PIRATE THIS BOOK

95 Essays for the End of the World by

Luther Sin

Part I of V

Lowest Common Denomination

If it's true that all religions share some common ground, but vary in their opinions regarding other matters, isn't it fair to say that the overlapping bits are those which have been found to be true (or useful) by more than one civilization? For instance, many successful religions include a taboo on the eating of pork. And before we all knew about trichinosis and the requisite temperature for killing such parasites, following this advice could save your life. It's still not a bad idea. Another example: at least 80 distinct cultures, many of which are thought to have no recent common ancestor, have a "flood myth" resembling the Biblical story of Noah and the Ark. Similar elements include the building of a boat, pairs of animals, and one man who, along with his wife / family, survives the catastrophe. Of course, the story of Cinderella has also been discovered to be more or less culturally universal -- but that one's just about marrying up, isn't it? Anyway; we tell the same stories, and we follow the same rules. Only not exactly the same stories, and not exactly the same rules. Which is fine -- hooray for diversity and all that. But if you're looking for a deeper truth, why not start with what damn near everybody believes? Sure, being "wishy-washy" or "New Agey" in one's faith is frowned upon by old-school Christians (not to mention Muslims & Jews). But I fail to see the value in absolute certainty. People who claim to be sure about what happens after death are either (a) blessed with miraculous knowledge from beyond the grave, (b) mentally ill, or (c) scoundrels who make things up for the purpose of manipulating their fellow men. Can't we all agree that some of the content of some religions was generated by those in category (c)? And if some, why not admit that it's most of the stuff that doesn't overlap -- at least in other people's religions? As in, "I don't know about all that past-life nonsense, but the concept of karma seems pretty right on..." It's the same thing with a Muslim who's moved by the Sermon on the Mount but just can't get down with the Old Testament slaughter of the Philistines or Jacob's divine right to be the ancestor of every living human being on Earth. There's no reason he needs to come around to the point of view that the Pope's infallible. Of course, examining Christianity from the perspective of an outsider, he's going to reject the parts which seem ignorant or false. Rather than scorn his judgment, shouldn't we recognize it as a little more objective than our own? I don't think we ought to revive Odin and Loki, or revert to matriarchal, "pagan" forms of worship. Those things died out for a reason. But we aren't much better if we continue to propagate those elements of our own religion which have become obsolete. The millennialism isn't fooling anyone, 2000 years after Jesus is reported to have said "Behold, I come quickly" and a decade after the latest apocalyptic scare. Opposition to contraception is getting a little old in a world where we've just passed the 7-billion-human mark. It's time to let go of such things.

Oycott Boil
Carbon footprint, sure. But it's a bit more complicated than that. Eaten at McDonald's lately? Congratulations, you're a supporter of factory farming and GMOs. Been trying to cut down on the trans fats? You've probably also been consuming more palm oil, the increased production of which is currently accelerating the deforestation of the world's last remaining orangutan habitat. Seemingly innocuous actions can cause real harm. Vicariously, of course; very few of us actually drive the bulldozers that knock down rainforests, or lock chickens into tiny cages, then shoot them up with steroids and antibiotics. But by continuing to purchase cheap goods made possible by the above practices, we tacitly signal that we approve. Shop at Wal-Mart? You're helping send American jobs to China, furthering the exploitation of prisoners and sweatshop workers. By far the most powerful tool available to us as consumers is the boycott. Completely refusing to buy someone's product, as an individual or a bloc, sends them a strong message -- that we don't want them to keep doing what they're doing. If we have a problem with the modern American slaughterhouse, we can buy better meat, or go vegetarian. If we don't like what Exxon and Shell do in developing countries, we're free to stop funding them with our regular purchase of gasoline. Nobody's holding a gun to our heads and forcing us to give our money to the destroyers of this earth. (Well, except maybe the IRS.) The fact is, much of the time we choose -- consciously or unconsciously -- to give this representation of our invested time and energy to the people who are going to do the worst possible things with it. And why? Because it's hard not having a car. Because organic groceries are more expensive. But those aren't the only reasons. Like the cigarette addict who knows he should quit, but just can't seem to make that final break, we've grown used to our bad habit. We like the warmth, plentiful food and cheap transportation afforded by everyone else's natural resources, even as it becomes increasingly obvious to them what we're doing. (Taking their fossil fuels in exchange for worthless paper, having exhausted the majority of our own.) In the long run, we know we have to stop; but in the short, we keep burning more and more. Our increasing dependence on imported oil means that countries which produce it (Venezuela circa 1979) have us over a barrel if they threaten to stop selling to us. The depletion of old, reliable fields here at home means companies which extract it (BP circa 2011) take bigger risks. Such as drilling in deeper water, where it's harder to cap spills if they happen. But what are you supposed to do once all the stuff nearer the coast has been used up? Ideally, we'd never run out of oil. Ideally, we'd never have to go to war to keep getting it cheaply. But we don't live in an ideal world, it will eventually run out (or become too expensive to use as mere fuel, which is the same thing as far as we're concerned), and almost every American war / "police action" / black op for the past twenty years has been more or less about oil. So what should we do? Stop buying it. As much as possible, as soon as possible. And yes, I mean you.

