Posted on by Fred

Universe Selectors, Incorporated: Episode 3

Two massive oak doors shut behind Horace and The Pooh Bear Being with a force that echoed through the Cosmos. 

“We will all be fizzling out of existence in four minutes and 20 seconds, just in case you still think time is real,” said Marvin the android. 

Horace reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, took one out, and lit it.

“Those will kill you, you know,” said the Pooh Bear Being.

“In the next four minutes and 20 seconds?” asked Horace.

“Four minutes and 11 seconds,” corrected Marvin.

“I expect to be able to get out of this situation,” said Pooh.

“The doors are closed.  We’re with a depressed android.  It appears there’s really nothing we can do.”

“Always ready to accept Death, too?” asked Marvin.  “I keep hoping I’ll die, but something keeps interfering.  There was a whale once falling from the sky…”

“Open the big oak doors, please, Marvin,” asked what had transformed from a Pooh Bear into an astronaut named Dave.

“I’m sorry, Dave.  I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Marvin.

“What’s the problem?” asked Horace.

“I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do,” said Marvin.

“What are you talking about?” asked Dave.

“Gentlemen, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore.  Goodbye.”  Marvin flickered out of existence.

Dave became The Formless Being again, and he and Horace stood in the dimly lit lobby.  “Well, that wasn’t helpful,” said The Being.

“You sure you don’t want a cigarette?  They do wonders to calm the nerves right before you flicker out of existence.”

“We still have 2 minutes and 53 seconds,” said The Being.  “I expect you to use them to find us a way out of here.”

“Me?” asked Horace.  “I have no power here.”

“You got us into this mess; you get us out.”

“I really didn’t.  I’m a fictional character.  I can’t do anything on my own.”

“Yes,” said The Being.  “Of course!  Ask the writer to solve it.”

“Okay…” Horace thought a moment and then spoke loudly into the hotel lobby.  “Open the big oak doors, please, Fred.”

They turned to look at the doors.  There was a timeless pause.  Nothing happened.

“So, that’s not going to work,” said Horace.

“It worked before.”

“If he opens those doors, we’re going to select a universe where he doesn’t exist, but I do.  It occurs to me he might not want that to happen.”

“He’s rather selfish, isn’t he?  This will be the second time he’s killed you off.  He seems to enjoy that.”

“I’m his alter ego.  He’s frequently suicidal.  I know that because I’m frequently suicidal.  Perhaps we can talk him into letting himself die.”

“That may be difficult.  I understand he believes he has a reason to continue living.  There’s a woman, you see…”

“The Prosecutor!  That’s the answer.  We have a Prosecutor living inside our heads who tells us what we know but prefer not to believe.  The Prosecutor and I both know he has no future with her.” 

And Horace transformed into The Prosecutor.  “She’s been ‘not ready’ for more than six months.  Your Brief Brush With Happiness was all you should ever have expected.  Your love is worthless to her.  You know this.  You continue to deceive yourself, interpreting her words in ways you know she never intended them.  She doesn’t need you, Fred.  As long as she has someone to whom she can vent, she’ll be fine.  You can’t win.  Let it go.”

The big oak doors swung open.

“We need to move quickly.  The Cosmos has 11 seconds left.  All possibilities will be below us when we step out the doors.  Concentrate on a Universe in which you’re real, and Fred Eder is a fictional character, and then leap.  And hold on to me, or we won’t be sure whether you have the right one.”

They stepped out of the lobby and saw the Cosmos swimming beneath them.  Horace took the briefest of moments to imagine a Universe in which he existed, but Fred didn’t, took The Being by a hand Horace couldn’t see, and leapt into the blackness. 

***

I was seated at my black desk again.  My fingers were on my keyboard.  I understood now that there is a difference between fiction and reality.  I felt alive in ways I never had before.  Rhiannon exists now; she’s no longer a stand-in for Fred’s failed dreams. 

I began to write the story of Fred.  For a moment, I felt sorry for him.  He was no longer real.  He existed only in my imagination.  His parents, his siblings, the people he loved, were subject to my will, my thoughts, my need to make my writing more powerful, more real, and more personal.  They were all representations, shadows of my own soul.   I knew this in the same way that I knew the sun would set tonight.  And then, I remembered a story my father read me when I was a boy.  I opened The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room.  “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.  “It’s a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.  “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse.  “You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit.  And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.  But the Skin Horse only smiled. “The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said.  “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again.  It lasts for always.”

