The disillusioned foetus

A society which thrives on spinning illusions is bound to spin off lots of disillusion too. One would expect an illusion-addicted world to generate copious amounts of disillusion as a kind of waste product. Spin sewage perhaps.

This particular waste product is generated whenever an illusion goes crashing into reality. The impact spews out a fragmented mass of disillusion seeds which fall to a ground already well fertilized with bullshit.

Oh dear - for any gardener the outcome is all too obvious. Those little seeds of disillusion settle on the ground and take root. Like green shoots after a forest fire they soon begin to grow like crazy. True to form, the spinners of illusion merely respond by piling on more and more of that nourishing bullshit.

So perhaps our much-aired problem of declining political engagement should be painted on a larger canvas. Maybe it is all bound up with a general increase in disillusion, linked not so much to politics per se as our addiction to illusions plus their crash and burn habit whenever reality gets in the way. As it so often does.

A complete absence of political quality must be an issue too. Bombastic serial liars must be another, but these problems merely bring forward that inevitable crash and burn when reality rears its inconvenient head.

Addiction to political spin is the key problem. It creates expectations which are far too high for the meagre abilities of its sponsors. Crash and burn goes with the territory.

One might expect older people to be disillusioned as a matter of course, but as the illusions multiply they are recycled into disillusion at a greater and greater rate and the bullshit fertiliser is piled on faster and faster. So the disillusioned become younger and younger... and younger.

The age of the disillusioned foetus is nigh.