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https://freedomain.com/freedomain_books/the-future/

Centuries in the future, an old man awakes from cryogenic sleep to face the judgement of a utopian society that barely survived his past abuses of power. In the vein of 'Atlas Shrugged, philosophy, philosopher Stefan Molyneux has created a compelling and powerful work of imagination. He vividly describes the wonderful future that mankind can achieve - and the barriers to getting there - and all that we need to leave behind to finally live in peace...

Transcript
00:00:00 The Future by Stephen Molyneux, chapter 31.
00:00:04 Roman's sons were named Aene and Cable.
00:00:10 Aene was in his mid-teens, Cable a year or two younger.
00:00:15 Everyone thinks the most important relationships in childhood
00:00:22 are with the parents, which is only true if there are no siblings.
00:00:28 Like most primitive older brothers, Aene was consumed by the unearned privilege of an early
00:00:34 birth. He was taller, of course, stronger, faster at everything except sprinting,
00:00:40 a naturally gifted athlete and hunter. Cable was more sensitive, more drawn to their mother,
00:00:48 more dreamy and abstract, and thus more subject to scorn and humiliation at the hands of his
00:00:55 older brother. Vanity is rage spread thin. Aene could be bitterly funny, but was also
00:01:04 perpetually angry. Some people have the disorienting habit of switching emotions without transition,
00:01:11 from laughter to rage, in a moment. Aene was one of those, and Cable learned quite early to not
00:01:18 bother trying to figure out his brother's moods or trying to appease or placate them.
00:01:24 They were both raised in the harsh straightjacket of grim necessity. Babies died, women expired in
00:01:35 childbirth, infected fingers had to be hacked off, the hunting herds had to be followed,
00:01:41 the conveyor belt of food had to run constantly. You had to hunt when you were starving and give
00:01:47 food to those who had stayed home. Elders were respected, venerated even, until they consumed
00:01:55 more than they could possibly produce, at which point they were expected to take a noble stroll
00:02:00 to nowhere.
00:02:01 Over many years, a strange bifurcation had occurred in the culture of the tribe.
00:02:12 They had a few solar-powered book libraries. They taught their children to read, debated
00:02:18 philosophy and morality, and whether there were any limits to the duties owed to the tribe.
00:02:23 They had fallen from a high place, which was very different from rising from a low place.
00:02:32 Their natural intelligence prevented them from falling too far. They had actually become
00:02:40 the mythical creatures talked about so often throughout the ages, the noble savages.
00:02:45 They spun complicated stories, invented endless songs, learned and taught complex dances,
00:02:53 and justified their spartan lives with appeals to abstract principles of self-reliance,
00:03:01 unadorned natural living, and the usual environmentalist fantasies that technology
00:03:06 was a wall between mortals and their true humanity.
00:03:10 They did not revere nature, but viewed her as a blind, tough adversary.
00:03:19 Almost unknown to themselves, they were part of the sentimental nostalgia common to all
00:03:27 human history, where people living complicated lives cast their minds back to an imaginary,
00:03:35 simplistic vision of hunting, eating, and sleeping. The stress of civilization has always
00:03:42 turned to imaginary dust in the face of spear-throwing, face-painting, and crapping in a hole.
00:03:50 Their lives were occasionally stressful, but the stress never lasted for long.
00:03:57 Unlike the old world, which seemed designed to slowly murder people by incrementally drowning
00:04:03 them in endless cortisol, it is hard to enjoy your life if you are trapped on a ship that
00:04:10 takes fifty years to sink. In the old world, the unsustainability of the system was deeply felt
00:04:20 by the ice people, those who had evolved with the instinctive stress measurements of the longevity
00:04:25 of proposed resources. Can we make it through the winter? Those carefree souls who failed
00:04:32 to answer this basic question accurately froze in their huts come March.
00:04:37 The old world had no chance of lasting, mathematically, demographically, morally,
00:04:48 in any and every way, and those trapped in its cripplingly slow decay choked, suffocated,
00:04:58 and drowned in their own rising stress. The human system of survival, the adrenaline dumps
00:05:05 of sprinting from predators, was stretched to unbearable lengths. Hormonal responses
00:05:11 designed to last minutes were stretched out to decades, and people turned into
00:05:17 fitful ghosts, dragging the chains of their own mismatched biology.
00:05:24 Neither the parents nor the children slept the first night that the angels hovered overhead,
00:05:31 outlined against the ghost clouds and stars. Sudden shifts in elemental power can scarcely
00:05:41 be navigated by the trauma-frozen mental maps we use to navigate brutal authority.
00:05:49 The parents were beyond uneasy. They no longer felt like parents, in fact.
00:05:59 At some point, about halfway through that dismal night, Roman threw aside his covers and stepped
00:06:08 out of his tent. It was a starry night, and a slow breeze brought chill hints of the coming winter.
00:06:18 The constellations blazed and shivered, supremely indifferent to the mad changes in the world they
00:06:24 barely lit. Roman coughed, hoping to summon other parents. Almost immediately, tent flaps opened,
00:06:34 and parents came filing out from their sleepless teepees. Gratifyingly, no children emerged.
00:06:40 Roman gestured for the parents to follow him towards a low tangle of cherry trees.
00:06:45 Immediately, an angel flashed before him, saying, "Please do not leave the children unsupervised."
00:06:50 Roman grunted and nodded, feeling a choking stab of rage.
00:06:55 He turned around and gestured for the fire to be relit in the center of the encampment.
00:06:59 The parents all sat, cross-legged, in a circle. The angels ringed them, like the outer rim of
00:07:10 an arrow target. One man with thick black hair said, "I could skin your goddamn kids, Roman!"
00:07:17 An angel appeared on his left shoulder and said, "Please note that some children are awake.
00:07:23 This statement is unacceptable." Roman said, "Let's talk about raising goats."
