Amerika

I will inscribe for you a quandary.

It is very popular for people to “not know” what is right. They have moral crises, they rage and question, and in doubt, they do whatever they were going to do anyway. It’s very convenient that way.

The more I see of the world, the more I think people have zero doubt as to what is right. However, that clips their wings. You can’t very well do something you want to if you know it’s wrong. So they inject doubt, and agonize over fake drama.

The quandary is this:

If you think about any situation in life, you can think about how it would exist in perfection.

For example, that term paper in high school.

An ideal student would plot out the number of weeks until it was due, divide up the tasks by approximate weight, and have it all researched, note-taken and outlined by a few days before it was due. Then, with 96 or 72 hours remaining, they’d write it and set it aside, giving it a once-over the morning or night before it was due.

If you look at the A students in your school, most of them did this (or if your curriculum was dumbed-down, whatever equivalent of this was necessary).

We all know this is the right way to act. Or rather, it’s the perfect way, and those mean separate things. Or do they?

I submit that evil seeks a minimum, such as “what can I do without immediately creating bad circumstances.” It’s good that aims for an ideal: it wants to bring out the best in life and thus, to celebrate life itself. Hmm, that’s a thought. A cheerful one, although it’s “more” work.

Or is it? It might be it’s just more organized work.

The more I see, the more I realize that we all know — in our hearts, guts and inner self minds — what would be ideal, optimal or excellent. We know what would bring about the good, the beautiful and the true.

It’s just that to do these things would require us to give up some of the sense of control that we have. We could no longer just be an ego. We’d have to pay attention to reality.

That humbles us, and makes us mad. It’s like we’re a gorilla, and there’s another gorilla called life that’s demanding we give in to him. Hell, no, we won’t go. We’ll fight.

But from a distance, all that can be seen is one gorilla fighting with the empty air, injuring only himself as night falls and there still is no fire, no food and no future for his witless tribe.

Tags: conservatism, optimality