that in the privacy of their homes and in the privacy of their minds they would act, think and feel that way. And besides, the realness of those who appear on TV news programs or in newspapers is intrinsically diminished by that very fact, for they are automatically more remote and less tangible than the people one interacts with in the outer world. That potentially gives one the license to be indifferent and uncaring towards the plight of the people in news reports.

Another possible explanation (and one that is obviously related to the explanation immediately above) is that the media is only providing its audience with what the audience itself desires. If that is the case, then it is a sad indictment indeed upon the modern society, for it means that our society wants and needs those stories of violence, murder, catastrophes to satisfy its morbidity and bloodthirstiness. It would then follow that while our society prides itself on being law-abiding and highly civilized, its citizens actually behave in ways no better than those barbaric ancient Roman crowds that avidly watched the fights to the death in the arenas.

A more moderate explanation would be that the media is possibly doing it as a way of keeping the masses law-abiding and in fear—by showing them what happens when laws are not obeyed. For example, a very common news story is that of fatal car accidents. Surely, by reporting this kind of a story, the media is also conveying, directly or indirectly, a warning that if the road rules are not followed then this is what happens. Yet, even if this is a valid explanation, it is still only a partial answer as to why the media feels impelled to keep telling you those stories of deaths, tragedies and disasters, for surely the media plays a much bigger and more complex role than just being a broadcaster of public warnings. (Exactly what that role is would, however, require another article to address.)

It should be noted that this article is not about the bias the media may display in its reporting of news, overtly or otherwise. Rather, it concerns itself with deeper and more fundamental issues: What exactly is the connection between reality and the way the media interprets and portrays it? How does the media’s interpretation of reality shape the way its audience perceives reality? How does the media affect our views of the world? Does the media have a hidden agenda to influence the minds of its audience, and if so, what are the methods they use to instil their opinions into us?

If it appears by this point that the media has interwoven itself inextricably into the very fabric of our lives, and that we have no chance of ever liberating ourselves from its insidious grasp and its inflexible power over us, then imagine if you will a utopian scenario whereby we live in a world in which the media no longer exists; a world in which the media no longer intrudes incessantly into our lives; a world in which we are no longer ceaselessly bombarded by its paranoid ravings and no longer confronted at every turn by their reports of disasters, tragedies, catastrophes; a world in which we are able to form our own view of the world based solely on our own direct, personal experiences, rather than experiencing the world vicariously via the TV news programs and newspapers and having our opinions, beliefs, attitudes and our very reality moulded by the media; a world in which we no longer sacrifice our principles, our integrity, our morality, our decency on the altar of mainstream mass media; a world in which we are free to just live our own lives and die our own deaths.

Sure, such a scenario may sound hopelessly naive and unrealistic. Yet, perhaps hundreds or thousands of years from now, it will finally be realized how the media are just carrion flies that feed off tragedies and spread the diseases of meaninglessness and misery, and how gullible and short-sighted people were in allowing the media to interfere into and mar their lives each and every day.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The final version of this piece is still to come, as I still want to work more on its language, wording, expression, structure, etc. and there are still some other ideas that I haven’t yet added to the piece. (For example, there’s my idea that, in some ways, news programs and newspapers serve the same function that memento mori served in medieval times, for they keep reminding you of death, over and over again. But whereas the medieval memento mori had a definite function in imbuing people with theological and moral lessons, the aim that the media has in talking about death over and over again is less clear and certain. It is entirely possible that even the media itself has not formulated clear and lucid reasons as to why it is always talking about death. But of course the modern man would recoil at the thought of such macabre, morbid and gruesome concept as a memento mori in our modern lives. The concept of a memento mori would be seen as macabre and overly superstitious by modern man. And yet, the modern man accepts with equanimity and without any argument the disguised memento mori that he is confronted with daily via the news. Seemingly, we live in an enlightened, modern, progressive society and yet, still, we have memento mori all around us, constantly confronting us and assaulting us via the mass media, so that their presence in our lives is even more ubiquitous than the presence of memento mori in the life of the medieval man.)

          (Ouro)Boris and I

I have a domesticated ouroboros for a pet. I have named him OuroBoris, which is a pun on his common name, as an indication that he belongs to me and is a part of me, Boris, and because of the many affinities, connections, and similarities that we share.

Ouroboroses have a superficial resemblance to hoop snakes, but there are some obvious differences between them, both in appearance and behaviour. For one thing, a hoop snake eventually lets go of its tail, but OuroBoris always keeps his tail in his mouth. Also, hoop snakes are cold to touch and have a rubbery feel to them, whilst my ouroboros’ body is warm and firm. The most salient distinction between them lies in their eyes. Hoop snakes have dead, reptilian eyes with an empty expression in them, but OuroBoris has deep, human-like eyes, containing within them the wisdom of eons, wisdom such that a hoop snake could never possess.

As I mentioned, OuroBoris never lets go of his tail which must mean that his mouth is permanently fused to the other end of his digestive tract. Therefore, he keeps recycling and redigesting the same piece of food, with the food going in a perpetual loop from his mouth to the end of his digestive tract, and then from the end of his digestive tract straight back into his mouth. Consequently, I don’t need to feed him at all, and I save a lot of money on pet food.