00:07:30 A shiver of nervous laughter ran around the dark circle.
00:07:34 He turned to the closest hovering angel. "Okay with you, you fat, floating freak?"
00:07:40 Roman could see the firelight reflected in the twin floating doll's eyes of the baby.
00:07:46 Silence.
00:07:48 Roman turned and said, "I don't know. How the hell are you supposed to raise goats without
00:07:56 discipline?" A father grunted. "Those damned things will eat you out of the house and home,
00:08:01 unless you put fences up," a mother said. "And what on earth do we do with the goats if all the
00:08:08 fences come down? And they're used to fences and they just wander around getting in the way and
00:08:12 not being productive and not listening, being disobedient?" Another father whispered, "They're
00:08:18 just gonna turn on us. They're gonna bite us in our sleep. It's gonna be a war." A woman said,
00:08:27 "How the hell am I supposed to raise goats? Totally different from how I,
00:08:31 all of us were parented. We might as well just try and invent some new clicking language."
00:08:36 The circle of blue eyes hovered impassively.
00:08:39 Another man growled, "Look at us here, sitting in the night, whispering like thieves, hoping we
00:08:47 don't get our asses stung by electricity. What kind of authority figures are we supposed to be
00:08:51 for our goats?" A wide-eyed woman said, "Make no mistake, this is the end of us."
00:08:58 "Roman says we came from the sieve. All right, we live hard out here, that's our way. It ain't
00:09:04 honor because we kept to the path and we could teach our kids." "Goat? Kids, you floating freaks."
00:09:09 "But if it all ends here, if we can't be ourselves with our goats, then what the hell was the point
00:09:15 of freezing our asses off out here all these years? We might as well just plunked into the sieve with
00:09:21 the honey and eat and robot butlers and whatnot. It doesn't just make a lie of us here and now,
00:09:27 but of everything in the past that we..." Her eloquence failed her and she sunk into a gloomy
00:09:35 silence. "I won't have it!" cried another man suddenly, turning defiantly to the floating
00:09:41 angels. "There has to be some way!" Silence and smiles from the floating blue eyes.
00:09:50 Roman grunted and said, "I went over all this for David. They have us beat. Even if we could
00:09:57 disable them, they'll just send more. They can hear everything, see everything,
00:10:04 cut through everything, report home." An older woman burst into tears. "God,
00:10:11 can't be, can't be so hopeless. I don't even know how to wake up tomorrow. How are we going to get
00:10:20 them to do what we want?" "What we need," said the dark-haired man evenly. "We sacrificed so much,"
00:10:30 said another man softly, gesturing into the night. "There's a line of ancestors going out
00:10:38 to the horizon, all shaking their heads and wishing they could come back to life to knock
00:10:43 some sense back into us." A woman said tearfully, "Who are we if we are not in charge?"
00:10:53 Everyone suddenly looked at Roman. They could see, almost scrolling across his face, the words,
00:11:04 "I don't know." One of the angels turned to him. "Scans show no goats in the vicinity.
00:11:13 Please do not use analogies when discussing your children."
00:11:16 The dark-haired man jumped up, shouting with rage, and leapt at the angel, which
00:11:22 darted nimbly up, escaping his outstretched fingers.
00:11:25 The floating baby smiled. "Please do not attack the angels. Everyone gets one warning."
00:11:33 One woman said, "Would it be helpful if we got some actual goats? Then we could—" Roman sighed,
00:11:43 "It won't do much good to try and outsmart them. They've been battle-tested, so to speak,
00:11:48 in just about every environment. They beat the whole world." He stood up. "No,
00:11:56 no. We will have to find another way." Everyone's eyes stared at him expectantly,
00:12:04 hopefully. He shook his head again. "I'm not saying what you're thinking."
00:12:09 The eyelids fluttered, the eyes lowered, the mouths pouted.
00:12:21 Roman awoke, feeling tendrils of uneasiness in his belly, an instability, a
00:12:28 "hanging by a thread, being hunted" sensation. It was late, mid-morning, far beyond his usual
00:12:37 rising time, but he didn't feel rested. It was like when hunting was going badly,
00:12:44 and he rehearsed endless successful kills in his dreams, but awoke feeling hungry and exhausted.
00:12:50 He leaned up on his elbows, turning his face to the left and rubbing his eyes.
00:12:56 The teepee was stained, silent. Above him, a little to the right,
00:13:05 blocking the small hole designed to let the smoke out, hung a silent, floating angel.
00:13:10 The pupils of the blue eyes were trained on him, and he had a sudden shudder, as if he were being
00:13:17 watched by a pink devil or a malevolent ancestor, or his own conscience. A sudden thought came to
00:13:25 him, and he smiled grimly with the pretense of courage, because he was now being watched for
00:13:32 "how long until I change?" The thought came to him.
00:13:43 He did not want to get up. He wanted to lie in a fetal position,
00:13:48 hugging his own tension, circling it like a useless, toothless shark.
00:13:53 But he willed himself to rise, in part because, being over fifty, he had to pee.
00:14:01 He stumbled stiffly out of his teepee, and looked over the encampment.
00:14:09 Very few parents were up. Children milled about, playing various games, watched over by the
00:14:14 attentive angels. Ane and Cable were playing rock-paper-scissors in front of his teepee,
00:14:23 over the fading smoke of the night fire. They looked up at him, the curious and complicated
00:14:29 mixture of emotions – fear, defiance, resentment, anger, uncertainty.
00:14:38 "Morning, Dad," said Ane, warily. Cable nodded in agreement, and Roman returned the greeting.
00:14:45 Roman felt sudden anger. The children were just milling about, playing listless games,
00:14:53 rather than doing the work necessary for survival.
00:14:55 "It's not abuse, if it keeps us alive," he thought with sudden savagery.
00:15:00 He was developing a kind of sixth sense about the location of the angels.
