We even disgust ourselves. How is this degradation possible? In Well's fantasy it took thousands of years for the Morlocks to separate themselves from the Eloi, but it has happened to us in the space of a few generations. We never had a chance, we know that now. Why did we even think we had a chance? Why did we think things were opening up? Nothing was opening up. The same walls, the same doors as were there for Jude the Obscure. The same walls, the same doors made solely to keep us out.
What place did we have inside? What place could we take there, when the inside was constructed precisely to keep us outside? In truth, we know our place is outside. In truth, we know that it is best for us that we remain outside. Yours is the kingdom, ours the wandering about. Yours are the feet square on solid earth, ours the sore feet from wandering here and there. Don't listen to our moaning, insiders, don't mind our wailing, we know where we belong. We lament not our position in the world - it is just, it is right - but the cruelty of fate. How could it be that we were destined to remain outside even as you were inside?
That's what we lament, the whole situation. We lament the whole, we do not wail for ourselves. How did we think we could get in? But there was hope! Hope, once upon a time. Hope that we could take our place among the other insiders. Hope that by some oversight, by some loophole we would be permitted to gain entry. That is youth: hope, the gift of hope. How difficult it is to grow old! How difficult it is to acknowledge, at last, that the last of youth's potential has drained from us! Only then do we look around ourselves and acknowledge where we are.
So we are outside, we tell ourselves. So this is where we are. Before then, it passed by us in a blur. We were too busy moving from place to place, trying to get inside. Before, we were too busy, we had no time to see where we were. And no desire, either. Who wants to see where they are? Who wants to accept their station in life? That only comes with age, and with the enfeeblement that accompanies age. One day, age says to you, enough, stop this wandering about, stopping bashing your head against the walls and the doors, there's no point. Age says, sink down against the wall, acknowledge you are beaten, accept your place. You failed, but you were destined to fail; the grounds of your hope were bogus.
Once, it is true, you had the gift of hope, you searched for signs in the world outside - you thought: if I am alert enough, quick enough, I might get in. Once you possessed that great hope in your guile and cunning to think you might separate yourself from the others and get in, but in truth, there was never a hope, never a chance, never a clue. What signs you saw were bogus signs. You came back to the other outsiders, ashamed. And they came to you, ashamed. For they had had the same dream as you. You had all shared the same dream, the same delusion.
Now there is at least comfort in your shared predicament. Now there are others to slump down besides, to whom you can say, we gave it our best shot. There would be a kind of glory to this slumping down if you had the energy. But listless, drained of hope, you sink to the ground, you lie there wandering if that ground is also a wall. The sky spread above you. How distant it is! As far as the far interior, where the insiders are! As far as the dreams of your youth!
They have the right skillset and you have the wrong skillset. They have the right connections and you have the wrong connections. They are taller than you, they walk upright, not hunched over, their eyes are clear and their skin shining. Look at you! How did you ever think you had a hope? Why did you think you could sneak in when it was stamped on your face from the start? The face of a failure. The face of one who had failed in advance. The stooped gait of one who had dreamt of escape. The dull eyes of one who studied in the evenings. The grey skin of one who had not seen the sun.
Now are growing old. We are slumped together, growing older, seeing in the others only our own grey and ravaged faces. Why did we think we could get inside? It would be comic if we had the energy to laugh. But we have no energy. Our gaze surveys the world indifferently. The greyness of the outside, as grey as our own skin, as grey as our studies and the grey sky. What hope was there? Our joy, once, was in moving too quickly to see the greyness. Our hope lay in the dream of outdistancing the world, of going inside. We had no eyes for the world, then. No time to see what would later fill our days and nights.
Do we even dream of the inside anymore? Is it there, that hope, even in our dreams? Morlocks and Eloi - which are which? We've forgotten. The one high, the other low, the one tweedy, the other non-tweedy. The one with elbow patches, the other without elbow patches. The one with a big car his mother bought him, the other without a car, either big or small. The one with references from the good and the great, the other with references from the bad and the mediocre.
And if you managed to get a reference from one of the good and the great, as I did in my distant youth? If it happened by some miracle that one of the good and the great wrote you a reference? It was written in a single line, a single sentence. It was written as a single sentence, with a clear message. In one single line, it said, in effect: keep him outside. Let him remain outside. Let him pass his days outside. Do not let him in. How could it be otherwise?
In truth, the same was written in every line of our CVs! How we laboured over them, our CVs and letters of application! How carefully we pored over every line, rocking our heads like talmudic scholars! We went through every line of job adverts to make sure they were echoed in our letters of application! Over and over again, night after night, we reread our applications and our CVs. We printed them out on vellum, we printed them on special gold stationary in imperial blue ink, but it made no difference. We folded them into golden envelopes and sent them by registered post, but it made no difference.
They could tell, straightaway, the search committees, the recruiters, that we were not one of them. It was obvious from the start. What hope did we have? What chance did we have? On the face of it, we had every chance. On the face of it, it is a meritocratic world. But what chance did we have to earn merits? It as clear right away there was nothing to distinguish us from the other huddled masses. It was clear on what side we belonged. The outside, not the inside. The outside, the grey world, and not the inside, the world of colours and flavours and joy.
