Morally speaking, I’m not averse to the prospect of killing a fellow human being. Thankfully not one of the many situations which would elicit such an action have yet come to pass, but the potential is there; I feel it, lurking restlessly in the muddied backwaters of my psyche. Repressed, like some corrosive secret, is all the seething, writhing, bile-fuelled rage of a vengeful father of murdered babies just waiting to erupt.
But hey, don’t let that put you off, I’m quite a nice guy really and far too controlled to ever reveal such tendencies publicly – over-controlled Freud might argue, but what did he know? You’re quite safe with me, honest … just don’t make me angry.
One situation that would certainly make me angry however, and tip the scales in favour of the remorseless slaying of those around me in an ugly and primeval way, would be finding myself in the company of any contestant from TV’s weekly helping of hapless buffoonery, The Apprentice. In that circumstance there would be red mist and blood. Oh yes, Lots of that. Probably a long jail sentence too. Unless I could convince the jury I was doing the world a favour. Which I think is feasible. If they were normal people.
The crux of the matter is this … The Apprentice represents everything that is shit about the human condition. It convinces a bunch of pathologically-narcissistic idiots to behave in a sub-infantile manor by dangling a soulless, over-paid job a few feet from their faces, all for the entertainment of a mob. The sinister/genius part is making the contestants faithfully believe that by acting in the way that they do, they are displaying the qualities of leadership.
I can’t remember the quote exactly but Jeremy Paxman wrote in his book The Political Animal something along the lines of that in comparison to Shakespeare, Einstein, Mozart and the like, we are all second-raters. At the time I thought it was the saddest thing in the world. I have since come to realise it is much sadder to be second rate yet convinced you are a genius, particularly so when under the scrutiny of an audience that mocks as if attending a Victorian freak show.
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[...] culture, which advances the idea business people should act like the idiotic narcissists on The Apprentice, and you have a recipe for frayed nerves and bad attitudes. That’s my excuse [...]