Dressed in gleaming pure white robes, brown leather sandals, rainbow-colored caps, and green silicone bracelets emblazoned with eco-friendly slogans - such as Nuclear holocaust can wait or For a planet free of enriched plutonium-, Seneca, Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras held a calm and useless conversation whose epicenter was none other than the concept of friendship. Discussing about "Those who have a friend, have a treasure"... about "friends forever, but business are business..." Although in the Philosophy Academy the ignorance seemed to be doomed to exile, they weren't quite clear on it...
- Friendship is a supreme good –said Aristotle.
- No, my dear friend, it is but a good supreme, –replied Plato.
- It is the same either way... –Seneca concluded.
Caramba! Despite the fact that he had once declared in a press conference that “I only know that I know nothing”, it was clear that Seneca knew... a lot. In just six words, he had not only given an answer to several centuries of a heavy uncertainty that suffocated the human being, but also his apparently simple and concise conclusion was going to suppose a true revolution of thought, because thinking and lying, lying and thinking, would be the same thing from then on.
The news spread like wildfire, it turned overnight into a revitalizing pandemic; not only the elites were rubbing their hands, the plebs were in full ecstasy. Even Descartes was forced to reformulate his once revealing ideas, yielding to the influence of the new universal current. “I think and I lie, therefore I am”, lit up in his brain. Now yes, without a doubt he had found the authentic lever of Archimedes, the heel of Achilles and the enormous strength of Hercules. Neither no one nor nothing would be able to stop him now, nor even a long-range ballistic missile; yes, one of those whose control panel would end up being given to children for Christmas in the non-so-distant future as it might seem then.
Thanks to that brilliant and revolutionary idea of friendship, or rather it should be said Idea, in capital letters, of friendship -what was important was the idea and not friendship itself-, the world would finally be either the paradise that could never be or that could never end up being, although it seemed that it could have been. Even the theory that stupidity is an inherent quality of the human being and tending to infinity would have to be irremediably revised. Einstein seemed to have been wrong by default, since the trend was now towards infinity... squared.
Ideas such as that the division of labor had managed to develop the world with modern slaves of a low wage, that fear and hunger, far from being a control, exercised a purifying mission of a vitiated and corrupt humanity, or that bread and circus to the people continued to be true balms in times when the generalized shearling was threatened by a timid neuronal numbness, they had not only been totally eclipsed by the Idea of friendship, but, only traveling in space and time towards a future far away, those would be likely to be recovered, although as vulgar archaeological finds by chance.
Friendship would no longer be an individual, group or planetary virtue, it would transcend the physical, the earthly, entering the subconscious. No more worries about shaking hands with the banker and having to count your fingers; his friendship would be more than enough, especially considering that we would still have our toes. Money, as such, would cease to have value, but as just money it would continue to be worth and fluctuate according to our degree of rapport with the system; and here, ladies and gentlemen, friendship, having or not having friends, would play a decisive role, unbalancing... yes, rather unbalancing.
Oh friendship, thank you Seneca for such a precious and generous gift. I already know which presents I would be giving to my friends on next Christmas, on their next birthdays, on their next weddings, on their children's baptisms and communions, on their well-deserved job promotions, on the always deserved victories of their favorite teams... good doses of friendship wrapped in the best gift paper, a present that they would never forget in the future and that, without a doubt, would fill that tortuous horror vacui that galloped at a trot through their respective existences. It would no longer be necessary to continue searching for the elixir, the fragrance of eternal youth; the envy, the filthy and the neat, would be completely cancelled; the politically correct would no longer be interested, it would only serve a common interest for the sake of the good of the fragmented interests of each and every one of the interested parties –the contracting party of the first part...-; the education of the new generations would no longer be based on enmity, but on friendship towards the adversary, a new model that is difficult to understand, although easy to apply. And between the difficulty of understanding and the ease of applying... Ockham already was clear, with or without a knife.
Suddenly, when Pythagoras was about to state his hypothesis about friendship from an alphanumeric perspective, the clock radio kicked into action, snapping me out of my philosophical nightmare.
- We interrupt our programming to offer you the last news... and never better said: the friendship truce has been broken and someone has already pressed the button...
