All Other Prophets Were Assholes

an expulsion of millennial angst

Well, I guess we know who's going to hell, don't we? Back to Scotcho's Purgatory, if you please!

Introduction

The folly of saddling a work with a title destined to offend any person possessing more than a scrap of faith is not lost on the author of this text. It would seem, then, that the target audience of such a work would be those persons either totally devoid of religious belief or utterly cynical towards a particular brand of faith. While such readers are welcome, they are not the sole audience for which this work was intendend.

In fact, as my brief study of other professional prophets has shown, no prophet will be taken seriously unless that person should utter the semantical equivalent of the statement "all other prophets were assholes". So, dear reader, rest assured that I hold no grudges against your particular faith or prophet. It is just, as they say, good business.

For instance, note how many of the ten commandments which Moses delivered from god deal with prohibitions against worshipping other deities or dishonoring the one god rather than prohibitions against humankind's indecent acts upon itself? And what sort of contempt would cause god to declare vengance not only on those that hate him, but also, according to my King James version of the old testament, "unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me"? It is clear that, even if you yourself are a deity, professional jealousy and contempt for one's peers are the rule, particularly in what I like to call "old school" religions, those faiths which rely on some sort of fundamentalism or orthodoxy which deny the concept of revision.

I am the prophet of revision, and if there is one thing which I rail against without mercy, it is the idea that there can be any worthwhile orthodoxy which does not include basic concepts of human decency and justice. Not because such concepts are inherent to humankind, but precisely because they are the stuff of which we lack. Admittedly, most religions provide an abundance of restrictions and rules for their followers. The problem, in the eyes of this prophet, is that no clear vision of human decency and justice results from the laws of religions, or at least no vision so clear that humankind feels compelled to follow and obey.

I am the prophet of revision, and it is my goal to fill this obvious spiritual void, to provide that vision of clarity your soul seeks, even if you are ignorant of the quest, blind to your own hollow and desperate act of seeking.

I am the prophet of revision, and, as your spiritual guide, it is my duty to inform you that all other prophets were assholes. Only my word will save your miserable skin and that which resides within. Come with me so that the human text might be revised.

1:Stakeholders seek vampire's heart

The meek shall inherit the earth, or, more specifically, what rubble remains of the earth after venture capitalists, short-sighted developers, genocidal despots and world class toxin producers have their way. Perhaps a better way to phrase it, were a supposed messiah figure at all concerned with accuracy, would be to say, "The meek shall inherit the mess."

Of course, such a prophecy would be a poor marketing tool, on a par with "The meek shall wash the dishes" and "The meek shall clean up the vomit stains on the carpet". Regardless, that metaphysical vomit is going to need a stanley steaming sooner or later, and it's doubtful that the responsible parties will be anything but doormat material. The unmeek have an uncanny ability to exit the party while merry is still being made, or did you think those Eskimos standing knee deep in Valdez spillage were Exxon executives?

Do you frequently find yourself sinking in the doody swamp of your betters? The good news: you may be one of the meek. The bad news: you better hope your skin isn't sensitive to scrubbing bubbles and bon ami, if you get my drift.

Many meek seek to exchange their fate with that of their 'betters', opting for the spiritual equivalent of those multi-level marketing scams and mass mail rip-offs that prey on the fears of other meek rejects. Let's be frank - that's just cannibalism, and sometimes it's better to go hungry than to satiate oneself on the flesh of one's peers. The fact that Chainsaw Al Dunlap sleeps well is more a function of the price of valium than a measure of the contents of his conscience.

What, then, is the alternative to feasting on or being feasted upon? Fast. Fast. Fast.

Fast 'til your bones poke through your flesh.

Fast 'til you please the palate of none.

Fast 'til hawkers of human meat go broke.

Let me play prophet and read the future for you: Lean times approach. All hardship thus far has only been preparation, tenderization of the meat, an internship in submission. Those jokers quoting revelations have one thing right: humanity has yet to endure its worst shitstorm. The worst is yet to come. The ever-thinning facade of civility to our civilization will soon wear through, and when all is done, what will be left will be ours. The mess.

As your spiritual advisor, let me recommend that you prepare to fast, otherwise you might succumb to the temptations of the flesh, becoming legion with the beast.

Further, let me suggest that we consider our rights as stakeholders in civilization. Perhaps we deserve a fate better than that of janitor to humanity. Perhaps it is not too late to drive the stake through the vampire's heart. Perhaps the beast will not be fed.