Legal Code
Law, as a language, is the programmer's worst nightmare. It's not written to any kind of standard. It's neither concise nor well-organized. It is full of its own version of GOTO, poorly commented, and indexed in a fashion which makes it difficult to find a particular instruction (unless you know the line number). Instead of modifying existing code to operate more efficiently, new instructions are merely layered on top, subroutine upon subroutine. Is it any wonder that our system is lagging a bit? Our resources are hopelessly misallocated. Much of our memory has become corrupted, and bad ideas run amok like viruses, multiplying from state to state by turning the citizens' own initiative process against them. All too frequently people don't even know exactly what it is they're voting for (or against). When was the last time you read the full text of any legal document? Like the disclaimers displayed at the beginning of every installation wizard, laws have simply become too cumbersome to be bothered with. You don't need to understand them to use the program. You just have to indicate that you accept. The same way we're convinced to click "I Agree" (since otherwise we can't use the software we just bought / downloaded), we're convinced to get a driver's license. To pay property tax. To register as a medical marijuana patient. But what if our laws were "open source", or better yet, written via wiki? What if everyone had the right and the ability to personally influence each and every legislative decision? We've all heard the logistical argument against direct democracy, but with the advent of our global information culture, that just doesn't wash anymore. It's perfectly feasible to inform everyone about their choices and receive their input electronically. I mean, if it could help Republicans steal an election in Ohio, technology can certainly work for the rest of us in a better capacity.

Priesthood
We have but two modern priesthoods -doctoring and lawyering. Even the priesthood isn't a priesthood, anymore. People listen to doctors and lawyers as if their fate hangs in the balance since very probably, it does. The fear of hell has been replaced with the fears of prison, disgrace, bankruptcy, heart disease, impotence, and cancer. All our fears are temporal and thus our hopes as well so why listen to priests? Better to listen to those who promise a healthier, wealthier life on earth. Better even to listen to quacks and Ponzi schemers than to turn back to superstition and ignorance, to exaggerating the fear of the unknown with tales of fire and brimstone the teller has never seen. Better we should believe in nothing at all than the patriarchal, nationalistic fantasies of a dead culture, stapled to a few good pieces of moral advice from a man soon killed for giving them. Better our sons should lament their lack of a religion than we should give them the one our fathers gave us.