00:15:08 He knew, without turning around, that the angel inside his teepee was now floating
00:15:13 behind him, staring at the hairs on the back of his neck.
00:15:16 It wasn't that they made any sound, or had any electrical presence. It was more like,
00:15:22 "Hmm." He suddenly remembered that as a child, he had fingered threads while going to sleep,
00:15:29 and always had a great instinct as to when a thread was just about to end.
00:15:35 All predators understand predators. The thought struck him with such sudden severity that he
00:15:42 truly imagined that the angel behind him had said something. "Are they controlling my brain?"
00:15:47 Given that he did not understand the technology at all – he doubted many people did, even in the
00:15:54 civ – he would have no way of knowing. But he did begrudgingly accept that the civ robot pimps
00:16:01 believed in free will and wouldn't program him that way.
00:16:05 "It's your inner angel answering the outer," Roman grimaced and put his hands to his ears,
00:16:14 uselessly. He turned to his kids. "What the hell are you doing?" he was about to demand,
00:16:22 but checked himself. "What are you up to?" he asked. Ayn ducked his head, glancing
00:16:31 just above and behind his father. "Just waiting for you to get up, I suppose."
00:16:40 Cain, his youngest, said, "Are you hungry?" Roman waved him off. He caught the eye of
00:16:45 another father across from the central fire pit, who cocked his head and shrugged slightly.
00:16:51 Roman's eyes narrowed. "Do I need to talk?"
00:16:56 "About what?" asked Ayn with pretend innocence. There was an awkward pause. Roman could clearly
00:17:06 see that his boys wanted to get back to their game, and suddenly felt further anger. "I want it."
00:17:11 He looked at his boys closely. Cable could not yet grow a beard, but Ayn possessed some
00:17:19 fairly robust stubble. "Unnecessary." Roman wondered where his wife was. He saw a line
00:17:28 of people walking in the heat-hazed distance. "It's probably the women going to get water."
00:17:33 Roman had no idea what to say to his sons. He opened his mouth and closed it like a
00:17:45 slow-motion fish out of water. "What are you boys up to today?"
00:17:52 Ayn looked at him with a flash of defiance. "We have no idea."
00:17:56 "What's that supposed to mean?" Roman was about to ask, but realized he could not neutralize
00:18:02 his tone to the satisfaction of the floating angel. Roman took a deep breath. "All right.
00:18:10 Things have changed. Let's not pretend." Cable swallowed, his cheeks reddening,
00:18:16 and wiped his eyes with self-conscious anger. Ayn said, "It's hard to know who's in charge now."
00:18:23 Roman said evenly, "You brought us down this path, on a mountain that night with those girls."
00:18:31 "You always told me to defend what's ours!" cried Ayn. Roman felt hot rage. His fists clenched,
00:18:39 and he felt a tickle on the back of his neck with the approach of the angel.
00:18:43 A floating baby in the back of his brain froze his tongue.
00:18:47 "I didn't tell you to bully girls," he said with effort. "Oh yeah, Dad, because
00:18:56 bullying whoever is smaller is totally bad, right?" Roman's mouth fell open. "A scorn."
00:19:05 He took a deep breath. "Oh, you are very brave now, with your little allies."
00:19:11 Cable said, "I don't like this any more than you do, Dad."
00:19:15 "Oh, shut up," said Ayn carelessly. The baby angel was silent.
00:19:20 Roman leaned in, towering over his eldest son. "So, you want to be in charge now, right?"
00:19:29 He murmured. "You've got your little sky buddies, you've got half a mustache,
00:19:34 you've got your skinny little muscles and your little bit of armpit arrogance.
00:19:39 I understand. Happens to all. So, be in charge. I'll promote you. Go on, get all the food,
00:19:48 keep everyone in line and... what, Dad? These angels don't want me to treat you like a child,
00:19:54 so don't be a child. Be a man. It's what you want, isn't it?"
00:19:58 "Dad," murmured Cable, obviously frightened. "Oh, God, don't be such a baby," cried Ayn in
00:20:06 frustration. The angel darted forward from behind Roman and said, "Please do not insult your
00:20:11 brother." Roman's eyes widened slightly. "How the hell does it know they are related?"
00:20:18 He felt an elemental invasion of his privacy. He glared at the floating blue eyes. "How the hell
00:20:25 do you know that?" Silence. "I want to talk to David, but put him on," the angel said.
00:20:31 "I am not a communications device." Ayn looked up, squinting against the white glare of the
00:20:40 clouds surrounding the angel. "How long are you here for?" Silence. Roman's hands itched
00:20:51 for a giant stick that he could use to smash and smash the angel into easily buried history.
00:20:56 He then felt a sudden rush of sadness, of loss, and remembered his own father towering over him,
00:21:09 exacting vengeance for some slight he could not remember. "Don't do it!"
00:21:14 "Who am I without power?"
00:21:19 The most fundamental question of humanity shot through his mind, chased by crackles of trauma.
00:21:29 Roman squatted down in front of his children.
00:21:36 "If you want to learn how to live, you will do what I say, although I am now prevented from
00:21:43 punishing you of raising my voice. Sitting here, playing your finger games, will not put any food
00:21:51 on your lap or water in your belly. You don't want to be irresponsible. You need to hunt.
00:22:00 You need to set traps. You need to make sure that the women are getting what they need."
00:22:06 "Life is a circle that goes round day after day. Your bodies are always eating themselves,
00:22:12 whether you feed them or not. Do you understand?" Roman's voice rose slightly at the end of his
00:22:19 speech. He flinched involuntarily, but apparently he was still within bounds because nothing happened.
00:22:28 Ayn's eyes also narrowed, almost in imitation of his father, it seemed. "I'm tired of hunting."