Perhaps, but at present we are right on course for the party to end all parties.

2:Toss another soccer mom onto the fire

Into every life, I've been told, a little rain must fall. Kind, wise words, unless you happen to be drowning in the deluge, wondering how much Bill Gates had to pay to have his allotment sent your way. The distribution of suffering, from all general appearances, falls along lines which run inverse to the distribution of wealth. "Remember," that little J.C. Watts standing upon your shoulder reminds you, "no one ever said life would be fair." Kind, wise words, unless you happen to be one of those people who wasn't lucky enough to be advised about prevailing conditions on earth prior to your birth. Somehow, somewhere, there has to have been someone who said that life should be fair. If not, let me be the first: "Life should be fair." Now that we've established what life should be, equitable to all, let us concentrate on the mechanics of bringing such a reality about.

Some would say that it is less than fair, a savage inequity, even, for the meek to inherit the remains of a corrupt civilization. After all, haven't the meek paid heavily enough for their existence in this life? Is it too much to ask, some meek might be bold enough to query, to be reincarnated without a mop and bucket included as accesories? The idea of inheriting this mess is enough, in some cynical circles, to make one hope that all suggestions of an afterlife are simply viscious rumors designed to keep the meek in line. (As a professional prophet, I can see the need to subjugate the meek. After all, it's no fun being part of the ruling class when the experience includes having a broom shoved up your ass by disgruntled proletariat. That is not the stuff of which Robin Leach's dreams are made, my friends.) So, perhaps the first mechanism we should consider is the liberation of the meek.

The idea that the meek would renounce their inheritance is unheard of in both contemporary and archaic religion, but this fact alone should not rule the idea out. After all, didn't you hesitate before the first time you threw out a publisher's clearinghouse sweepstakes notification? Now, don't you find the act easy? Because you have learned that the likelihood of actually receiving X million dollars from Ed McMahon is only slightly greater than that of peace in the middle east, you no longer feel that twinge of doubt and regret as you toss that thick envelope into a waste receptacle. Come, my meek friends, and toss off the last vestige of unredeemable promises. Dare to step on a crack - I swear there will be no adverse effects to your mothers' backs.

Some will say that I am suggesting that there is no god, no higher power. They will say that I am the voice of satan, attempting weakly to convert a few souls to naughty ends. Let me assure you that I, like the rest of you, have no palpable evidence to either prove or disprove the existence of any particular deity, or, for that matter, even the existence of spacecraft following comet hale-bopp. In that respect I may be the singularly most worthless prophet ever devised. So, should you have allegiance to a particular brand of faith, I congratulate you on your ability to fearlessly leap from the cliffs of ignorance. Perhaps, though, this coward has words your ears need hear. I, for my own part, can only pray that you listen.

What higher power would ask that its creations do nothing to halt injustice? What higher power would prize most among its creations the virtue of submission? Who really benefits when we complacently submit to the horrors of a cannibalistic society?

Remember, the good samaritan was a 'nigger'. And that nigger was the only one who would stop to help a dying man, suggesting that it is that which society hates which shall save us. The pious continued on their journeys uninterrupted, suggesting that those who most proudly declare their piety are those least likely to exhibit decency. I further suggest that submission is a virtue only when resistance is merely an act of pride, that inaction is only commendable when the only available action is cannibalism. Equity is not an impossible dream; it is the inevitable result should we heed the call to action. Forbearance under the current circumstances is not a measure of strength and tolerance, it is a delusional state in which we deny the consequences of our society, of our own inaction to injustice and cruelty. Equity begins when you decide that you will no longer tolerate crimes committed in your name, when you decide that your eyes can no longer remain closed, when you reach out your hand to that half-corpse in the dust and recognize in its eyes something that once was your own.

Mercy.

3:The product that praises its package

What is the soul? Some would have it that the soul is a metaphysical diamond buried within the flesh, the gem, as it were, of creation. Others would contend that such an idea is too commodity-driven, that the notion of a discrete soul was devised by those comfortable with accepted ideas about private property. They would say that, unlike the material realm, the spiritual realm is a unified plane. Only in the material realm, they would argue, are the separations between what is yours and what is mine important. In the spiritual realm, they would neatly summarize, all is one.

What does this speak to those of us still currently burdened by material existence? To some it might suggest that a mass death, like that of the branch davidians in Waco, is a joyous occasion, a reunion of souls. Others might say that the hereafter, if it exists at all, will come soon enough, that we should instead look to the spiritual realm only for lessons as to how to live, not for excuses to die or abandon this existence, which are amply provided by the material realm.