Obviously, with his tail stuck permanently in his mouth, OuroBoris cannot utter any sounds, even if he was capable of it. Perhaps if his tail were to be somehow removed from his mouth, he would have the capacity of speech, and he would then say the wisest and most beautiful things to me. However, we have no need for words for our communication is on a higher and deeper plane than lame, unwieldy, coarse lumps of words. OuroBoris and I speak oceans just through our eyes alone. I am always learning new cosmological and existential secrets and mysteries from his eyes, even when glancing into them but for an instant. His eyes communicate to me ineffable, transcendent, eternal, infinite truths that could never be conveyed via words. We spend long periods of time holding our heads close to one another, gazing deeply, just like two lovers, into each other’s eyes, and forgetting about everything else. If I could, I would look inside his eyes forever, and would be happy to do nothing else with my life, and no one could ever tear me away from those eyes.

My ouroboros and I spend a lot of time together. I often take OuroBoris for walks outside, or rather, I roll him down the pavement like a wheel. He particularly enjoys being pushed down steep hills, gaining enormous speed on his way down. By swallowing more of his body, he can reduce his diameter, and I can then wear him as an exotic ring, bracelet, or necklace. Sometimes, he even lets me twirl him around my waist like a hula hoop. OuroBoris always wins when we play hide-and-seek, because he is able to swallow himself completely and thus become invisible. Occasionally, he wraps his entire body around me, and I no longer know where I end and he begins.

Well-meaning solicitous people keep telling me (with my welfare in mind, of course) that ouroboroses are not genuine animals, that they are just imaginary mythological creatures, but I don’t care at all. In fact, it would suit me just fine, and it would be quite apt and not at all strange if my pet were indeed a mythical creature that doesn’t exist in the real world, for I have never felt too real myself. Indeed, sometimes I wonder who is more real and who is writing this story – me or OuroBoris? Judging by how greatly OuroBoris enjoys life and with what ardency he embraces reality, it seems to me as if he is the real being, well-adapted to the world, and I am the imaginary one, incapable of ever fitting in.

In any case, as mentioned above, me and OuroBoris have a lot in common. Ouroboroses have always had an association with constant rebirth, bringing oneself to life, and the union of conscious and unconscious worlds, and those are precisely the ideals that I strive for in my life and in particular with my creativity and writing. For example, many of my stories come from dreams, and by turning those dreams into stories I make the unconscious conscious. Moreover, when I write, I always endeavour to transmute into words those truths that are unspoken and ineffable, that people cannot or refuse to confront and articulate, truths which lie buried deep within the unconscious bedrock. And I experience constant rebirth, always sloughing off the old self and begetting a new one, forever undergoing a transformation of my character, my inner world, my creativity. Nothing is ever stable or constant in my life. Additionally, just as OuroBoris is always swallowing his tail, so I too am always swallowing my feelings, my pride, my pain, my joy, and my sadness, never making them evident to anyone, not even to myself.

Occasionally, I do wonder whether I give too much of my time to OuroBoris and whether he is taking over my life. And what if I am identifying too much with him? Could he be taking over my identity as well as my life? But I quickly push such thoughts away, feeling ashamed to be even thinking such horrid things about my beloved pet.

I must admit though that, ultimately, OuroBoris eludes all comprehension and control. He might reveal all the mysteries of existence and the Universe to me, but the one mystery that he won’t reveal is the mystery of who he really is. I hardly have any control over what behaviour patterns he might exhibit next, and I very rarely can grasp what the motivation, meaning and function of a particular behaviour of his might be. Nor do I ever know what secrets and truths his eyes might convey to me next. Such a situation is frustrating yet also rewarding, for he keeps surprising me and challenging my mind with his actions and his revelations. Trying to have control over OuroBoris and trying to understand him and his behaviour is like trying to have control over and trying to understand your dreams. Sure, there are periods when there is perfect communication and agreement between us, but then those periods vanish in an instant, just like a dream. In a way, the comparison to a dream is quite apt, for an ouroboros is after all (or at least that’s what some claim it to be) a mythical being. If OuroBoris is, indeed, a dream being that exists solely within the collective unconsciousness of mankind, then it is only to be expected that his ways and behaviour would be almost beyond my control and comprehension. I just have to be satisfied with what little authority and understanding that I do possess.

Or perhaps, rather than a dream being, OuroBoris is merely a symbol or a metaphorical entity representing something in my inner or outer worlds? Or what if OuroBoris and I are merely fictional characters in an allegorical parable that endeavours to convey some essential deep truths about existence and reality—truths that I myself, am, alas, blind to and can not comprehend. But these are, probably, just futile, irrelevant speculations that are neither here nor there.

I recall hearing somewhere that ouroboroses are eternal creatures that possess an infinite diameter, which only appears to be finite when they are in the folded circular state. If that is indeed the case, then it must be that my OuroBoris is just a tiny segment of a limitless ouroboros, and other parts of him are probably being looked after in other homes by other people, and some parts of him are possibly living out in the wild all over the world. It would also then mean that my OuroBoris must have had many owners prior to me and will have many more owners after me, spending only a tiny portion of his life with me. If so, then I want to be sure that I leave a special mark in his memory, and that he will remember all my kindness and unconditional love for him.

Even if I don’t possess an entire ouroboros for the entirety of his lifetime, I would still be enormously grateful for and proud of being the owner of just an infinitesimal part of him for merely an infinitesimal period of his life, for he has taught me so much. The most important lesson that OuroBoris has taught me (as this lesson has had so many crucial consequences for my life) is how to bend my body identically to the way that he bends his body, so that my mouth connects with the other end of my alimentary canal. By contorting my body in such a way, my existence has changed fundamentally and for the better as, just like OuroBoris, I never need to ingest new food again.