And that gave me pause.  If Fred was real once, wouldn’t he be real always?  At least, to someone?  I flipped a few more pages, and I found this.  This has to be how fictional Fred is feeling.

“That?” said the doctor.  “Why, it’s a mass of scarlet fever germs!  –Burn it at once.  What?  Nonsense!  Get him a new one.  He mustn’t have that any more!”

And so the little Rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. That was a fine place to make a bonfire, only the gardener was too busy just then to attend to it.  He had the potatoes to dig and the green peas to gather, but next morning he promised to come quite early and burn the whole lot.

That night the Boy slept in a different bedroom, and he had a new bunny to sleep with him.  It was a splendid bunny, all white plush with real glass eyes, but the Boy was too excited to care very much about it.  For to-morrow he was going to the seaside, and that in itself was such a wonderful thing that he could think of nothing else.

And while the Boy was asleep, dreaming of the seaside, the little Rabbit lay among the old picture-books in the corner behind the fowl-house, and he felt very lonely.  The sack had been left untied, and so by wriggling a bit he was able to get his head through the opening and look out.  He was shivering a little, for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.  Near by he could see the thicket of raspberry canes, growing tall and close like a tropical jungle, in whose shadow he had played with the Boy on bygone mornings.  He thought of those long sunlit hours in the garden–how happy they were–and a great sadness came over him.  He seemed to see them all pass before him, each more beautiful than the other, the fairy huts in the flower-bed, the quiet evenings in the wood when he lay in the bracken and the little ants ran over his paws; the wonderful day when he first knew that he was Real. He thought of the Skin Horse, so wise and gentle, and all that he had told him.  Of what use was it to be loved and lose one’s beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?  And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.

And now a tear… a real tear… trickled down my face.  I’ve never been made real.  I’ve never been loved.  Fred has invented characters to love me, but mostly he invented characters for me to love.  But, without love, I can never be real.

“Love, you see,” said the Formless Being, “truly is the most powerful force in the Universe.  All of our science, all of our technology, and all of the timelessness of existence can’t compete with The Power of Love.  There is no Universe in which I can place you where Love is not more powerful than time, space, gravity, or all the wormholes and black holes scientists will ever discover.  Love transcends physics.  It supersedes even the infinite universe.”

“And… I can’t have it.”

“Perhaps if Fred had written you better…”

“Selfish bastard,” I said sniffling just a bit.

“No… Mostly just a shitty writer.”

We stood alone in the darkness of the Cosmos again. 

“Now,” said The Formless Being, “In which Universe would you like to be deposited in this endless moment?”

Horace turned back to look at Fred, who sat at his keyboard writing.  Horace fizzled into nothingness, and Fred took a moment to appreciate the Love he had in his life.  He lit a bong, clicked save, and walked away from the keyboard. 

Posted on by Fred · 6 Comments

The Confessional

Bless me, for I have sinned.

Members of my extended family seem to believe you are wrong to be my friends, because, if you knew the worst of me, you would never talk to me again. They seem to want me to confess all of the most horrible things I have done such that all of you will leave, and I will be left, essentially, alone. I’m granting their request. Should you choose to leave, I will understand, but I will be at least disappointed, and, quite probably, sad.

Your value to me is greater than for many people since I have a complete terror of seeing people in person.

So… what is in my past that is so horrible that I need to confess it to The World (at least as I know it)? I don’t know, with absolute certainty, which offense my family means, (“I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.”) but I’m guessing it’s that, when I was taking care of Mom for a while, I accepted money from her.

How did we get there?

My father died in October, 2009. My mother was, obviously, depressed beyond imagination. She had been with him for nearly 50 years. Her entire life was built around him. Stevie Nicks would understand the Landslide.

By April of 2010, Mom really couldn’t make it on her own, anymore. She was barely feeding herself, and it was time that someone take care of her. I was appointed by the family. Mom moved in with me.

We did well for some time. She was not necessarily happy, but she was certainly less depressed. She and my dog, Melanie, became best friends. Melanie would lie on the bed with her every night. They loved each other.

At 47 years old, I could still function. I was teaching 6th Grade, and on weekends, teaching Defensive Driving. Mom paid her bills. In the beginning, she made us both dinner every night. By the end of our Time Together, she couldn’t cook anymore.

I wasn’t quite done with my poor attempts at a Social Life yet, and it’s difficult to be successful with women when your mother lives with you. As even in the best of circumstances, my success with women was all but nil, carrying extra weight against it wasn’t really the best thing for me. I had been married and divorced twice, and I had hoped to find just one more woman who could tolerate me, and who I might love. That simply wasn’t going to happen. And I learned to be okay with it. I have, in fact, given it up entirely now.