What, then, can we call the primary lesson taught by the spiritual realm? Whatever our many differences, our varied faiths and lacks thereof, we can see the strength of unity and the weakness of division. I feel a parable is in order:

Once there was only one soul, known only as the Spirit. The Spirit simply was, and it was everything. However, being everything at once made it very difficult for the Spirit to be any particular thing at any given time. Thus, should the spirit wish to feel joy, it could not do so without also feeling rage, despair, any number of emotions. So while the Spirit was everything, it was also nothing, or, to be exact, no one thing. The Spirit did not wish to exist forever as nothing, so it decided to separate itself into infinitesimally small pieces, and place each of these pieces into some inanimate object and bring it to life. The Spirit believed this would allow it to experience each of the many things which comprised it, and it was right. What the Spirit did not realize was that, separated, the pieces would have no ties to each other. Over time the pieces forgot not only each other but themselves. Each believed its identity was somehow linked to the inanimate matter which contained it, even though this matter survived only briefly and had no history which could explain why other, different types of matter displayed similiar characteristics. In short, the pieces began a form of container worship which could be primarily characterized by prejudices in favor of particular types of containers and against others. The void feared by the Spirit had been replaced by the madness of babel.

The point of this parable is to illustrate how the division of souls creates madness, and to further suggest that the manner in which we live our lives so separate from each other is an unnecessary burden, an experiment gone awry. Fearing the void of no identity, we have rushed to define ourselves by what we are not. As we smugly point out the faggotjunkienigger from whom we are so desperately separate, we are not, in truth, proclaiming our superiority. We are crying the agony of division. We are screaming at hollowness left by the experiment. We are scratching an itch on an amputated limb, an itch no less real though the limb is clearly missing. And while the teeming masses of humanity scurry into their fortified bunkers, clutching blockbuster videos and carry out foods, seeking a shelter from hardship and the demands of diversity, what our hearts need is reunion.

Reunion is coming. It is the inevitable destiny, even if it will only come after utter annihilation. The decision we must make is whether we will actively seek to be reunited and act as ushers to the future, or, conversely, whether we will choose like so many to begin the new cries of division, to begin an age where all are separate and none equal. The choice is whether we prefer reunion here or post mortem.

These new cries, be certain, will be the last. Even now they sound hollow and false to those who take the time to listen. Did William Jefferson Clinton's support of the Defense of Marriage Act seem to be anything but a desperate campaign ploy? Did Pat Buchanan's anti-Jose rhetoric seem like anything but cleverly-phrased xenophobe baiting? Did the throngs of shrill critics to the Oakland Unified School District's ebonics proposal appear to be truly concerned with the plight of young black americans, or, for that matter, any children? These acts are not symptomatic of a culture in which ideas are discussed and debated, they are the last attempts of a rapidly eroding status quo to defend itself against changes which, for the most part, have already begun to occur.

The revision is underway.

4:Powerwalking with the beast

I must remind readers that the intent of this prophecy is to revise the reader, or, to be more precise, to deconstruct those defenses which render the reader insentient to the process of revision. Thus should these words attack rather than arm those who hold them close. As prophet, I will consider infidels those who use these words as justification to attack or cause harm to others.

None among us is free of sin. We are all abominations in the sight of perfection. We must be the target of our own revision and resist the temptation to focus our corrective loathing on the other.

We cannot hope to revise the external rapist, whether corporate-plunderer of the earth or private destroyer of lives, for the rapist is one who has knowingly accepted their taste for human flesh and actively cultivates their sickness. The best we can hope to accomplish is the establishment sufficient protections to ensure that violations are few and punishments severe.

So, while we must actively resist the external rapist at every opportunity, it is the internal rapist which the revision shall address.

The most difficult step, in our culture of division, is accepting that such a beast dwells inside us, and that, indeed, it is an inseparable part of the human text. But if we are to revise the text in any meaningful sense, we must be open to the possibility of errors of the gravest and most despicable sort. It is for this reason that the author must be merciless with respect to other faiths, particularly those fundamental orthodoxies which have instilled in readers the idea that the human text is a sacred product of a higher power. All other prophets were assholes because they could not recognize their own deceit, their own darkness.

If revision is heresy, then justice is an impossibility. If we cannot recognize fault in the human text, then our explanations for crime and other human shortcomings are reduced to prejudice and intolerance. By making the human text inviolable, we have provided a sanctuary for evil. We must, in the parlance of substance abuse recovery, love the addict as we hate the addiction.