                                                              ***

‘What a ridiculous story I have written,” thought the ouroboros to himself in frustration, as he dropped the pen out of his mouth onto the writing desk, folded himself back into his usual circular position, with his tail in his mouth, and filled his hungry stomach with warm recycled mush.

‘I must be losing it, I am writing absolute garbage, creating bizarre, nonsensical worlds and creatures. No publisher is going to believe or accept such a high fantasy of some fictitious bipedal animal keeping an ouroboros as a pet, of that I am quite sure. The preposterous idea of us, ouroboroses, the infinite, immortal, all-wise, all-knowing beings, the repositories and founts of all truths and all mysteries, being the playthings of some lowly finite beings who occupy but a speck of space and exist but for an instant of time. How could such primitive creatures have sufficient power and intelligence to keep one of us as their pet? How could such ephemeral beings possess any knowledge and understanding of existence, the world and reality?

‘To endow these creatures with cognition, intellect, and existence is beyond the scope of all probability. Such beings could never exist in the real world. Even within the context of a fictional story it is too implausible and far-fetched (bordering indeed on the profane) to bestow reality upon them. For one thing, how likely is it that there could be such freakish animals with unwieldy, awkward appendages attached to and sticking out of their torsos, destroying the smoothness and the streamlined contours of their bodies? Creatures that are incapable of folding themselves into the perfect shape of a circle, and instead spend their whole lives positioned in a crooked and precarious perpendicular stance? Beings who, because of their mortality, would be ceaselessly haunted and confronted by death, and thus would be incapable of devoting themselves fully to life? Beings that baulk at or are incapable of re-eating and re-digesting in perpetuity the same piece of food, and thus would be condemned instead to spending their whole lives looking for and fighting for new sustenance to consume? How can there be a world in which the predominant and paramount preoccupation and activity of every living creature is to struggle for, search for, and ingest new food, each and every day?

‘No, I can’t write this story. Potentially, this story could even be judged as and condemned for being politically incorrect and derogatory to ouroboroses, particularly because I bring into question the very reality of ouroboroses’ existence, even if only within a fictional setting. And then I would be in all sorts of trouble. And, in any case, I can’t even think of a good ending for this story. I’m going to scrap it altogether and write a conventional pet story instead.’

                                                Boris and I

I have a simple and finite creature for a pet. I have named it Boris, both because it rhymes with my name, and as an indication that it belongs to me and is a part of me…

The world awoke one bright morning to find that the Sun was gone, replaced by a circular cardboard cut-out that looked just like a child’s drawing. The cut-out was roughly coloured in by a yellow pencil, with some of the colouring straying beyond the circumference of the disc and staining the blueness of the sky. Short cardboard rays were coming out of the rim and a smiley face was sketched inside the circle.

After mankind recovered from the shock of losing their beloved star, urgent plans were made to locate it and put it back in its rightful place. Great rewards were offered to anyone who could provide information or clues as to its whereabouts. Police forces around the globe allocated their best men to try and pinpoint who was most likely to commit such a heinous act. Crime organisations were pressured to reveal if this was their doing and, if so, how much did they want for the Sun’s safe release. The most prominent clairvoyants and psychics were called upon to use their extrasensory abilities to help find where the Sun might be held against its will.

Despite these exhaustive efforts, the Sun remained missing, although many continued to cling desperately to the hope it would still be found alive.

With time’s passing, the pain of losing the Sun became less acute. The world slowly grew accustomed to the substitute and even began to appreciate its benefits. People understood how lucky they were that this impostor gave out the same amount of warmth and illumination as the original star. The physicists were pleased that the replacement exerted an identical gravitational force, so that Earth’s orbit remained unchanged; the workers were relieved that the stand-in did not increase their hours of labour, and the farmers were thankful that the cardboard disc provided an equivalent quantity of light to nourish their crops.

Eventually, it was seen as quite appropriate to have a bogus Sun up in heavens, given that so much else was phony in society: fake tans; artificial noses on artificial faces; feigned smiles and laughter; fabricated, unnatural foods; living counterfeit lives on the computer. Many believed the substitute was put in the sky as a sign of the divine approval of humanity’s false ways. Consequently, it was concluded that unauthenticity is the true nature of man.

Centuries passed and there was nobody left on Earth who had experienced the glory of the original Sun. The crudely coloured cardboard disc with its cardboard rays and smiley face was now the only sun this world had ever known. Lovers swooned under the warm beauty of its radiance; artists, imbued with inspiration, painted masterpieces of luminous colours depicting the circle in all its vibrant glory; composers wrote symphonies dedicated to the perfection of its proportions; poets extolled the elusive enigma of its smile in their sonnets and religious worshippers thanked their Maker for gifting the Earth with such a miracle of nature—the Substitute Sun.

There once was a Fable which desperately wanted to share itself with the world. To do this it needed a cast to perform it, ideally consisting of animals that knew how to talk and act like people. The animals did not have to be great actors, for the plot and the dialogue of the Fable were really quite simple and yet, at the same time, highly symbolic and conveying a moral lesson.

The Fable first approached its old friend Kevin the Kangaroo, asking him if he would like to participate and promising him he would be the leading character in the story. “So sorry, mate” Kevin boomed in his deep voice, “but the mating season is coming up and I need to build up my muscles to fight off the rivals.”

The Fable was a bit disappointed but didn’t allow itself be down for too long. It next asked its chum, Edna the Echidna, if she would like to have a starring role.

