BELGRADE, THURSDAY

“GET OUT OF MARKETING NOW!”

So says Professor Gavin Doodly-Munchausen of the Pointless Life Pursuits Institute, a European Union philosophy think tank, based in Lourdes, France.

The institute has recently conducted a large study of human pursuits across the European Union, and beyond, and ranked them with respect to philosophical principles laid down by such luminaries as Socrates, Plato, Hillel, Jesus, and the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. “We’ve even taken a leaf or two from the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita and Buddha as well,” the Professor explained.

The study came up with some curious results. “Almost anything to do with productivity is ultimately Sisyphean, unachievable, and pitilessly pointless. One hundred per cent productivity is impossible, as every time a goal is reached, another immediately presents itself. Because you can always be more productive. This is impossibly bad for human psychology.”

Strangely, politics is classed as even more futile than being productive. “The first question we asked ourselves was, what was the point of much of the politics practiced in the world?” Professor Doodly-Munchausen said. “Then we examined motive, opportunity and method – yes, not unlike crime, as we saw similarities in both character and purpose. Well, the conclusion – and this was unanimous – was that about ninety five percent of politics is less than useless and without purpose. It appears that much of government, at all levels, is there merely to support government. If you stripped it away, society would function just the same, or perhaps a little better. Government wastes money like no other activity, and with very little to show for it. It is short-sighted, knee jerking and ultimately selfish. Remember no government ever died for its people, although many demand the reverse regularly. Government often ends up as just another well connected lobby group. Indeed, there’s a graph somewhere in our research demonstrating that in certain countries with the right demographics, government will outnumber the general population in decades to come. In the end, government is a method of social control beyond policing and the military. If you get enough people dependent on government, you have less risk of social upheaval. It has nothing to do with democracy, merely survival.”

The research indicated that people who complete sensible projects, no matter how hard and how long, have the healthiest psychological balance in their lives. “It’s the finite nature of the thing that matters,” Doodly-Munchausen said. “The individual has to know there’s an end to it, a result, something to show for their efforts. Even if they spend their time repeating the same finite project over and over. That’s why sport is so popular.”

Jobs with no obvious meaning, or end result, can take years off a person’s life – witness celebrity which has a terrific burn-out rate and consequent degeneration. “Yes, apart from a few old fossil superstars held together wth Botox and pills,” Professor Doodly-Munchausen said, “the lifespan of celebrity is getting shorter. For the bottom end, it’s measured in weeks and months. That can be traumatic. Often suicide is the only way back for these people, one last grasp at fame.”

However, if you want the most dangerous career on the planet, it’s not soldier, or nuclear worker, or even personal assistant to Cher. “No, it’s definitely marketing,” Professor Doodly-Munchausen insists. “All our stats say it. It’s out there on its own. I mean even advertising has that element of creativity that gives some modicum of purpose, though the thing they are selling is wickedly inane. But marketing, it has no redeeming features. It’s really a modern attempt at alchemy, which proved hopeless in the past and left shadows in its wake. Marketing kills the soul almost immediately, we found. It makes a robot out of the average human in about three weeks. It makes them unbearably smug within a year. And it begins to kill them before their first campaign is off the ground. When you hear some say ‘I’m in marketing’, run, and run fast. Using very complicated algebra, we have found that marketing takes years off the average lifespan – six actually for every decade you spend in the job. And if you say the word ‘Product’ more than fifty times a day, you could be looking at as many as ten years off the average life for every decade worked. Well, you do the math there.”

Is there anything that scores worse than marketing?

“Oh, yes, dictatorship,” said Professor Doodly-Munchausen. “It has to be the most futile of existences. And the end can be quite brutal.”