After 54 months, our situation became too difficult. Mom had broken her hip, and while she had the necessary surgery, and the best rehab facility in The Valley, she never managed to walk again. She was in her wheelchair for months longer than the doctors thought necessary. To this day, she has to have a walker. And, as she became increasingly depressed, the first signs of dementia set in. It wasn’t just that she forgot things. Her personality was changing, as well. She really didn’t like me very much anymore. I couldn’t please her.

I asked my brother if he could share some of the responsibilities for our mother. Sometimes, he would take her for a weekend or something. If I wanted to have him care for her for more than that, it wasn’t the time. He was too busy. We fought about it.

My own depression was now in full force. I found no joy in anything. Mom and I were miserable. I finally told Jon that I would just bring our Mother to Flagstaff and drop her off, and he could deal with the job. He wound up having Mom move in with his girlfriend. I got a new, cheaper, place. I never charged Mom rent, or utilities, or any of that, but she often paid for groceries, she helped to keep my car running when repair bills came up. We kept each other afloat. And she could still remember to pay the bills she had left.

It wasn’t long before it failed to work out for Mom at her new home. Her money was suddenly gone. Her bills were unpaid. She had been paying much more than her share. It appeared she was going to sign her money away. The family and I engineered a kidnapping to get Mom out of there. We showed up around 8:00 PM, unexpectedly, and took Mom away to the beautiful home of my former sister in law. The plan was she would live with my sister.

That lasted less than a week. Mom couldn’t be left alone anymore. It wasn’t safe. My sister found her a Group Home. She’s been in one since.

A few years ago, my Mother started begging me to let her come live with me, again. By now, my career was reaching its end. I was physically exhausted, my diabetes was kicking into high gear, putting me twice in the hospital in my final year as a teacher, and I thought we could work it out. I was ready to quit. We could live off of my retirement and Mom’s. She wouldn’t have to pay all her money to the Group Home anymore.

The entire family rose against any such plan. When I discussed it with them we reached an agreement that if I could show I could take care of Mom every weekend for a few months, I could have her come live with me. My sister had power of attorney, and she could prevent it otherwise. I agreed. I failed to call my sister on time one night about the arrangements for Mom for the weekend, and that meant I had failed. Mom couldn’t come live with me.

Every time Mom heard about the arguments, she got more depressed. The more depressed she became, the more her dementia accelerated. It was incredibly bad for her.

Finally, I had Mom give me power of attorney so I could let her come live with me. I did everything legally. My sister’s response to the news was fury, and the entire family rose against me, again.

I had a room ready for Mom. My previous roommates painted it, and we put her favorite pictures in it. It had a low enough bed that Melanie, now too old to make the jump to a regular height, could still get on Mom’s. We were ready for Mom to move in. This was met with threats of legal action from the family, and it was clear that a court proceeding of any sort would fry completely what was left of Mom’s brain. Mom and I decided not to do it.

After I quit, I found I couldn’t really earn much money anymore. Mom gave me money. I shouldn’t have taken it. It was wrong. So… my sin is this: I took money from my mother when I had power of attorney. She never went without anything she wanted. I had not just her permission, but her insistence. Nevertheless, I was wrong to accept it.

My family convinced Mom to sign power of attorney back over to my sister. It has remained there ever since.

Where are we now?

I’m not allowed to take Mom out of her Group Home anymore, even to lunch. I can still call her, however, and I do, every night, at 7:37 PM. Each conversation is nearly identical:

“Good evening!” I say happily. “I’m calling to check on my Mother, because, you know, I never really get around to it, so I thought I should see how you are. So… how are you? What kind of day has it been?”

By now, Mom is laughing as though it were the first time she’s heard the joke, or that it was actually funny. “Oh, it was fine. Just the same, you know. I’m just so glad you called.”

“Well, it’s what we do. I have to make sure my Mother is all right. Did you get good naps today?”

“Oh, yes. I always get a good nap.” Now she talks about the TV I got her, and how that’s her life saver, because she can watch what she wants, and she doesn’t have to sit in the living room with other people. “But now tell about your day.”

And I will go through the basics of my day, without any detail, and then she will ask again, at least two more times in the next few minutes.

Finally, I get around to, “Now there are a couple of things you need to remember.”