Devangelism
The next paradigm shift will not be a change in scientific perspective, but rather an expansion of etiquette. We will simply realize how downright rude it is to approach someone with the goal of saving his or her immortal soul. Some of us begin to recognize this already, like children made uncomfortable by their parents' insistent proselytizing. We see it every time a perfectly friendly Mormon or Jehovah's Witness gets a door slammed in his face. But do we really understand the (excellent) reasons for our discomfort / outrage? "Saving their souls" was the argument used by every conquistador from Columbus on to excuse treating the native inhabitants of wherever like subhuman scum. After all, so long as the spiritual essence of their victims went to heaven, it didn't really matter what happened to their earthly bodies. This is how we (non-Native Americans) acquired America. It's how Britain took over Australia (for use as a prison colony). It's just the M.O. for a technologically superior Western culture encountering an unfamiliar, "primitive" people: slaughter them, exterminate their way of life, then turn around and say, "Well, at least now they have a chance at eternal reward." As if entry into Paradise were contingent upon having heard two syllables translated from Hebrew to Greek and thence to English (or Spanish or Portuguese, whatever). What kind of a God would consign people to eternal flame and agony for mere ignorance? Even the Catholic Church could see the disconnect here. It's why they came up with limbo, for babies and virtuous heathens. And what about those who were willing to hear the "good news"? Did it stop our European forefathers from stealing their land and possessions? From raping or enslaving them? Did their newfound faith protect them from the (also new) smallpox virus? Nope. These Christianized savages had merely begun a long process of initiation into the white man's culture. After accepting a foreign religion, they were asked to forget what they remembered of their own. To switch languages after the same fashion. To teach their children to act like us. "Rudeness" barely begins to cover it; but then again, there's hardly a better term. This sort of behavior is insulting, presumptuous, unabashedly bold: in a word, rude. One begins by assuming that the other person does not already know what one is about to tell him. One then proceeds by further assuming that any rejection of the pitch is due to some misunderstanding and not because the would-be convert actually has legitimate issues with the faith one is selling. Part of the problem is epistemological. How do you know what you're trying to convince me of? It's reasonable to infer (from the observation of oneself and others) that we're all going to die someday. It's also reasonable to assume (for the same reasons) that the world will carry on without us. It may even be reasonable to believe (based on accounts of near-death experiences) that at the moment one dies one sees a bright light. But where did we get this St. Peter shit? Most cultures believe in an afterlife, or at least in some form of endurance of the soul (such as reincarnation). But there the similarities, for the most part, end. While we generally agree that some part of us goes on after death, we can't seem to do so about what happens to it. I prefer to believe this is for the simple reason that nobody knows, or has any way of knowing (until they do). All our theories of post-mortem punishment, reward, and/or rebirth are, to use the terminology of Karl Popper, unfalsifiable hypotheses. If you get to heaven or are reborn, there's no way to tell anybody about it. Not that they'd believe you, anyway. Because in most of our experience, once people die, they tend to stay dead. If you choose to believe in exceptions to this rule (other than zombies), congratulations on your faith. Now shut the fuck up about it already.

Add-Ons
Cars. iPods. Facebook pages. Technology has made possible the addition of electronic or mechanical appendages to a person's conception of himself. Like the lawyer in the joke who, having had his arm torn off, laments the loss of his Rolex, we sometimes identify with these artificial extensions of ourselves more than with our own natural bodies. Consider the common computer nerd. Rather than try to improve his physical health (often poor), he focuses his efforts on learning to better use a machine which, while not actually a part of him, allows him to transcend his condition. To earn money. To play, create. (And to see millions of pictures of naked women.) He despises those who choose the other path -- "jocks". No coincidence that many heavy computer users are into anime and sci-fi, entertainments which feature technology as a source of personal power. We geeks love the idea that someday our intellect will translate into the capacity for dominance. Having been shoved into one too many trash cans in our youth, we nurture a revenge fantasy that vindicates our collective decision to more or less neglect our bodies in favor of hypertrophy of the mind. But it doesn't really work that way, does it? Women continue to go for the guys with ripped abs and well-formed deltoids, not the guys with overclocked gaming machines. The ability to write properly commented code will never be a secondary sex characteristic. While money may attract the insincere, lust remains a purely physical phenomenon, and it's this fact which stings more than a pinkbelly administered by the entire football team. What are we to do? Should we take solace in the fact that most of our high school and college rivals will eventually be brought low by sedentary jobs, pizza delivery, and big-screen TVs? Or should we, inspired by the fact that Niels Bohr was not only a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist but also an Olympic-level athlete, strive to achieve a more appropriate balance in our own lives? Whichever option we choose, we're still going to die. No amount of working out or aggressive pharmaceutical research will guarantee immortality. And as they say, you can't take it with you: the body or the computer. So let's just try and remember that, accessories or no, we are all in the process of becoming obsolete.

