It
was inside a magnificent modern church, large enough to hold a televangelist’s
flock. Beggars who’d arrived before me stood
outside, talking to each other while we waited for its doors to open; but they
spoke so rapidly I couldn't understand them.
Apparently it was obvious that I was trying to, because one man asked
me, in English, “Do you know what language we are speaking?”
“Arabic”,
I said.
“Iraqi,”
he said, and we began to talk; but in English.
They
were all friendly, and wanted to talk with me, the newcomer. I tried to bring up the situation in Iraq, which
I’ve been following on the internet, but none of them wanted to talk about that. Ordinary people don’t usually pay much
attention to politics—or rather, the competition between rival gangs to
plunder the dying commonwealth, which is what nowadays passes for politics—because
they know whoever wins, they’ll lose.
The doors
finally opened, and the man handing out food told us he would pray with anyone
who was in need of prayer. The beggar standing
beside me said he didn’t need prayer. Thinking
it unwise to offend our benefactor, I told him Muslims and Christians worship
the same god. He said he didn’t believe
in any gods.
Most
ordinary people aren’t ignorant and gullible, as their supposed betters believe,
or claim to believe. They’re ignorant, as
are we all, but not gullible. They do what they must in order to survive, as do
we all, and that includes learning to believe—or rather, suspending their
disbelief—in the dogmas of their society.
But they don’t believe, or suspend their disbelief, in those dogmas because
experience has taught them they’re true.
They do it because their parents, teachers and bosses—all the people
who have power over them—tell them they’re true.
In
order to join adult society, children must learn to speak its language, to say
what adults say, even when—especially when—experience teaches them it’s not
true. But most ordinary people know
they’ll never join adult society. They’ll
always be children, ruled by people more powerful than they are. Ordinary people therefore say and do what
they’re supposed to, but only as long as it’s useful for them to do so. And when society—or rather, its rulers—no
longer have any use for them, ordinary people no longer have any use for it and
its dogmas.
But I
don’t often talk with ordinary people nowadays.
I talk instead with people on the internet. They’re ignorant, as we all are, but not ordinary. Although they’re becoming so. Or rather, ordinary people are becoming more
like people on the internet.
Most
of them are alone, as I am, and paranoid, which I probably am not because I
don’t believe, as most of them do, or claim they do, that I know the truth, and
anyone who doesn’t believe what I believe is either deluded, or lying.
I go
on the internet seeking conversation, and/or to learn. They go on it seeking to educate the deluded
and/or unmask the liars—the people who believe, or claim to believe, the lies
we’re all taught—that climate change is real, the theory of evolution is
true, and the earth is a sphere.
No
educated person, religious or not, believes the earth is flat. But most people on the internet, whether or
not they’re religious, claim it’s a religious dogma that the earth is flat,
which shows they’re as ignorant of religion as they are of science. But unlike ordinary people, they refuse to
admit they’re ignorant.
They’re
often knowledgeable, but never wise enough to know our knowledge has limits
because we ourselves have limits. Or
rather, they believe that although they don’t know everything, they know
everything worth knowing. But even the
wisest of us can never be certain that what we believe today won’t be changed
by what we learn tomorrow. Or rather,
they’re certain—as certain as we can be of anything - that it will be
changed.
The
internet is replacing television for most people, especially people who watch
television instead of reading (People who still read usually do it passively, accepting
or rejecting what they read without thinking; but people who watch are even
more passive). These people are the
audience for televangelists, and the internet enables them to become something
like televangelists themselves.
Why am I writing this? I no longer care about any of them.
I
used to love other people more than I loved myself, and I lived for them. But no longer.
I
don’t know everything about them, but I know enough now to know they disgust me,
and I want to die.
