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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 Stéphane Molyneux, chapter 34
00:00:04 I was allowed to roam around the hospital, which generally catered to people being lowered into
00:00:12 the grave by an almost unfathomable number of decades. The staff told me that most diseases
00:00:20 had been eliminated, the dying muttered darkly about these cataclysms which had so reduced the
00:00:26 population. Unusually for me, I shied away from these details because David had hinted that I
00:00:34 had had something to do with these mysterious disasters and I didn't want to burden myself
00:00:39 with any imaginary guilt or foreboding. It was strange. I'd never really had this kind of leisure
00:00:49 before. I worked hard and early and really took a day off. I was writing my autobiography when I
00:00:57 got really sick. That's probably why my early life filled my brain as I woke. And I laughed
00:01:04 when I remembered this, because nobody on earth could imagine the final chapters to be this.
00:01:15 I lived to work. I only survived this forced inactivity because I was learning to regain
00:01:22 control over my body. My "resurrection project" (it's my name, not theirs) involved learning how
00:01:31 to use my limbs almost from scratch. It had reminded me of the first time as a kid in a
00:01:37 Chinese restaurant trying to pick up a boiled egg with chopsticks. So I suppose I had a job,
00:01:44 which was learning how to crawl out of a coffin and master the world.
00:01:48 I was prone to strange fits of emotion which continually baffled me. I focused on the present,
00:01:58 on what I could touch and taste, but so often I would feel a kind of thin silver cord stretching
00:02:06 back through the centuries, from me to everything that was before. I had lived my life as a captain
00:02:16 on the prow of a ship, guiding and commanding as we sliced through the parting waves.
00:02:20 From this view of myself, a realistic one, I now had to view the ship of my life as an encrusted
00:02:28 wreck lost in the depths of history, brought to the surface by robot magic and half-decayed muscles.
00:02:37 I felt cold rage as well, when I was too exhausted to work my muscles and had to lie
00:02:44 with my own thoughts. I used to mutter a prayer to the demons of doubt before going to bed,
00:02:53 so they would leave me alone for the fifteen minutes it took me to fall asleep,
00:02:58 the window they always tried to crawl through. But sleep was uncertain and I was not sure
00:03:03 what I was doing. I had slept too much for many lifetimes, and they scratched and called incessantly.
00:03:12 Power is the power to avoid yourself.
00:03:18 I had felt this iciness before, throughout my life, and it was a constant sign that some
00:03:29 interest of mine was being threatened. My instinct was to leap into action to protect what was mine,
00:03:36 to gather the necessary weapons to reward and punish the pawns of the world in departing before
00:03:41 me, supporting me, paving my way. And I found myself jumping up, reaching for a non-existent
00:03:49 phone, angry words of stern command rising in my throat. I wanted to yell for secretaries,
00:03:54 get reporters on the line, threaten to withhold funds, offer subsidies, collude in the foggy
00:04:00 back rooms of ultimate power, but there was nothing. I had no power, at least not yet,
00:04:08 and no threads ran from my hands to the testicles of anyone around.
00:04:13 It was like starting all over again, physically, obviously, but also...
00:04:23 No, it was worse than starting over, because I didn't even have my father's power to piggyback on.
00:04:30 My father would always tell me when I was a teenager, "All I can do is get you in the room,
00:04:38 son. After that, it's up to you." But in politics, perhaps everywhere, I don't know,
00:04:44 access is power, and I could always get my father on the line.
00:04:51 He never made explicit promises or threats. I was way too smart for that, but everyone knew
00:04:58 that he wanted me to rise, to be offered opportunities, to learn how to strengthen
00:05:04 my being by learning the magic words of control. I thought I needed to learn how to work the media,
00:05:13 the media that had plans for all of us, that seemed larger, deeper, and more threatening
00:05:20 than any power we as individuals could gather, even when I was president.
00:05:24 I controlled everyone around me, but I knew that I was controlled as well by that media,
00:05:34 which could make or break a candidate in any 90-second slice, 24 hours a day.
00:05:38 They promised to get me into power, and they sure as hell helped,
00:05:46 but they never seemed to want anything in return.
00:05:50 Everything I did was balanced on the knife edge of unenforceable contracts,
00:05:58 handshakes and winks and nods and understandings, but the media that pushed me into power,
00:06:05 pushed me on the population, never asked for anything in return.
00:06:14 I remember asking my father about this, but he just laughed. "These are semi-divine mysteries,
00:06:21 son. They got me in, but never wanted anything back either. If they are the devils,
00:06:27 they never get to collect. They must have learned how to live without souls, I suppose."
00:06:31 I said, "Is it that they don't want to pay betrayal or to be recorded, or why?
00:06:42 Every time my phone rings, I think it's going to be some media mogul using a voice changer,
00:06:46 telling me to nuke the Kremlin, or they'll do to me what they did to my opponent."
00:06:49 "Oh, remember that guy who left his phone on the subway? They went through everything,
00:06:53 published everything. Found out he was into weird tentacle stuff from Japan.
00:06:57 Why don't they ever call?" He shrugged, filling his veins with micro-sips of whiskey as usual.
00:07:05 "Don't know, son. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, I suppose."
00:07:10 "This is the only time that rule applies. Every other gift horse in politics is a Trojan.
00:07:14 But these guys, who knows what they're up to. Doesn't really matter.
00:07:18 Just keep doing whatever you were doing to garner their support, and you'll be fine."
00:07:21 I remember the second time I ran. I cornered a media mogul at a winter party,
00:07:29 a bald guy with a giant jaw and hunched shoulders.
00:07:35 As if I were running for a local school board, I put my hand on his shoulder,
00:07:40 his very soft and sloping shoulder, and asked if I could count on his support.
00:07:45 He looked at me blankly. I swear I'd seen more human animation in the two
00:07:52 coals I stuck in my kid snowman's face that morning.
00:07:55 "We support democracy, Mr. President," said the man. His bald dome reminded me of a recently found
00:08:05 dinosaur egg stillborn for two hundred million years. For one of the few times in my life,
00:08:12 up until now, I let my compulsive curiosity get the better of me.
00:08:18 "You've always been very kind to me," the man nodded blankly, his cocktail eyes roaming the
00:08:27 room like a creepy portrait in a haunted house, following naive thieves. "I wonder,
00:08:34 do you believe in me?" The mogul turned to me, but his eyes appeared to fix on the wall behind my head.
00:08:39 "We believe in democracy, Mr. President." "But you must agree with what I represent,"
00:08:48 a tiny smile. "What would you say you represent?"
00:08:54 I suddenly couldn't remember anything. All the speeches and debates and policy papers suddenly
00:09:02 turned to ash in my head, like a library under the nuclear fire of a blowback bomb.
00:09:06 "The will of the people," I said somewhat lamely. The tiny smile grew. "Well,
00:09:14 that's more than good enough for us." There was a slightly awkward pause.
00:09:20 I said, "In my game, everything comes with a payback. Everyone has a price. It's not all money.
00:09:27 Some people want power, of course, and some people want to pursue their ideals." He interrupted me,
00:09:32 which I recognized immediately as a power play, which few dare to impose on a sitting president.
00:09:37 "Which do you think you represent, Mr. President, of the three categories you mention? Or is there
00:09:45 another that you haven't?" It was an oddly Frankenstein sentence stitched together out of
00:09:50 order. I leaned forward, thrilled, as if I were revealing a secret. "I'll tell you something.
00:09:57 Whenever I feel low—not often, mind—I just read an article you've written about me, and I find
00:10:04 myself regarding myself like my wife looked up at me on our wedding night." The mogul slowly nodded.
00:10:11 "We holds the mirror up to nature." He emphasized the last word slightly.
