Voluptocracy

All human life is a genetically driven struggle for sex and protein. For these 2 things we’re viscerally compelled to strive, to compete. We have no choice in the matter. And yet, our, so called, rational minds have come to view government, business and even recreation through the lens of self-denial.

Fiscal conservatism is another name for stinginess. Efficiency is code for repression. A healthy lifestyle is cipher for a miserable pulse munching subsistence. Those new alcohol guidelines - a conspiracy of the pious, the temperate and the insufferably meek.

The Glibertine turned his head slightly, Oi, Merely, your push.

Taking this as her opportunity to escape the Glibertine’s halitosic, red-eyed rant, the babymaid scampered to the other end of the bar. He shifted his glaze in my general direction.

What we need is government by the fat. No, f*ck that, by sensualists. Hell, yes, what the world wants is sensualist rule.

Those poor Islamists. Do you know why they want to kill us? Because they’re jealous of all the sex and meat we get. They’re jealous that our civilization has better realised the promise locked within our genetic coding. In their minds we loll on beaches, men and women, in a mass meat-greased grope, sucking icy beers and licking drugs from between the natural folds of virgin skin. But we know that’s not true. We know we’ve not yet reached that Arcady. There’s much more to do!

To anybody watching, it would have seemed unlikely that the grey mullet masquerading as the Glibertine’s tongue had ever ventured past his browned fangs to traverse any skin but his own, yet his eyes shone with the light of truth.

The Islamists don’t respect us because we’re equivocal about our freedoms. Because we try to see their side, to view things from their arid perspective, they see us as weak, as having no confidence in our way of being. Bugger perspective! I say, let’s rededicate ourselves to ourselves. Let us show them how deeply we cherish our indulgences, our gluttonousness and our wanton lusts.

Our leaders will be voluptuaries, one and all. This new system of government will be voluptoccray. Henceforth the parliament shall be the Pleasure Dome. We’ll rid it of that dreadful Spartan native timber and procure furnishings befitting our decadence – cushions and the like, really comfy ones, rich brocades, velvets and silks. As they recline and govern, the voluptuaries will be served sweetmeats, sherbet and betel from trays of beaten relic gold. We’ll turn down the lights and get rid of the cameras, other than the feed to Al Jazeera.

The Glibertine drained an Irish and turned his back to the bar. He surveyed the dimly lit room, packed with punters laughing and drinking with admirable purpose.

He outstretched his arms and threw back his head in celebration, This is what we do best! Join with me, brothers and sisters, in love and desire. Hold my hand and together we’ll draw a generously proportioned crease in the sheets. The demarcation between our civilizations will be stark. Voluptocracy here, theocracy there. We will truly live as we were meant to live. We will fight and love and eat and drink and we will deeply inhale. We will lick and suck and nibble. We will use all our resources to scour the earth for protein and pleasures. We will draw to us disciples of the true way.

And, when the opium cloud lifts, we will find the world in our lap, entwined in an exhausted, sweet afterglow, Civilization’s sensory circuitry pulsing the last pleasure packets to the endings of the earth.

We will be as one and, most importantly, have won.