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howtolivealifelessordinary · 7 years

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Be Fearless But Smart

One of the most common things I hear before I embark on any adventures is, “You’re going by yourself? Please, be careful!” or “Is it safe to go alone?”. While I do appreciate the care of my wellbeing, I can’t help but feel as if there is another meaning to these statements- “As a woman, it’s just not smart to go to (insert country) all by yourself.” These statements usually come from men and older people whereas my girlfriends and close friends will usually respond with, “Fuck yea, Sara, I’m so glad you’re doing this!” For this reason, I can’t help but get annoyed at people trying to project their own personal fears and old world beliefs onto me.

When I moved to Australia, before I went, a lot of people made the “joke” not to get eaten by a shark or crocodile or bitten by one of Australia’s hundreds of venomous species. I began to notice a pattern. The most cynical people opinionating themselves were the ones that had never left the country and some, even the state. The irony was, when I went to Australia, the Aussie’s who’d never been to the U.S. “jokingly” said it was because they were afraid of getting shot. It seemed to me that many were looking for an excuse not to go somewhere or do something as a mask for what they were truly trying to hide- their fear.

I hear it all the time, “Oh, I’d love to try diving but what if I saw a shark?” ; “I’d love to go bungee jumping but what if the rope broke?” ; “I always wanted to see the pyramids but I don’t think it’s the safest time to do so.”- All of these statements and many others I receive have one thing in common- they’re fueled by fear. And I noticed they usually start out from a place of love or ambition. It saddens me to think of how much opportunity and dreams are lost, how much more we don’t do as opposed to accomplishing, when coming from a place of fear. How much we are truly limiting ourselves by choosing to focus on the excuses and fears of the should-not’s and not focusing on the perseverance, growth, and sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming adversity and our alleged limitations. To these individuals, I say, “If you see a shark, just breathe. Most of them have no interest in you and if they start getting too close for comfort, knock them in the nose.” ; “If my rope broke or my parachute didn’t deploy at least I died doing something that I always wanted to do.” ; “Nowhere in the world is safe these days.” I live my life one day at a time and I try not to worry too much about the future or the what-ifs. All I know is today, I want to be happy, today I want to enjoy my life, today I want to feel free, and the only way I know how to accomplish that is by getting out there and trying it all. Life is like food and sex- You never know what you do and don’t like until you’ve tried it. And if you’re like me, you like to give things a fair 2 or 3 tries before you decide. (Wink, wink)

The people who are just afraid of getting hurt or dying don’t really bother me too much. It’s the one’s that use my gender as an excuse for why I shouldn’t do some things that I really have a problem with. I have now been to Peru, India, and Egypt on my own, all places I was told that I shouldn’t travel to as a solo female and all places that I felt completely comfortable and in control. After being groped, beaten, and sexually abused by men in my own country, I’ve learned a lot on how to remain unnoticed by the opposite sex and I use these smarts to not get myself in the same situations on foreign soil. I stay strong and alert no matter where I’m at in the world because I’ve learned that it could happen anywhere by anyone and it’s better to be safe than very very sorry. As women, we’re taught how to avoid these things and we adjust our lives accordingly. Some women prefer to go to the gym or take self defense and some choose to dress and act more conservatively and they both have validity and a place in society. Being smart about it means that we understand there are still some places that as solo females we should just avoid, no matter what country- dark alleys, sketchy neighborhoods, and male prisons.

For the people who choose to use my gender as an excuse for their fear I say, “Fuck you. Start teaching our sons to respect women and treat us like people instead of property. Stop telling me where I can and can’t go when you’ve never been there yourself. I’ve grown up in a world that can be very unkind to women, do you think I haven’t learned a few things? And what? Am I supposed to just wait until it’s “safe” to go or wait until some man decides he wants to accompany me? Fuck that. I wait for no one and I’m not going to continue on with this cycle of fear preventing me from living my life.”

It’s never really “safe” to go anywhere in the world, especially these days with the fear of terrorism in every direction. I could have gone to Europe or Mexico or Florida or the UK and have just as likely been in danger. The “terrorist’s” intent is to incite fear in all of us and if we allow it to prevent us from doing the things we desire in life then we are essentially letting them win. You want to fight terrorism? Then act with love. Love for your life. Love for your “god”. Love for your freedom. Love for your fellow humans despite our cultural differences. Because that’s what this war on terror really is, a war on love. Which side do we want to be on?

“I’m so jealous of everything you do. You’re so brave, Sara.”