00:22:37 Cable inhaled sharply, sitting back. Roman said, "I'm not going to talk about this again. We are
00:22:44 hunters, not farmers." Ayn jutted out his lower lip and said, "We didn't get in trouble because
00:22:51 I pushed a few girls around. We got in trouble because you beat the hell out of anyone who wants
00:22:56 to plant crops. We got in trouble because we are always moving around, so we don't have any property.
00:23:02 We don't have any rights. And you said yourself that the civ is all about property. You blame me
00:23:08 for your own dumb decisions, Dad." He imitated Roman. "We are hunters. We throw spear. We eat
00:23:15 meat. We are brave warriors who shoot deer and beat children." Cable was too frightened to laugh.
00:23:23 Ayn continued, "And you never have to take any responsibility. We could have off the land
00:23:29 growing food for us, but no, we have to be hunters. We have to cover our cheeks in blood. That is,
00:23:34 what do you say, our way." "Well, it's not our way, Dad. It's just your way.
00:23:39 Hey, you yell at me for not taking responsibility, but you raised me, Dad. Who am I but the shadow
00:23:49 of you, of what you want, what you have done? I'm not some carved off thing that has nothing to do
00:23:56 with you." "That's right," said Roman grimly. "Blame me for everything." The angel moved forward
00:24:03 slightly and said, "Irrational absolutes tend to escalate conflict." "Oh, shut up!" screamed Roman,
00:24:10 raising his arms thick with fight-or-flight blood. Roman woke up in the late afternoon.
00:24:21 His wife, Sarah, was leaning over him, pressing a cold cloth to his forehead.
00:24:27 "Oh, you're back," she said simply. "Don't yet. Look around." Roman grimaced and obeyed her.
00:24:36 Lying on the hides were a dozen women and half a dozen men. All were in various states of dazed
00:24:45 disrepair. The dark-haired man from the previous night was next to him. He smiled wryly at Roman.
00:24:52 "Well, we can't confirm that the angels work, at least." Roman said, "I don't remember getting
00:24:58 the warning." The dark-haired man leaned over with glowing eyes and whispered, "You were
00:25:04 magnificent. I never seen more electricity except from the sky."
00:25:09 The tribe fell apart. There was no other way to put it. The women stopped having sex with the men.
00:25:24 The men wandered around depressed, anxious, almost formless, it seemed. Some were seen
00:25:33 shaking under the scant starlight, as if withdrawing from a powerful addiction, as in fact they were.
00:25:39 The older children, having been ground down by brutal authority their entire lives,
00:25:45 attempted to enter the power vacuum caused by the angels, but the floating eyes were having none of
00:25:52 it. Elder siblings were commanded to refrain from verbal or physical abuse against the younger
00:25:58 siblings, against other children. If they were young, the commandments were very gentle, and
00:26:03 if ignored, the angels simply interposed themselves between the children. If verbal
00:26:08 abuse continued, the angels played classical music at very high volume, driving the attacker away.
00:26:17 Children wept in the dirt and dust, bereft of form, shape, and personality.
00:26:26 Mothers wept with them, side by side, without touching, as if in strange solidarity.
00:26:35 Men hunted with increased ferocity. They shot animals only to wound them,
00:26:42 then stood with their feet on the necks of their prey, firing arrows into their fading eyes.
00:26:47 The angels were silent, with one exception. Apparently, the non-aggression principle
00:26:55 applied only to humans. The dark-haired man was electrified because he was clearly
00:27:02 torturing a rabbit. He was not given a warning.
00:27:10 Roman felt himself strangely emotional. He had previously controlled his emotions by controlling
00:27:19 his children. These eruptions of random feelings were extremely disorienting to him,
00:27:25 and he went on long, solitary hunting trips – once even forgetting his arrows – so that his status
00:27:32 would not be destroyed by the rebellion of his heart.
00:27:39 He dreamed of his father and his mother almost every night. They raged at him as they had in
00:27:48 life, demanding that he honor their memory by maintaining their rules. In a strange reversal
00:27:54 of what had actually happened to him as a child, his mother raged at him while his father sat in
00:28:00 silent and claustrophobic disappointment. "Don't do it!" He awoke from one of these nightmares
00:28:10 with a distinct and metallic thought dancing on his tongue. "I was not beating my children
00:28:18 by my parents." You can now follow that thought. He lacked the language.
00:28:26 Self-knowledge is the most foreign tongue to primitive personalities.
00:28:31 They may as well be dropped into ancient Greece to debate Socrates.
00:28:34 Every true thought about themselves feels like gibberish to those who have externalized and
00:28:41 punished their irrationalities.
00:28:43 The work ethic of the tribe largely collapsed. The raging men killed so many animals that the
00:28:56 careful weighing of consumption so essential to their survival vanished, and they ran out of meat
00:29:01 within a fortnight. In many ways, it was even worse for the women. Female aggression is often
00:29:10 secondhand. They cannot beat up other men, but they can spread rumors, attack children,
00:29:16 and provoke their mates into fighting other males. The women of the tribe also used sex as a reward
00:29:22 mechanism, but since the men were depressed and absent, and the all-seeing angels were everywhere,
00:29:27 they lost this power too. With the loss of sexual power came a collapse in grooming standards.
00:29:38 Everything the adults did in the tribe was to dominate. In the absence of domination, they were
00:29:47 utterly disoriented, like gymnasts in zero gravity. Their muscles meant nothing. There was no
00:29:56 resistance, and therefore no strength, no purpose. All their prior ferocious skills sagged into
00:30:04 twitchy and flaccid emptiness. Their rage blocked them from learning any new skills, since the new
00:30:11 rules were enforced, not accepted. The scorn and rebellion of the children grew in leaps and bounds
00:30:21 because they saw the soft victim underbelly of their prior tormentors.
00:30:26 When violence in parenting is removed, parents are revealed as helpless and empty,
00:30:35 at least for a time. "You could have stopped any time if you wanted to,"
00:30:42 and "You stopped beating us because the angels are beating you."