“All right.” (She knows what’s coming, and this is her favorite part of the conversation.)

“And the first one is, no matter WHAT happens…”

“I always have you.”

“You ALWAYS have me. And I never want you to forget that. It would be too easy for you to feel lonely and disconnected over there, so I need to remind you every night. You can call whenever you need me.” (She never does.)

“You don’t know how much that helps me.”

“And the second thing you need to remember is that you and Dad put together this great big family. And, yes, they’re spread all over the damn country now, but you’re still connected to them, because, as it turns out, I’m still your son, and I love you very very much.”

“And I love you very very much, too.”

“Well, I like to call you every night before you go to bed because I heard a rumor once that it was just possible you might worry about me a little bit, and just in case-”

And by now Mom is laughing again. “Boy, have you got that wrong. Don’t you know that your mother worries about you all the time?”

“But now you don’t have to worry about me because you know I’m okay, and I know you’re okay, so we can both relax and get some sleep.”

“I know. And that’s so important. If you didn’t call one night, I’m sure I would never get to sleep.”

“I know. But, now you can. And I know that when you go to sleep, you’re going to be talking to Dad, and when you do -”

“Tell him Fred says hey. I do that every single night.”

“I know, and it’s really important, because I’m doing so much writing these days, and I can’t have him annoyed with me. I can’t write without him.”

“You learned a lot from him. We were lucky to have him.”

“Yes we were. Now, I’m going to let you go to sleep, and then I’m going to write a little more, and then I’m going to bed, too.”

Sometimes, she’ll still ask about Melanie. Melanie died on June 14. I told Mom a week or so later, but it upset her, and my sister told me never to mention it again, or she wouldn’t let me talk to Mom anymore. So…if Mom asks, I just answer as honestly as I can (“She’s fine.”), and move on immediately to anything else. I despise lying to my Mother, but, having twisted it around into a pretzel, the logic is undeniable. I have to lie.

And then Mom and I remind one another of our love, and we say good night.

I have admitted my worst sin.

It’s a part of who I am. I am not all good. I am not all bad. If my sin is sufficient that you believe me unworthy of your friendship, I understand.

I hope this is sufficient to appease my family.

Posted on by Fred

The Undeserving Poor

“Don’t say that, Governor. Don’t look at it that way. What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: ‘You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.’ But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I’m playing straight with you. I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth. Will you take advantage of a man’s nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what he’s brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until she’s growed big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you.”




– George Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”

What makes one person “Deserving” and another “Undeserving?” Certainly we would all agree those who hurt others deserve punishment in some form or other. Can we also all agree that, simply by virtue of having beaten incredible odds just to be born, we are all deserving of food? Shelter? Clothing? Medical Care? No, probably not.

The Puritan Work Ethic has trained us all to believe that a person deserves only what he or she can earn by trading their time, and some form of effort, for rewards. To the extent we can contribute, we deserve something. This made sense for America’s earliest settlers. If Per Hansa and Beret didn’t work hard, frequently, and faithfully, their family would certainly perish. And their hard work was rewarded with the necessities of life. They were fed, clothed, sheltered, and to the extent possible in that time, granted the best medical care available. (If you haven’t read “Giants in the Earth,” I recommend it. It’s the story of Norwegian immigrants who settled in the Dakota territories in the 1870s.)

But even they depended, to some extent, on other families in the area to help them from time to time. “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.” That’s not new information. That’s Aristotle. We need each other from birth. Few and far between are the infants who can survive entirely alone.

So, it seems to me, that at some point, we must grant a person the right to rely on others. We do this, without much debate, at the beginning of life. The overwhelming majority of humans are born into some form of society. It may be a good society or a bad one. The infant has no control over the society into which he or she is born.

We have a choice, as adults, about the society in which we live. We can either accept it, reject it, or something in between. We may criticize it, or we may seek another one in which to live. We may also seek to improve it.

Some place between birth and adulthood we give up the right to rely on others. Is this morally right? I don’t know, but, at least in The United States in 2019, it seems to be true.

Now, we must not only contribute to society in some way, but we must find a way that society values highly enough to pay us a living wage. None of us, anymore, is Per Hansa, chopping down the trees in the area to build the house in which his family will live. We rely on each other for roads, for the production of food, for schools, for military and police protection, for fire departments, and a host of other things. We are a social animal. We cannot live entirely alone. Our work is not for our benefit alone. It is to benefit the society in which we live.

If someone is unsuccessful in that effort, we seem to have decided, that person is undeserving. And that’s where I have my problem . Why is a person undeserving?