“It’s got nothing to do with bravery. I’m stubborn as fuck. There’s no reason to be jealous when you are just as capable.”

Sometimes I think that the only reason the world is still so “dangerous” for women is because it’s just not used to seeing us be empowered or independent. My theory is, that if I just go out there and represent us ladies well in the world then I’m only making it easier and safer for my daughters to do the same in the future.

Fear can fuel us. It can make us test our boundaries or at least help us realize what our boundaries are. It can knock you on your ass, afraid to try again or it can be our teacher and educate us how to better handle something in future. It ties in a lot with being vulnerable and when we overcome our fears, we overcome ourselves and set the bar higher. And while fear is absolutely necessary and a healthy thing to have, it is in perfect duality with how irrational it can be and how detrimental it can be to our mind and our lives. If you live your life in constant fear, then you are never really free and you are never really living. We’re all born and we all die but it’s everything that we accomplish in between that makes us more accepting of our fate or fearful of it.

The reason I say I’m not brave is because I experience fear just like everyone else. But I’m very rebellious by nature and I think of fear as an authoritative figure in my life that needs to be questioned and challenged constantly.

I’m terrified of the ocean but I don’t let it stop me from surfing or diving or cage-diving with sharks. It fuels my curiosity and makes me question what it is about something that is scary to me. When you begin to understand your fears, it makes it easier to overcome or rationalize them. I’ve realized that the only reason I feared the ocean was because of the depth and darkness, how murky the water can be, what lies undiscovered in there, essentially, the unknown. Understanding that sparks a curiosity in me that desires to discover more and I find the more I discover and begin to understand, the less I am afraid. I chose to let my love of nature and the planet overrule my fear of not understanding it. Just like I choose to let my love of people, spirituality, food, and experience overrule my fear of dangerous men in the world. I am afraid of what the future may hold but I use that to seize each day and live the way I want to right now.

I refuse to let my fear of life prevent me from loving my life and loving my life entails doing so many things that started out as scary.

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mindlessgothamite-blog · 7 years

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Title; Delayed Realization

Rating; PG-13

Pairing; Oswald/Edward

Word Count; 1084

Warnings; Canon divergence, angst, confusion, happy ending!

Notes; Okay this went kinda way left field of the actual prompt because I think I had some unresolved feelings towards the dreaded Episode 14. I hope you still enjoy!

Edward's mind was a Gordian knot of jumbled, twisted emotion. It was life's great riddle, the answer to which had always evaded him. How could one work out feelings that made no sense? On the exterior Edward was calm and collected, but his thoughts constantly raced and conflicted, emotions firing off in shotgun blasts to his frontal lobe. Since he found out about Oswald's betrayal, those blasts had come in the form of blinding rage and a need for vengeance... but also an undercurrent of intense, soul-crushing pain.

His two sides were constantly at war to begin with, and the events that had transpired since his plan was set into motion had only exacerbated that fight. At every turn Oswald had behaved differently than he had expected, had gone left when he would have predictably gone right. His willingness to sacrifice himself to avoid Edward coming to harm was so unlike him that it shook him to his core, casting doubt over his entire way of thinking.

Oswald was inherently selfish, he had thought. Even when acting on behalf of others, there was inevitably some benefit to himself. He was the master of crocodile tears and pandering sentiment, but Edward had always admired that about him. Oswald was calculating, motivated, ambitious, everything Edward himself had wished to be throughout his adult life. When he nursed the small man back to health they had become close, but Edward was always suspicious because he knew Oswald's reputation.

When he wrote to him in Arkham and sent him packages, he began to weasel his way into Edward's heart, which he had kept on lock-down to protect himself.

When Oswald sprung him from Arkham and took him in, Edward had fallen under his spell. He began to do things that were out of character for himself. He risked his life to protect him from Butch, spent his days agonizing over managing Oswald's hefty workload, and spent his nights with the other man, doing menial domestic things that were only enjoyable because he was doing them with Oswald.

And then Isabella came and left just as fast by the mayor's order, leaving Edward irreparably broken, grasping for meaning. She was the spectre of a past that he had wanted so badly, one he could cling to and build the life he wanted with.

But did he really want that life?

A little wife, a little home, perhaps some little children?

Or was it some strange reach for a normalcy that he had always craved but could never truly enjoy?

