VI. A Better World
You are asleep, dreaming the dream they put into your head through the television. You refuse to believe in God, but fall for crap like Kharma because it makes a little more sense. You refuse to believe in Kharma, but fall for crap like Luck because it makes a little more sense.
Listen. Very carefully.
They’re all lies. Every last one of them.
They bombard you with different faiths, all thirty-one flavors, so you’ll believe what they want you to believe.
Life is not fair. There’s no divine retribution, no celestial justice, no Three-Fold Law.
Life is not fair, and it’s a better world because of it.
That’s right. A better world.
Listen. Think for a moment of the worst thing you’ve ever done in your life. The most awful, unredeemable, wretched action… that you got away with.
Yes, that one.
Now, consider the person you’d be today if you got caught.
Every one of us has at least one sin, one terrible act. Something so unpardonable it would change our lives forever if we were ever made accountable for it. I have mine. And no, I’m not telling.
Because no one ever discovered who perpetrated that little offense, because we were never brought to bear the burden, we were able to look back at it, learn from it, draw shame from it, and grow from it.
In other words, it’s better we were not caught. We’re better people because of it.
Sometimes, justice is a lot quieter than we think.
And it’s a better world because of it.
VII. The Blame Game
A woman burns herself with hot coffee she was holding in her lap while driving, and successfully sues McDonalds for millions of dollars. Her claim? They didn’t tell her the coffee was hot.
Funny, I thought tea was the drink you served cold.
A teenager kills himself. His parents blame the music he listened to, the books he read, his peers and his teachers… but never think of pointing their twisted little fingers at the person who actually pulled the trigger.
Someone smokes three packs of cigarettes a day, acquires cancer and sues the company that makes them, claiming they lied about the addictive nature of nicotine… despite the fact the United States Surgeon General’s been screaming about it for nearly fifty years.
A cheerleader gets pregnant and her parents blame the school for teaching sex education.
A man contracts AIDS from a needle others used to fill his bloodstream with heroin and we blame the United States government for not providing clean needles to drug addicts.
A man kills twenty innocent people with an automatic weapon and we blame the gun company.
Perhaps it is because we no longer have the strength to look at what we’ve become. But then again, perhaps we haven’t changed at all. We’ve just found more creative ways to ignore what we’ve always been.
The longer you keep your eye on what we were and what we are, the less you see what we might be.
VIII. Fanfare for the Common Man
The common man has an IQ of 90.
The common man thinks it is perfectly all right for professional athletes to get away with minor crimes like rape, assault and drug abuse as long as they continue entertaining the public.
The common man believes his opinion counts, no matter what his intelligence or education.
I fear the common man, be he white or black or yellow or red. His ignorance is his creed.
IX. The Hamburger Example
How many things in this life do you take for granted?
Color?
Touch?
Taste?
How about freewill?
Yes. You heard what I said. Your freewill.
Just as the Minusians don’t have color, they don’t have freewill.
But don’t feel sorry for them.
You don’t have it, either.
Don’t believe me? Let me prove it to you.
Let’s pretend its lunchtime. You’re at work. You’re hungry for something…
How about a hamburger?
I don’t care if you’re a vegetarian or a vegan. You’re going to have a Soy burger.
You’re hungry for a hamburger. You’re at work. Logically, you can choose to have a hamburger from anywhere in the world. Even Paris, France. Anywhere you like. Where do you want to get your hamburger?
You have a car, but only thirty minutes. Your timeframe cuts down on your options. As powerful as freewill may be, it cannot beat the timeclock.
“But,” you suggest, “I can choose to ignore the timeclock to get the hamburger I want.”
That’s true. But will you? Will you jeopardize your job in order to get a hamburger? Put yourself in the unemployment line to get a hamburger? Risk not finding another job for weeks in order to get a hamburger? Risk your credit rating, your car payment, your mortgage, your electric bill, your water bill, your phone bill, your credit card payments, your cable bill, food for your dog and cat, and your child all so you can have a hamburger?
I didn’t think so.
By the way, that big fat paragraph above is filled with things that override your freewill. Sure, you can choose to screw your job for a hamburger, but we don’t call that freewill. We call that “dumb.”
So, you have a half-hour time limit to get your hamburger. Where do you want to go?
Not MacDonalds. You don’t like MacDonalds. Besides, they put horsemeat in their burgers.
Not Wendy’s. They’re too far away. At least a forty minute drive there and back again, and that’s if there isn’t a line.
And it is lunch-time.
Not Burger King. You had Burger King yesterday.
Not Dilbert Boys, that small burger joint down the street. The last time you ate there, you got food poisoning. You can’t even think of eating there.
Not Taco Bell or Del Taco. They got great tacos, but their burgers suck.
Where are you going to go? You’re running out of options.
You’re running out of freewill.
Okay, you could go to Fudruckers, but that would take too long. You’ve only got a half an hour.
Well, actually, you’ve only got twenty-five minutes. You’ve spent five minutes trying to decide where to go.
And where the hell are your keys? You put them on the seat when you grabbed your —
Oh shit.
That’s right. You locked your keys in the car.
Now what’s really going to fuck with your head is this: Did you choose to leave your keys in the car or did you just not pay attention?
From what part of your anatomy does freewill come from? Does it come from your spleen or your stomach? Does it come from your liver or your kidneys? Only the ignorant believe it comes from the brain. The brain is nothing more than a computer, firing neurons from stimuli from your nerve endings. The signals are always the same. Always.
Now you’re options are really limited. Looks like you’ve only got two options. There’s MacDonalds — even though you hate MacDonalds — or there’s the AM/PM across the street.
What’s the choice? Come on, you’ve got freewill. You can make any decision you want!
Well, your stomach tells you that eating at AM/PM is dangerous, so you grit your teeth and head over to MacDonalds. Because when it comes down to it, what you eat every day is really determined by your stomach. Your body tells you what nutrients you need and you eat the foods that provide those nutrients. Sometimes, MacDonalds gives you what you need. Sometimes, it’s Wendy’s.
You don’t control the urge of hunger with freewill, nor do you control anything else.
* * *
Freewill is the belief that humanity has the mental capability of making any decision, regardless of internal or external stimuli. You can freely make any choice.
Okay, how about schitzophrenia? Can you choose to not have schitzophrenia? You have freewill, after all; you can choose any choice, regardless of internal or external stimulation.
How about brain damage? Can you choose to not have brain damage? I was in a car wreck a few years ago and my memory has never been the same. Can I choose to not have brain damage?
How about your cigarette cravings. You can quit any time. Any time you want. You know they’re killing you, turning your teeth yellow, making you stink, killing your lung capacity, making you look foolish to others but you just – can’t – stop.
Oh, you could choose to stop whenever you like, can’t you? Or are you just choosing not to stop?
Child molestors are the worst criminals in the world. More than that, when they get caught and go to prison, they’re treated like shit. Raped by other inmates, ignored by the guards, a child molestor faces absolute hell when he goes to prison. You’d think that a person caught for abusing a child, a person who gets sent to prison for abusing a child, would never ever risk doing it again and risk going back to hell.
You’d be wrong, of course, because the repeat offender rate of child molestors is 100%.
* * *
Choices. We all have choices. Or do we?
Freewill is a necessary illusion, designed to maintain the culture we live in. Because Heaven forbid we should consider the implications of life without it.