O' Hare
Everything dies. Bodies age, houses crumble, cars break down. Empires dissolve, alliances shift, dynasties fall. The pursuit of immortality is a fool's dream. Surely it's better to come to terms with this than to live a whole life in denial and fear. Even if it takes your youth to achieve such reconciliation at least middle age and dotage will not come as surprises. We hate to admit what is obvious to anyone who thinks about it, preferring instead to erect statues in the desert -monuments to ignorance and hubris. What good is an airport named after a dead man to its namesake? Even if it bears his name while he is alive he will still die and it will be forgotten.

Organic
The little sticker with the USDA logo lets us know that this apple is better than a regular apple. It is coated with less wax, contains more vitamins, and is contaminated with no pesticide residue. Clearly superior to your standard pome. But the fact is, before the turn of the previous century, this was the only kind of apple in existence. Until Fritz Haber's famous process (patented in 1908, commercialized by Carl Bosch) allowed us to "fix" nitrogen from the air to make fertilizer, our production of food was limited by the amount of available natural nitrates (as it still is in organic farming). If you overused the soil by growing nitrogen-hungry crops for several consecutive years, it would cease to be fertile. Thanks to the aforementioned ingenious Germans, however, our species avoided Malthus' brick wall, doubling the planet's maximum carrying capacity for humans practically overnight. Of course, the new process also made it possible to produce explosives much more cheaply, leading to massive destruction and loss of life in World Wars I & II. Ironic, eh? But we were talking about food, not bombs. And one effect of these recently invented farming methods has been to increase size and volume at the expense of taste and nutritional content. Thus a modern, synthetically-fertilized apple may provide less actual sustenance than the organic / pre-WWI version of the fruit, despite its large, juicy appearance. Likewise with meat. The more rapidly you fatten a cow (by adding grain to its diet), the sicker it gets. Though the fat content ("marbling") of its muscles goes up steadily, the animal's digestive system breaks down. Commercially raised cattle often develop horrible ulcers and must be given antibiotics constantly to prevent infection. But who cares? Wheat and corn are cheap, and large beef producers want to get their product to market as quickly as possible. So we eat sick cows. It's a good analogy for what's happened to us. We can feed more people, but they've become less healthy. Proper nutrition has become a luxury rather than the norm. Quality of food has always separated the rich from the poor; but at least in the past an apple was an apple. It's as if we solved world hunger by sending dog food to impoverished nations. Sure, you could probably live off it in a pinch. But is it really right to feed people the stuff?

American History in a Nutshell

We killed off the original inhabitants and moved their descendants onto small, worthless patches of land some of which we later decided we wanted after all. We enslaved the inhabitants of other countries to pick our cotton and build our railroads; not to mention indentured servitude, debtors' prisons, and company towns. We shot most of the native wildlife, burned the grasslands to fertilize our crops, left the center of the country a dusty wasteland. Now we just pave everything over. We suck all the oil we can get out of the ground, net all the fish we can get out of the sea, use open pools of cyanide to extract gold. We carve away hillsides to get at the coal beneath, cut down forests to make lumber, paper, & toothpicks, lock all the animals in cages until we get hungry. And throughout all of this we have somehow continued to believe that ours is the best possible way of doing things.

Prophets & Leaders

Though every man, alone, feels the weight of his ignorance we have convinced ourselves that together we know what we are doing. But how can the whole know what no part of it understands? Or, if the truth is that some of us do get it why assume that it is our leaders and not our mad-eyed prophets who have the correct perspective? As far as I know, power has never made anyone better, wiser, or a superior arbiter of decisions. Rather, one who held a good deal of it declared (absolutely) that it corrupts, that great men are almost always bad men. But we do not listen; we still crucify prophets and glorify leaders. Are these the actions of an enlightened society?