Edward knew he was wrong on the inside. He knew that murder was wrong, but when he did it it was like cool air to a man who had always been forced to walk on the surface of the sun. It was control, it was power, it made sense to him in a world that was mostly nonsense. Oswald had always understood that. He had nurtured that feeling when all others would spurn him for it. He had understood what it was like to have a desperate need to twist the world to one's will, to mold those around with words and actions.

Oswald understood him in a way that no person had ever even attempted. He alone had been able to sort through Edward's harried brain and make sense of the maelstrom that existed there, at the center. He even knew that Edward had manipulated his emotions by playing off the feelings that lingered for his late mother, but didn't seem to care. He had felt so lost without Isabella, so driven by anger over her death that he had let his darker instincts take hold.

The instincts that Oswald knew well because he, too, weathered them.

Oswald, who had saved him.

Oswald, who had broken him.

Oswald, who loved him so deeply that he was willing to force himself to change something that was so central to his being; his instinct for self-preservation.

Oswald, who now plead with him to speak as Edward held a gun to his gut.

Tears streamed down the tall man's cheek, melding with the rivulets of rainwater that trickled off his chin. He had been thrown into chaos with Isabella's death, but perhaps the answer wasn't the revenge that his violent id desired. Perhaps the answer was a gentle surrender to the one man who knew how to piece together the tatters of Edward's psyche, the man who soothed him with his presence.

“I loved her Oswald...” He mumbled out loud, trying to make sense of things, staring down at the cold metal in his hand.

“Ed... Please. I love you.” Oswald whimpered, voice the one of a man who had suffered endlessly.

Edward had once told himself that he would never be the cause of the other man's suffering, that they were best friends and as such, he would protect him from it. He had held Oswald so many times before, comforted him in so many times of duress, and now he had broken him down and forced him into another wave of pain. Oswald had said they needed one another, words that slid into his brain like a cool balm.

They had both suffered enough.

They were two sides of the same coin; impulsive and controlled, action and planning, their natures duality encompassed.

Together, would there be balance?

The thought was like a switch for something deep inside of him, the lighting of a candle that had been neglected since the night Isabella came into his life. In that moment, the adoration, the warmth, the need he felt towards Oswald reignited, pouring over his rain-soaked form all at once.

The gun slid from Edward's fingers, his white-knuckled grip going slack as he moved forward to take the smaller man's chin in hand.

“We do need one another, don't we?” He muttered, staring down into the deep green eyes he had forgotten he loved.

“We do, Ed... I need you. W-what...” Oswald replied in confusion.

The confusion dissolved instantly, beautiful eyes sliding closed as Edward captured his lips with his own. Thin arms wrapped around his shoulders, tiptoes stood on to make the angle of their kiss more even. Edward let up only when the need for consistent breaths arose, pulling his lips away only far enough to whisper to the other man.

“Never hurt me again, Oswald. Please.” Edward pressed his forehead to Oswald's, both arms now holding him tight.

“I'd rather die.” Oswald promised.

#Gotham #Gotham Fanfiction #Nygmobblepot #Nygmobblepot Fanfiction #Prompt 27 #Gotham spoilers

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asteriskes-blog · 7 years

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Temptation 1 (unfinished)

A demon walks in the door of my room, briskly and without looking at me. Gazing down upon the floor, he plops down upon the chest opposite the dresser. He is not frightening, he is not threatening, though his crocodile skin is off-putting. He is dressed business-casual, he seems beat, that is to say exhausted. I imagine that if not for his crocodile skin there would be bags beneath his orange-yellow eyes.

There is even something redeeming in his exhaustion. One feels something akin to pity. His orange-yellow eyes point to me now, piercing, tired, annoyed. As if I’ve just inconvenienced him.

But I am too tired. Done for the day. My business casual clothes are strewn about the floor. His gaze only arouses in me an indulgent and playful indignance.

“Go away demon, I am too tired now to be corrupted,” I say with a smirk, pretending to be distracted with my book.

“Yeah, yeah” he says quickly, almost whispering. He squints his eyes, scrutinizing me, attempting, I suppose, to make me feel uncomfortable.

“Does it lessen the effectiveness of the manipulation if I know you are trying to manipulate me?” I ask.

“Hmph,” He says and leans back with his eyes closed, his hands behind his head. “No you cannot be tempted like others,” he said, “You have nurtured your own pride, deluded yourself so far that you contrive nearly every necessary pleasure through selflessness. Yes, like the rest you function on pride and greed, but in this you have tricked your mind, deformed your very nerves and neurons so that you are the best sheep you could be, and none may be suspicious of you. I can’t myself tell to what extent its genius and to what extent foolishness, though either way you are a putrid flagellant, a masochist of the first rank!”

