Things are never actually right in the world. Or, I should say, no one has the ability to accept and agree with everything that is done and that happens. So people who write articles about what needs to change and who ought to do what, and whether so and so was really a good person, are mostly just wasting the time they clearly have too much of. But it just so happens I am one of those with too much time on my hands, and I thoroughly enjoy wasting things that everyone older and wiser than me has told me are important. I live in the woods you see, so I am always in a good mood and never willing to share it with anyone. That works just fine; since no one quite remotely interesting lives within thirty miles of me. So this is an article about how things ought to be done, only...in the spirit that they will never change. God forbid I run out of things to correct; how ever would I converse with people?
    

This disclaimer was not so much to show that I am smarter than the inflamed insubstantialists who whine over the editorials of the press and the billion and one social/political bloggers on the net, albeit that was a smidgen of the underlying message. It was more to call attention to the fact that I do not assume to know more than anyone else about anything, unlike the bulk of people inclined to publish their opinion. It is not a lecture, but a piece of prose that maybe you’ll relate to. The author is no teacher, but a peer (as is anyone, I believe, until one surrenders themselves to the other). I am not out to convert the blind or the opposed, only to communicate to the like minded. Anything else I find to be presumptuous and kind of rude. Am I biased and do I harbor volatile opinions? Of course. Would I write this or you read this otherwise? Some read to find something to regurgitate later, some read to dismantle. Not that I am against critically looking at what is before me, but my Fadré told me not to go picking fights. Instead of hunting for the easily dismantled, I prefer to look at everything that surrounds me, but nothing more. It is much harder to look at things that nobody wrote and figure out how to read them, so I respect the few who can do that. Those are the best kinds of readers. They will tell you when you’re full of s***, but only when you truly are, and not because they feel they are obligated to to prove themselves clever. As such, this article is for those readers.

I like to put myself higher than other people. Both in my mind and physically. Being situated, for instance, on a stage, always instills me with a sense of dominance over the crowd...of safety and deserving. The applause is roaring and naturally it is; I am better than these people. Now, not everybody loves or even likes being on stage, I know. I’ve met a girl who went on, came back and threw up. But everybody likes to think they are better than others. What you know and how you feel are separate, so I don’t think that this is wrong, but it is true. The superiority is a very malleable state; very delicate. It is a standard you have for some indefinite or unimportant quality that is much easier to raise than to lower. Not everyone can or will imagine that they are better than the people around them, but for thousands of years man has deluded himself into thinking he is better than the beasts. That is impossible, as “better” is a very debatable word. We certainly aren’t always happier, or more efficient. We aren’t even always smarter, though that is very difficult for some to admit. We don’t give the most back or make the most sense, there aren’t the largest numbers of us, we aren’t strongest, fastest, nor do we live longest. But we know we are better. Now I am not a religious man, nor am I anti theistic, but supposedly, in Catholicism, God created us in his own image. Fine. But he also created all the other creatures, and unless he’s narcissistic, which may be argued, he loves all of them more. I jest, but my point being that even without believing or ever even considering that how we feel is a sense of “Superiority”, that is only because our standard blinds us to simplicity, and simplicity is most often the most accurate. So what makes me better than an ant? I am taller.
    

Therefore, I think it is safe to say that we are all merely animals. We are no better, no worse, and no less selfish. Which is a wonderful thing; that relieves us of most real responsibility, for if we are really only animals, spawned by a world ruled not by fairness but by randomness, there cannot conceivably be a good or an evil. Only what we think is acceptable and what we reject. But although I believe it is important to realize that there is no right answer, I think it is much more important to know what is wrong or right to oneself. Not what the good book says, not what the contemporary culture projects, but rather whatever you can test and feel and question and probe over and over again but keep coming up with the same result for. Of course, culture and faith and our peers are all part of who we are, but the idea is to strip away as much of it as you can in the moments when you are trying to define yourself to avoid the insane notion that one side of anything is right and another wrong. Unless fact, things only ever differ.
    

What does it matter? What am I trying to convince you of? Nothing, at the moment. I just wanted to establish a base with my readers, so that in the future, when the topics I broach become more complex and specific, you can easily follow my thought process from the very roots of my logic. This is little more than a peek at the inside of my head, and a forewarning that I do not accept responsibility for any injury sustained while you are in there.

It’s Been Fun,
Lawcke