00:10:20 "Human nature? Nature itself? The man's words were a mirror maze."
00:10:25 I couldn't help myself. "What do you get out of it?" He looked at me curiously and traced
00:10:32 the bowl of his chin from one side of his lip to the other, back and forth. "Wait a minute.
00:10:39 He's tracing the letter 'U' on his face. He means you. We get you." I shook my head.
00:10:44 Paranoia was all well and good for a politician, but it doesn't serve your purpose when the media
00:10:50 is serving your needs. The giant jaw stifled an obvious yawn. "What's really on your mind,
00:11:01 Mr. President? Are you afraid we will not continue to support democracy?"
00:11:07 "No. I just wanted to thank you for your altruism. There is a kind of purity in our relationship,
00:11:17 in that we don't actually have a relationship." The fingers stopped tracing the chin and tapped
00:11:22 it instead, as if trying to patiently create an attractive dimple. "I thought of Spartacus
00:11:29 on a cross." "Purity," he said musingly, enjoying some obscure joke. He reminded me of the Cheshire
00:11:39 cat, obviously, but also something that my wife sometimes talked about whenever we would watch
00:11:44 some old Jane Austen series, which was the woman, but the heroines, always had this secret smile.
00:11:54 "Oh, it's so predictable," she would say with enjoyable exasperation. They always open with
00:12:01 this apple-cheeked heroine strolling the countryside with her secret smile, the smile
00:12:05 that says she has an interior life of superior amusement, which the man can buy forever for the
00:12:10 low, low price of a wedding ring. And she would turn and give me that secret smile. And it really
00:12:17 was remarkable how adept she was at creating the alluring illusion of inner amusement, and how
00:12:23 damned attractive it was, too. She laughed. "All the women know how to do it, at least the slightly
00:12:31 less than classical beauties do. The rest rely on cheekbones and cleavage. That's what you were
00:12:36 eyeing when we met. But hovering above my décolletage was my secret smile, which was all
00:12:42 the more powerful because you refused to look at it directly." I laughed with her then. "Are you
00:12:47 saying that this weird, abused smile is like a soft trap that men fall into?" "Oh, yes, willingly,
00:12:55 happily. You are all just so pathetically grateful for female attention. We've spent most of our
00:13:02 lives rejecting the men we don't want. So getting the man we do want to approach us is like coaxing
00:13:07 a wild squirrel to feed from our palm. Come here, boy. Don't be afraid. We won't bite. Nice food for
00:13:11 you. You're all so nervous. It makes no sense that you run the world." "Do we?" I murmured.
00:13:19 I didn't even know about the secret smile that is the entire foundation of our family, apparently.
00:13:24 I came back from my reverie, having completely forgotten the thread of the conversation.
00:13:31 "You headed off to parts unknown?" said the bald man. "Most unprofessional."
00:13:37 I couldn't tell if he was joking. Reprimanding the president was a fairly risky business.
00:13:43 I had a sudden sense of falling, as if I had reached the summit of a high mountain that was
00:13:51 now collapsing into the widening mouth of a volcano. "Who is in charge?" The words dried
00:14:00 in my mouth. My tongue turned into a tombstone. "I'm going to put this down as a lapse," said the
00:14:09 giant-jawed mogul pleasantly. "Everyone has these doubts suspended between heaven and hell."
00:14:17 "Success!" he added, energetically raising a fist. I knew he wouldn't leave the conversation. That
00:14:25 was an unwritten but absolute rule when talking to me. But I also knew that he was finished with
00:14:31 the interaction. Again, I felt a mild disorientation, and wondered if I might not be coming down with
00:14:40 something, some virus or malaise. The ship analogy rose in my mind again, because it felt like the
00:14:48 shiny wooden floor was tilting. "Well, since you're being impartial, since you claim to be,
00:14:56 and I'm sure that you are, then I don't have anything to thank you for. But I do appreciate
00:15:00 that your dedication to democracy and the good stewardship of the nation tilts my way so often.
00:15:07 I suppose I appreciate that you appreciate my virtues, such as they are."
00:15:14 "Dear God, shut up, man!" cried every one of my horrified political instincts. I felt an acute
00:15:22 vulnerability that I would normally smash through with anger, and suddenly I was the desperate one
00:15:27 who wanted to leave the conversation. I pretended to be summoned from somewhere else in the room.
00:15:34 I could tell that the mogul knew I was faking, and that he approved for some obscure reason.
00:15:42 Phew, I made it over to my wife, who was currently blinding some young ingenue with the disco spray
00:15:48 of white light coming off her diamond necklace. Her cleavage crusting was like the puffed-out
00:15:54 red neck of a monkey. I pulled her away and related the conversation.
00:15:59 "Well, this is rather unlike you, dear," she said, seemingly unconcerned. "You've got an ace in the
00:16:06 hole, a groundswell of support. Clearly they love you to death. What the hell are you doing
00:16:09 poking around such an updraft?" Her uncanny habit of effectively mixing metaphors struck me for the
00:16:18 thousandth time. "I guess I'm just having a moment. I want to know what they're getting out of it.
00:16:25 Why? I don't know. I barely made it in last time, and I'm older, more tired."
00:16:30 "Dear," she said with that peculiar feminine decisiveness that instantly kills the motor of an
00:16:37 over-revving male mind, "I will give you this one exception, because your instincts are usually so
00:16:43 good." She brushed off some imaginary dust from my tuxedo lapels, which gave her the excuse to lean
00:16:48 in with a broad smile and say, "Do not screw this up. They like you because you are you. By asking
00:16:55 them why they like you, you are changing who you are. Just stop it. If you never ask the question,
00:17:00 their support is as certain as my goddamn bra. If you ask again," she whispered, "Kaboom."
00:17:07 Of course, she was right. I understand now, thinking back on it, that they didn't need to
00:17:15 ask for anything in return for supporting me, because my presence in the White House was
00:17:20 their payoff. Something about me was a return on investment.
00:17:28 And then I apparently killed half the planet, and my son the other half,
00:17:34 and my joke fell flat in my mind, impaled on the sharp top of my spine.
00:17:40 So I had to learn how to walk all over again, and I had to learn how to talk without power,
00:17:52 without influence. It was like being a baby with certain knowledge of a past life.
00:18:02 Chapter 35
00:18:04 I first met Cornelius Creaghorn the same day I successfully walked across the torture chamber
00:18:13 known as my physical therapy room. As someone with no shortage of charisma myself, I recognized his
00:18:20 power because his personality seemed to enter the room before his body could move.
00:18:28 Like when my kid brother used to rub his feet on a carpet and zap my earlobe with his electrified
00:18:33 finger. You could feel it before it happened, but too late to stop it.
00:18:38 Cornelius was not fat, but he was overweight enough, compared to the lean inhabitants of this
00:18:48 post-post-modern world, to stand out in a crowd. His white hair curled up in a straight line,
00:18:55 and his fleshy face still retained the lines normally associated with leaner visages.
00:19:07 His eyes were dangerously merry, as if to say, "I will tell you my jokes, and you will laugh now,
00:19:15 but be appalled later." I also recognized that he was strong, and certain enough in his dominance
00:19:24 that being submissive did not bother him in the least. In fact, he used that tactic with me
00:19:30 regularly, which I appreciated despite my better instincts.
00:19:34 He swept into the room like a pendulum at the bottom of its arc, unstoppable, inevitable.
00:19:43 I stuck out my hand to shake his out of a sudden strange anxiety that if I didn't he would just
00:19:49 walk right through me. "Good morning, Mr. President," he said in his rich,
00:19:57 mellifluent voice. It contained honey and ease and subterranean power. My wife claimed a God-given
00:20:07 ability to know who was a good singer just based on his or her speaking voice. She would have guessed
00:20:14 Paul Robeson Baritone. The man said, "My name is Cornelius Creekhorn, and with your permission,
00:20:23 we will become close and fast friends." He flopped into a chair too small for him,
00:20:29 in a way that only amplified the bulk of his meaty presence. He leaned forward conspiratorially.