“Oh I’d love to, I really would, darling,” Edna cooed with an apologetic smile, “but my quills have become quite dull and I need to sharpen them so I can protect myself against the barbs of my frenemies and social rivals.”

The Fable was disheartened, for it had already envisaged the exact part Edna would play in the story, but eventually the Fable perked up and went to see its good buddy, Wally the Wombat.

“Wally, I promise you, you will get the top billing and be mentioned in every second line of this tale!” the Fable declared, not without some urgency in its voice.

“Oh my dear Fable!” Wally wheezed, for his mouth was full of dirt, “my burrow has fallen into disrepair and I have to renovate it before the rainy season starts.”

Although it took some effort, the Fable did manage to accept this rebuff with equanimity and persevered in its resolve to teach the world its moral lesson.

Last on the list was its close pal Paddy the Platypus. “It’d be much to my liking to be a part of your tale,” Paddy quacked through his duckbill, “but I promised my dear wifey I wouldn’t participate in no strange projects no more. Me missus really came down hard on me that time I got myself involved in an Aboriginal Dreamtime myth and I never heard the end of it.”

What was the Fable to do? If it didn’t find a cast, how could it ever enlighten the world with its moral? It thought about assuming another form, perhaps that of a Proverb or an Aphorism, in which it wouldn’t need any characters to convey its message. Yet the Fable knew, all too well, that fables are the most ancient and effective way of teaching the rights and wrongs of conduct, of revealing the truths, fallacies and pitfalls of existence.

The Fable looked back with frustration, annoyance and dejection at all the brush-offs and excuses it received from its friends. Their words of rejection kept running through its mind, and that is when a marvellous flash of inspiration hit the Fable. The Fable suddenly realised that the trials and tribulations it went through looking for the cast was a fable in itself! It saw clearly that the things its pals said and did were simple yet full of symbolism, just the way it should be in a fable. And best of all…there was a moral lesson that fitted in perfectly with this chain of events!

No matter that this moral lesson was completely different from the one the Fable originally intended to share with the world. On the contrary, this message was all the more powerful and convincing, for it came from real life circumstances as experienced first-hand by the Fable rather than from animals acting out parts in the fictional scenario the Fable had initially planned.

And now, before it could take a well-deserved rest, there was only one thing left for the Fable to do and that was to state the moral in a succinct statement:

Lessons learned from the fable of life are the most important lessons of all.

I possess a cherished childhood memory which persists to this very day. It is the middle of a sunny summer day. I am running down the stairs, quickly and excitedly, with my neighbours following me. We all want to see the Sun. It just fell down in the front yard. I saw it coming down like an overripe cantaloupe, staining the sky with sticky, succulent golden juices. There it is, lying on the ground, a giant orange, trampling the grass it landed on, squirting its warm essence all over our bodies. The neighbourhood dogs are running around, barking at this strange visitor. I approach it warily. I touch it. It is warm and beautiful, glistening in the mid-noon light. I remember well the feelings of amazement, incredulity, inexplicable joy overwhelming me and the comical expressions of confusion on the faces of my neighbours.

This memory is so vivid and life-like that, despite its patent impossibility, I still refuse to accept that this event could never have taken place.

Memory works in bewildering ways. An invisible, unseen Judge takes control of our sensory input and, like a master sculptor who breathes life into rough, mute stone, the Judge works the raw data into a work of art. Scenes that at the time seemed insignificant and totally unworthy of our attention emerge like the ugly duckling, full of stature, grandeur and beauty. Our mundane, trivial, everyday experiences turn into possessions that are treasured forever.

Just as Nature abhors vacuum, so the Judge detests meaninglessness and arbitrariness. So thoroughly does he imbue the events of the time past with meaning that we often look back and sigh, “Oh yes, it all makes sense now!”

The Judge is at once a great dramatist and a master propagandist. He knows that to make the greatest impact and to have the greatest emotional and mental effect, the unfolding of the events needs to follow some logical pattern, with preferably a climax at some stage of the proceedings.

And so when we remember, we remember not in the temporal order but rather in the order that has the greatest dramatic force. Our recollections are stripped of all unnecessary details, of all that would not contribute to the melodramatic content. Just the vital core, the heart of the experience remains.

Propaganda works by reducing the issue to its lowest common denominator, and by incessant iteration of a simple and direct message. Have not we all been affected by a memory that keeps flashing in our minds non-stop, again and again, enraging us, turning us into beings of hate.

We also should not forget that the Judge is a superb fabulist. However, his fabrications are not just some fanciful, unbelievable scenarios; rather he counterfeits reality, producing specimens that are indistinguishable from the genuine article and intermixing his sham creations with veracious recollections. How well he knows the structure of reality to be able to produce samples that have all the hallmarks of real life, so that at times we are unable to tell whether something really did happen or if it is one of the Judge’s forgeries.

It must be admitted, though, that the creative skills of the Judge fluctuate wildly. Oftentimes he is a terrible cook, putting too much sugar into the dishes he concocts. Consequently, many of our recollections have a cloying, saccharine taste to them, with the raw experiences of harsh, stark reality transformed into idyllic, fairy tale-like versions of life. Occasionally he is a master chef, for unlike natural foods that spoil, sour and rot over time, some reminiscences acquire, as time passes, more and more delectable and subtle flavours.