00:30:49 As the collapse of parental work fueled the growing hunger, and the survival of the tribe
00:31:01 became a very real question, some of the older children began to step into leadership roles,
00:31:07 but a very different form of leadership than had been inflicted before.
00:31:13 Ane, in particular, felt a growing and grudging sympathy for his parents.
00:31:21 Aging patriarchy has long swung from violent abuse to rank self-pity,
00:31:28 as strength fades from striking muscles, soul-sucking emotional manipulation takes its place.
00:31:34 Fear of violence gets replaced by fear of guilt.
00:31:40 Ane could see that his father was shrinking physically. His pride in his lean legs and
00:31:50 broad chest had collapsed in on itself. Ane was reminded of the first teepee he had tried to build,
00:31:56 which had similarly fallen inward.
00:31:58 Violent people are helpless without violence. That is mostly what the violence is designed
00:32:07 to cover up. Ane could see the near instant erasure of his father's dominance, and Roman's
00:32:16 imposing physical and mental figure fell away in his mind, showing a squalling and helpless infant
00:32:23 working the levers of a giant warrior's arms. Ane remembered as a child, curiously hacking
00:32:31 back the shell of a dead tortoise, being surprised at the soft and helpless thing inside.
00:32:36 The helplessness and the armor are the same thing.
00:32:47 He felt sympathy for his father's exposure, but he also felt a cold anger.
00:32:53 Sympathy for brutalizers can be warranted,
00:32:57 but it is usually a step too far to demand it from their victims.
00:33:02 Finally, Ane grew tired of half-measures and demanded that the tribe assemble.
00:33:10 The adults were so inert that they simply allowed themselves to be led and sat in a
00:33:16 circle around the main fire pit like so many legless sacks. Below were the men, women,
00:33:25 and children, floating above them like pink proximate constellations were the tousled
00:33:31 blonde angels, silent, smiling, implacable, absolute. Their bows were out.
00:33:41 "So we are not doing so well," said Ane. "The elders, you've all gone walkabout. You're just
00:33:52 hunting and eating at a distance, staying out for days, not bringing much of anything back.
00:33:57 And the kids, well, they're not doing so well either."
00:34:00 His voice cracked, but he struggles on, not even sure what he was going to say next.
00:34:05 "And it's a shock. I get it. These angels have changed a lot, everything really. But it's not
00:34:15 like they've turned us into another kind of animal. We still aren't. They're not interfering
00:34:20 in survival because that would violate their rules or something. It's a big deal. I get it,
00:34:28 not eating, but I don't get why everything is just falling apart so fast. You can't eat us.
00:34:35 You can't yell at us, but we still need you. You have learned other things than eating and yelling.
00:34:43 And I don't want to have to learn everything for myself all over again."
00:34:48 "Dad," he said, his voice breaking, "when I twisted my ankle running off to that rabbit,
00:34:54 we were like halfway to the horizon and you just tied it up and told me to walk.
00:34:59 That was a long way. I think I remember just about every step. You told me to be tough.
00:35:06 You gave me a stick to bite on. I was like six or something. And you're getting close to 50, I think.
00:35:13 I don't know you can deal with just about any kind of pain because you taught me to. So I don't
00:35:19 understand why you can't just put one foot in front of the other and make your way home."
00:35:25 "Jesse," Ayn pointed at the dark haired man, "every day you attack the angels, more than once
00:35:33 sometimes, and you just lose all the time. And we're all terrified that you're going to get some
00:35:38 permanent damage, like you're going to glow at night and your bones are going to snap when you
00:35:42 take a step. What are you doing? You were always telling me that if something doesn't work,
00:35:48 like being upwind when you're hunting, then you just stop doing it. You had these rules.
00:35:54 Like my dad has these rules. Like you all have these rules. And you're just not applying them
00:36:01 now. And it's driving me crazy. Why are these floating babies undoing everything about us?
00:36:08 Why can't we hold anything together?" His voice rose. "We're going to die, die off if we don't
00:36:15 change, learn something, whatever it is that we have to learn. We can't get enough food and water
00:36:22 for all the kids and you without your help. You're all turning into these useless eaters. But you're
00:36:28 not going off into the wild like grandpa did. You're just consuming everything, giving nothing."
00:36:36 Ayn was struck by a sudden thought. "Do you want...
00:36:42 Forgiveness? I don't think it's guilt. I don't think that, but something. Dad!"
00:36:52 Roman raised his dead eyes to his son. He slowly shook his head.
00:36:58 Ayn gestured helplessly. "Are we supposed to just wander off and leave you here to survive on your
00:37:07 own if you want? Is everything being run by ghosts? You're still my dad, even if you don't hit me,
00:37:15 maybe more." Roman felt a deep vibration in his soul like a rolling church bell.
00:37:27 A choice arose in his heart that he did not expect. He had demanded apologies almost
00:37:35 every day from those around him, from his children,
00:37:37 but he could not remember offering a single one as an adult.
00:37:43 "Don't do it! To hell with inner voices, I will act!"
00:37:49 Roman wrestled himself to his feet as if he were underwater, weighed down.
00:37:56 He walked to his son on numb feet, on a new path, in a new world.
00:38:07 He opened his arms. The circling angels smiled and put away their weapons.
00:38:21 Chapter 32
00:38:28 As the leader of the free world, I am not unused to getting my way.
00:38:37 After my wife removed her face, revealing a swirling galaxy floating in a void, I roared.
00:38:47 That has always been my way, the sword of Damocles hanging over the puppet strings of everyone around
00:38:52 me. When you're born with a big face and a strong jaw, and you're taller than normal,
00:38:58 with a full head of thick hair, rising impatience followed by table-pounding roaring just
00:39:02 scatters everyone into conformity around you.
