Parasites

I am tired; I am always tired. I have yet to get dressed and the day is already all but over. I have not left the house. I have instead spent the day consuming music, films, dreams and caffeine. Tomorrow I have an exam. Yet I do not seem that much bothered about it. In fact it concerns me very little. I suspect I shall perform adequately in it – enough at least to keep my grades limping along at the desired level. I feel exhausted. Three years of achieving so little, three years of no sleep and three years of no mornings can take it out of you. Without apparent purpose the body slowly decays.

And yet I maintain this condition thanks to the taxpayer.

Society, directed through the restrictive yet necessary shackles of government, has decided that in the long run it is worth funding people like me. Their hope, I assume, is that given three years of protection from the labour markets, I, and others like me will develop a perspective on life that will enable us to better take society forwards. If these ‘creative classes’ have to be funded by taxing the worker ants, the very people who have been failed by society - then so be it.

Millions of people awake early every day to commute to their machines of production to mindlessly create the surplus required to keep me here. To keep me comfortable while consuming the works of those who came before me. Those who took societies widgets and twisted them into social mirrors of colour.

In the third millennium, when class issues are merely a bad hang over from a particularly bad century – it is strange how I fear the end of this system of slavery that has served me so well. It is this fear that will undoubtedly motivate me to vote for those who I previously despised and work for those I previously distrusted.

Yet now I think I know why I will.
Three years to realise what it is your eyes are telling you.
Worker ants are nothing without their Queens.