Sandman on Peter Lawwell’s Golden Path

PETER LAWWELL’S GOLDEN PATH…

Back in the 1960s the seminal sci-Fi novel series, ‘Dune’ was written. Six books by Frank Herbert, spanning millenia far in mankind’s future, yet grounded in basic human faith, greed and conflict.

The Dune series, fyi, is one of the all-time greats, giving birth to Star Wars, inspiring Game Of Thrones and others – all through the books the references trigger for anyone grown up in the generations peppered by George Lucas’ movies. Dune was the OG (that means ‘original’ in modern cool-kid-speak)…

Dune in a nutshell is about the battle to control a drug, ‘Spice’ native to a desert planet, produced by monstrous sandworms, a substance which allows a man prescience – i.e the ability to see timelines and future probablilities. It becomes the most valuable commodity in the universe.

There is a stunning and bizarre turn in the series around the fourth book when Leto II, the emperor of Dune forgoes his humanity, choosing to undergo a transformation, to become part-man, part-sandworm, adopting the grotesque physical changes and a mental expansion that benefits him with almost God-like abilities.

He does this for a reason: His prescience has shown him the future of humankind under his leadership if forging along its current course; he envisions a species alone in the universe, slave to the ultra-advanced technology it has developed, a technology that eventually turns upon its creators and slaughters humankind in the terrible apocalyptic nightmares Leto is cursed with. Jim Cameron nicked – sorry, was inspired to make – Terminator from that small passage in the books.

So he makes this trade, Leto, to turn from his own human genetics and become something more – or less – to merge with the source of his power, become one with the very thing he believes he cannot exist without.

He does this believing it will save humanity from a terrible future. He does this knowing humanity will be subjugated to an aeon of misery and ignorance under his tyranny. He does this to save humanity from itself.

Leto calls this his ‘Golden Path’.

Peter Lawwell chose his own Golden Path, too. Pistol Pete saw the future of Celtic after TEN, a brave new world devoid of the imploded Zombie, one where Celtic must forge toward new horizons, expand operations, seek to compete with the Euro elite and take its place at the very top table, and in doing so leave this domestic cesspit in our wake, conquered, no longer the reliable staple of paltry prize money and paucity of dividend from poorly-wrangled TV contracts and sponsorships.

And Pete feared.

For that was a lot of work, and a lot of risk, and a lot of turmoil. So he chose another way – the fork in the road that ended after NINE and was engineered by some subtle downsizing and lowering of sights and expectations, and merging with the creatures across the city in a pact of insidious symbiosis.

Fuelled by the belief of his accountancy background the choice was always the conservative CEO option; grand plans were for Elon Musk maverick types and Bitcoin speculators, and you know what happened to them, right?

Yes, they became billionaires…

You see, the reasonable man – and Pete’s very reasonable – adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore…

..Well, therefore ALL progess depends upon the unreasonable man.

And here Celtic are on Peter Lawwell’s Golden Path, one where grand ideas of sticking the nut in Real Madrid become the giggling dare of slapping a middling EPL side on the cheek and running away.

Knowing our place. Our chosen place; Back behind the cheating, conniving vermin we worked for generations to subjugate.

But that’s a fan’s viewpoint. The ‘professional’ clinical business model speaks a different language. ‘Short-term pain, long term gain,’ will be a phrase spinning around Pistol Pete’s armoury of mind-numbing management-mantras; the kind of shite David Brent would spill. Many out there who think themselves ‘businessmen’ may nod in tacit approval.

Well, you’re wrong. Now was the time for the unreasonable men to step forward and take Celtic way beyond.

The path Pete adopted is the same path Kellys and Whites crawled along on their knees for decades; the path trammelled by the Ibrox ideals of auld Scotia, where the RC is subject and the Empire dominant. But yer own pockets are lined…

I prefer to quote Dune again, something known as The Litany Against Fear – ‘Fear is The Mind-Killer…’ it begins – states emphatically – and if only Pistol Pete had really believed that, then Celtic would today be travelling towards a new universe instead of trapped in their own backyard and cowed by that fear many of us thought we’d shaken off long ago; Not at the right levels, evidently.

So long to our once swaggering, jibing CEO.

When the chips went down, we found out what the C really stood for…

Coward.

Sandman. Far Out.