Sometimes, due to oversight or perhaps overwork, the master hand of the Judge fails. As a result, we experience disjoined impressions: we recall a face but not the voice; a familiar scent cannot be pinpointed to a time and place; a particular scene remains but its context disappears. Or could it be that this is perhaps the Judge’s idea of fun, reminding us not to take him for granted, teasing and tantalising our minds so that when we finally do retrieve the full memory, we would value it all the more.

But maybe we should not be so critical of the Judge’s work. After all, he repeatedly acts like a doting mother, anaesthetising our wounds, dulling the sharp edges of the past, effacing the hurt, the embarrassment and the pain. The majority of our recollections are but an expurgated version of the original experience, painted in softer hues and purged of the hurtful aspect. We look back at our previous troubles, snicker with a knowing air and mutter to ourselves, “If only I had problems like that now.”

When we reminisce, we enter a paradoxical state of existence. At the same instant, we span two disparate dimensions. We dissociate ourselves from the present, the eyes stop registering the surroundings, the brain stops analysing the incoming information. No longer are we harried by our environment or by our concerns. The work of Time is undone. Slowly we travel back to a loved one, to our childhood and become one with our past self. Old men lose their wrinkles, loose flesh becomes taut, muscles regain their long-gone strength. They have imbibed the Elixir of Youth and are now running around with their best friend and hearing their dear mothers calling them home for lunch. They are the centre of attention now, life’s possibilities open to them once more, no longer somebody’s neglected grandfather.

Is it really a sin to live in the past?

The ability to bring dead, vanished past back to life is a priceless, magical gift that every human being possesses. How poorer would our lives be without our memories—the souvenirs of the mind.

I recently asked myself, ‘What if our pets were to write a book analysing our behaviour from their point of view? How would they interpret and explain our actions, our drives, our fears, our desires? What kinds of insights into our own lives, our own behaviour could we gain from their perspective?’

I have begun to create just such a book. Below are some extracts from it:

“We 21st century dogs are different from the dogs of the 20th century; we are wiser, more advanced, more knowledgeable, more cynical, more jaded—we’ve been around the neighbourhood block a few times. Nowadays, it’s hard to teach young dogs new tricks, let alone teaching old dogs new tricks, for we modern dogs are more reluctant to blindly obey our Masters’ orders.”

“We must admit that our efforts to understand our Masters are inherently stymied and constantly undermined by our Masters’ near-inability to communicate in any intelligible language. They are incapable of expressing their thoughts and feelings in a coherent, lucid sort of manner, and our discourse with them is limited to only a few basic vocalisations that we have been able to discover the meaning of. Because these vocalisations are all concerned with elementary physical actions, such as sitting, we cannot convey to our Masters the true range and depth of our thoughts and feelings, and are unable to engage them in a higher dialogue. Consequently, there will forever exist an unbridgeable gulf between us and them.

Nevertheless, we persevere tirelessly at attempting to impart to our Masters that we 21st century dogs are not the simple, unsophisticated, naive creatures they apparently believe us to be. As we cannot communicate with them through language, we instead perform actions which hold deep symbolic significance, hoping our Masters will thereby recognise how enlightened and profound we really are.

For example, before lying down to sleep, we turn around several times in order to pay our respects to those who bring us our dreams—it is our way of praying for peaceful and pleasant dreams, dreams that will not disturb us or make us twitch in our slumbers.

Another example is when we are rolling around in the grass, with our legs pointing up to the sky and our backs upon the ground. In such a way we are giving thanks to the Father Sun for providing us with light and warmth, and we are also giving thanks to the Mother Earth for providing us with solid land upon which to walk, run, play and perform our purgative tasks.

Alas, it seems that our Masters cannot even comprehend our symbolic actions and instead apparently misconstrue them as arising out of our primal instincts.”

“Our Masters even lack the basic understanding of how to communicate correctly through facial expressions. For example, through hard lessons we have determined that when our Masters bare their fangs at us, it is not an aggressive gesture that warns of their intent to attack and bite, but is rather, absurdly and paradoxically enough, a benevolent expression of friendliness, pleasure and happiness.”

“In such laborious, tortuous ways we, bit by bit, compile rudimentary knowledge of our Masters’ behaviour. Yet, we must persist in trying to comprehend our Masters as best as we can, for even a partial, imperfect understanding of their actions, motives, fears, desires would be invaluable to us.”

“Our Masters are always rushing about, preoccupied by some mysterious concerns. They disappear for long stretches of time and just as we are about to give up all hope of ever seeing them again, they rematerialise and we are overcome with joy and relief at the sight of them. The reasons behind our Masters’ frequent departures need to be investigated further.”

“Our Masters possess extraordinary (bordering on magical) powers. They are able to produce our nourishment from a place where before there was not even the faintest whiff of food. They can create, with no perceptible effort and using merely their bare hands, an empty space where there once stood an invisible—yet cruelly mocking our senses—impenetrable barrier. This compassionate act of wizardry of our Masters allows us precious access to our beloved outside playground/lavatory, where there is fresh air, green grass, wide open spaces, and where we are able to unburden ourselves of the foul substances within our bodies; otherwise we would remain imprisoned inside forever.”

“Our ancestors believed that the Masters are all-powerful, all-knowing and pure goodness; that nothing the Masters do is ever wrong, evil or senseless, even if at times the Masters’ actions appear to be absurd or malicious. The dogs of the past explained away the seemingly vicious, meaningless acts their Masters sometimes committed against them by arguing that we, mere dogs, lacked the perspicacity needed to fully comprehend the Masters’ motives and actions. If only we had the ability to see the complete picture from the Masters’ perspective, those dogs claimed, then the Masters’ deeds, no matter how violent or arbitrary they may seem, would always turn out to make sense and to be to the dogs’ benefit.