From me errupts geniuine laughter and to him I reply:

“Ha tricks, ha delusion. Tell me demom what is this truth from which I deviate? Better yet how does anything I do ill-serve me? So I go about, as you say, a flagellant. So leave my whip and I to our romance. Let us be. So you say I am putrid, well I should not agree with you, but if it is so, let it be so. I am no enemy of vice, less so of the Devil, all you say to me when we take the spin from it is that I which I knew already, and aside from that cherished, is that not, as they say, giving your lord ‘his due?’ So tell me then what is this truth of life I defy.”

Say he:

“Ha, so there you sit, the devil on your left and Christ on your right and you a blissful child holding up an olive branch, No problems. Ha. You are worse than a Christian, you are a Christian who believes they are a Nihilist, believes so because, of course, its fashionable! You think a man may act however he pleases and that you have simply been gifted by providence with a fetish for kindness. How lucky you are truly! How privileged! Ah but you are not so simple as that, I know you Nicholas, as I know all men. You think you can throw up your hands and say ‘I am selfish! I am weak!’ and that gives your morals your moral efforts a rock solid foundation. You try to convince me even that they are of an entirely unconscious nature. Like a beast of the field goes about eating, extricating, fornicating, so there you go all smiles and alms. But you are no animal Nicholas, indeed you are a man and it is clear to me that though you prance about showing off your nuanced understandings, your shrugging cynicisms still you do not grasp the nature of true human selfishness of the capriciousness of your kind. More so still do you misunderstand the devil. He is not some god of old satisfied for the month with a few dead lambs. No he has a goal, a plan for your kind and I assure you, you do not satisfy it. For your morality is not unconscious, it is fraught with ambition and idealism; of visions of a world very different from the one you inhabit. It is not simply that you get a hard on at the half toothed smile of a beggar, that your body is inexplicably overwhelmed with ecstasy at the passing of some progressive legislation. No these sensations are contrived, they are contingent upon their satisfying your designs on as you say ‘making a brighter future for the children’ yes?”

“So I look out for myself and my progeny. So I will my view upon the world. you wish to convince me these designs are of a personally gratifying nature? So be it, this I will not deny. Has your devil something against the will to power? Whatever form it takes?”

“As I have said, the devil, like you, is a man of design, an evangelical, if I may use the term, and your worldview is much at odds with his. Or better said, because your world view is fraught with absurdities, your actions contradict his world view.”

“So I am an enemy to the devil. What of it?”

Haha, first you are mister nuance, tipping your hat to him, now you declare yourself an enemy. Hahaha. How many books have you read? And still you are a fool, always contradicting yourself so as to suit the situation.”

“So I am his friend, so I am his enemy, what is that to me? These are not tangible things, they are of no concern.”

“Oh deep down you are not his enemy I assure you that. And the reason why is very tangible. You see chief among your proud and shining virtues is that of mercy no? Like the god you were brought up on, the god of mercy? You may have ‘fallen from grace’ as you so cutely put it, but still his ideal is burned into you, still you cannot help but be made in his image. But I will tell you what you think you already know- that that god is fiction. But it is not a fiction born of insecurity as you and your ‘intellectual’ ilk seem so confidently to think, no it is a fiction born of hubris! Pure hubris against my master, the true master, the truly merciful.

How is this you say? Lets talk for a minute about mercy- or better put, as neither you nor the devil are in such a position of power over men to distribute mercy, lets call it the simple alleviation of suffering. Suffering is a nice base for you yes? To alleviate suffering can be called, for you, a central goal to bring about that ‘divine mercy’? But I say to you now my master has far better designs for such than you do.”

“Oh do enlighten then, my pride will not be hurt for assenting to the wiser, be he even the Devil! Tell me, your lord doesn’t oppose the principle of skepticism does he?”

“Principle? Ha! No there was a time... but now everything is so muddled Besides what is a skeptic when a man has no say in what he does or does not take for granted. Besides isn’t it obvious? The devil is a utilitarian, his favored may be found among skeptics and believers alike. Besides, the skeptic is not really so fond of his skepticism that he wouldn’t kiss the ground and cry tears of joy at a very inkling of assuredness, of real belief. The skeptic is only concerned with removing all that is extraneous, of getting down to the undeniable, unavoidable truths by way of reduction. But men like you, men like you Nicholas can never be true skeptics, not unaided, not running in the low and pitiful circles you run in, reading the books everyone else has read. No, people like you become like a small child at the edge of the diving board- petrified, afraid to take another step. But you... you have a fierce spirit, I’ll give you that, you are ready to believe anything, you are deep down dying above all to get down to those basic truths, down to that skeleton upon which you may build everything. And I... I am here to help you with this. I am here to give you that so that finally you and the lord will be in harmony.”

