© Zeitgeist Films/Everett/REX
In Martin Cruz Smith’s thriller Havana Bay, a visiting American gets caught in a plot against Fidel Castro, but then discovers the plot was organised by Castro himself. Castro is well aware of the growing discontent with his rule even in the top circle of functionaries around him, so every couple of years he orders a secret agent to organise a plot to overthrow him, in order to root out the disloyal functionaries. Just when the plot is supposed to be enacted, the malcontents are arrested and liquidated. And that’s the first thing I would do to secure my reign if I ruled the world—God himself does it in GK Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, so I’d be in a good company.
My next measure would be to lower the standard of living of my subjects. Why? Here I will follow the lesson of Ismail Kadare’s short novel The Pyramid, in which the Egyptian Pharaoh Cheops announces that he does not want to build a pyramid like his predecessors. Alarmed by this suggestion, his advisors point out that pyramid-building is crucial to preserving his authority, for it is a way to keep his people poor and distracted and therefore obedient. Cheops recognises the truth of this, and so his advisors examine different options to diminish the citizens’ prosperity: engaging Egypt in war with its neighbours, for instance, or bringing about a natural catastrophe (like disturbing the regular flow of the Nile and thus crippling agriculture). But these options are rejected as too dangerous (Egypt could lose the war, natural catastrophes might lead to uncontrollable chaos). So they return to the idea of building a pyramid so large that its construction will mobilise the resources of the country and sap the energies of its populace, keeping everyone in line. The project puts the country into an emergency state for two decades, with the secret police busy discovering sabotages and organising Stalinist-style arrests, public confessions and executions. I would try to find a similar mission more appropriate for our times, like investing breathtaking sums of money into human expeditions to Mars and other planets.
To finance these extravagant public projects, I would enact laws propagating smoking. Heavy smokers die earlier— just imagine how much less the state would have to spend on retirement and healthcare. Under my rule, in Soviet style, every smoker who consumes at least two packs per day would pay lower taxes and receive a special medal for being a Public Hero of Financial Consolidation.
Furthermore, to maintain public morality and reduce sexual depravity, I would add mandatory sexual education to the primary school curriculum. These lessons would adopt the approach outlined in the famous scene from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, in which a teacher examines his pupils on how to arouse a woman. Caught in their ignorance, the embarrassed pupils avoid his gaze and stammer answers, while the teacher reprimands them for not practising the subject at home. With his wife’s assistance, he demonstrates the penetration of penis into vagina. One of the schoolboys casts a furtive glance through the window, and the teacher asks him sarcastically: “Would you be kind enough to tell us what is so attractive out there in the courtyard?” Such education would undoubtedly ruin the pleasure of sex for generations.
And, last but not least, to ensure that people treat each other politely and kindly, I would make it a rule that, prior to each conversation, there should be a ritualised period of vulgar insults. Why? Is this not contrary to common sense, which tells us that we only explode into wild swearing when, in the middle of a polite conversation, we get really mad and cannot hold back our frustration? But common sense is wrong here (as is usually the case). I have a ritual with some of my good friends: when we meet, we engage for the first five minutes in formulaic session of rough and tasteless swearing and offending each other. Then, after we get tired, we acknowledge with a brief nod that this rather boring but unavoidable introductory ritual is over and, with great relief at fulfilling one’s duty, we relax and start to talk in a normal polite way, as the kind and considerate people that we really are. Imposing such a ritual on all people will guarantee peace and mutual respect.
You think these are mere extravagant jokes? Think again: do we not already live in a similar world?
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher and writer of the film “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology.” His new book, “Event,” is the second in Penguin’s Philosophy in Transit series