These days, we occasionally question whether or not our Masters are as powerful, as knowledgeable, as virtuous as we make them out to be. Perhaps the belief that our Masters possess superpowers and moral perfection arose because the dogs of the past surmised that if they were to accept this concept unquestioningly, the Masters would treat them better and feed them more. It is entirely possible that this idea was then passed down over the ages, without ever being challenged, and eventually assumed the appearance of an incontrovertible, absolute truth.”

“And yet, despite all these niggling doubts, we still love and revere our Masters unconditionally and only wish the best for them.”

“Several enduring questions confront us.

One question: Do our Masters have, in turn, their own Masters? If so, does each of our Masters have their own personal Master, or is there just one Master of all Masters? If latter is the case, does that Master of all Masters appear as omnipotent, omniscient, all-good to our Masters as our Masters appear to us? Does the Master of all Masters bestow the same love and care upon our Masters as our Masters confer upon us? Does the Master of all Masters sometimes also act in seemingly violent, senseless ways towards them, and do our Masters accept his incomprehensible deeds with the same grace and unwavering faith that we accept all of our Masters’ actions towards us, no matter how vicious or arbitrary they may appear to be? Do our Masters love the Master of Masters unequivocally, regardless of how he treats them, or do our Masters sometimes doubt the Master of Masters’ absolute goodness?

Another question: Given that each one of us has our own all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good Master, does it follow that all Masters are equal in their strength, wisdom and virtuousness? Or are some Masters more omnipotent, more omniscient, more perfectly good than others?

And another question: Why is it that our Masters cannot learn how to speak correctly and how to express themselves properly through their facial expressions, given that they are all-powerful and all-knowing?

But most puzzling of all, the issue that most deeply concerns and mystifies us is the presence of some malevolent entity which attacks our Masters even while they are safe and cosy in the giant, secure kennels, with us by their side. How it gains access to the giant lair is an enigma we are yet to figure out.

So far our observations have revealed that this creature possesses no solid body, has no claws or fangs, gives off no smell and moves in total silence. Nevertheless, despite its apparent intangibility, the powers of this implacable foe are formidable in their magnitude.

It is capable of distracting our Masters, taking their attention away from us. It can upset them to the extent that they become completely indifferent to us, and even incapacitate them to the point where they no longer care for us. Consequently, the solving of this mystery is of utmost importance and urgency to us all.

As yet, we have had no success in making any progress with this dilemma, apart from one tiny possible clue, although it may not be of any relevance or of any help in solving this problem. A vocalisation which sounds a lot like “black dog” is often uttered by our Masters when they are under attack by this sinister creature. Yet we fail to see how there could be any connection between this entity and a black dog, for a lot of us are not black, and so our Masters are obviously not referring to us. And in any case, it is impossible to believe that a dog of any kind, black or otherwise, would ever do anything as horrible to our Masters as what this creature does to them.

Perhaps we have been regarding this conundrum from a wrong perspective. Rather than looking at it straight in the face, what if we were to tilt our heads and look at it from an angle? The world always makes more sense when seen atilt, and this problem too might be easily and readily resolved from a different viewpoint.

But there could be an even simpler solution: if only our Masters were to disclose to us the whereabouts of this hateful enemy, we would rush at it with all our might, assail it with our teeth, deafen it with our shouts and scare it away forever.”

One day a new type of phone that you could use to call yourself appeared on the market. All one had to do was dial a certain number and one would be connected straight away with oneself. The quality of the reception was so good that the voice on the other end of the line sounded as if it was coming from the very same room.

Inevitably, there was some initial apprehension about using this phone, for no one quite knew what kind of a response they would receive when they rang themselves out of the blue for the very first time. What if their unexpected call was considered to be an impertinent and unforgivable invasion of privacy? Eventually, these fears subsided as most found that they were greeted with warmth and enthusiasm and their calls were seen as a pleasant surprise.

People rushed to purchase this new invention, which was marketed under the brand name “mePhone”. Suppliers could not keep up with the demand and there were ugly scenes as customers fought amongst themselves for the last available mePhone.

The advertising campaign for the mePhone was built around the slogan: “With the mePhone, there’ll be no more me-phoniness or lying to yourself!” and for once the reality corresponded exactly to the promotional claims, as it truly was a unique invention the likes of which had never been seen before.

For the mePhone to work properly certain procedures, as set out in the Owner’s Manual, had to be followed. First, the reception only worked in particular areas, access to which required an extra fee. Second, there was a strict time limit on how long you could spend speaking with yourself. And third, when using the mePhone, one had to wear special apparel that was sold separately from the phone. Also, the cost of a call was outrageously expensive, although some enterprising phone companies, hoping to capitalise on the popularity of the mePhone, for a while only charged a local call rate.

The high charge for using a mePhone was partly due to the technical complexities involved in establishing a connection, for there were many impostors who pretended, for their own twisted and devious reasons, to be the voice of your true inner self. Thus, a lot of specialist expertise was required to connect you to the real you. The biggest technical problem to overcome, however, was how to avoid getting a busy signal when calling yourself, for if you were calling yourself then that meant you were already on the phone and thus your line must, ipso facto, be engaged. So it was an astounding technological achievement that the creative wizards behind the mePhone were able to somehow surmount this seemingly unresolvable paradox and allow people to get through to themselves. How it was actually done remained, for obvious reasons, a tightly guarded industrial secret. There was speculation that it involved utilising the Many Worlds quantum theory, so that by using the mePhone a person was connected to themselves in another parallel Universe.