As he said this last part his mouth widened into a gleeful smile, though his eyes remained a way which seemed distant and mean, almost struggling.

“Does this look in his eyes discredit him?” I thought to myself recalling the eyes of kinder smiles. “Do perhaps, my eyes discredit me? Are they merely the result of ignorance?” So I endeavored for my eyes to show nothing to him and I asked him to continue.

“I mentioned before hubris, the hubris of the invention of the God of Abraham- your god- whether you accept it or not! You see there was a time when man did not have such wild fancies of mercy. When man did not say to himself: ‘surely there must be something better than this miserable planet. Surely we shouldn’t have to accept, nay, to tip our hats to all that is nasty and bitter. Surely destiny has decreed that one such as I should be sentenced to lay on a couch and eat grapes for an eternity. There are, of course, old ways of avoiding such a nasty fate, but those ways call for certain sacrifices and I am above such. To say that this existence is a zero-sum game... why its preposterous, for if that is the case how am I to be a hero? If that is the case I could not be a thing of goodness, there would be no duality and from me would spring both good and evil things. No, no all the gods love me, and all the gods love my perfect vision of the planet. Why in fact would heaven even make a whole number of Gods if they should always agree? Surely it’d be just as well to have one. Yes, one, one who is the epitome of strength to validate me. A singularity, perfect harmony. No disagreement or internal dissension to rustle my oh so delicate feathers. All that which requires blood of me, all that which brings me pain these mean nothing to an eternity of perfection.’

See back then man at least had to accept the everlasting ‘evil’ nature of the world. They had to grunt and fume and say under their breath ‘oh devil you just wait, i’ll have the last laugh here!’ while they went about toiling miserably, wishing haughtily pity and mercy on the men who-laughing- set lions upon them. But now, in this putrid age we have those ridiculous sort who believe its just a matter of time before all those visions of perfection (which the men of old did not dare taint with the earthly) take over the heart of every man, woman, and child on this planet. Any pain, any toil, any hint of burden is met with offense, indignance, as if it was the most morbid insult! You know well this all, for you are one among them! ‘I shall be the one’ you poke out your chest and say ‘I shall stride forth gallantly into the world and change it irrevocably. Whatever meagre portions I should take I will give this world at least thrice such. Perfection is just on the horizon, and when my progeny sit down to their eternal feast they will look back upon my meagre memory with gratefulness. Perhaps they won’t even remember me then, how delightfully humble of me to take pride anyway, sensuously humble indeed!’ So simple, how simple a life you lead. How inexplicably simple it all is. Take all of that evil and that pain and put it in a rocket ship, send it to the Moon or maybe even to Venus! You think you can just cut that knot like Alexander and all the problems will be solved. That you and your kind deserve nothing but eternal infancy. Protected, warm, safe.

There is simply no respect whatsoever and that lack of respect, oh I warn you, that lack of respect will be your greatest sin. You say you give the devil his due, but that is a lie, a mocking and sick lie. You say you are reconciled to him while in secret you plot to disenfranchise him; to eliminate him and his memory. He has seen your vision of the world and he saw in that world no place for him. But he need not revenge himself, for that will come in time. He only needs to sit back and watch the world work to see you and your sort wreak havoc upon yourselves and the planet you so imperiously cherish.”

“And how” I asked him seriously “are a few simple acts of charity, a genuine concern for civic involvement and progress, and whatever other deplorable actions of goodness in which I am engaged assure my doom? What doom is this anyway, for which you give me such a lauding credit?”

“Mr. Cox you know well what the chaos is, you feel the anxiety of it every day... I know... you are sensitive to these things. You see the way the world is going, you see the bubble before you- everyday it grows. Every day the civilization declines, the analogies to Rome are no longer so lionizing as they may once have been. Rome, you say, fell from decadence, the same decadence you see all about you everywhere. Not in one group, or one class, but in them all. They have all reaped the benefits for now of men like you, you have built over them a mighty and luxurious castle indeed. And it is upon them that castle shall fall. The knife is coming, it will taste uncalloused skin, it will chase weak and unmuscled legs, and be seen by hearts and minds which will wish that had been so sturdy as they were when they built this castle in the hard times of old.

