Then I had to come up with a second post. That part was a bit rockier. I started writing a post titled "on valuation" that was basically a philosophical analysis for the reason behind human lives having value. And it was just dreadful. Reading it now, it's just self-indulgent dreck hiding behind some fancy words and a pathological sense of detachment. Wisely, I chose not to finish it, and it sits, unpublished, in my posts list, where nobody else will ever have to see it. You're welcome.
I'm happy that I've reached the point where I can look at it with something other than revulsion. You see, the vast majority of my writing experience has been fiction, and I can get pretty loopy when I'm not writing a story. So I can sort of forgive myself for trying to write something exceedingly meaningful and brilliant, even if I completely crashed and burned.
But, you know, if I were to write that today, I'd probably choose to publish it here (and not just because I need to fill my quota this month). Terrible, self-indulgent dreck it may have been, but it was an honest reflection of my thoughts at the time. They just happened to sound like the thoughts of a college freshman who'd just taken his first philosophy class. And, I mean, I already was that guy. But I'm starting to think it's more important to be honest about who I am, and how I feel, and what I want to write, then it is to worry about how people will react to me.
I'm human (mostly), so I worry about other peoples' reactions to me all the time. I like to think that it doesn't bother me when somebody has a problem with be, but in fact, it grates on me. I'm just terrible at being unliked, I guess. The plus side is that my self-esteem is generally high enough that, if I learn that somebody doesn't like me, I just write him or her off as a complete moron who judges people without getting to know them. That way, everybody wins!
But there's a problem with writing people off: they get written. If you want to forget something, writing it down is definitely not the way to go. So the people you most want to forget tend to stay with you, one way or another, and become your lifelong companions. Try to look at it positively, if you must, but just realize that, when you embrace that hatred of an individual, you make them a part of yourself.
I certainly have benefited from hating people before. As a writer, and sometimes an actor, I've been able to channel the personalities of people I despise into characters into my work. If you hate somebody enough, you can form a truly excellent representation of them, one that utterly smacks of realness. From that perspective, it might be best to hate people as much as possible! Art is born from emotional reactions; to generate those feelings, you might need to find reasons to hate people. It's called being a curmudgeon, and it's a fantastic boon to anybody who needs to remember anything.
The real advantage is that, the more things you can remember, the more miserable you get to be, as all of the things that make you so unhappy arrive unbidden in your mind at all hours of the day (and night, if you're lucky enough to dream)!
There was this guy I knew. Short, brown hair, brown eyes, kind of doughy features. The greatest opinion of his own virtues of anyone I've ever met. This guy would look you in the eyes and tell you that he knew he was going to be the president someday, because he has the charisma and the conviction that's lacking in Americans today. And he was totally sincere about it! Anyway, he turned out to be a crazy stalker/blackmail artist/pathological liar (thankfully, I found out about all that roughly five minutes after meeting him), but he never really figured out why everyone in the world hated him; he assumed they were all just immoral jerks.
He got in some trouble for his crazy antics (a whole lot of trouble, in fact) and I, being the kindhearted soul that I am, gave him some advice. He did not follow my advice, and got in even more trouble, and blamed me for it (I was entirely detached from the situation and so his blaming me was, in a word, hilarious). Yet he went off into the world entirely convinced that I had been partially responsible for the difficulties he'd experienced...somehow. The last time I spoke with him, after I learned he blamed me, I was shocked to find the urge in my heart to kill him.
Now, I like to talk about killing people, purely in jest, all the time. Maybe it's not a good idea, but I've more or less learned to keep it toned down to discussions with close friends. But that's just it -- it's all in jest. The most minor inconvenience can spark a tirade about how this or that person deserves to be strung up by their lymph nodes and bombarded with twelve thousand pounds of silly putty unto death, but I don't really mean it!
Except where this guy was concerned, I found that it was no laughing matter. I didn't want to joke about killing him; instead, I realized that, in my heart, I had come to believe that his life held negative value. I was convinced that he was such a heartless wretch, such a monstrous sociopath, that the world would experience nothing but benefit by his removal from it.
The idea that the world would be better off without a particular person isn't unusual; people make that decision, and other people die for it, every day. But I'd never experienced a feeling like that before (or since, thank goodness), and it terrified me.
Not to ruin the ending, but I didn't kill him. I wasn't overcome with murderous rage, or anything like that; I just felt like it might have been the right thing to do.
I look him up online every once in a while, just to see what he's up to, and every time I find that it's always the exact same game. He still believes (insanely) that he's on the path to the presidency. He still believes that he has harmed nobody. And part of me still believes that I missed an opportunity to make the world a better place, all those years ago.
It wasn't my right. It wasn't my responsibility. And it surely wouldn't have been smart. But if you sat across from someone who had both the capacity and the ambition to become a tyrant, and you let him go...are you, in fact culpable for choosing to ignore your foresight? If I really believed that he deserved to die, then what stopped me? It wasn't my regard for him. Mainly, I suppose, it was the fear of what would become of me, not physically, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Too afraid to go down that road. Perhaps not even capable of doing more than dreaming about it.
Nevertheless, I hate him so much that, until the day I hear that he has died, I will spend some time each day wondering if I did the right thing. Until then, I just have to hope that I don't live to face the consequences of being one of the people he believes wronged him.
I didn't wrong you, man. But it wasn't because of the value I place on your life. It was because of the value I place on mine.
There's value, and there's cost. A life is valued at one life. But taking a life? Really, that costs two. It's a price I don't think I could ever pay.
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