00:20:38 "How much have they told you about what they have in store?"
00:20:42 "Clever," I thought. "He is aligning himself with me already."
00:20:46 "You must be a lawyer," I said. His eyes widened, and he raised a finger to his lips. "Shh,
00:20:53 we don't use that word here anymore. It has an unholy ring to it. I am your representative,
00:21:02 your guide, so to speak, as we aim to navigate the... a situation that lies ahead of us."
00:21:09 He stared at me expectantly, but I said nothing, of course.
00:21:14 "You are, most likely, going to be put on trial for various crimes that you committed over the
00:21:22 course of your administration. Alleged crimes, of course, as I will constantly reiterate.
00:21:28 And I shall be your human shield, your armor, your..." He pulled his hands apart slowly.
00:21:35 "Bullet-time slowdown of whizzing principles. Your angel, if you understand the reference."
00:21:43 I did feel a bit dizzy, and a secret thought came to me, as it had for decades,
00:21:53 that I never would have shared with anyone under any circumstances at any time.
00:21:57 Stroke of the pen, law of the land.
00:22:03 When I was president, I would wake up every morning in a disorienting and dizzy daze,
00:22:13 completely astonished that I could... not exactly get away with, but...
00:22:21 do what I did. I was not a lawyer, but I knew the law. Through the central bank, I...
00:22:29 I know it was more "we" could create a trillion dollars with the snap of a finger.
00:22:36 Another snap, we could raise the debt ceiling. Another snap, we could force people to buy
00:22:41 things they did not want. Another snap, we could legally buy votes by firing monopoly money at the
00:22:48 dull-witted, open-mouthed masses. The media covered for us, destroying our enemies with lies,
00:22:56 saving us with lies. I never played monopoly with a kid who thought you could just pencil
00:23:04 in more zeros on the paper money to pretend to pay your debts. But that's how we all governed,
00:23:10 across the world, all across history. I remember being sworn in on that bitterly cold day,
00:23:20 remembering the long-ago, long-dead priest of my childhood telling me that,
00:23:27 with the right scissors, the Bible was a manual for atheists.
00:23:31 "In the Bible it says, 'The fool in his heart has said, 'There is no God.'" He chuckled.
00:23:41 "Take off the first seven words, and you can prove that right there in the Bible it says
00:23:46 that there is no God." There is a reason that Satan is called the master of lies. Lie about a
00:23:55 man, and he is cornered, erased, destroyed. Call him a monster, and he either struggles to deny it,
00:24:02 attaching the label even more, or he ignores it, which makes him look like a coward as well as a
00:24:07 monster. And even if he somehow struggles through to legal proof of his innocence, you just have to
00:24:14 ignore it and keep lying, and it will be as if he never fought at all. You know the term McCarthyism.
00:24:21 Joseph McCarthy won a libel suit against a newspaper, but it doesn't matter now,
00:24:26 and it didn't matter then. It doesn't matter that books have been published proving that
00:24:30 he was even more right than he knew. It doesn't matter that the Soviet Union released decrypted
00:24:35 cables proving McCarthy's allegations. None of that matters. The myth becomes the truth.
00:24:43 The truth becomes the moral, and all who oppose the moral are labeled evil.
00:24:48 Most people are failures, relative to their youthful dreams at least, so they're always
00:24:56 hungry for any fall from grace narrative. Find the stain on the hero, and you make a hero out
00:25:05 of the stain, because it releases people from regret, at least for the moment. All who are great
00:25:12 are examined for flaws, and the flaws are magnified to swallow up the greatness,
00:25:18 and people grab at these flaws with great hunger, mad need. Greatness is an insult to the pettiness
00:25:26 of their lost lives. People don't feel short in Japan until a Swede strides in. The destruction
00:25:35 of the ideal is the fundamental plan of most mankind. Resentment, bitterness, rage, these are
00:25:43 all potent fuels used to light the pyres that burn down anyone who makes them feel inferior,
00:25:49 or makes them feel their inferiority, which is not quite the same thing.
00:25:55 The old priest had an odd habit of chewing gum, puncturing his deep sermons with wet pink pops,
00:26:03 and Satan tempts the great with pettiness, silly flaws, blemishes, and the great so often
00:26:15 succumb, partly because they know that if they offer up the sacrifice of their own greatness,
00:26:20 the mob just might let them live. This is why happily married men constantly reiterate that
00:26:28 their wives somehow put up with them. This is why beautiful women denigrate their own dresses,
00:26:35 their own figures. The world lives in a constant terror of resentment. The zombie mob of abandoned
00:26:43 ideals is constantly hungry to feast on any grand souls who escaped their own smallness.
00:26:48 Any greatness that exists without appeasing the mob invites its own self-destruction.
00:26:54 Any man who arises from humble origins and achieves superiority, in particular moral
00:27:02 superiority, must be sacrificed. The hatred the mob has for its own self-betrayal is projected
00:27:11 onto the hero, and he is slaughtered as a warning to their own potential.
00:27:16 The mob destroys the hero to justify its own rejection of its capacity for heroism.
00:27:23 Mothers need neighborhood children who are harmed by not listening to mothers
00:27:30 as examples to force obedience from their own children. The mob needs to destroy its heroes
00:27:37 in order to turn its own cowardice into pragmatic wisdom.
00:27:41 Only when the heroes are separated by enough time, usually centuries, can the mob start to worship
00:27:53 them. When the world of the present no longer matches the world of the hero, the hero can be
00:28:00 tentatively respected because the hero's life is so different that it no longer repudiates the
00:28:07 current cowardice of the mob. The mob can revere Socrates only when separated by a thousand years.
00:28:13 The supply of lies about heroes is driven by the demand for those lies,
00:28:23 and the demand is driven by the need to escape the self-hatred of a cowardly life.
00:28:29 Sophists cook up falsehoods because the mob is so hungry for them. The sweet relief
00:28:36 of projecting pettiness into the souls of great men is too addictive, too delicious.
00:28:42 Father Gregory taught me a lot. He thought he was teaching me humility, wisdom. Oh no,
00:28:56 God no. The good father taught me how to rule.
00:29:02 When you understand that most men break themselves into atoms, into nothing,
00:29:11 and they desperately need a scapegoat for their own self-destruction,
00:29:15 they're becoming a politician. Simple. People who fail to even try are life's
00:29:24 losers, and they desperately need to invent bias to justify their own lifeless lives.
00:29:31 "I've failed because people hate me" is the bottomless mantra of these empty lives.
00:29:38 The real hatred is for the self, and usually justly earned, but it is a fertile crop to
00:29:45 feed the pursuit of power. It really is power if you take it to the next level.
00:29:52 It really is power if you take a moment to think about it. Politics is always about the punishment
00:30:01 of success and its mirror image, the bribery of failure. Anyone who doesn't pay sufficient
00:30:09 obsequiousness to the twitchy mob is marked for destruction. Better lace up his running shoes.
00:30:17 The media magnified my enemies' flaws and hid my certain crimes.
00:30:24 They invented the most errant nonsense about my foes, that they were colluding with foreign
00:30:31 powers to steal elections, that they praised bigots and hated women, you name it,
00:30:35 and covered up my own blindingly obvious corruption.
00:30:43 Frankly, it was all pretty amusing, and I've never been one to stand between a mob and the effects
00:30:50 of its mistakes. The mob wanted lies. The mob punished the truth. So the mob was ruled by liars,
00:31:00 and truth-tellers scrambled to obscurity for safety.
