Location: The Gist and Tangent Pub (Back Room)
Session Title: “Equally Addicted: A Round Table on Compulsive Egalitarianism”
Moderator: Dr. Paige Turner (observing silently)
Observers: John St. Evola, Sam Loudermilk
Council Cohort: Ethics of the Irreconcilable
PARTICIPANTS:
• Karl (Marx) – wearing a woolen waistcoat and fingerless gloves
• Jean-Jacques (Rousseau) – barefoot, holding a chipped mug of herbal tea
• Ursula (K. Le Guin) – cloaked in ethically-sourced linen, with a hand-carved staff
• John (Lennon) – in sunglasses indoors, finger-paint on his jeans
• Emma (Goldman) – filing her nails with an anarchist pamphlet
• Oscar (Wilde) – draped in velvet, sipping from an equal-opportunity chalice
**************
KARL:
Hi. My name is Karl, and I haven’t believed in hierarchies since 1844.
(collective nods, murmurs of “Hi Karl.”)
I tried to quit. I really did. But every time I see a boss, I just want to nationalize him. Even my dog has to share his chew toys. My conscience redistributes them nightly.
ROUSSEAU:
Brother, I weep. I tried living in the woods to escape the chains of civilization, but then I realized I was expecting the squirrels to abide by democratic nut distribution. Even they staged a counter-revolution.
URSULA:
There is a Tao in equality. I keep writing thought experiments where power structures dissolve, and everyone shares kitchen duty… but the dishes keep piling up. I dream of hierarchy and wake up ashamed.
JOHN (LENNON):
Imagine no possessions… I can’t stop imagining it. It’s ruining my estate planning.
EMMA:
I once slapped a man for insisting on paying the check. It was a reflex. I screamed “NO MASTERS” and kicked over the fondue set.
OSCAR:
Equality is a dreadful addiction. I once refused a velvet rope at the opera. I wanted everyone to come backstage. Even the critics.
⸻
SAM LOUDERMILK (whispering to John St. Evola):
You know what this is?
This is like a twelve-step program that skips the first step: admitting that some people are just better at walking.
JOHN ST. EVOLA (nodding solemnly):
Yes. And yet they all suffer from the same affliction: mistaking symmetry for justice, and the unnatural for the good.
(pauses, watching Rousseau pass around the “sharing stick”)
That man once abandoned his own children. Now he’s preaching nursery-level communism to a roomful of sentimental aristocrats.
SAM:
At least Emma’s honest. You see the way she stabbed the fondue pot? That was real class warfare.
**************
URSULA (closing her eyes):
I just want to believe that no one’s above another. That even the stars don’t shine more than their neighbors.
(She begins to hum a minor key lullaby called “The Ballad of Equal Footing.”)
OSCAR:
But some of us sparkle, darling. Some of us must.
**************
NOTES (Filed by Paige Turner):
• Session terminated early due to spontaneous conga line of collective guilt.
• John St. Evola later cited this meeting in his lecture, “On the Tyranny of Sameness: Why Gravity Itself Discriminates.”
• Sam Loudermilk requested hazard pay for emotional exposure.
COUNCIL-OF CONCERNED-CONSERVATIONISTS…..Between Jest And Earnest….. 