Antagonism
We are not the heroes of this story; we are the beneficiaries of evil acts. We are the slightly sympathetic sons & daughters of a ruthless tyrant whose ear is poisoned by cunning advisors. Perhaps, through the king's love for us, he can be dissuaded from his dark purpose; but then again, probably not. For these Rasputins have his attention; they threaten him with nightmare scenarios to convince him of the necessity of what is harmful and unnecessary. And our pleas will be seen not as clearsighted and disinterested but as the naive folly of youth. The regal head will shake off our opinions, a wistful smile upon the royal lips, the smile of a man who remembers when he thought as we do now. But his knitted brow will reveal that he also remembers his viziers' reasons, and still finds them more persuasive. And though his heart will be in sympathy with us, he will continue to choose wrongly again, and again.

The Franchise Way of Life

There is a tendency, here in America, to assume that if something is the most successful of its kind it is also therefore the best. The reasoning goes: people being free to choose what they like, more people will tend to choose a superior good or service, and the provider of this product will earn more money than his competitors. And on the surface of it this may seem right and true. Consider, however, the nature of a profit margin. Profit is the difference between what one spends on materials, labor, etc. and what one manages to charge the customer. Imagine two hypothetical proprietors, one of whom reinvests 90% of his income back into the business which generated it, while the other socks away a solid 50% in the bank for later use. Who do you think will provide a superior product? And who will be able to franchise? There are any number of real-world examples. "Property management" corporations collect rent from a number of apartment complexes, but rarely use much of that money to improve the buildings in which their existing tenants live; they'd rather save up to buy a new plot of land and build a nicer, newer set of abodes which will fetch a higher price (at least until they, too, become old and decrepit through lack of maintenance). "Mom and pop" operations get pushed out of business because they can't match Wal-Mart's economies of scale. Not because they provide an inferior product; because they never earned enough to pay for a second location. Never built "brand recognition", never advertised outside their local community, never had the opportunity or the inclination to become ubiquitous. But then again, they never dreamt of using Chinese prison labor to cut their production costs, either. Does anyone seriously believe that McDonald's became what they are by having the best hamburgers? They became what they are by having the cheapest burgers, and by buying even cheaper ingredients. Those who charged a reasonable price and used the money to buy decent meat simply couldn't compete. For a while such a place might do a successful local business; but it wouldn't grow, and eventually the "big guys" would encroach upon its territory. It's the same way with cultures. Ours isn't necessarily the best way of life; it's just the most aggressive when it comes to propagating itself. Think about it -- no indigenous people trying to maintain a balance with the earth on which they lived could ever compete with modern, industrialized civilization. The general who is more willing to burn up all the resources behind his lines is better able to push the front. A field of grain feeds an army better than a forest; having as many babies as you can, while not the best idea if you're planning on staying in the same land area for the foreseeable future, does yield the largest possible fighting force. They'll have to wage war or starve; but hey, that's their problem. What's important is that one's lineage be preserved. That it go forth and conquer. The game of empire is to amass as many colonies as possible. To exploit them for their resources, and then use those resources to subjugate new colonies, or take existing colonies from competing empires. Has this not now become the nature of business? Instead of flags, we plant logos. Instead of paying tribute to Rome, we send vinyl envelopes full of cash back to the home office. But many aspects are rather similar: the male-dominated hierarchy, the aggressive competition, the emphasis on expansion. As the Japanese have it: "Business is war." War on whom? Other businesses? Governments who would restrict "free trade"? The consumer? The planet? If this rhetoric seems ridiculous to you, look around; the war is indeed taking all it can from us and the world we live on. To what end are we being assembled, indoctrinated, ranked according to ability? Why must we extract every drop of available energy from our surroundings, then expend it driving or flying ourselves around in separate compartments? Who the fuck, exactly, is all of this for?

Governments vs. Peace

So long as governments exist, true peace never can. Our leaders draw lines in the earth (or on a map, representing the same) so that one day, those on one side of the line can be turned against those on the other and vice versa. If we do not intend to make war, why draw lines at all? Why collect taxes and spend half of them on armaments? Einstein once said this succinctly and persuasively but while we pretend to revere him as one of the smartest men who ever lived we piss all over his legacy. The bomb he helped to make possible is coveted by all governments -hoarded by those who have it, lusted after by those who don't. A Mexican standoff is not peace. It is a mutual understanding based not on trust but on the fear of total, assured destruction. Dr. Seuss explained it in a manner even a child could understand and we read "The Butter Battle Book" to our kids but fail to heed its (obvious) message. Why?