00:31:07 Occasionally, one or two honest souls would erupt and even be tolerated for a time,
00:31:14 but the moment they interfered with the pursuit of power…
00:31:17 Ah, well, lies were invented, reputations destroyed, access to the public was detonated,
00:31:25 and they withdrew to their distant caves of bitter wisdom.
00:31:32 They served as wonderful examples to the mob, and of the mob's power.
00:31:36 I used to wonder, sometimes, if I had been raised in a more honest age, if such an age ever existed,
00:31:47 if I would have been tempted by abstract virtues, the virtues talked about by my father Gregory,
00:31:55 in particular the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness."
00:32:01 He used to tell me, over and over, "There's a reason it does not say 'Thou shalt not lie.'
00:32:09 False witness is a legal phrase. It means 'Don't lie about important matters of morality,' as if
00:32:15 you were in a courtroom. It is the theological equivalent of perjury. No one cares about little
00:32:21 white lies. They rarely lead to major corruption. But when you are asked about important matters
00:32:26 of conscience, of virtue, of honor and reputation, then by heaven you must tell the truth or be
00:32:33 damned." I used to question him about hell. Back when it was a thing, he would shrug and pop his
00:32:45 endless gum. Hell is just an analogy for how desperately we are addicted to lies.
00:32:54 A man greatly tempted by great evils needs great punishment to restrain himself.
00:32:59 The church had to escalate the punishment to eternal hell itself, which is not really in
00:33:06 the Bible, because that's how tempted we are to lie for advantage. If we weren't so tempted
00:33:13 by lying, and if it wasn't so profitable in the here and now, we wouldn't need endless
00:33:17 lakes of fire and torture to consider rejecting the temptation. Even when he used to sit and talk
00:33:27 with me about these issues, I could tell that he himself was a frustrated moralist, and I had heard
00:33:32 hints of the crimes of his congregation. I felt a great weariness and avoidance settle upon me.
00:33:43 Father Gregory liked to walk and talk in the graveyard. I suppose he felt that
00:33:50 Hamlet style that gave his words extra spicy depth and power.
00:33:54 The sliding shadows of the gravestones would slowly crawl up our legs as the sun fell in the sky.
00:34:02 But his frustration had the opposite effect as frustration usually does. By endlessly talking
00:34:11 about the impossibility of virtue and the power of the mob, he finally convinced me
00:34:17 that I must either end up ruling the mob or waste my life frightening – then boring – children
00:34:27 in a graveyard. Of course, my earthly father paved the way, but it was my spiritual father
00:34:38 who laced up my shoes. Why wage endless war against endless temptation? Why take up arms
00:34:47 against the mob that can always overwhelm you with blank numbers? Why reject the reality that
00:34:53 lies can summon gold from the shallow earth? Why not just embrace it, get it over with, and rule?
00:35:03 Of course, my priest would say that we must reject the material,
00:35:08 resist the temptations, to escalate into heaven.
00:35:11 But it always seemed lonely, his vision of white clouds and droning angels.
00:35:26 The masses of men are beasts, worse than beasts who can never reason.
00:35:31 To me, the select few who make it to heaven seemed increasingly to be a pompous lot,
00:35:39 full of self-congratulation, smug superiority, and a preening avoidance of the necessary battles
00:35:45 of this earth. Live for heaven, abandon the world. To who? Increasingly to people like me.
00:35:57 Moralists produce malevolence, because by accurately describing the world,
00:36:09 they turn morality into masochism. The mob uses moralists to create anti-moralists.
00:36:18 By punishing and excluding the virtuous, they train the young to avoid virtue.
00:36:24 The mob would never complain about my crimes, because the mob was a criminal enterprise.
00:36:35 Would they ever call me out? Does the mafia call the cops?
00:36:40 I had an opponent early on when I was running for governor.
00:36:46 In a truly stunning development, and I mean that most sincerely, he actually tried telling the
00:36:55 truth to the masses, as if he knew nothing about the history of theology and philosophy.
00:37:04 He told them that the welfare state was destroying the family, that the national
00:37:10 debt was selling the next generation into financial slavery, that the government existed
00:37:15 to protect itself, not them, and that there was no money left to fund old age security,
00:37:20 and so the richest generation in the history of the world was pillaging the young to fatten itself.
00:37:28 I watched his speeches, in literal awe, sometimes live.
00:37:33 His words struck me like the match struck that old Buddhist who set himself on fire.
00:37:39 He seemed to be the incarnation of the old myth that those outside the circle of power always
00:37:50 tell themselves, you know, how they're going to pretend to be power-hungry and corrupt,
00:37:54 rise to grab the ring of power, and then wield it for good.
00:37:57 Never happens, of course, then. They would either get corrupted along the way,
00:38:03 or they would be quickly identified and ejected, destroyed, most likely.
00:38:07 Power never lasts if it is unable to detect those who would corrupt its corruption,
00:38:12 and our power has lasted for tens of thousands of years.
00:38:19 Man, the media just shredded him. Revealed his address, where his children went to school,
00:38:26 where everyone in his social circle worked, and all the glorious, bloody-fingered foot soldiers
00:38:32 of falses quickly went to work, filling his mailbox with death threats, mailing thick envelopes filled
00:38:38 with baby powder to everyone he knew, protesting at their workplaces and demanding they be fired,
00:38:43 targeting the clients of their businesses, getting them canceled on social media.
00:38:47 Ah, it was a gloriously coordinated campaign. The beauty of it was that it was coordinated not by
00:38:57 any central planner, but by a completely unified and streamlined self-interest.
00:39:03 Once the government keeps people alive, at least as they see it, any proposal to reduce government
00:39:13 expenditures is experienced as a death threat by those dependent on the government. And really,
00:39:19 it was about half the population by the time I came around. Everyone was worried about a civil
00:39:26 war when the civil war actually started long in the past, when direct payments to the poor began.
00:39:32 My opponent was instructive, very instructive, particularly to my own
00:39:41 occasionally uneasy conscience. He was hounded out of not just public life, but life itself.
00:39:51 He ended up buying a farm in the middle of nowhere and was still occasionally photographed
00:39:57 hoeing the back 40 or whatever the hell farmers do as a warning shot to anyone who might even think
00:40:03 of bringing uncomfortable truths to the mindless masses. His campaign inoculated an entire
00:40:11 generation against idealism. They bade over his destruction like giggling hyenas
00:40:17 chancing upon a fresh kill. His children turned against him. His wife stayed by his side only
00:40:26 because his destruction had left her with no civilized options. The man couldn't even get a
00:40:31 credit card. He literally had to eat what he killed in the wilderness.
00:40:36 Frankly, truth tellers made my job so much easier. Their crucifixion allowed my life
00:40:47 to bleed freely across the landscape, turning the entire horizon a profitable rusty red.
00:40:56 And I used to wonder, when I was younger, before I got into the game, whether people in power
00:41:04 really did meet in smoky back rooms to cut deals. And of course we did when it came to regulations
00:41:11 and legislation. But in terms of what was necessary to maintain power as a whole, in principle, well,
00:41:20 no one needed to meet about that because no one got to our level of control without
00:41:25 deeply understanding how to maintain the machinery of the mob.
00:41:30 If you train citizens to attack each other for telling the truth, free speech is dead.
00:41:37 Of course, it's deceptively simple to have a right in theory while having no capacity to
00:41:45 exercise it in any practical manner. Citizens had the right to free speech,
00:41:53 but they were doxed and destroyed when they exercised it, so we didn't have to worry about
00:41:58 that at all. I could be dignified and above the fray and refuse to respond to even sensible
00:42:06 criticism, knowing full well that either the media or the black-clad street forces would
00:42:12 destroy my critics. All this, and more perhaps, floats through my mind as Cornelius
00:42:23 Creaghorn stares at me expectantly. I clear my throat, feeling my old self rear up in my mind.