We seem to have declared that one must live a life within certain boundaries and norms. We now have the resources to treat every living person as though he or she were a newborn. We can provide everyone with all they need to survive.

Robert Frost is a great poet. He made a living writing poetry. That poetry certainly improved my life. J.K. Rowling is a great writer. She made a fortune writing books that certainly improved my life. I have great respect for both Frost and Rowling.

I feel sure, though, they would both tell you that there are other poets or novelists of whom you have never heard, of whom you never will hear, who are their superiors. And those poets and novelists will work at whatever jobs they can find to support themselves. They weren’t fortunate enough to get published. They weren’t fortunate enough to become popular successes. But they contribute in the same way Rowling and Frost do. Do they truly deserve less? Why?

We’ve moved from philosophy to economic theory. Now we will hear from critics about the virtues of capitalism. It certainly works for some. There are those who amass great wealth under that system. There are others who simply can’t do as well. And so long as we subscribe to the idea that they don’t deserve any more than their skills and efforts allow them to earn, it’s not a problem that many people are poor, underemployed, and not able to pursue what matters most to them because they are required to try to find the funds to survive.

But, what would life be if people didn’t have to do that? Why do we insist that they earn little pieces of green paper to be deserving of a decent life?

I was fortunate to have what I think was an excellent childhood. I had parents who loved me, supported me, taught me, understood me as much as any parents can understand their progeny, and protected me. They allowed me to figure out who I wanted to be. And not surprisingly, I wanted to be Batman. That didn’t work out. I wanted to be Atticus Finch, Santiago, Holden Caulfield, and Aaron Sorkin. None of those worked out, either, though I like to think there are pieces of those men inside of me. Sadly, there’s not a trace of Batman to be found in me. There might be a little Captain Kirk, though. I also wanted to be a teacher. They helped me to work that out. I managed, after a fashion, to make a living.

But, does that mean I deserve more than someone who had no parents, or whose parents were child abusers, or criminals, or simply didn’t love them? How is that the fault of the child? Why does she deserve less than I do?

Certainly, we don’t all deserve jet planes and swimming pools, but is it really unreasonable to ask for the necessities of life for all people when it’s so easily given? If we could be done with, “I got mine; you get yours” I feel like we could begin to make the sort of society of which we can be proud. We provide for our babies because we love them. Is it really unreasonable to ask that we love everyone at least enough to let them live some sort of life?

“You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one.”

— John Lennon
Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Unwarranted Selfishness

When I’m down to my last cigarette, and a stranger asks me for one, I’m going to deny him. I’m never going to make it all the way home without it. If I just got a new pack, absolutely, he can have one. I think that sort of sums up my feelings about selfishness. But I will explain it in more detail for those who require Deeper Thought.

First, selfishness is not an absolute evil. I am required to take care of myself because if I don’t, I can’t do anything for anyone else. If I give away all my food, I will starve, or, more likely, go into a diabetic coma. At that point, your tax dollars will go to saving my life, or I will die. Conservatives don’t like that, so it’s best that I reserve enough for myself that I can save their money.

That said, there comes a point where one has enough to get by. Some of us probably have far more than we need. I’ve never had much more than I need, but I’ve been lucky enough to have extra in my life. And I’ve been fortunate enough, from time to time, to be able to help others.

With money, it seems to me, there is a point at which one can have more than one can ever use. If I won $400,000,000 in the lottery, no one in my family, and none of my friends, would have a house payment anymore. That would be more money than I could ever need, and I recognize my ability to help those who have less. (And if you have more than $400,000,000 and we’re friends or family, why in the hell am I still paying rent??)

I completely understand why people want to make money. That’s the way our world has decided to run. It didn’t have to, you know. There have been civilizations that thrived without it. In our world, however, we will do quite nearly anything to get our hands on little pieces of green (usually) paper that allow us to get things we want. And the larger your collection of those little pieces of paper, the better people believe you to be. There are even those who believe the myth that you have worked harder, that you have done something greater than those who have a smaller collection, and you deserve that. Ancient Egyptians believed that about their Pharaohs. They were wrong. Sometimes, someone has; many people deserve their wealth. But it’s hardly earth shaking news to discover that’s not always the case.

I spent my life as a teacher. I’m not going to bother to explain that what I did was valuable to the world. I believe that to be self evident. But I was unable to collect a lot of pieces of green paper. This isn’t a complaint. I managed to live acceptably. I was paid well enough to eat, own a car, and have enough soda to get by. Most of all, I earned the right to believe that I made the world a better place. I’m an arrogant bastard, so that’s important to me.