00:39:06 People are like salmon. If you're a strong enough current, everyone gets in line.
00:39:14 Tentative people drive me insane, or rather they would if they weren't so damn useful.
00:39:20 So many people try to be nice, but nice people never get anything done. At best,
00:39:28 they are as valuable as the mortar used to build a cathedral. Without mortar, I guess,
00:39:34 there is no cathedral, but no one cares about the mortar or comes to see it.
00:39:41 The man who came into my room after my faceless wife floated out was impossible for me to read.
00:39:49 Let's be honest, when two people, two men, come together, it's like two airplanes flying
00:40:00 towards each other. One goes up, one goes under, or everyone dies. Life is nothing but status.
00:40:09 We are haggling apes in suits. Nothing more, nothing less.
00:40:14 I can always sniff deference in the air and create it if necessary. Escalation is the key.
00:40:25 You just have to clench your jaw, stare without blinking, and raise your voice to the point where
00:40:31 people fully, truly, and deeply understand that they will have to kill you to get their way.
00:40:39 Iron will is the inevitable physics of our universe. People have no more choice to obey
00:40:47 the resolute than water has to obey the tide. Occasionally, I come across another alpha,
00:40:56 and we try our usual tricks on each other, and then both end up laughing, shaking hands, and
00:41:02 going our different ways. It's kind of like two lions each thinking they're hunting a gazelle
00:41:08 coming across each other in a bear claw flurry of comical surprise. No one expects them to eat
00:41:15 each other. They part as friends, knowing there is more than enough meat for every predator.
00:41:19 I was so glad not to live in a time of duels and honor and pistols at dawn.
00:41:32 I could lie and spread rumors and undermine reputations without a thought. No one was
00:41:38 going to slap my face with a glove and shoot my kidney out in the morning mist.
00:41:42 Consequences are an insult to the kind of ambition I was raised with. The only cure
00:41:51 for addiction is a hangover, and I never had any of the hangovers of guilt or shame or regret.
00:42:00 I don't think in my life I ever really felt fear.
00:42:07 Caution, for sure, when I was in the presence of a dangerous enemy, but not outright fear.
00:42:14 I was originally kind of worried about all of the supposedly good people in the world,
00:42:26 but I remained strangely invisible to them. I am the natural prey of abstract virtue,
00:42:35 but I was like a zebra wandering through a pride of lions, watching them scrabble for ants
00:42:41 in the dust, invulnerable in my obviousness. Jane's funeral showed me who really ran the world.
00:42:54 You run it, or you get run over.
00:42:56 The first few tendrils of power are tough. Once you snag those, they turn into a kind of
00:43:07 wobbly lasso you can use to capture more. The moment you have any shred of political power,
00:43:14 you can punish your enemies and reward your friends. So your enemies fear you, and your friends
00:43:21 love you. In every successful politician is the basic thought, "How can I possibly get away with
00:43:32 this?" I promised not to raise taxes, then I raised taxes. I promised to reduce immigration,
00:43:39 then I increased immigration. I promised transparency, then slow-walked document
00:43:46 requests for years. I praised free speech, then imposed censorship. I promised more press
00:43:52 conferences, then rambled my way through remote teleconferences. It all reminded me of pulling
00:43:59 out a stubborn tooth when I was a kid. You're frightened of the tug, then it turns out to be
00:44:04 nothing, just the snapping of a thin thread, a mouthful of temporary blood.
00:44:13 The press was my friend. Reporters attacked all my enemies, making up lies and sending the
00:44:20 innocent tumbling into the humiliating canyons of self-justification. Academia praised me in
00:44:27 obtuse syllables. Movies portrayed my kind as noble and heroic. Economists told everyone I
00:44:37 was in total control when things went well, but a victim of blind market forces when my economy
00:44:43 went into the crapper. I was hated, sure, but you can't be any kind of leader if you fear disapproval.
00:44:52 Leadership is all about forcing people to do what they damn well don't want to do,
00:44:58 like being a general in a war. And forcing people makes them upset, sure,
00:45:06 but it was pretty easy to deal with. I had the magic spell of the common good, which I could use
00:45:13 to curse anyone who didn't do what I wanted, what I told them to. I represented this common good. I
00:45:20 was its bland and enslaved acolyte. So it wasn't me that people had to obey, it was the good of
00:45:26 everyone, themselves included, even if they didn't see it at the time. Smiley face.
00:45:33 Ah, people shuffled into my life on a continual basis. It was a total conveyor belt of hypocritical
00:45:42 need. We all played the game and danced the dance. They talked about the common good, and I talked
00:45:50 about the general good. Reporters wrote about democracy, and everyone got free stuff, and I got
00:45:56 more power. And the common good lay twitching and hyperventilating on the carpet like a frat boy
00:46:03 after his first prison shower. Damn, those were great days. You rise, a smooth sunshine, and
00:46:18 people feed you and lay out your clothes. It seems vaguely offensive to have to shave yourself. And
00:46:28 you take your meetings with excellent coffee, and sunlight pours in through the windows on deep,
00:46:35 rich mahogany tables, and the paper is always crisp, and aides lean into your ears and whisper
00:46:42 sexy secrets into your brain, and everyone dances a disco dance of verbal avoidance of naked self-interest,
00:46:49 and the machineries of pen and paper create legal mazes that mice have to forever sprint
00:46:55 through to get a scrap of cheese. And your heart swells with the joy of control,
00:47:03 and you know that no one, not one single soul, will ever speak the words that will undo everything.
00:47:13 We know that it is all a theater of blood, that the state escalates until citizens comply or die,
00:47:23 that all the creamy white walls and pillars are the blended bones of freedom.
00:47:31 And if people would only tell the truth, it would all go away.
00:47:36 But they are addicted to the lies, and here was the most perfect thing.
