The Coffee Rules > Falsity As Totality > The Big Nothing

Dad - "Sam and Marg are coming over so they'll probably want coffee."

Nobby - "Er... possibly... I guess."

Dad - "Well, is it alright if I have a coffee?"

Nobby (rolling eyes) - "Oh for fuck's sake. You don't have to ask permission to have a coffee. The coffee is in there, the pot is in there, you just go and make one. I've shown you how to do it any number of times. We don't need any silly games. I've told you, I don't care what you do - you may do anything you like, go make a coffee, whatever - but just include me out of the silly games."

Dad (with a look of cold hatred in his face) - "It's not a game."

Nobby - "It is a game. If it has rules and it has roles it's a game. What are the rules? Okay, here they are, I'll tell you - The Coffee Rules:

1. (nodding head with happy face): You really, really like having a coffee.
2. (shaking head with sad face): You can't make a coffee.
3. (nodding head): Nobby can make a coffee.
4. (shaking head): You can't ask Nobby for a coffee if it's only for you.
5. (nodding head): You can ask for a coffee if it's being made for other people.

"Thus (finger goes in the air as dominoes of realisation fall), if Nobby is making coffee for other people... it's alright for me to mention it... and since I am mentioning it, if I ask very, very politely and meekly so that no one could possibly object... and besides which, I'm not asking for me, I'm asking for other people... then I can have a coffee! Yay! Victory in the Pacific!

"God spare me. And that's the coffee game. It and a thousand other variations, always this way. And for yourself within the logic of the game, the question 'Is it alright if I have a coffee?' makes sense. But if you're me and you think the game is bullshit to begin with, the question is absurd. And it is absurd. It's precisely as absurd as 'Is it alright if I turn on the TV?', and 'Is it alright if I go to bed?', and 'Is it alright if I don't finish my meal?'. And we know it's absurd because: What if I was to answer no? No, you must stay up all night staring at a black television forcing yourself to eat the cold congealed remains of your dinner. Yeah right, what obvious bullshit.

"But never mind all that. I'm going to short circuit the game. Come with me, you're going to make yourself a coffee. You make yourself twenty cups of tea a day and making coffee is no different. You're perfectly capable. You can do one, you can do the other. Let's do it."


After a momentary pause wherein he wonders if he can sulk his way out of it without looking like a complete dickhead (and quickly deciding no), he gets up and under my instruction makes himself a coffee. It takes a couple of minutes and is slightly more complicated than turning on a light switch but not much.

Shortly thereafter Sam and Marg arrive, and with his coffee in front of him, and to prove he's not a bullshit artist and how necessary and right the game was, he makes a big fuss of asking them if they want a coffee. The prospect of further game playing and point scoring is cruelly crushed when they say no. Cue the eye-roll. And without looking, I know for a cold hard certainty that the old man's head is now running with pointless calculations for how he might have achieved the end result of having a coffee made for him in spite of no one else wanting one and all the while still conforming to the rules of the game. Games is all there is.


I also know with equal certainty that he will never make a coffee for himself ever again. Here, as in the real world, there is no greater crime than the calling of a game. The old man would rather do without coffee for the rest of his life, indeed never mention the accursed drink again, as long as we never go anywhere near a conversation that may involve his falsity being called out. The only thing that will put that look of hatred on his face is having a game named.

And in this regard he's nothing special. We see it all the time. Every idiotic charade will take place in order to preserve the sanctity of falsity uber alles. We will turn ourselves inside-out, say any idiotic thing, declare black to be white, whatever, and all to avoid acknowledging the mind buggering breadth and depth of the lie.

---

I realise now that when I wrote that Big Lie thing a while back I made a mistake. I declared that the great sin being protected in the bullshit discussion about Hitler and the Big Lie was usury. It isn't. Usury is merely a mechanism under the overarching ne plus ultra sin of falsity itself. The arse-about crap surrounding what we call Hitler's Big Lie exists in order to protect falsity as totality. This is the topic that may not be broached. Everything underneath it is effectively second fiddle. Even the sleek viciousness of usury must kneel at the altar of falsehood.


Whether you want to use the term or not, it's all about the continuum. That's the selfishness / selflessness continuum at the top of the page there. It's un-patented so anyone may feel free to steal it and do whatever they like with it. And ever predictable yours truly, there's nothing I like better than throwing the topic-du-jour up against the continuum to see which of them comes out of it alive.

Here we plunge into circular logic but never mind, let's just go with it. When juxtaposed against the unarguable rightness of selflessness, the concomitant 'wrongness' of selfishness becomes too obvious for itself. Further, as one travels in the wrong direction on the continuum the more obvious this becomes. Thus: the mind set that says that an accumulation of chateaux, yachts with helicopters, and under-age sex-slaves is more important than the right of entire towns not to be fire-bombed must come from a false view of the self. It must. And we're at a truly fundamental level here - the level of the self versus the not-self. This is the anti-buddha sure, and such an black beast must view himself, and everything not-him (which is to say 'all of creation') through a lens of falsity. Falsity comes first and foremost, the thing without which there is nothing, not even the definition.


It's not for no reason that one of Satan's titles is the Prince of Lies. Such a personification could never be called the Prince of Usury, or Theft, or any other lesser sin. Each of those is merely a mechanism under the totality of falsity, the falsity that comes with denying the continuum. And for anyone who wants to point to beasts and the reality of their behaviour, go and do that thing - tell yourself you're a beast and prove my point for me while you're at it. Back to Satan now: in naming the personification of evil, only one sin was ever going to cut the mustard and that was lying.

---

In the beginning was the word. Yeah, right. What are the odds that that word was a lie? With falsity at the heart of things I'd say it's somewhere in the vicinity of a certainty. And in today's discussion we take the word away (word = thought = conversation = philosophy = every goddamn thing) and what is there? What of a person is left? What of a people is left? With the lies so big, so numerous, so total, to call the lie leads where? A discussion like this of such a totality, whether for the macro or the micro, is a discussion of the self, an attack at the heart, a thing that cannot be permitted.

---

Let justice be done though the heavens fall. I admit that there's not much space in that expression for the micro but what if we substitute 'let the truth be told' for 'let justice be done'? That works doesn't it? So let's carry on - Why do we hear that phrase but never see it take place? Kevin Costner said it in JFK and what happened? Nothing - Tommy Lee Jones walked. Was anyone surprised? Of course not. The heavens cannot fall. Everything must be done to ensure that that doesn't happen.

Not forgetting the irony of course: there is no heaven. As if let justice be done though the heavens fall could escape the totality of the lie. In the beginning was the lie remember? The lie, the totality, cannot be called. God forbid. Without it we are nothing. Without it God is nothing. No word, no God, no nothing.

Excellent. Let's do it - Nothing Here We Come. There's no point being bloody-minded if you're not going to go all the way. Let's strip it to the core until nothing is left. Fuck heaven.

We'll all take turns.

I'll get mine too.

Whatever the fuck it is, this thing we've constructed, this bullshit self, we'll burn it all away. Send that metaphoric monkey back to his bullshit heaven. Fingers crossed there's nothing left except for whatever there was before the word, before the lie. God knows what that'll look like. A man sitting under a Bodhi tree perhaps. Or is that too romantic? How about a burned out eucalyptus with the smell of charcoal hanging heavy?

The tax file number, the family name, the christian name, all gone with nobody recognisable left behind.

This is all bullshit of course. None of it makes a lick of sense. But since when did that ever stop anyone?