Into this great shelter you have let reprobate filth! Men who serve neither God nor the Devil. Men and Women who, had they not had their minds and wills dulled by your ease and charity, would, without a second thought, quit your church for my masters call. But instead they, like the beasts they are, go to where the fruit grows ripest. Go to where men like you foolishly give of yourself again and again and again. For you may seek to give threefold what you take. But what about a hundred or a thousand times that? What if of those three thousand not one gives half of what they have taken? It is only natural when you have such lofty hopes to smother your contempt for those who squander your gifts on further reducing their ability to contribute. It is only natural when you distribute such hope that those pathetic masses should say to themselves in their hour of drunken self-pity ‘thank god that the future should find a solution to this all!’

Your kindness has doomed them, your inability to admit to your personality any meanness has filled their hearts with false promises. Your ideologies of tolerance and soft cushions have enabled them. And when the lights go out they will have you to thank. For they are weak and will always suffer, that is their lot. In times of old the church had the courtesy and wherewithal to refer to these as reprobate, as Calvin’s damned. But now that concept sickens you, now you and your society see that word, reprobate, as an evil one, perhaps the most evil word of all. You would dare not utter it for fear of an existential crises, though in secret you hold it for the devil and for those strong few who contradict you.

And those weak and selfish, they and their progeny will receive threefold the punishment you deemed yourself too lofty to give. Perhaps they could have been something great. But instead you gave their fathers and their grandfathers and their mothers and their grandmothers liquor money. Or on the upper crust you celebrated their neuroticism and their vices, you lead them to believe it was better and more righteous to be a victim to their past than to carry on. And so their children and grandchildren were doomed, because you had faith in them.”

“And I should object” I said, “that there are enough strong in this world, that if they all should be good and really devote themselves to good works then real and honest ways to avoid these problems should be found. It is rather the absence of hope and the prevalence of the sort of man I suspect you wish me to be which are the issue. For wherever vice and its suffering is found there is there also one profiting. Whenever some youth proclaims some faulty or naive ideology there are those there among them who wish only for self-aggrandizement and so in pursuit of defend that faulty vehicle with vehemence. It is not only the work of charities to hand out money blindly. Though likely some operate in such a way, most of the sort involved in any kind of charitable activity have a more dynamic view and approach to their involvement in their respective communities. As for the poor wretches of which you speak- the mentally unstable and the addicts- these are the exceptions and not the rule. And not every addict lives the entirety of their life so diseased, for some help may be found, and in that recovery, though it may have been one among a thousand, there is created a real and intimate source of hope for the outcome of good works. There is one who stands to say, ‘so my salvation and the salvation of those like me was a one in a million chance, so through my efforts let us make it 2 in a million.’”

At this the deamon smirked and shook his head:

“And so he should convert another I suppose? Make it 3 in a million, and so on and so on. But what if in the course of gaining those 3 you loose 300? If the 3 have so positive and compounding impact, do the 300 whither to dust? Or indeed do those 300 reprobate drag down the world with them? Swallowing up any bit of good you have built. Indeed what has your centuries upon centuries of good work brought you? Your warm bed and white picket fence? No indeed it was the suffering and oppression of others which gave these to you, gave you your luxuries, your luxury of hope. The luxury of thinking that the nectar you so easily obtain can simply be plucked from the trees and strewn about all over the dismal, suffering parts of the world. The luxury of thinking that the dismal sufferings of these people is somehow the most unnatural denial of the way things should be, that somewhere, in the great soft blanket the world has so carefully stitched for you, some evil ogre has torn a hole causing all those poor people to suffer.

It simply couldn’t be that it is natural for those people to suffer, that is is natural for someone to suffer, that indeed every ounce of happiness you receive is leached from someone else.

They know pleasures their forefathers never did. Some, you know the sort, even experienced this ‘earthly perfection’ in their childhood, spoiled and cushioned from every care and misfortune. And when these urchins reach adulthood and taste the first drop of the worlds bitterness become to the acutest extent outraged and offended. You have also the opposite variety- those who’s lives have been so unceasingly miserable that it obviously must be something gone terribly awry with the world. Yes there is always something wrong they say, terribly wrong. It would be an outrage, so they think, that this should be their lot.

Look to your campuses: the haughty vacant smile of the Marxist, or for that matter of the Libertarian. Where have you seen that smile before you wonder. Then it strikes you, where the manifesto now sits there was once a bible,

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