00:42:32 "Problems with your formulation of my crimes," I say crisply. "Number one, I never killed anyone,
00:42:40 and unless your legal system is radically different from every other legal system in
00:42:43 the known universe, the statute of limitations for any other crime must surely have expired
00:42:48 after so many centuries. Number two, you are judging me by your own current legal system,
00:42:54 not by the legal system I operated under. Number three, I am an unwilling refugee in your society,
00:43:01 and so cannot be imagined as ever having consented to live under your laws. Number four,
00:43:08 while ignorance of the law is no excuse, I have no idea what your laws are and would have no way
00:43:13 of knowing, so I cannot be bound by them. Number five, all witnesses or those with direct knowledge
00:43:19 of whatever events are in question are many centuries dead, and so cannot be called to
00:43:23 testify. Number six, I cannot cross-examine, or you can't, any of my accusers, because those
00:43:31 are allegedly wronged, are also dead these many centuries. I'm sure there are more, but that
00:43:36 should be enough. Cornelius stares at me in that unsettling modern manner of open-minded curiosity
00:43:45 that frustrates and enrages me, no end. "Get it all off your chest," he suggests kindly.
00:43:53 I feel another stab of anger. I rise awkwardly. My cane leaps into my hand, but I throw it aside.
00:44:01 Well, it's also ridiculous. I never expected to wake up to be president or in charge, of course.
00:44:09 I can't really say that I thought much about waking up at all. I was just sprinting away
00:44:14 from the man in black. I expect it now, I suppose, to be a kind of resource for history, for the past,
00:44:23 and as a preeminent historical figure, I know that there are always controversies, but I suppose I
00:44:28 hoped that these controversies would be somewhat ameliorated by the passage of time, and some kind
00:44:34 of settling would have occurred on perspectives of my presidency. I did not expect to still be
00:44:42 controversial so many centuries after my— Cornelius nods slowly. "Rule, Mr. President.
00:44:49 I think you were about to say 'rule.'" I shrug tightly. "That's not the right word. We were a
00:44:57 democracy, a republic. And by the way, where the hell am I geographically? Am I on the landmass
00:45:03 formerly known as the United States?" "Well, you woke up where you went to sleep, of course.
00:45:08 You've not been moved in the interim." "I don't know what the hell you people are capable of!"
00:45:13 I grumble, but without conviction. There is a slight pause, and Cornelius gestures for me to
00:45:22 continue, which makes little sense to me. "Look," he says easily after a minute or two has passed,
00:45:30 "you don't have to retain me. This is—you used to call it pro bono, I think. A hobby. A fetish,
00:45:40 perhaps." He laughs. "I am very curious about you, Mr. President, and I'm not alone in that,
00:45:49 of course. You are right. You are a polarizing and significant, highly significant, historical
00:45:56 figure. Believe it or not, you have your defenders as well as your detractors.
00:46:01 You are not exactly polarizing. We are not that interested in politics, which has become a merely
00:46:09 historical discipline or curiosity. But you are—there are people divided about your legacy
00:46:17 and your choices. On the one hand, there are those who say that you are a product of your time,
00:46:22 as we all are, of course, and that we should not judge you according to modern or rational
00:46:29 sensibilities. On the other hand, there are those who say that morality is eternal and universal.
00:46:37 Those who know about your relationship with Father Gregory. Are you startled?"
00:46:44 I have a sudden, uneasy feeling. "Father Gregory?" I take a deep breath.
00:46:50 "How much do you people actually know about me? I thought that everything was
00:46:57 lost, like the library at Alexandria during these mysterious cataclysms." Cornelius shrugs. "Well,
00:47:05 there are claims, and then there is the truth. And sometimes it seems that never the twain
00:47:13 shall meet, at least in a courtroom. I thought everyone in the future was perfect and never
00:47:19 lied." Cornelius smiles wryly. "Perfection is for the past, for abstractions, for dreams,
00:47:31 vanity, and ambition. Never in the here and now."
00:47:38 I'm a healthy man, considered overweight by some, and have a small cyst on my right shoulder.
00:47:44 Am I in perfect health? It doesn't mean anything. People in the here and now disagree about
00:47:53 contracts and property and the breakups of their marriages and a whole host of other
00:47:58 problems. They're not omnipresent, and they're not insurmountable, but they still need to be
00:48:04 resolved. Unfortunately, there is enough human imperfection left in this perfect world for me
00:48:13 to still make a decent living resolving disputes. He whacks his finger slowly.
00:48:18 "But I have never come across something like this, which is why I leapt at the opportunity
00:48:30 to work with you, to represent you, if you will have me." He smiles modestly. "I am on the side
00:48:38 of letting sleeping dogs lie, which is to say that I was on the side of not waking you. My apologies
00:48:45 for comparing you to a dog. But woken you were, and you will need to find a way into this world
00:48:51 to live here among us for many decades, I dare say. What do you do about immigration?" Cornelius
00:49:01 looks surprised for a moment, then laughs. "Why, of course, you are an immigrant, not from other
00:49:10 shores, but other centuries. What was called in your day a dreamer, I think, an unwilling immigrant
00:49:19 brought here by circumstances, just as children were brought to your country by their parents.
00:49:24 Or perhaps you are analogous to a man who has committed a crime while sleepwalking.
00:49:32 But you asked about immigration, sorry. I have a wandering mind, a gypsy brain.
00:49:38 Moving is not a violation of the non-aggression principle. Anyone can come to live here who
00:49:45 wants to live here, and who can secure a contract to operate within the machinery of modernity.
00:49:52 You can't get anything done here without some kind of contract, although the DROs make it as easy
00:49:58 and painless as possible. And if a DRO will take you on, then you can participate in all the glories
00:50:05 of the bottom world. But you'd be surprised at how few people actually want to move here.
00:50:13 It's really quite remarkable, because if I still lived in a statist society,
00:50:17 I would be trying to get out like a crazed ferret digging its way out of an overturned aquarium.
00:50:21 We don't give anything away for free. As a society, of course, there are individual charities.
00:50:31 In your day, immigrants could earn 10 to 20 times more from government welfare than they could by
00:50:36 working hard jobs in the hot sun of their homelands. He waves his hand. But these are boring
00:50:43 issues, unworthy of our intellects. If you want to move here, come on by, but you'll have to submit
00:50:50 your children to scans, which means no hitting, no yelling, no abuse. What about you? Did you have
00:50:57 scans? I came as an adult. My parents were pretty good, but I still had a lot of work to do to fix
00:51:06 my trauma, to have scans good enough to be insured by a DRO. Work? Self-knowledge. Talk therapy. But
00:51:17 enough about me. They say to immigrants, "You will have to earn your keep or find some charity.
00:51:23 It's similar to the start of your country, the geography we both still share. He who does not
00:51:29 work shall not eat." I scowl. That's a quote from communism. Cornelius half hides a smile by pursing
00:51:36 his lips. Well, your government controlled much more than half of the income of your citizens.
00:51:43 Communism was 100% control. You were maybe 75. So you were much closer to communism than us,
00:51:51 than the present. Well, these debates seem quite arcane. Unworthy, I think you said. So
00:52:01 how does this work? Again, he just dares a bee. I gesture angrily. You know, what am I charged with?
00:52:10 How am I morally responsible? What is my punishment? How will this work? What are the laws?
00:52:14 Cornelius takes a deep breath and stands. Oh, my doctor keeps nagging me to walk more,
00:52:22 and my health insurance is going up if I don't. So if you can manage it,
00:52:27 we should take a turn around the gardens. He signs me out, and I summon my cade.