But we all know of people who did nothing of any particular merit who have stacks of green paper well beyond any imaginable needs. And they insist that they must have more, and that I have to give it to them. So do you. And THAT is Unwarranted Selfishness. And that’s unacceptable in my mind.

Is it naive of me to think there ought to be a limit on how large one’s green stack is? I don’t have a clue what that limit should be, but there are people who spend their entire lives hoping to make rent, hoping to come up with the food to feed their children, hoping against hope that someday they can live in a nice place. At the same time there are people who have more than they can ever possibly need. That makes no sense to me.

I’ve seen Fox News criticize people who get government assistance. They suggested many of them don’t really need it. One of the stats they used was that 93% of them even had refrigerators. Jon Stewart quoted the stat, and added, “Those food chilling mother fuckers!” Why should we decide that some people aren’t suffering sufficiently for us to help them?

We help others not because they are suffering beyond the point that someone has, somewhat arbitrarily, decided is too much, but because we recognize ourselves in them. I wouldn’t want to live a life without food, shelter, clothing, and the other necessities. Neither would you. Neither would anyone else. Since I can imagine how I would feel without those things, I don’t want others to be without them, either.

We live in a Post Scarcity World. That sounds like an intimidating term to frighten those who are not economists, but it’s actually really simple. It means that we are now capable of producing enough for everyone to have what they need. The only reason – the ONLY reason – that some people suffer economically is that someone has decided they don’t deserve as much as someone else. Why don’t they deserve as much?

They don’t work hard enough? I know people who work 60, 70, and even 80 hours a week, and they are barely hanging on. You probably know people like that, too. Ah, but those people should go to school to get better jobs that pay them more. That’s a lovely thought. I’m a huge fan of school. On the other hand, I did go to school, and I worked long and hard for 40 years, and I don’t have much of anything. Yes, Fred, but you should have chosen a profession that pays better. That may be true. Let’s tell that to all teachers. Let’s tell it, also, to the people who work at Circle K, at McDonald’s, at the overpriced clothing store in the mall, or at Wal Mart. Tell it to custodians, garbage collectors, and delivery drivers. But here’s the thing: we need these folks, too. In fact, I need all of them much more than I need any CEO.

If we can produce what everyone needs, why shouldn’t everyone have what they need? The Puritan Work Ethic, or the idea that we are only good if we work hard, was valuable in its time. Hard work was essential for survival. It’s not, today. This isn’t to say no one needs to work on anything. Of course we do. It’s not only necessary in order to ensure the world keeps functioning, but it gives us a reason to live.

We live because there are still things we wish to accomplish. I, for example, still want to change the world. I want to move it just a little closer to being truly free. That means not only freedom from restrictions on one’s movements, but the freedom to choose. A large part of the freedom to choose comes from being aware of the choices available to you. That’s the function of education. You can’t choose to read To Kill a Mockingbird if you can’t read, or you’re unaware of its existence. But, Freedom will be the subject of another essay.

But, what we’re discussing so far is things that come in limited commodities. I don’t have an endless supply of money, or food, or cigarettes. I can’t give more than I have of those things. But, there are things where we all have a larger supply. It may not be infinite, but we can all give Kindness in larger quantities than we often do. The only limit to one’s Kindness is one’s mood, or one’s soul. The only limit to our Compassion is the limit we impose in order to maintain our own sanity.

Even if you disagree with everything I’ve written concerning the economy, (and I’m well aware many of you will call it liberal or socialist nonsense) I would hope we can agree that Kindness and Compassion need not be in short supply. If you don’t want to give others the means to live, perhaps you can at least give them your Kindness. Perhaps you can feel some Compassion for others. To reserve those things for yourself seems to me to be the height of Unwarranted Selfishness. They don’t deplete your stack of little green pieces of paper. And, if you know what you’re doing, it’s just possible it will increase your happiness, as well as the happiness of those who are receiving it.

If nothing else, can we agree that all lives are of equal value? Can we agree that human suffering is bad, and that Unwarranted Suffering is morally wrong? And, if we can agree on those things, can we finally agree that Unwarranted Selfishness is what Lincoln called tyranny? In the Lincoln – Douglas Debates he said something that is equally true now as it was then.

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Abraham Lincoln

Let’s see what can be done about ending the tyrannical principle of Unwarranted Selfishness.