We Can Be Villians Just For One Day

Originally written March 30, 2007

Where is the place that we have come from, and where is it that you are taking us. Put it together and you find yourself entrenched in a fear of living your own life. We can preach to the high heavens that somewhere out there the wrong direction is lying in our path. Fear the possibility that the world is unjust, unequal; that the less fortunate will be left behind. Fear that our conscience may appear somewhat unseemly to those that care about such things.

But there ain’t no medals on my chest, cause I ain’t no hero. Sometimes these things just happen. There is no right or wrong to it.

I was raised in America, and led a privileged life. I was educated to believe everyone was equal to each other, although some were inevitably more equal than others. I had access to freedoms, technology, basic nutrition. I would like think I have taken advantage of every person and opportunity bestowed upon me.

Antje Mai is a beautiful, complicated and intelligent professor at our law school. Our heroine was raised in East Germany on the dark side of the wall. She was educated from an early age to defend her village from the imperialist forces of the west. As a child she had to cultivate a garden to provide her family with subsistence. Once the wall came down she engaged in one memorable display of self destruction, an inevitable consequence of unbridled freedom for a people that knew not what it was like.

Angela was raised in northern China near the border of Russia. She was educated to believe that the massacre of Tienanmen Square was a lie created by the western media to cast a negative light upon the People’s Republic of China. The limited access to such stories on the internet in China has done little to persuade her otherwise. She believes in the Communist Party in the same way the religious believe in God; an all-knowing, all-seeing benefactor of one’s devotion and affections.

In my time at the helm of this law school, I have used my influence to publish to an article on the economic failure that is financial relief to such backwater regions. There is a great deal of money and power to be made in selling fear to those who would be called idealists. We can all gather at our cocktail parties to raise money for the cause or candidate of the month. We could volunteer our time at the local shelter, build houses in Mexico, save the rain forest and feed the orphans.

What makes this fight eternal is that seemingly endless supply of hope; that just around the next bend daylight will break. But it never makes a difference. Such fragments do not make a whole. I’ve come away from this experience jaded towards any goal of salvation. A quarter the world’s population here is brainwashed, impoverished, and have no hope of advancement or contribution to the world’s economy. Reality is not an expensive dinner with proceeds going to save the panda bear. Reality is carving out a small corner in this world and keeping the barbarians at the gate.

You want to save the world? Then hop aboard the “feel better about ourselves” bandwagon. I have a castle to build.