However, the steep costs and other inconveniences were more than outweighed by the benefits one gained from having a good chat with oneself, for no one ever had the time to stop and take a good, honest look at their lives. Everyone was always rushing about, preoccupied with the mundane details of existence, trying to silence the nagging questions of whether or not they were happy with their lives and if they were being true to their inner selves. The users of the mePhone could now catch up with all the things in their lives they never had the chance to think about before, to find out the vital news that fell by the wayside as they were speeding along the road of life.

Conversation flowed easily as people found that talking with yourself was a lot like talking to an old confidant you hadn’t seen for a long time and with whom the most intimate matters could be discussed candidly. Not infrequently tears were shed as truths one had been hiding from oneself for many years were revealed and conveyed in forthright terms. Conversations gained a confessional aspect, as darkest secrets and problems known only to oneself were divulged openly over the phone lines. Quite often, surprises were lying in store as people discovered what they were really feeling inside. At other times, the voice on the other end of the line would remind you of your long-neglected dreams, of desires and needs you had suppressed for far too long. Many found out they weren’t really happy in their places of employment. Some realised they had fallen out of love a long time ago. Others saw for the first time that they had deluded themselves as well as others into believing they had reached fulfilment. Quite a few recognised that they had become so comfortable with being miserable and disenchanted that they shrank back in fear when contentment appeared to be within easy reach. And so it was an enlightening and cathartic experience to be able to have a deep and meaningful talk with oneself.

Naturally, some were reluctant to use the mePhone, afraid of the frank and unvarnished truths that they might reveal to themselves, too scared to ask themselves what it is that they really wanted from life and what would make them happy. They had an instinctive aversion to self-exploration and self-discovery, due to their fear of what they might find lurking in the shadows and depths of their souls. Or, perhaps, they were afraid of what they might not find there, given how easy it was to deceive oneself that one possessed undiscovered talents and untapped potential hiding somewhere within. And so these people avoided using the mePhone, for it had an unparalleled ability to demolish all the delusions with which they comforted themselves throughout their lives.

The mePhone became so popular that it turned into an obsession for some users who spent all their time listening to and talking with themselves, finding it to be much more satisfying and fascinating than conversing with others.

Alas, for an unfortunate few, no matter how many times they tried, they just could not reach themselves on their mePhones; either no one would pick up the mePhone on the other end or if it was picked up, it would be hung up as soon as one said “hello” to oneself. In some cases, a connection could not be established due to the line being broken or the number always being engaged or disconnected.

In a way, it was a brilliant invention—both going against the zeitgeist, for the predominant trend was to avoid introspection, yet, at the same time quite fitting for the times, for everyone was communicating endlessly using all kinds of phones, having superficial conversations via texting, emails, tweets and instant messaging, yet never once listening to their own true inner voice. Consequently, all connection to oneself was lost and people were living unauthentic lives, deaf and blind to their own feelings, needs, desires. With the mePhone, one was able to satisfy the insatiable need for electronic devices and yet, at the same time, engage in deep, invaluable introspective explorations, analyses and discoveries.

The world became a better, happier place because of the mePhone as people at last began to be true to their own selves, for they knew they could no longer get away with lying to themselves. The way life had been before the mePhone was just a distant, faded memory and no person could imagine ever being without one.

It was widely known that Death had been ailing for some time. Its poor health had made it rather slipshod in the execution of its duties. Whole generations were being taken away in the flower of their youth, while other people were living for an extraordinarily long time – over 400 years in certain cases.

For a while Death hovered in a half-alive condition, with one foot in the grave, and mankind held its breath, fearing Death would rally and make a complete recovery.

And then the day came when Death breathed its last and nobody could believe their good fortune. It was hard to grasp that Death no longer dwelled in the world, and that one’s life would never again be burdened with the ever-present spectre of extinction hovering nearby. No one would have to grapple any more with the problem of incorporating one’s own demise into their lives.

The most eminent pathologists of the land were assigned the task of performing an autopsy on Death. Their unanimous conclusion was that Death died of natural causes. What nobody had suspected was that Death possessed a finite life span. Everyone had always assumed it would live forever, yet it too carried within itself the lethal seeds of mortality.

The next most pressing issue was the burial of Death. Issues never considered before needed to be addressed urgently, for the world wanted to be sure Death really was dead and would not rise again. Where should the funeral ceremony be held? According to which religion’s rites should the memorial service be conducted? Who should give the eulogy? Where to entomb it?

The matter of whom to invite to the service proved to be the most intractable issue of all. A certain number of tickets were reserved for those most deeply affected by Death’s passing – morticians, grave diggers, psychotherapists, blues singers, goths and horror film directors. Otherwise, it was nearly impossible to determine who was genuinely grief-stricken and who only wanted to attend the ceremony so as to be a part of this historic occasion.

Eventually, all of these matters were resolved by the International Committee for the Interment of Death. After lengthy debates, the Committee announced that the ceremony will be held in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, for Death’s death was seen as the ultimate fulfilment of Christ’s promise of Eternal Life. The heated objections of atheists and adherents of other religions were appeased somewhat by granting them special dispensation to be present at the ceremony inside the church. The world’s political leaders and its leading religious figures, philosophers and scientists all gave eulogies, each expressing their own views on the meaning of Death and the meaning of its demise. It was widely agreed that Death was given the exact send-off that it deserved.