And what is the nature of the addiction? It is, stated glibly, an appetite for destruction. We see evidence of it not only in every instance of rape/suicide/aggression/overdose/abuse/exploitation/cannibalism, but also in the smoothly deceptive way in which we hypnotize ourselves with vacant entertainments and hollow joys, the manner in which we so easily distract ourselves from the true substance of existence.

Just as the Spirit disdained the void implied by being everything, we, as individual pieces, fear the void implied by our gross separation. But, helpless as we are to the mechanics of the subconscious, we are compelled towards that void while at the same time making futile efforts to halt our progress. These contradictory mechanisms work towards an identical goal, while grinding their gears in opposite directions, in large part because our understanding of the void is so immature that we confuse a lack of rigid form for anarchy, not realizing that chaos itself tells us more meaningful information about ourselves than any linear framework could ever hope.

The revision recognizes that the text is never complete, and that, further, once static, the text is no longer a living thing, but a tool of the dead. Dead words serving death.

To admit fault is to admit the possibility of correction. It is an act of life. Thus is the admission of sin so central to almost every religion. That is the value of the meek, the virtue which earns them their inheritance: their humble acceptance of their wrongs.

But we must do more than admit that we have sinned. We must freely acknowledge that we will surely sin again, that our every act, no matter how seemingly noble, carries with it the seeds of sin. Further, we must examine in detail those aspects of ourselves which are most contemptible: our greed, our hatred, our self-serving pride. We must recognize that those impulses which give us our greatest strength frequently are those best characterized as corrupt.

We must, in short, redefine what it is we mean by strength, and renegotiate with ourselves what we are willing to lose in order to acquire it.

Control, power, strength - these virtues live only if others, less strident, die. Who will mourn the dead?

5:Micromanagement yields blood from a stone

How odd it is that humankind only willingly shows restraint in areas where there need be none. We limit who and how we may love. We create national forums to discuss means by which our assistance to needy can be eliminated. We learn a myriad of ways to close our eyes, restraining that which we must see. We gladly step forward to sew tight all entry to our hearts.

In other areas, the feasting grounds of the beast, we let our appetites run unfettered, seemingly unaware that there might be some practical limit to the amount of toxic rubbish, violence and lies a single soul can tolerate. After all, is not ours the most adaptable of species, able to subsist on wallpaper and leather hides, capable of enduring the most inconceivable of tortures and mutilations, willing to listen to the most degrading of untruths with a smiling face?

Perhaps, but what, then, will our adaptation lead us to become? Is the end result a human variety resistant to all evil or utterly compatible with it?

I suggest that we can ill afford to become more callous, that we have already crossed the line to where what helps us survive as a species begins to damn us as individuals. I say, throw the social darwins into a pit among their peers since they seem so anxious to prove that only the strong shall survive. What crawls from the pit when all is done is that which we should most loathe to become.

If the current future is a world in which only the most cruelly able will be able to triumph, should we then breed cruelty as virtue, kindness as vice? Should we dispassionately sharpen our career skills like so many greedy knives, preparing for the carrion feast ahead? One also hears that the taste of human flesh is a slowly acquired taste....should we begin now and be better prepared for the road ahead? A fable is in order:

Two farmers looked upon an almanac and saw that it forecast a most difficult winter ahead. Both were very alarmed by the prospect of starvation and so went to their homes to prepare. One farmer hoarded all that he could find, and, fearing that others in need might hear of his stores, built his fences high and moats deep. He reinforced the doors to his home with the strongest steel. He armed himself and his children and had them patrol the borders of his fields night and day. He thought, "Should any in this town have to starve, it shall not be my own."

The second farmer planted all that he could, knocking down his fences so that he and his neighbors might have a little extra land on which to plant. He sent his children to the fields and worked them as never before. When work on his lands were done, he would send them to help others. He thought, "Should any in this town starve, it shall not be because we would not lend our hands to theirs."

The winter came, and it was worse than either farmer could have thought. Noone in the tiny town managed to survive, so how they behaved in their last days was how they met their end.

But I digress. There is a barely supressed notion, ever growing in popularity, that all humankind needs to survive any hardship or peril is to exert just that extra little bit of rational control over the situation in order to triumph. Losers, so goes this philosophy, are those who lack the mettle to squarely assess the situation and act resolutely, and they deserve to live in the shadow of their dreams, american or otherwise.

