In that town, they had a ritual: they would take a chicken and prick it with a needle. The chicken would run, fly, and they would chase after it as if it were a balloon, and they would prick it, everyone following the chicken, through the streets, everyone laughing. The poor chicken would end up in agony, lame and with its eyes wide open, and finally, it would die. Then they would pluck its feathers, and each child would hang one over their bed. It was a festival of national importance. Intellectuals would write essays reflecting on the greatness of pricking the chicken. The best filmmakers would make documentaries that everyone applauded. It was an integrative ritual that taught children not to be affected by the suffering of others. Above all, they learned that there are categories and that a chicken has no business being part of it. It was an integrative ritual unique to that town, since outside of that town, mistreating animals is frowned upon, as if it were related to mistreating people.
Those people had other rituals for learning modesty. For example, the trains. Because they promoted asceticism, they had a railway system that was a torture. They considered short-distance trains to be in bad taste, provincial, and only invested in long-distance trains because the further they traveled from their own town by train, the better they felt morally. Anything outside taught them humility, and that made them very hospitable people.
Once a year, they celebrated the Big Hamburger Festival. The hamburger had nothing to do with their culinary tradition; on the contrary. But on that day, they brought out tables to the streets filled with Big Macs, with mustard and ketchup, which happened to be the colors of their flag. It was packed with people. The rest of the year, that town went hungry, but on the day of the festival, everyone ate their fill, and the cooks—also considered a source of pride, like their own culinary tradition, which was excellent, by the way—were revered and won awards in competitions on that day, and appeared on television wearing chef hats and white coats. It was a beautiful celebration, full of flags. Men gave their partners a rose, and women gave them a hamburger.
They seem like strange customs. I think they were simply beyond common sense. They had outgrown this phase. The envy of the world.