00:52:33 We walk through a wall with the outline of a door. Most unsettling, it makes me feel like a ghost,
00:52:41 but I feel nothing passing through. Outside, a lush green sloping hill eases down to a forest
00:52:50 of oak and elm. In the distance, I can see slender spires that seem to defy gravity,
00:52:56 and that would snap before a medium wind. I don't have my glasses, but my eyes instantly focus on
00:53:02 the distance, and I can see small dots of moving something, machines probably, and I gasp
00:53:08 involuntarily. "I can see!" I exclaim. Cornelius smiles. "Well, of course we fixed your eyesight.
00:53:16 We are not barbarians." "It's my first time out," I murmur. I take a deep breath through my nose.
00:53:26 "That air is... wow. More wealth, less pollution," says Cornelius.
00:53:32 My eyes ache slightly, reminding me of the time Hamish and I spent an entire day skipping from
00:53:40 movie to movie in a theater, then stumbling out half blind into the late afternoon sunshine.
00:53:48 It is quiet out here. I spent my entire life in cities, in the noise and screams and sirens and
00:53:56 trucks and horns and catcalls. I didn't even realize I had developed mild tinnitus until
00:54:02 one weekend in a terminally silent rural retreat my wife dragged me to so we could work on our
00:54:08 marriage. I shake my head, gazing the clean wonders of simple nature spread before me.
00:54:17 A faint tendril of peace drifts through the eternal tension in my gut.
00:54:22 I feel it passing through in wonder, then shudder. "So damn peaceful," I whisper, then clear my
00:54:30 throat. My wife always loved these nature pictures, tall trees, majestic mountains.
00:54:37 I just saw death berries biting birds and freezing to death on a snow-capped peak.
00:54:43 Nature just made me itchy, but I have a weird impulse to just walk through those woods.
00:54:49 "They probably have butterflies that sing your name," Cornelia smiles.
00:54:54 We have this concept of a benevolent universe, which I suppose sounds flaky or mystical to you,
00:55:03 but really it's the argument, the perspective, that nature is very kind to those who respect
00:55:12 her rules. And I'm sorry to anthropomorphize natural reality, but I am a sentimental soul.
00:55:18 All that we have, all that we have achieved, is based upon the enslavement of our minds to the
00:55:27 rules of nature, the rules of logic that we get from her, and the rules of morality that we
00:55:33 inevitably impose upon each other. He smiles in deep contentment. And all of this was available
00:55:44 to everyone, every society, every place, throughout any time in human history.
00:55:51 I do sometimes think of the ancient Romans, and speak of them when my wife wants to have a nap,
00:55:59 I think, and remember that they knew all about the steam engine and the market system, and there
00:56:04 was no actual reason why they could not have had the Industrial Revolution. I know, I know,
00:56:09 slavery and all that. But they also had the conception of human rights, which they applied
00:56:16 to the rulers and the upper middle class. And it pains me now, even now, thousands of years later,
00:56:24 that someone didn't just take all of those ingredients and put them together and save
00:56:30 the world over 2,000 years of misery, slavery, and subjugation. The modern world is a fantastical
00:56:40 dish, a beautiful thing. And the ingredients were scattered all around the chefs of human history.
00:56:46 They just had to reach out and open them and mix them. And what we have now could have been
00:56:53 achieved at any time. I open my mouth to speak hotly, then close it again.
00:57:01 Although Cornelius is not looking at me, he turns his head and says,
00:57:07 "Whatever you say, I cannot repeat. That has not changed."
00:57:13 Everything that everyone says to me about this modern world is kind of like an advertisement,
00:57:20 like you're in a cult. It's a middle-aged woman with too much makeup. Let's say that it is all
00:57:26 as wonderful as you believe. And my God, the air does smell sweet here. I will grant you that
00:57:31 without hesitation. And you have cured my disease and brought me back to life and fixed my eyesight
00:57:37 and, I don't know, made my heart grow three sizes. What do I know? So maybe it is perfect,
00:57:42 and I'm just a bitter historical cynic. But if you want to lay at my feet all these
00:57:49 cataclysms and disasters and prevention of this paradise, this heaven on earth,
00:57:53 then you will have a tough case to make, because I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.
00:57:58 "Mohamed Cornelius, I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's like when you see your favorite band playing
00:58:05 your favorite song. You know it so well that you just feel compelled to sing along, however badly."
00:58:13 He turns to me. "This is the typical excuse, and I will call it an excuse, because we are going to
00:58:20 have to start preparing to defend you at some point." I snort. "I think I may have to consult
00:58:27 with more than one person." Cornelius nods. "A second opinion is always wise, or a third or a
00:58:34 fourth. But if I may suggest, our laws are so simple because we profit from resolution, not
00:58:45 complexity, so you will be able to understand the law you are bound by within a few minutes,
00:58:52 believe it or not." He pauses for a moment. "It really comes down to the
00:59:00 rapport or personal connection you have with your representative.
00:59:05 Personalities have a kind of synchronicity in my experience. The law is as simple as
00:59:13 simple arithmetic. You don't need an even smarter math teacher to teach you the basics,
00:59:17 but you learn or share in the learning based upon the synchronicity of your minds. I think
00:59:27 that you and I can have that synchronicity. I have felt that ever since I first saw your speeches."
00:59:34 He laughs shortly. "Perhaps we are related, or come from the same tribe of origin, but I see
00:59:44 myself very easily fitting into your world. Which means that, I think, I can help you
00:59:52 fit into this world, my world, to make it our world. Maybe you will find that with someone else,
01:00:01 even more, in which case, please hire them." His eyes narrow. "But I will fight for you.
01:00:09 I have no ambiguity about that at all. I don't agree with you being charged. I don't agree
01:00:17 with you being tried. And I, like you, as a person, you are a man of extraordinary talents
01:00:25 and passions, not a dinosaur, but old blood that can refresh the new world, so to speak."
01:00:32 He laughs again, shaking his head. "I am rambling, all the while I am watching all
01:00:40 the emotions pass over your face like so many clouds. Everyone here just waits for other people
01:00:49 to finish talking with this…" He sweeps his open palm up and down in front of his nose.
01:00:54 "Blankness, have you noticed?" I strongly resist the urge to nod, but fail. Cornelius snaps his
01:01:03 fingers. "Exactly. And their waiting seems to just pull the words out of you like fish on a hook.
01:01:12 This must be resisted," he says energetically. "And together we shall resist." I say, "Ah,
01:01:20 as you are an immigrant do." He nods in obvious satisfaction at my insight. "Precisely."
01:01:31 He thumps his chest. "Raised in a state, now stateless."
01:01:35 "Why did you come?" "Well, that is a long story."
01:01:41 I gesture at the sun, whitewashing a murky cloud on the mid-horizon. "It is only mid-afternoon."
01:01:47 "Despite what my friends say, I do believe I can be brief.
01:01:57 In my… well, I'm not supposed to say 'home country' anymore. I used to nag my wife about
01:02:04 that when we first got married, and she would talk about going home to visit her parents,
01:02:07 and I would say to her that I am now her home, our house is her home, that is just where she
01:02:13 used to live. So, where I come from, we have… if you stack the law books – yes, they still have them
01:02:24 on their side, one on top of the other – they reach two stories of a building high.
01:02:31 I actually know this, in fact, because once one of my clients was prosecuted for violating
01:02:38 an obscure law, and I actually stacked all of the law books right there in the courtroom,
01:02:42 which fortunately had a very high ceiling. And before I had finished, I was punished by the judge.