Without fully exploring the folly of this faux philosophy, let me remind readers of a group determined to fully grasp their dreams: the Donner Party. The bold immigrants decided that they, too, deserved to live like kings and taste the sweet wine of success, and must have thought their futures assured before snow trapped them high in the mountains. Then, slowly, some of the Donner Party began to crave a different taste, more unfamiliar to them than even the strangest of wines. Do, a voice inside them implored, what thou willst...

History tells us that not all of the survivors yielded to the tempation to taste human flesh.

And not all of those who yielded survived.

6:Melting down the golden rule for scrap

What distinguishes prophecy from insanity, true vision from mental illness? It is necessary for us to discuss this issue, not only because my detractors will claim that my prophecy is merely a pathological talent to forever see the glass that is half empty, but because others, you among them, will begin to have difficulties in verifying the information brought to your attention by your senses. You will begin to wonder, like me, if there is indeed a flaw of some sort in your perception or if the flaw is instead in what you perceive. Perhaps, you may conclude, you have simply been working too hard, having an extended bad day.

It has always been much easier to dismiss prophecy than to act upon it.

Traditionally, insanity is defined as a mental state which prevents a person from being a productive, functioning member of society. However, when the society in question is cannibalistic, can being a functioning member of it be a mark of sanity?

In the land of the blind, so the saying goes, the one-eyed man is king. Admittedly, though, some kings are made to suffer for their vision.

The problem, then, becomes one of determining the relative truth of your perception in an environment which is actively hostile to the truth and its proponents. Such a situation breeds paranoia, and, in situations where you find yourself alone in your perception of the truth (however you define that nebulous quality), self doubt.

Once you begin to lose faith in yourself, in your capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, then does the difference between the two become the thin line upon which you balance. Often, responding to the cries of the madding crowd, you fall to the side of least resistance, capitulating to that which should most properly be abhorrent to you. For there are no instant rewards for seekers or speakers of truth, only instant punishments, and you, like I, live in culture where all satisfactions are required to be immediate. How will you remain patient while at the same time coping with continuous torment, unending temptation?

The rewards for decency are less palpable than the punishments for failing to compete against one another. Thus is it that we are loathe to lend assistance to the needy. Thus is it that we claim that we are too "busy" to become involved in the lives of others in our communities. Thus is it that we live separate lives with little common cause.

Occasionally we recognize those who exhibit extraordinary decency, but it is not to make them an example for all to follow so much as it is to say, "Here is one who has done the impossible and improbable. How unlikely it would be for all of us to behave as this one has so unselfishly done." In honoring those who have behaved with compassion, we absolve ourselves from the responsibility of behaving in a similiar fashion.

We congratulate ourselves on our ability to honor those who achieve in the fields of compassion and decency, as if that process of honoring itself were an act of compassion or decency. While there is no sin to honoring those who exhibit charity, it is in no way itself a form of charity.

The measure of a society is not in how it bestows honor upon its most noble, nor in how it rewards its most talented and productive individuals. Even a despotic fascist can pin a medal on a hero, just as entertainment tonight can shines a spotlight on a reigning superstars. Everyone, it seems, simply loves a winner...

But what honors shall we heap upon the losers, the useless, the helpless and weak?

Shall we further victimize them and claim that it is due to their own nature as human waste that they have been so unsuccessful at garnering their slice of the human pie? For, if we accept social darwinism as our religion, would not it be better for the human species if we were to thin our ranks of those who cannot thrive amidst competition?

One might think so, if darwinism could be applied so that fiscal might makes right, rather than physical might. In such a world, a world which I hasten to add has never yet existed, the fiscally weak would go quietly to their fate, leaving the future in the hands of sound financial planners and well-heeled developers. Ah, the possibilities! But in the world in which we must actually live, there are no barriers preventing the fiscally weak from voting, as it were, with their fists.

As you suffer another car-jacking, or as your spouse is so cruelly raped, or as a bomb explodes outside your place of business or recreation, KNOW that this, too, is evolution, survival of the fittest. KNOW that survival will go to those most willing to be cruel and inhuman, unless those who value something other than cruelty band together and speak as one.

KNOW further that should you decide that, in the interests of your own survival, you must become cruel yourself, that you must cease your precarious balance and give way to the path of least resistance, that you make yourself an enemy of all those who would speak in another voice.

KNOW lastly that no voice speaks longer than the voice of truth.

