Two Hundred and Nine

I went to a different free food pantry yesterday, because its website said it was the largest pantry in the county.  

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.