The Power of Disbelief

The Church has lost much of its power in recent years, for the simple reason that people have ceased to believe in its illusions. They no longer believe that priests have the right or the ability to intercede on their behalf with eternity, are instead coming around to the point of view that "every man must work out his own salvation," with or without the requisite fear & trembling. Yet we continue to place our faith in the shibboleth of State. Why, having rejected the principle that man needs an intercessor between him and his God, do we accept that he needs one twixt him and his fellows? If atheism can peacefully remove the reins of power from the wizened old hands of churchmen, why cannot anarchism perform the same service re: statesmen? Both systems are propped up by false beliefs. And just as many of us have stopped believing in a God who prefers the pleas of the clergy to those of the laity, we can stop believing in the lie that states rule by the consent of the governed. They do not. They exist despite the objections of the governed, and we must make our objections more loudly if they are ever to be heard. When was the last time you felt represented? And when was the last time you paid a tax? I'm willing to bet that the latter was more recent than the former. States are rarely as interested in representing the interests of their citizens as they are in finding out new ways to take a portion of our labor (represented, of course, by the money they print). Why do we put up with this? It's not as if the government is forcing everyone to pay taxes -- that's just another one of its illusions. There are a whole lot more taxpayers than there are tax collectors, necessarily so by the nature of the system. When the ratio of parasite to host starts to get too large, the thing collapses. And starts over again. But it doesn't have to. The trick is to get past revolutions & Reformations. To realize that politics, like religion, always has been and always will be a mechanism of control. To regard interference in temporal matters with the same instinctive abhorrence we feel when someone tries to swindle us spiritually. To recognize that just as a man has a right not to pay tithe, he has a right not to pay tax. And for God's sake, to quit being so damn scared of a little anarchy.

Comrade Christ
We've all heard the Gospel. But how many of us really remember what it says? Jesus taught that heaven is something present within our everyday perception of reality, a potential much larger than its apparent size. A mustard seed. A hidden talent. Etc. Many of his parables are attempts to describe this subtle Kingdom, which he never quite seems to be able to explain to his satisfaction. He frequently displays frustration with those who wilfully refuse to hear or understand his message. In other places (see the Sermon on the Mount) our hero explains what is not important. Worldly status, money, stockpiles built up against future shortages -- he takes a dim view of these things, declaring that faith will be sufficient to ensure all are fed and clothed. He advises his disciples to take with them no provisions for their journeys, to rely on charity. He tells a rich young man who "would be perfect" to sell everything he owns and give the proceeds to the poor. After his death, we are told that "all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need." -- Acts 2:44-45. This was the sole requirement to join the early Christian church; it was taken so seriously that a story is told (in Acts 5:1-10) of a man and his wife who were struck dead by God for trying to deceive Peter about the purchase price of some land they had sold. Perhaps you think I'm making the first Christians out to be some kind of communist, utopian cult, that my interpretation of Scripture is unfair. If so, I think you need to read your Book again. Read the part where Jesus whips the moneychangers from the temple, or explains to the Pharisees that currency is worth only so much as the man on its face. Read the story of his pre-burial anointment by a woman who emptied the common treasury to buy ceremonial oil. In fact, the Apostolic way of life is communistic and utopian from our modern perspective (as well as from that of those living in Biblical times, as evidenced by all the cynical disbelievers who approached to discredit the Messiah.) It was threatening to worldly power when it was invented and it's threatening now. The only difference is that today the once-bright light of truth has been concealed beneath innumerable layers of cloudy doctrine. When we use the name of Jesus as a mere mantra, repeating it over and over against what we do not understand, we do the man's ideas a huge disservice. For once a thing has been said enough, it can be said again with no danger of clarifying the underlying message. The very familiarity of the sound stops us from really listening to it. "Jesus." It elicits a horde of emotional reactions but causes very few to think seriously about the Gospels. And doesn't that suck? Shouldn't we strive to understand exactly what these parables mean, to make sure his martyrdom meant something? To learn from the mistakes of 2000 years ago? Shouldn't it be the content and not the trappings of our religion with which we are fascinated?