00:47:47 I understood, oh, incredibly quickly, that anyone who talked about freedom from me, freedom from us,
00:47:58 freedom from lies, was roundly attacked by everyone else. I didn't really need to lift a
00:48:05 finger to control speech, thought even, because anyone who talked about property rights and
00:48:12 taxationist theft was destroyed by their fellow citizens. I found this hilarious.
00:48:20 It was like thinking that you needed bars to keep the monkeys in your zoo,
00:48:26 when any monkey that even thought about escaping would be beaten within an inch of its life by
00:48:31 every other monkey around. Saves a lot of money on security.
00:48:37 I found it so amusing watching the libertarians and Austrian economists
00:48:48 wail and bleat about central banking and the counterfeit nature of government money.
00:48:54 They genuinely seemed to think that their words would undo our electric power to type
00:49:01 whatever we wanted into our own bank accounts. I imagined them walking on a hot beach and
00:49:08 shielding themselves from burns by endlessly muttering the word "sunscreen."
00:49:12 It took me a while to learn that you cannot have power without spreading it around.
00:49:24 Otherwise you create implacable enemies who will offer more to the court toadies dependent
00:49:29 on the steady drip of government cheese.
00:49:30 Sure, we created whatever money we wanted, but we spread it around. We gave it to the bankers.
00:49:40 We gave it to those tight to the center of power. And we gave watered-down remnants to the poor,
00:49:47 single mothers, those dependent, so they thought, on us, our generosity.
00:49:53 They all stood and placed their hands on their hearts when the flags flapped and the anthems
00:50:03 played, because they were worshipping the gang that gave them cash. And it was a cosmic comedy
00:50:16 how everyone self-righteously lied and paraded and pretended. It was the new religion. Ah, except
00:50:25 we could offer them something more visceral than heaven itself,
00:50:28 the money they needed to escape their terrible decisions.
00:50:32 Single mothers always voted for us. They couldn't choose a good father for their kids,
00:50:40 but they sure knew how to choose a political leader for the entire country.
00:50:44 Oh, it's hard to give those solemn speeches about their noble, stunning, and brave sacrifices
00:50:50 without bursting into laughter.
00:50:52 Once the government can spread trillions of dollars around the economy, it becomes deeply
00:51:02 hilarious to watch everyone talk about the noble and abstract responsibility of voting,
00:51:07 a solemn civic duty. At the end of any election cycle, my cheeks were raw from biting.
00:51:15 To be fair, there were a lot of true believers in my inner circle. They genuinely thought
00:51:27 that we were there to help the poor, to protect the nation, to keep people healthy and happy.
00:51:35 They hurried to endless meetings with badly wound neckties, growing flop sweat, and a panting,
00:51:41 almost hysterical earnestness. And they genuinely believed that as long as anyone
00:51:47 suffered in the land, they just weren't doing their job properly.
00:51:50 They had this aching hypersensitivity to unhappiness anywhere in the world,
00:51:58 literally anywhere in the world. It was incredible.
00:52:02 And their entire identities were based on alleviating suffering,
00:52:06 which meant that any idiot who pretended to suffer controlled their entire existence.
00:52:10 But they were incredibly useful as human shields to any philosophical skepticism about the virtue
00:52:20 of what we were doing. You could prop them up totally drunk on a lie detector,
00:52:25 and they would absolutely pass it if they were asked, "Are you here to do good?"
00:52:31 I found their earnestness deeply creepy. Their essential monkey brains had been gouged out and
00:52:38 replaced by unearthly girly angels. They were the opposite of me, but we complemented each other
00:52:48 perfectly. I did the messy dealings with the machinery of power, where fingers and souls get
00:52:56 lost on a regular basis, while they covered the unholy mess with a sheen of self-righteous
00:53:03 stained glass. I did the screaming wetwork of carving bloody laws from squealing self-interest.
00:53:11 They covered up the inevitable abattoir with apple-cheeked earnest choirs.
00:53:21 Oh, God, who else? Oh, yeah. There was the gang called the Dreadnaughts. They didn't have my
00:53:34 sunny and joyful passion for the exercise of mere power. Oh, no. They had some mysterious,
00:53:42 darker purpose to their daily grind. They hated something or wanted something, and no one ever
00:53:51 tried to plumb their black depths, because they were such useful weapons to point at intransigent
00:53:57 enemies. The Dreadnaughts would comb over a person's entire history, finding something,
00:54:04 or inventing something, to kill off their public lives. Nuance was their enemy, out of context to
00:54:11 their ranged weapon. There were also the Enforcers, for anyone we couldn't snag legally. They attacked
00:54:24 anyone who supported or went to the speeches of these paladins. They called in the bomb threats
00:54:30 and death threats. They were mostly single sons of single mothers, sent out by the unconscious,
00:54:40 terrified greed of the Matriarchs. We secretly called them the Statriarchs, to wreck and destroy
00:54:46 anyone who might interfere with the free flow of tax revenues to their ample polyester labs.
00:54:52 It wasn't a simple thing to be a politician. You had to have an instinctive feel for all these
00:55:04 colliding alliances. You had to manage the idealism of the choirboys, and use it as a
00:55:10 cover for the Dreadnaughts, and make sure the Enforcers didn't go too feral. You had to,
00:55:16 I'm not sure exactly how to put it, it wasn't exactly overlooked, but
00:55:22 bypass everything that was going on. You couldn't look at anything directly, we all knew that, but
00:55:31 you had to work with it, examine it. It sometimes felt like fixing a complicated watch in pitch
00:55:40 darkness. Your sense of touch goes astronomical, but you can't see a damn thing.