7:Vices of the hairy-palmed invisible hand

When we look to the media and public figures and see the wholesale production of lies, it becomes very easy to think of humankind as creatures who are masters of deception. Indeed, for some public figures, not to mention many in the legal and public relations professions, such a mastery might even be a source of private pride, just as the idiocy and gullibility of the great unwashed provides them with further reason to think themselves part of some knowledgeable elite.

In truth, though, the smoke and mirrors produced by humankind are cheap and tawdry efforts unworthy of a species with the hubris to consider itself enlightened. The only mastery is a mastery in self-deception at which all, high and mighty to the most lowly, have the ability to excel.

While the media pundits and cultural spin doctors cynically applaud their efforts to dupe the masses, how many of them realize that such a deception is only possible because it is desired? How many further realize that they themselves have the same desires? And how few actually realize the manner in which they themselves are being duped?

One of the most entertaining and impossible myths of the modern age, and perhaps the most central as well, is the notion inspired by Adam Smith that there is an invisible hand at work in societies with a free market economy. Such a miraculous hand, we are led to believe, corrects all the ills of society in an effortless way that absolves us all, thankfully, from having to exert our individual will in order to produce social justice. Social equilibrium will, just like economic equilibrium, be a natural result of such an economy.

Never mind that such a free market itself has proven impossible to foster, let us look at the machinations of this hypothetical hand: supposedly, in its quest to apply rationality to all aspects of the processes of production and sales, it will also promote the common good as a by-product, because what is good for society is good for the economy.

The flaw in such logic is that the invisible hand cares not whether the market is sustained with justice or injustice so long as it is sustained. If fact, were injustice to produce more favorable short-term results, the invisible hand would gladly embrace injustice. The division of labor requires an abundant workforce, not a well-paid workforce. There is little the average capitalist can do to reduce the costs of capital and rent beyond a certain practical limit, so the only way to reduce costs of production is to tinker with that most malleable of factors: labor.

Of course, were wages to drop consistently below subsistence level, the peasants would revolt, would they not? Or would they instead incur debt and live on borrowed dollars like modern day sharecroppers?

I see no revolution, only an accumulation of debt by the underclasses.

The self-correcting invisible hand is interested only in pleasuring itself. The common good, reduced in importance to a secondary by-product of the faux free market, seldom gets attention in a society where only the first in line gets served.

Let us not despair, for, after all, we are number two and we must try harder.

Rationality, especially as characterized by the practices of differentiation and specialization, cannot be expected to produce anything but more rationality. The form of thinking mirrors the content. Justice, however, is not merely an extension of rationality; it requires that we exert our will. Decency is not always favorable to the bottom line, and that which favors the bottom line is not always just.

The vices of the invisible hand are two-fold: First, it creates the illusion that we are absolved of the responsibilities of individual will, for no one need worry their conscience so long as the invisible hand holds the scales of justice and insures their proper working. We will call this vice "deception" and further note that it is successfully perpetrated only because we are so anxious to believe such a lie.

Second, the invisible hand corrupts the possibility of justice by placing the common good to the wayside of human concern, for there can be no justice in our actions if justice is not primary in our concerns. We will call this vice "displacement" and further note that it is successfully perpetrated only because we are so eager to substitute selfish goals for virture.

What is surprising, then, is not the fact that humankind is primarily characterized by its selfishness, but the lengths to which we are willing to go in order to hide this character under a veneer of nobility and rationality.

Could it be that the profit motive, however powerful it may reign, does not inspire that which we call our souls? Could it be that the almighty invisible hand shirks from thumbwrestling with the extended hand of charity?

Could such a ferocious tiger have but a paper roar?

8:Closing the deal with the seven seals

The dominant truth of our society is that it forces us to live in such a manner that our sensitivity to that which is noble and decent in humanity becomes gradually deadened.

Note that the author of these words is not so naive as to assume that the impulse towards decency is more compelling than the impulse towards self-gratification. Nor am I arrogant enough to presume that my words alone have the power to rectify or revise the souls of my readers.

That task I purposefully leave unfinished. Consider it as a challenge, a challenge presented to you without optimism of either your willingness to accept or your ability to succeed. A doomed challenged, as it were, to the statistically doomed.

Should you decide to accept this mission, and take these meager words sifted from the infoheap to your heart, your path shall not be easy. You will make yourself an enemy to those who would see corruption and capitulation reign. You will make yourself an ally to those most helpless and incapable of giving you earthly rewards, only seldom glimpsing the rewards of an open heart and extended hand.