Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The world we choose

I think I've finally made some peace with the bullshit of the scolds in the world and all of our own similar tendencies to repress in lieu of more decency.

If people keep choosing to take this route to fruitlessly force people to be better, they deserve the world it creates.

That is the direction we've taken. I hope these are the consequences we intended.

Because this is the world we chose.

Why is it so hard for us to imagine or believe that we choose to be good people? Or bad people? Why is it so hard for us to imagine that we choose to be good, to do good, or to be bad, to do bad, of our own accord?

Why is it so hard for us to accept that we choose to do good of our own conscience?

It's not. For people who choose to do so.

The only people for whom it is hard to accept such a premise are those who don't choose to be good or do good, for real, but only do so for fear of the consequences otherwise.

And those people are not good people, genuinely, of their own accord. Their life is one long lie to themselves. Because they have never, honestly, chosen to be good of their own free will because it is the right thing to do. They've never really chosen to be good, for real, is the truth.

And how sad for anyone who chooses that life.

And if we don't take a different direction, that is the life we chose.

And how sad for us.

In which case, thank goodness we have children to choose better than us.

Yes we can

...cut this bullshit out.

Detroit mayor, aide plead not guilty to lying about affair

What are we doing investigating a mayor for having an affair?

Why are they facing felonies for lying about it under oath?

We have become such petty, mean-spirited little scolds.

We have got to be insane if we really think that history will look back and say we did good with this nonsense.

I realize now that the reason I love all of the great writers and artists I grew up loving was not because they made assholes like this prosecutor go away, but because they made plain who was the real asshole in situations like this.

Is this really what makes this country great? Hardly.

It's hard to believe that anyone could be older than 10 and think anything different.