Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“I guess nothing more than what I’m already doing, although not for much longer since I’m already tiring of it.”

“Is that enough? And do you do it for the right reasons?”

“You mean as opposed to the immense prestige and monetary compensation?”

“Fine, let me concede that you do what you can, do it well, and for the right reasons. You know, I trust, that in the vast ocean of Injustice there are certainly bigger fish to fry than Hurd. Accordingly, there’s a philosophical argument that goes something like this. Imagine yourself gaily reposing in your lavishly-landscaped backyard. Suddenly you’re drawn, in reaction to some plaintive moaning, to look over the fence and into your neighbor’s yard where you see a young girl with dirt-caked hair literally starving to death. Can you envision a scenario under which you would not immediately drop everything and come to her aid? My strong guess is you would do so regardless of any resulting personal detriment, economic or otherwise. Indulge me with patience Casi and allow me to once again tell you something you already know. At this very moment while you and I pick at this fried calamari, which incidentally has inexplicably not been properly breaded or fried and is therefore unforgivably rubbery, there exists just such a girl slowly starving to death but out of our sight, her belly bloated by empty want, her lips scarred with thirsty lesions. This girl starves while people like us throw away turkey sandwiches because the sweaty guy behind the counter put mayo on it. Now the only difference between these two girls as they relate to you is proximity yet one spurs you to action and the other you callously disregard. You know, I again trust, that proximity is not a legitimate basis for favoring one over the other. So why don’t you obey this moral imperative, drop everything, and devote yourself to rescuing this girl and the many others like her? Or perhaps you think these people should starve to death while you and I gorge on fatted calves by candlelight. I mean please. This philosopher, through me, has lifted your veil of ignorance and laid bare your inconsistent behavior and I can see from the vertical nodding of your head that you agree there is simply no justification for your inaction. Can you really just keep your head buried in the sand while only ineffectually addressing the unjustly caged. What say you to all this? Speaketh.”

“Well as I tried to say earlier,” I said now. “I’m getting tired of dealing with the caged but I think you might be on to something with this other dilemma.”

“How so?”

“Because even though I am an exceedingly happy person, well, that may be pushing it. Even though I’m quite happy. Not really happy, I mean, content let’s say. I’m not miserable that’s for sure. Not that miserable. Let’s say I wasn’t a happy person even though I am. Let’s say I was a fucked-up, confused person. Or sad, that’s it, kind of weirdly sad. Just take this premise at face value. Imagine this persistent drizzle between my ears that maybe threatens to turn into a full-blown mental tempest. The real question would be why this is so and how to fix it. Well I’m aware, in the troublingly peripheral way I’m aware of so much suspect data and concepts, of the psych notion that says I’m better off viewing my difficulties as externally based and therefore transient and capable of being borne rather than as internally based, with its suggestion of intractability and concomitant depression. Of course even as I say that I’m also vaguely recalling the seemingly opposite notion that those who view the world as acting on them in a manner outside of their control are more fucked than those who view themselves as agents of their own destiny and maybe these kinds of epistemological vagaries are part of the problem. Not that I don’t have things I could point to. Like say a pain in my ear where every sound received feels like a tiny dagger finding its mark and none of the daggers come from a gorgeous miniscule girl who used to yap but now only practices an inexplicable silence. And imagine she had an aunt who always brings up ancient incidents freighted with significance, with Beethoven and loss, or a weird kid who asks simple questions that go unanswered, questions about bumpy old men who approach you all shirtless in icy air and maybe try to hug you and imagine I looked for that nut this morning, the way you might look for a misplaced pair of gloves, outside on the street on my way to work, but didn’t see him or an ambulance or anything. Where do these people go anyway? Where do they disappear to? The babies outside of pubby restaurants and the preternaturally old? Do they all fly hastily off of overpasses or step gingerly in front of trains? What about ten-year-olds with perfect uppercut swings and severely overweight bus drivers with big plans and their demented, agoraphobic Prometheus? Imagine I was the kind of person who thought about things like that all the time and imagine I had placed myself in an obscene amount of debt so that I could get yelled at by insane immoral people and deal with criminal defendants too and even when I sleep — sleep for Chrissakes! — a time when all should be placid and good, even then there are leeches in lab coats sawing my skull open and bleeding my brain to their desired effect. Imagine I was that fucked up is what I’m saying.”

“Done.”

“Even then I think I would feel that the sadness wasn’t entirely a function of those things. Because what you’ve just said makes me think that the genesis of the human problem, at least as instantiated in me, might just boil down to something akin to user error. Because I agree with you that I’m supposed to be a greater remedial source regarding such an extreme malfunction of justice. It’s a strange kind of agreement though because it doesn’t stem solely from reason. When I agree with a proposition after exercising my ability to reason I do something like accept a series of earlier related propositions as true. Then if these propositions tie together in such a way that they syllogistically lead to a conclusion, I accept that conclusion. Now there’s some of that going on here with this philosophical argument but I think there’s more to it as well. When you say I should help the starving girl who is thirty yards away I agree but I don’t agree the way I would with the statements that one plus two equals three or that bachelors are unmarried. As with all questions of ethics it seems to ultimately come down to a visceral feeling, either obeyed or disobeyed, that impels me to certain conduct. It’s not any amount of intellectual reasoning that tells me I shouldn’t simply walk away from this girl, it’s more like a feeling or emotion and it’s one that for some reason I feel certain anyone else would experience under the same or similar circumstances. I simply can’t imagine the opposite, can’t imagine someone sane not feeling compelled to help and moreover not feeling they’ve done something wrong if they ignore that compulsion.”

“Disagree.”

“The question then becomes where this feeling comes from and why it’s so universal? Some would say it’s instilled in us through a combination of physiological and social conditioning designed to perpetuate the species while others would credit something like God and say He instills it in us. Whatever the source, what if this imperative represents a kind of blueprint for humans? Maybe by violating the blueprint we invite a host of problems.”

“What?”

“Imagine you purchase a new major appliance. You bring the sucker home and immediately start using it, secure in the knowledge that you know everything you need to know about its successful operation. The thing hums along for years but there’s a hitch because even at the outset you’re aware that the device is somehow operating less than optimally. You ignore this failure because after all it essentially performs its function and repairs can be so expensive. As the years march on the thing deteriorates, to no one’s surprise but at a rate that exceeds the expected. Now imagine that one day you come across the appliance’s long-ignored owner’s manual and you sit down and read it for the first time. It yields its secrets to you and you realize you’ve been using the damn thing incorrectly. Armed with this knowledge you begin to use the thing the right way and you discover that it operates beautifully. The problem didn’t lie in the device nor was it inherent in its operation, the problem arose because of a misconception by the owner regarding the item’s proper operation, how it should be used and what its ultimate and proper purpose should be.”