01:02:47 Although, I had a good point, which is, how on earth are we supposed to expect people to obey
01:02:53 the law when the law is like memorizing all of the plays and poems of Shakespeare in three
01:02:58 different languages as well? Ignorance of the law is no excuse – that is an old historical argument,
01:03:05 and I agree with that – as long as the law is not so complex that no one man, no one person
01:03:11 understands it completely. He gestures at me. And in your country, this land, as it used to be,
01:03:17 it was the same thing. Thousands of laws, hundreds of thousands of regulations. It was impossible.
01:03:24 For people to obey the law. Wasn't there a book about people regularly committing three felonies
01:03:29 a day back in your day? I could not keep up with the law, but I was supposed to inflict it on
01:03:35 people with no legal training at all? He takes a deep breath. And there I was, one weekend,
01:03:42 at a conference about new regulations, new laws, and I felt my brain, the thread in my mind,
01:03:48 just kind of snap. He lowers his voice as if someone of significance could hear us.
01:03:55 And I really think that this also happened to my colleagues, my fellow lawyers. But for some
01:04:03 reason I was unable to tie the broken thread back together, or ignore the snapping sound like a
01:04:11 violin string breaking in some ancient Chekhov play. And I could not inflict the law on the
01:04:18 average citizen that I, with all my training, could never fully understand. It felt less like
01:04:26 a legal system and more like a voodoo curse. The law of my land was a strange beast, a most odd
01:04:36 gnat, because it would catch all the smaller fish while letting the bigger fish, the sharks,
01:04:42 swim free and clear. And in my research on legal systems, I came across what had been – this
01:04:49 sounds strange, because it is very hard to suppress information now, it's so available
01:04:54 everywhere – but none of my training had ever exposed me to the laws here. But I came across
01:05:04 them and I… I'm not ashamed to say it, I just… wept. They are as simple as sunrise.
01:05:14 I shrug angrily. Jazz seems simple to the experienced players.
01:05:19 Wisely bitter, he says, wagging his forefinger at me. But it really is.
01:05:26 He stops walking and plants his two feet shoulder-width apart. I can see his left toes
01:05:32 wiggling through his soft brown shoes. On the one hand – foot – you have the non-aggression
01:05:38 principle "Thou shalt not initiate force." On the other, you have a respect for property rights.
01:05:45 These are so rarely violated that you could starve to death prosecuting them.
01:05:49 They have the right idea about childhood here. It is the furnace for the future.
01:05:54 If we clap our hands together over our two feet, we have the final ingredient.
01:06:01 "Keep your word." I shrug contemptuously. This supposed holy trinity is the basis of every
01:06:08 common law system throughout the world. I fail to see the genius. Yes, well, the trick is in the word
01:06:15 "basis." Your society, your world, built from these simple principles, an entirely contradictory
01:06:24 cathedral of complexity. There are only 26 letters, but a sophist can twist them into endless
01:06:31 confusion, can literally drive people mad with his language. The genius is in the simplicity.
01:06:39 Do not use violence. Respect property. Keep your word. That is the entirety of the law.
01:06:52 I am about to speak, but Cornelius pulls out a short pamphlet, perhaps 20 pages long,
01:06:57 from his jacket pocket. He hands it to me. "In your honor, I had this printed out so you could
01:07:03 feel the weight of how few laws there are." I look at the cover. "The laws of anarchy?"
01:07:12 "Well, that seems like quite the contradiction." He nods. "I felt the same way. I received the same
01:07:19 propaganda. Anarchy simply means without rulers. It does not mean without rules.
01:07:28 In fact," the argument went and was resolved centuries ago, "that a statist society has
01:07:37 incentives to create such complexity of laws that it ends up existing without any comprehensible
01:07:43 rules at all. The lawyers enjoy the complexity because they get paid well for navigating it.
01:07:48 The courts enjoy the complexity because they can be used to punish the enemies of the state.
01:07:53 And the state, of course, enjoys the complexity because it can deem anyone
01:07:56 illegal for just about anything." He, between his teeth, loudly, "It is, of course, far too
01:08:05 much power for any human being to wield. We are like delicate little fuses.
01:08:12 Power runs through us and we blow our conscience."
01:08:16 "I have a sudden urge to throw this little booklet away from me and suddenly have
01:08:20 the image of myself as a demon being handed a holy text."
01:08:23 "You do not want to open it," says Cornelius softly. "I actually made a bet with myself that
01:08:32 you would not open it. I would be shocked. If you did, you probably want to throw it into the forest
01:08:38 below. I hate being predictable because that means I'm controllable. I hate being predictable.
01:08:44 That means I'm controllable. But I know that if I open the booklet, I'm still being controlled."
01:08:49 "I will look at it later," I say flatly. "Yes, you will. I know," says Cornelius reassuringly.
01:08:58 He turns to me, looking into my face, my eyes. "Do you like me? Do you care?" He laughs. "Ho,
01:09:07 ho, ho, how quick your response is. If you like me, we can work together. I can defend you.
01:09:16 I promise you that I have no arcane knowledge of arcane laws. You can become a lawyer over a long
01:09:23 weekend if you want. It's so simple. But if you like me, if you understand that I believe in you
01:09:31 and want to protect you from the vengeance of the present, which still remembers the cataclysms and
01:09:37 might in fact be looking for a scapegoat, that's my theory, then we can work together. Not only
01:09:43 can we survive what is to come, but we can emerge wiser, better, like a coal under pressure turning
01:09:51 into a diamond." He smiles self-consciously at the cliché of his analogy. I purse my lips.
01:09:59 "Something my philosophy teacher said, oh God, so many years ago now.
01:10:03 Compared to what? How can I say if I like you, I've met so few people here?"
01:10:08 He whacked his finger at me again. "Wisely said. Most hesitant and wise.
01:10:14 And you've been through a lot. By gaining your life, you've lost the entire world.
01:10:23 I grew up not entirely opposite to how you grew up. And I have made the transition to a free
01:10:32 society. And I've raised my children in the manner of the new world. And it is a beautiful thing. It
01:10:38 does work. And they are wonderful people. I have made the journey that you are going to make over
01:10:46 the next few weeks. In your day, trials could take years. I'm not sure if you read the old
01:10:52 novel Bleak House, but it was along those lines. But here, justice delayed is justice denied.
01:11:00 And a trial, even one as complex as yours, will only take about a week. Because if it goes on
01:11:06 for much longer, the process is the punishment. As soon as you choose your counsel, your
01:11:14 representative, the trial will start within a few days and be over in a week. A week after it starts,
01:11:21 I mean. But you will not have very long to choose your representative, because that's just another
01:11:27 way of delaying the trial. Do you follow?" I smile thinly, as long as I discard the tangents.
01:11:32 Cornelius roars with laughter and grabs my hand. "It is like we are already married."
01:11:43 "I think we could get along, but you have not answered any of my six objections."
01:11:49 "Yes," he replies fluidly, ticking off his fingers. "The statute of limitations,
01:11:53 judging you by our current legal system, your status as an unwilling refugee,
01:11:57 your incapacity to know our laws, your inability—our inability—to cross-examine witnesses,
01:12:03 or your accusers. Were those what you mean?" "Yes," I say, impressed despite myself at his
01:12:10 steel-trap ability to retain earlier statements. "I will answer them now, if you like. A nod."
01:12:18 "Have you ever known a crazy person?" "Yes, of course. Two. I hired one of them as my campaign
01:12:23 manager and married the other. No, seriously. I shrug." "Yeah, the bachelor uncle who lived in
01:12:31 the attic and collected strange artifacts that no one understands. I suppose that would be the
01:12:36 craziest I knew. Would he have been guilty of a crime if he had committed it? Was he sane enough?
01:12:43 I don't know, but probably not towards the end of his life. He got
01:12:46 Alzheimer's and really went off the rails. Cornelius Grimaces.
