Think of the typical pub setting, and in that typical pub there are four men at a table. One of those men, probably Dave, is providing the other three men his incredibly impassioned yet inorganic ‘opinion’ (regurgitation) on some recent event. It could well be that the second goal shouldn’t have been disallowed. Really, Dave knows that Dan and the gang have heard another version already, maybe on Match of The Day, maybe even from a 5-pint-deeper Dave the night before.

So it’s not to tell anybody anything at all. If it’s known, and it’s known that it’s known, that’s quite alright.

So it’s not the ‘what’ in what we say that matters at all. Not for most, most of the time. What does matter though is that we do say. We construct nonsense reasons to open our noisy kissing food-holes and warble a jumble of disjoint frequencies at our neighbours, just to let them know we’re still there.

Maybe some part of us warbles to let ourselves know that we’re still here, and to let us carry on thinking that we think, give us some sense of autonomy over reality. In reality, in that reality, most of us are probably lucky if just once during our time here as a jelly blob we can recombine the available information in a form that hasn’t been universally had yet.

That’s not supposed to be a complaint, imagine how tiring a world where we actually had to think could be. If natural selection came back for us, and this time around it only took a fancy to those who had made some logical leap for the very first time, most of us would be in big trouble. Even if it were for the 10,000^th time, we’d still be in trouble.

It’s just a numbers game really, the collective thought density is high and we’ve been close to our limits for a while now, at least 99.7% of us have.

I was just on the phone to Mum, and a ‘genius’ kid came up. The particular pub chatter for this kid is that he’s remarkable. He was given a typical best-in-school reward for ‘exceptional’ GCSE results. Good job kid. Context is huge though, as is the interpretation of the word exceptional. He probably pulled in mostly A*’s, or whatever the equivalent now is to the speak of a partially-aged man. In the context of the other similarly-aged little humans trapped in a concrete box and green blazers, that really is quite exceptional. Zoom out even a wee amount, and suddenly a plethora of top-grades versus wearing the dunce hat obscure into the same net effect for the wider population. Pretty much nothing. Zoom out any more and we might as well all be eating dirt.

The proportion of folk who can make a meaningful impact on the direction of humanity is so small that, to the layperson, it is effectively fictional. We have as much chance of being one as being born a dragon. So our job here isn’t to be smart, or create anything that sticks; it can’t be, or we’d all miss by the moon and be unfulfilled and sad at the end of it. So forget even trying. Our job here must then just be here to enjoy it as it is, and do it together. Dave’s doing a solid job of that at least.

So go on Dave, what were you saying about VAR?