00:55:45 It was all collusion and backscratching. I remember as a rookie going on talk shows and
00:55:57 being interviewed by reporters, and I was young and naive enough to cautiously imagine that
00:56:03 reporters were tough as nails confronters of the powers that be. I guess I had imbibed too much of
00:56:09 the Kool-Aid as a teenager, but they were all mild sycophants, only dangerous to anyone who
00:56:16 challenged their vanity, which I certainly wasn't about to do. They would ask tough questions,
00:56:24 and I would dance a two-step of staccato avoidance, and then they would just move on.
00:56:30 They wouldn't try to pin me down, they wouldn't ask for clarification or, God help us, definitions.
00:56:37 They would ask, I would avoid, and they would pat themselves on the back for the
00:56:43 professionalism and toughness of their interrogation.
00:56:49 Ah, I remember being on a city council as early on, and some half-bald doofus was making a
00:56:57 documentary and marched up and challenged all of us to explain how we were going to pay for
00:57:02 everything we promised. We all gave each other a smirking side-eye and had him hauled out by
00:57:09 security. It was just a silly yet dangerous question. It wasn't like we were providing any
00:57:20 real value. That's not the point of government. The point of government is power, and you get
00:57:26 power by giving things away. But it's not actual power if you have to give your own stuff away,
00:57:31 that wouldn't make any sense at all. The whole point of having power is to remove yourself from
00:57:38 the mere mortality of mathematics. I remember my father explaining this to me when I was very
00:57:48 little, after we watched some stupid superhero movie, what my dad used to call "Kick Bangs."
00:57:54 Son, these superheroes, they can do the impossible, defy the laws of physics, fly,
00:58:03 shoot fire from their hands and lasers from their eyes. They are wrapped in magic. That's what
00:58:09 superpower means. He took an amber sip from a crystal whiskey glass that never seemed to empty.
00:58:16 And that's my job, and one day it will be your job as well, to defy reality, to break math,
00:58:27 to plant impossibility and harvest power. We are the farmers of what should never be,
00:58:36 but always is. And everyone worships the impossible. That is the root of patriotism.
00:58:45 Did you see the happy faces of the people in the crowd when the superhero flew by?
00:58:50 They love him because he makes heroism impossible for them because they can't fly.
00:58:57 They love him because he fights evil, but he is impossible, which means it is impossible for them
00:59:07 to fight evil. It eases their conscience for doing nothing about it.
00:59:16 In the past, with Jesus, you had to try and do what he did. Although he was a superhero in his
00:59:23 way, you could be like him. Now they want billionaires with impossible gadgets to fight
00:59:30 evil because they can never approach him, be like him. Jesus left us with the commandment
00:59:39 that everyone had to fight evil and that everyone could be like him. These new gods, superheroes,
00:59:48 you can't be like them. That's the point. They're everyone's excuse for doing nothing,
00:59:53 which is why everyone gets addicted to them and excited by them and will pay to relieve their own
00:59:58 conscience. In the past, you had to go to a priest and confess your sins and make amends and do
01:00:04 better. Now idiots slap down 20 bucks, cheer the impossible, and walk out absolved.
01:00:12 Some words sit in your life for years before they are properly understood.
01:00:22 Fighting evil is a dangerous business. It gets a lot of people killed and destroyed,
01:00:31 but no one wants to be ashamed of their own inaction. So we exist as a kind of pretend
01:00:38 virtue so people can pretend to do good without actually angering evil.
01:00:43 Everyone wants the slender waist. Nobody wants the diet. Everyone wants to feel heroic. No one
01:00:51 wants to put themselves in danger. So they come to us and demand that we do good, and every couple
01:00:57 of years they scribble an X on a ballot and consider themselves the ultimate saints of
01:01:01 human history. Well, the same thing was true for video games, but I never really understood how
01:01:08 anyone could take pride in pushing pixels around a dead screen, so I didn't bother to analyze it
01:01:13 too much. I do remember laughing once about a professional paper on virtual currency in some
01:01:21 gaming environment. The economist seemed to have absolutely no idea about the true nature of fiat
01:01:28 currency. I shake my head as the sandy-haired man walks into my room. Oh god, I have to stop
01:01:37 ruminating about the past. I know that it's all I have in whatever world I have woken into, but I
01:01:43 absolutely must find a way to excavate my prior skills into the here and now. I'll be damned if
01:01:50 I will rely on my historical reputation, being the Napoleon of my day, to gain authority and
01:01:55 power in the present. I loved the exercise of power. It's just my very reason for being, and
01:02:04 if I can't make it happen here, well, I'll just tell them to put me back to sleep and damn well
01:02:09 wake me up when I can. The man pulls a chair to the foot of my bed, sits down, and regards me with
01:02:19 — what the hell is that expression? Neutral curiosity? Condescending wonder? It's so weird
01:02:28 feeling my brain misfire in this way. I can read any expression from anyone, down to the last Adam,
01:02:34 but have no idea what is going on in this man's head. I don't care how long it's been. People
01:02:40 are still people. I suddenly realize I would much rather be paralyzed than lose my ability to read
01:02:47 people. That is a handicap I cannot stand. I will my brain to process the face beyond my covered
01:02:55 feet. The hair is light, mildly side-swept. The forehead is wide and strong. The eyes light. I
01:03:05 can't quite tell the color in the dark. The face is angular, as if composed of geometrical blocks
01:03:11 tightly packed. The mouth is not sensual, but not stern either. He does not look at me with respect
01:03:20 or fear or much curiosity for that matter or wonder. He looks at me like, like, I'm gonna
01:03:34 make a fist and wrap my knuckles against my forehead, but I know that would be an unpardonable
01:03:38 show of weakness. It is incredibly frustrating to be unable to read this man, to figure out his
01:03:44 weaknesses, his desires, his fears. I am as terrified as if I have woken up in the pilot
01:03:49 seat of a plunging airplane and none of the controls move at all. I am terrified. The
01:03:58 import of the thought strikes me like a spinal fist. This is fear. The man leans forward.
01:04:10 My name is David. Welcome back to life. You have no power here.