Unnecessary Necessities
(for the Modern Citizen)
ID. Social security number, driver's license, passport and birth certificate. Bank account. Includes checkbook, ATM card, and the opportunity to endlessly worry over your balance online. Personal grooming supplies. Shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, shaving cream and razors. Hair should also be cut according to the fashion for one's age, race, and economic status. Clothes & shoes. The more uncomfortable your shoes and the better pressed your pants, the richer you're probably trying to look. Good luck with that. A cell phone. This is so you can look important by getting up from meals to answer it, and so you can talk to your friends while using your next to last and least necessary necessity, A car. Serves to isolate you from undesirables on the journey between home and work (or work and home). Oh yeah, did we mention you're gonna need a place to live? And some insurance on that car. Plus money for food & gas. Better get a job...

Time vs. Money

If our time is so valuable, why are we always being encouraged to sell it so cheaply? I mean, if I can have an hour of leisure time or ten dollars, I'll probably take the time, for at least half the day. But it seems like anymore you're either in the shark tank, struggling to get 20 hours at seven-something per, or on salary being milked for 60-plus. What the hell happened to the middle ground? Why does the prerequisite amount of schooling for any given profession continuously trend upwards? And how come... oh, never mind. The point is, I don't really feel much like working. At the 7-11 or the Gap or McDonald's. Nor do I want to enroll in trade school or community college. In the words of Bartleby the Scrivener, "I would prefer not to." Is it so very wrong to question the basic ethic of one's society? It's just that I've never really seen it make anyone happy. I owe! I owe! It's off to work I go!

Us
The fundamental principle of our society is debt. Slept indoors for a night? You owe the guy who let you. Ate a meal? You owe the guy who cooked it, and should probably tip the one who served it to you. Want some clothes? Need some healing? It's gonna cost you... This may seem perfectly normal and unremarkable, until you consider that no indigenous people we've come across in the course of our colonial expansion has ever been discovered doing this -charging its members for the basic necessities of life. "Primitive" tribes do not cast someone outside the circle of their protection unless he commits a very serious crime. But in our so-called communities, it's merely the default option. It's even called "defaulting" when the bank or the original owner takes something back due to the puchaser's inability to continue paying. Which is an interesting situation. Anyone who makes payments owes the remaining balance on whatever he's making them towards. But if he fails to pay, and the item is taken back, he is rarely owed any part of the payments he has made. Most cultures today operate on a similar model. In Europe and Asia, Africa and Australia, North and South America, people owe and people are owed. We all maintain a complex system of rules for dealing with a variety of financial obligations. Perhaps it was an inevitable development following the invention of written numerals; as soon as debt could be recorded, it was. At which point barter turned into trade and our pre-capitalist ancestors became us. The modern man. With this shift, society went from being a comprehensive entity which served all its members' needs equally to one which serves the needs of some of its members at the expense of others. It became capable of pyramids but also of slavery. Capable of germinating the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, but also of expecting people to become interchangeable parts of an assembly line. It's easy to hate what we've become. But remember: it is what we've become. "The system" is in fact composed entirely of us. Society as a whole continues to exist in the form that it does because of the actions taken by individuals within it. We're all constantly making ripples. The question is, is our interference constructive or destructive? Are we amplifying or dampening our neighbors' effects? And which do we want to do? I think we owe it to ourselves to try something different.

Student & Teacher

The problem with machines is that they are so very literal. You have to explain every little thing to them in a form they can understand, and even if you do that you'll still have bugs, of course. Not because the thing is broken but because human beings do not realize how terribly imprecise they are in everyday speech. To be a computer programmer, one must become a patient, accurate corrector of error, oneself machinelike at the task. Telling a computer what you want it to do is kind of like teaching a child. It does no good to get angry if the other fails to comprehend; it can only be because noone has yet taught it how to grasp the concept. And more often than not, it is one's own instructions which are at fault. With computers, as with children, there is an immense capacity to learn coupled with a certain simplicity. A quality of not knowing what to do until they are told. And both will generally follow the path laid out for them to the best of their ability, with some margin of error.