Genesis

by Bernard Beckett

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved.

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does.

The people were divided into four distinct classes, based upon genomic readings: Laborers, Soldiers, Technicians, and Philosophers. Children were separated from their parents at birth, and details of their parentage were never divulged. At the end of their first year each child was tested, and either allocated to their class or terminated.

What the fuck

History has shown us the futility of the conspiracy theory. Complexity gives rise to error, and in error we grow our prejudice.

For a society to function successfully perhaps there needs to be a level of empathy that cannot be corrupted.

Conspiracy theory fails because it assumes people have within them the means to achieve their ends.

It is only in the State that the People may find their full expression. For the People are the State, and the State is the People.

Their sole criterion for making the decision was, “How well does this ladder we are being offered fit the hole in which we find ourselves?”

“I’m programmed to find myself attractive.” “I thought you said you were self-programming.” “It was a wise choice, don’t you think?”

Yes, the world may push your buttons as it passes through your circuitry. But the world does not pass through me. It lingers. I am in it and it is in me. I am the means by which the universe has come to know itself. I am the thing no machine can ever make. I am meaning.”

This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.

In the end, living is defined by dying.