Morality

Yesterday my BDSM girlfriend came over and we ended up watching Jesus Camp while enjoying the $35 worth of Chinese food I felt inclined to pay for. I'm normally a very stingy person, but in the few months it's taken for my bank account to approach ten grand I've actually become something approaching generous. It may just be a few isolated incidents, but I bought my roommate a $2 coffee yesterday and waved her away as she pulled out her pocketbook, while I fully intended to give a dollar to the homeless man selling newspapers outside, though he was gone by the time it took for me to figure out the asinine ATM prompts. I've long known that my personal level of morality is directly related to my income bracket. Back when I had first moved to the city, slaving away as a deli clerk making slightly more than minimum wage, I was a horrible goddamn person. I stole constantly, managing to somehow live on only $100 a month, most of my costs cut by stealing food and other essentials from my place of work. I've always been a bit of what I guess you would call a objectivist, simply I know that my worth as a person far exceeds that of any other. My personal hapiness is the one goal worth striving for, and this is why society should not hesitate to begruge me a few porterhouse steaks, salmon filets, $20 lamb roasts and whatever else I stuff in my giant ass jacket. If a man cannot live like a king he may as well eat like one, laws be damned.

Anyhow - Jesus Camp if you don't know, is a movie about the extreme religious right attempting to recuit children. The whole thing largely serves as an excuse for progressive liberals and the atheists to bitch and moan, which while warranted, I've grown awfully tired of this attaboy nonsense. We all hate the fucking South and we all know organized religion continues to fuck up this country's chance at progress in a variety of ways. My real problem is that among the people I know, namely the young intellectual females who continue to dabble in promiscuous sex and other forms of abstract self-expression and rebellion, none intend to have children. This is the new trend, something I refer to as the "Barren Intellectual" syndrome. It seems that our current culture has made the unfortunate distinction that because poor uneducated southern women continue to pump out children at alarming rates, that the mere act of procreation is somehow outddated - something best left to this contingent of god-fearing malcontents. Simply put it's thinking like this that is going to burn America to the ground. A few generations from now and the rabid right-wing fag-bashers are going to outnumber our supposedly enlightened ranks at a 4 to 1 ratio. There's a reason our presidents are forced to play the part of the perfect native son, unable to express any thoughts on religion other than "Boy I sure am glad our magic sky friend keeps this country running so smoothly."

Then again, the new atheism seems to also be gaining ground, which is not to say in any way that I condone this radical other end of the spectrum. All I want is for us to arrive at a middle ground, a sane and rational country where you can believe in god if you wish, and no one is going to either praise or denounce you for it. The book I'm writing now takes place fifty years past our current religious predicament, a world where these opposing forces have both achieved their ends; the north a godless secular state with a growing suicide rate, and a south still breeding the hate that keeps its people strong.  The death of god is something that will eventually be traced back to this time period, and I can only feel a bit like Carl Sagan, saying "My god, we've been to the moon" only the moment we're watching is the last point in time that humanity believed in something greater than itself, before succumbing to hopelessness.

Maybe the Ubermensche will eventually arrive. In all likelihood he'll be regarded as a savior, a new religion will spring up around him once he's martyred, and we'll be back at square one.

Honestly I've no idea what I'm talking about. If there's a point worth making it's that the Christians and the Catholics continue to maintain this idea that there exists in this world evil people. Not people who have differing viewpoints, or whose view of morality is skewed, but people whose only wish in their heart of hearts is to genuinely inflict harm on those around them. The rational man says "this is wrong! Look around you at your fellow man!" The murderer is driven by chemicals, the thief driven by biological needs, the pedophile bourne of his own unfortunate sexual tragedy. And yet here I am, a normal upbringing, a stable chemical balance, and a full awareness of the immortality of my actions. And yet still I find myself among the ranks of the countless deviants, wandering amongst the flock with a lascivious grin, discounting the morality of god as outdated as I continue to steal and curse and fuck without remorse, without purity or beauty in any of it.

I am the proof that evil exists.

I'm not sure how that makes me feel.