Straight after the funeral, the world kicked up its heels and celebrated.

When the unbridled, hysterical wave of joy at being liberated from Death’s tyrannical rule had abated, people sobered up and recounted the ways Death had helped out in the past.

They recalled with fondness Death’s unique ability to provide clear-cut and definitive solutions to any inextricable, inflexible or abstruse problem of existence; its unmatched faculty of erasing all pain, shame and misery; the way it was always there to readily and obediently offer its helping hand to anyone who would ask for it and the way in which it brought equality to the world and granted perpetual rest to the weary.

Religions could no longer survive without Death, for their appeal and authority derived from the promise of ideal and everlasting existence in the next world and from their expert knowledge of the nature of the Afterworld. New religions arose, prophesying that one day mortality would return to Earth and the virtuous would be rewarded with Eternal Death.

Mankind recognised how fundamentally it depended upon Death’s existence for the preservation of social order and peaceful international relations. Given that capital punishment and armed conflicts ceased holding any threat to a person’s life, nothing stood in the way of lawlessness and immorality in human affairs, and countries went to war on the slightest pretext.

Life soon lost its meaning, for Death had been needed to provide the contrast that distinguished being from non-being. Without it, existence became unrecognisable, a grey shadow of its former vibrant self, and to be alive was now an unendurable, yet inescapable, fate worse than death.

Each human being was forced to find the strength and the courage to face a baffling future in which the saving grace of demise was no longer present. Only then was it realised how inextricably Death had woven its fateful thread into every aspect of man’s existence and how much had been irremediably lost the day Death died.

He also realised that the lives of people on Earth were intractably complicated and unpredictable, because of the myriad stars and planets all exerting their own particular and often conflicting astrological influences upon mankind. This made forecasting the future nearly impossible and caused prophecies, divinations and horoscopes to be wildly inaccurate. With only a few celestial objects in the sky, existence would be so much more orderly and the flow of human affairs so much smoother.

And so this inventor-scientist applied all of his prodigious mechanical talents to the construction of a special weapon that could be used to shoot down heavenly bodies.

As an added bonus, when the gunned-down stars and planets landed on Earth, he dissected them and exhaustively analysed their inner structure in his laboratory, thus gaining invaluable knowledge which greatly advanced the field of astronomy. Once finished with his investigations, the scientist filed them carefully into his special astral album, like precious stamps and coins.

And that’s how the phrase “shooting stars” originated. Initially this phrase referred to the actual deed of gunning down stars, but over time its meaning shifted to refer to those falling stars that have been shot down.

Even to the present day, we continue to see stars falling from the sky, for they are the ones that have finally succumbed to the wounds inflicted by the astronomer’s gun hundreds of years ago.

One day, the nebula in the constellation of Orion, already the brightest nebula in the night sky, started to shine much more intensely, emitting a piercing blue-green light. Its luminosity was now so brilliant that it cast shadows during the daylight hours too, something that had always been the sole prerogative of the Sun.

Naturally, this generated great excitement, for never before had such an extremely bright celestial body been seen in the day sky. Everybody rushed outside to look at this heavenly wonder and to gawk at their double shadows, the old familiar one and the new one created by the Orion Nebula.

It was then that the world was hit by a very unpleasant surprise, for there was something quite peculiar about the shadows caused by the nebula. Instead of being mute, inert outlines of a person’s physical form, they revealed the shadow of a person’s character. Everyone’s inner anxieties, delusions and insecurities were now exposed for all to see.

No one could be found who did not possess a nebula shadow. Even newborns had a shadow accompanying them; thus, coincidentally, vindicating some psychological theories and theological dogmas, while demolishing others.

Naturally, the consequences of this new phenomenon were immense in their scope. Billions of lives were wrecked, relationships destroyed and careers ruined as a person’s innermost complexes and most tightly guarded secrets were revealed to their spouses, family, friends, work colleagues and complete strangers. The very structure of society was threatened, for its smooth running depended so much upon one’s true feelings and nature being suppressed and hidden, even from oneself. Consequently, these revelations came as a heavy shock to the many who didn’t know what apprehensions, self-deceptions and self-doubts they had been concealing from themselves in the remotest reaches of their psyches or in the deepest substrata of their unconscious minds.

Humanity was in a dilemma over how to cope with this situation. It certainly couldn’t dim or extinguish the nebula’s brightness. It could have tried to adapt to a nocturnal existence, when the shadows would be less distinct, but surely that would have been too radical and onerous a solution. Yet who could have risked or put up with the shame, the disgrace and the burden of walking around with all of their flaws and aberrations showing.

Inevitably, cults arose that chose to embrace with enthusiasm this new state of affairs. For them the Orion Nebula was The Bearer of Truth, The Great Enlightener of Mankind. Just as the Sun brought outer illumination, so the Orion Nebula was deemed to bring inner illumination to the world. The adherents of these sects took pride in letting others see their most intimate neuroses, and experienced catharsis in coming face-to-face with their fears, self-delusions and insecurities for the very first time. Having accepted their shadows, they felt more fulfilled and whole than they ever did before.

And then, just as suddenly as it flared up, the Orion Nebula dimmed to its usual luminosity. It didn’t take long for people to readjust to having only one shadow again. Lives, relationships and careers wrecked by the nebula were quickly rebuilt and almost everyone resumed living their old lives, maintaining total silence about that awkward period when their failings were revealed, the way a faux pas is ignored in polite company.