What chance did we have? What hope did we have? We clutch them still, our CVs, our letters of application. Still our computers are full of drafts of letters of application. We would laugh if we had the strength. Yes, if we were strong enough, we'd laugh at our predicament. But who has the strength? All that running about drained us. We were here and then there, taking part-time work here and then there, rushing about. They threw a little work to us, here and then there, on condition that we move here and then there, on condition we were ready for work at any time, at all times, that every day was a work day.
Yes, there was something for us to do then, in the old days. We thought we had been chosen, thought we had been selected from the masses, called forward for special favours and special attentions. But in truth, we were all the same to them. The same mass, the same magma, each interchangeable, all exactly alike. How could they tell us apart? We were, as a whole, marked apart from them. From the first, we were different. From the first we looked different and no doubt smelt different. We lacked the manners, lacked the right way of talking, lacked the vocabulary. No doubt we lacked the right gestures and grace.
Occasionally they threw us some work. That was generous. Occasionally, some work here and there - what generosity! We thought we had been favoured, by in fact it was only chance that favoured us, as, on another day it would withdraw its favour. For in truth we could not be told apart. We were all exactly alike, and it didn't matter to them which one of us was called forward for a little part-time work. There were no special favours, no special attention. None of us was special, none of us favoured. Favour fell on all and none.
What chance did we have? If I could laugh, I would laugh at our youthful folly. If I had the strength to laugh, I would do so at our early optimism. Did we really think we could pass among them, as one of them? Did we really think we pass as insiders, when from the first it was clear that we belonged outside? For that is where we belong, outside. For a time, it is true, a few outsiders got inside. For a time, it was possible. Those were the golden years of which our elders spoke. A marvellous time, when there was a real meritocracy, and some among us found admittance. But then the door closed shut again. It shut tighter than ever.
And what of those who had found their way inside? They send signals to us, we are sure of it. They send signs in what they publish, in the publications which reach us outside. Signs only we can read. But even those publications are becoming rarer and the signs no longer reach us. Did they ever reach us? Did we dream those signs, those signals? Was it another of our youthful delusions? Who of us can tell? Who can remember? We've no strength left for memory.
Every day is the same, every night is the same. Sometimes, a cry goes up. Sometimes, a wailing. But we do not wail for ourselves, for our particular case, but for the whole situation, for what the ancients called fate. It is an impersonal howl, more of a whimper than a howl, more a mewling that a whimper, and it soon dies down. Every day is the same, every night. Dawn comes with the promise of a beginning, but we are not fooled. There is the sun above the horizon, but we are not fooled. What is light but a lie? We have been made too many promises to believe. Too many promises, too many hints that there might be work here and there, that our contract might be extended, when in truth the work had already dried up, and the contract would go to insiders.
Night comes with the promise of an end, but we are not fooled by that, either. What is darkness but the time before another day? What is the day but the time before darkness? Night brings nothing to term, nothing is completed, nothing finished. What does not begin does not end, either. What failed to begin fails to end. What returns is only the failure of the beginning, the lack of firm ground. You take it for granted, insiders, the ground beneath your feet. But there is no ground for us to stand on, nowhere to take a stand. How can we find our footing? How could we dream of beginning? The beginning is over, having never begun. The end cannot come, because nothing has happened.
Our early scurrying was the imitation of beginning. Only now do we understand it. Our activity, our job applications, the part-time hours we willingly took on: all this was a imitation of action. Sometimes a great ululation arises from the plains. We lament not for ourselves, but for everything, for the division between the inside and the outside, and for the walls and doors which keep us out and keep them inside.
What would we do if one of them came outside? What would we do if through some great error, some lapse, one of the insiders found themselves outside? Tear him apart? We haven't the energy. Ask him for favours? But what is the point? Feel his tweed jacket? Perhaps. Touch his elbow pads? Maybe. Ask him for stories about the inside? But we have heard everything, all the rumours. Of great tables and great feasts, of bottles of port refilled every night, of cloisters and lawns and the sound of choirs and organs. We have heard it all and we've heard enough. Do not disturb us, we would say. Find your own corner in which to lament. Or lie down and be still among us. Lie down, take off your tweeds and join us.
But in truth, such a mistake is no longer possible. The walls are being built yet higher and the doors are being made yet stronger. New fortifications are being made. New procedures are in place. One day our descendants will speak of ours as the time of hope, of the time when the young still had the luxury of hope. They will regard us as indulgent, we who had some little hope from the start. How indulgent they were, our forefathers, they'll say. How sentimental, with their wailing. Our descendants will be harder than us, more immured than us. They will be blind and stooped from birth, from the outset. Nothing will ever begin for them, even the dream of beginning. What youth will they have? They'll be born straight into old age. Elderly from the start. Half-dead from the first.
In their blindness they will know neither night or day. In their deafness, only an impersonal roaring without cease. They will read nothing and know nothing, all will have been forgotten before they begin. Compared to them, we are strength itself! How lucky we were to have known hope! How lucky even to see a job application! How lucky to be able to draft a CV! How lucky to receive a rejection letter! How lucky to hear our name spoken by one who called us for some part-time work! Yes, this is a silver age, not the golden age, it is true, but not yet the desolate age without hope.