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The Goldfish
John Hamer
其他書名
Poems, Proverbs, and Prophecy
出版CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014-11-11
主題Philosophy / Ethics & Moral PhilosophyPhilosophy / EssaysPoetry / GeneralPoetry / Canadian
ISBN15031874119781503187412
URLhttp://books.google.com.hk/books?id=NmrUrQEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api
註釋THE GOLDFISH: There was an eagle soaring in a bright blue sky. "Financial security," intoned the narrator, in a deep manly voice. "This is what it looks like. Now imagine what it feels like." Could swear it was that guy-you know, the guy who does all the movie trailers-the one who just died. You've got to admit that there's something godlike about a disembodied Father Figure who can convey divine omnipresence whilst remaining nameless and faceless. Seriously, if Netflix was a country, a religious country, with a Cold War agenda, we'd put "In the Deep Manly Voice We Trust" on our money. But that's not what bothered me about the commercial. It was that stupid eagle: that's what failed to ring true. Because when I think about financial security, I imagine myself sitting by a warm fireplace in the dead of winter. I'm on a comfy old chair. Curled up with a blanket and a book. Enjoying my creature comforts. I glance periodically at the blizzard, a blizzard from hell, that's raging out there, on the other side of the window, in the real world. And when I try to imagine what my spirit animal might look like, my financial spirit animal, it's not an eagle or a lion or a bear. Nothing predatory. Nothing noble. Nope. All I see is a goldfish: a sickly, unloved goldfish, who finds himself, at present, in a freshly flushed toilet. What if the goldfish is a sinner in the eyes of an angry bean-counting deity, a God of Accountants and Actuaries, Audits and Austerity Measures? What if He(TM) punishes the profligate in the porcelain purgatory of the john? What if the goldfish deserves to suffer? Look, I doubt it, but it's hard to be sure. Theological truths of this stamp are slippery fish: hard to grasp, and harder to hold. Regardless, this much I do know, and I know it's enough: I'm a goldfish, and if you're my age or younger, you're probably one too. We're a generation of goldfish, a generation of redemptioners; a generation that was tricked into taking on mortgage-sized student loans; a generation that was promised passage from Proletaria to Professionalia. We paid top-dollar for the voyage to middle-class America. Yet few of us made it. Few of us arrived. Most, it seems, remain lost. Lost at sea.