"Disposable"

A dystopian short story - pertinent in our troubled times - which will make its appearance in my new collection "Dead-heading Roses in the Museum Garden and Other Stories" a little later this year.

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

Disposable

The year is unimportant. Simply know this: that in order to save itself, society has evolved in such a way as to believe it understands what is best for its citizens; that in its benevolence, it has assumed full responsibility for all basic necessities of living — food, shelter, security; that when someone works, produces or achieves something, they are rewarded with what once might have been regarded as ‘income’ — yet because of society’s comprehensive hand-holding, what is now earned can be treated as entirely disposable income and therefore of an entirely different order to what ‘wages’ had once been.

Because all domestic matters are managed, citizens have become almost universally healthy and law-abiding (partly as a result of rule-transgression being dealt with extremely severely), and they are more certain than ever in the direction and outcome of their existence — outcomes which (according to the prevalent mythology) are ‘class independent’ and solely based on the talents they possess and the choices they make.

Do not think, however, that this regime means everyone is equal, that there are no strata in society, that all are homogenous and there is nothing to aspire to. This is far from the truth. An artisan who labours at a work of art for an entire year will — depending on their previous record of achievement — be cared for during that creative period and, according to the quality and desirability of their final piece, be suitably rewarded (all the while knowing that anything ‘substandard’ will impact their future income and quality of life). This is a process which fosters excellence. At the other end of the scale, those who are less talented — the road-menders perhaps, or those who staff the ticket barriers at the transportation hubs — will receive their wage weekly, a wage which, not unnaturally, will be much less than that a great artist might enjoy. The manner in which each citizen is protected — food, shelter, comfort — will also be dependant upon their status. A senior party official can expect a greater degree of ease in their daily lives compared to most, even if their individual disposable income is not significantly larger than the government-controlled average. Can a citizen move from one strata to another, aspire for high office even if currently a lowly shop-worker? Of course. The system encourages such ambition. Work hard, display talent, demonstrate the unique value you alone can bring to society and you will be recompensed accordingly. The pursuit of excellence is a religion for many.

And if one chooses not to conform? There are a minority of such people — though not as many as there once were. Such individuals (the majority of whom are understandably incarcerated) are still required to work, and inevitably their living standards are rudimentary with any personal income limited and sporadic — after all, what do such people do to contribute to the well-being of the whole?

The prevailing wisdom is that the system is fair and equitable, and that society’s inhabitants are content — for surely that is their reward for knowing the rules and playing by them. Fear has been consigned to history, to the pages of dusty books long since unopened. If one wished to delve into the past and interrogate stories of violence and civil war then you could; there is no restriction on such knowledge. And yet no-one has any desire to venture back in time merely to stir old beliefs and theories; what would be the point in resurrecting discredited theories which might disturb the equilibrium? Work hard, do your best, play by the rules, earn your income, rejoice in choosing how to spend it; where is the advantage to be gained by doing otherwise? And what is the alternative anyway? Not working hard, not doing your best, disobeying the rules (and run the risk in doing so!), be dissatisfied with your wage, want more for less… or more just for the hell of it. And yet…

And yet there are those who — model citizens on the surface — pursue other ambitions. Their hearts are wedded to the old tenets of liberty and freedom; they believe it is every individual’s right to pursue the full compass of their being as they choose. For them, it is not merely income which should be disposable but each and every life, that the time one has been granted (and over which no-one has any control, not even the government) should be disposable too, how it is ‘spent’ the responsibility of the individuals themselves. If, in moments of weakness, they consider themselves revolutionaries it is a word they whisper quietly and privately to themselves; for they have been told (indeed, indoctrinated a few might say) that part of the price paid for being ‘looked after’ — being secure, healthy and so forth — is to be bound by the constraints necessitated by the rules. These rules are not merely those passed down through the generations and which might be enshrined in legend (“thou shalt not…” for example) but include many which have surreptitiously proliferated into all aspects of life — even when it comes to the language which is permissible to use.

“We have this issue” the government will have said one day, “and it is an issue we need to address. So we will try this…” — and a trial was run and at the end of the trial data produced to prove the success of the counter-measure; and over time another rule is added to the statute books, another constraint applied, the noose tightened. Thus some words — like ‘revolution’ — have become verboten. And the government lauds all these achievements, manufactures the data to prove that the citizenry are happy. In the beginning — in the very beginning when protest was still permitted — ministers would hold up copies of Orwell’s 1984 and claim it as depiction of an ideal badly implemented. It became the bible as how not to implement change, how not to shepherd a society and its citizenry. Winston Smith was painted not as a man seeking freedom but a fool. In their vision of the future everyone can be free, the government said; free and happy and secure — and now they can surely prove that is the case.

But the revolutionaries? Those who dream of regaining control of their lives? They pursue the veneer of the model citizen, but as for their disposable income — indeed, their disposable selves — they plot in the background, prepare to strike, identify with Winston Smith the hero, and all the while believe that their fate will be different, that there is no Room 101, not for them.

How wrong they are.

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