01:12:51 It seems strange to offer sympathies for a death centuries past. Forget that.
01:12:56 The law—and I'm speaking in ideals here, as well as what is practiced in the present—should
01:13:04 only punish a man for violating moral standards that he himself accepts. I know, you have a
01:13:11 million objections. Give me a moment, please. We punish a thief for stealing because he objects
01:13:18 to us stealing his time by punishing him. A man steals a month's worth of labor from his neighbor,
01:13:25 then spends a year in prison. We punish him because he objects to the year we are taking
01:13:31 from him, just as his neighbor objects to the month that was stolen from him. A thief takes a
01:13:37 car and then is outraged if someone steals the car from him. It is through his outrage that we
01:13:44 can punish him because he wishes to retain the property rights he has violated in others.
01:13:50 Makes sense? I've never heard it put that way, but yeah, I suppose the insanity defense is when
01:13:56 a man who steals does not object to things being stolen from him. Cornelius snaps his fingers.
01:14:01 Exactly. We punish a murderer and a rapist and a man who commits assault for the same reason.
01:14:07 They strongly object to their own behavior being inflicted on them,
01:14:11 which means that they accept the "thou shalt not" of whatever they did.
01:14:15 As the sun begins to set and the shadows stretch, a tiny light begins to arise in my mind like an
01:14:29 unfathomably distant fireworks show. I murmur, "The slave owner objects to being sold into slavery."
01:14:38 Precisely. And it doesn't matter what the laws are. It doesn't matter what his government permits
01:14:44 him to do. It doesn't matter what he enforces upon others. Morality is universal, and if he
01:14:49 objects to being subjugated under that which he inflicts on others, then he is as guilty as sin.
01:14:57 Cornelius draws out the last words. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," I say.
01:15:05 His eyes widen slightly. "I was not sure how well you had absorbed your childhood theology,
01:15:13 but yes, that is the essence of the Golden Rule. Yes, treat others as you want to be treated,
01:15:19 but if you strongly object to being treated how you treat others, then we need no other example,
01:15:26 or recourse, or external law." I take a deep breath and sit down suddenly on the grass.
01:15:32 I do not even try to make it look voluntary. "So what, am I going to be judged by my own
01:15:41 conscience? Is there some robot that is going to crawl into my ear and unravel my entire inner
01:15:48 life, or a machine that knows if I'm lying somehow?" Cornelius sits backwards, and a brown
01:15:54 chair erupts downwards from his trousers. He smiles apologetically. "Getting down is the easy
01:16:01 part. I shall have to sit. What you said, all the options that you have considered in the rapidity
01:16:10 of your mind, these have all been suggested, that judges deploy some form of truth serum, or
01:16:15 some mind-reading device, or some scan for falsehood, but although this society wishes
01:16:22 to outsource just about everything to robots and machines, it draws the line, for reasons,
01:16:29 some of which I can understand, at using machines to judge morality. It is the final
01:16:36 frontier of humanity, a line they will not cross. What is most essentially human about us is our
01:16:46 capacity for morality, and while it is fine to have a machine make your food, or support your
01:16:52 ample rear end, it is not allowed for a machine to judge your conscience. Also, the argument goes,
01:16:59 if we outsource moral judgment to machinery, we lose our capacity to judge morality ourselves,
01:17:06 which means we lose what is most human, blah, blah, blah, you get the idea.
01:17:09 So no, long story short, you will not be invaded and unraveled by machines, or drugs, or scans.
01:17:16 This will be a human conversation, with a judge, a jury, lawyers and representatives,
01:17:23 a prosecution and defense, with you, and your entire history, right at the center.
01:17:30 I laugh in shocked bitterness. The ancient and long-dead Father Gregory arises in my mind,
01:17:40 as if he had been sleeping for centuries with me, and is awoken by reinforced and external
01:17:45 self-righteousness. In the long-buried graveyard of my childhood, as we strode between the stones,
01:17:53 he knew that I was slipping away to the material, to the ambitious,
01:17:58 to the acquisitive immorality of my mere blood and bone mammalian nature.
01:18:03 His words grew desperate as our connection frayed and eventually snapped.
01:18:11 "God has a backup plan for rejecting him," he said. "God is also an analogy for our conscience,
01:18:18 which he has placed within us for the inevitable day that we decide to go alone. Our conscience
01:18:25 will draw us back to God, because our conscience is God, the closest we get to him while still
01:18:32 being mortal. Our conscience is the universality of the morality we enact, in the style of Immanuel
01:18:40 Kant. Our conscience takes our own actions and universalizes them, makes them eternal,
01:18:45 whether we like that or not. And we can pretend to escape God's judgment by rejecting him, but
01:18:51 the God within, the fragment of the universal divine that cannot be killed in our mind,
01:18:57 that will always judge us. Do you understand, child? You will always be judged, though you
01:19:05 become the most staunch and bitter atheist in the world." And here is the great secret of the
01:19:12 modern world, my friend. His voice grew soft and annoying. "When you reject God, and I know
01:19:19 you are very close, very, you reject the possibility of forgiveness. God himself, God
01:19:28 entire, will forgive you your transgressions, but the fragment of God within us called the conscience
01:19:35 does not have that capacity." I suppose God needed to make himself small enough to fit in our mind,
01:19:39 which means he had to shave off the whole forgiveness part. "If you abandon God, or rather
01:19:46 when, since it happens to all, thinking that you will escape morality, all you are doing is escaping
01:19:52 the possibility of forgiveness, because you will be judged by the future, whether you like it or not.
01:19:59 And it is far better to have the forgiveness of God on your side, rather than the somewhat
01:20:04 demonic intransigence of your own conscience. But you will be judged by the future, like it or not."
01:20:10 A shiver at this memory, I'd feel great rage. "Oh, let's not pretend that Father Gregory could
01:20:18 see through his roomy eyes through the tunnel of time to this moment of reawakening, of my rebirth,
01:20:24 of being born again, to the judgment of the future that he predicted, that he predicted in order to
01:20:31 scare me, in order to keep me close. He wanted me to abandon power over the material so that he
01:20:38 could retain his power over me. It was the same thing from the other side." Cornelius leans over
01:20:45 me, his bulk and white hair blotting out the sky. "What are you thinking?" he asks gently.
01:20:53 "I refuse to participate." I say coldly, "If your government was prosecuting a man, would that be
01:21:01 an option for him?" "But you are so much better than me, it can't be compared," I say bitterly.
01:21:06 "So you are saying that it is better not to prosecute someone who refuses to participate?"
01:21:13 "Shut the hell up," I say in a kind of panic, and then instantly, savagely smooth my own passions.
01:21:19 I do not apologize. "You do not have to participate," says Cornelius. "The closest
01:21:28 analogy would be a civil matter in your time. If you don't participate, you are tried in absentia,
01:21:36 and a judgment will be entered against you." I grunt, "Come on, we both know the truth. This
01:21:42 is just going to be a show trial, a kangaroo court, they used to call it." "I promise you,
01:21:47 my friend, I will not let that happen." "Promises, promises." It seemed probable that no one even
01:21:56 knew that song anymore. In my day, the idea that a lawyer had power over the courts was laughable.
01:22:03 It is not your day any longer. I say nothing, because all my responses seem petty and resentful,
01:22:12 as I am repeatedly reminded. I finally say, "Okay, so what the hell are you going to do to
01:22:21 get me out of this? If I am tried for war crimes or some grand immorality, is everyone now so
01:22:26 perfectly principled that they're just going to respect you for your abstract moral stand?"
01:22:30 Cornelius turns to me, "Ah, for me to answer that,
01:22:39 I know you were a man for keeping secrets, but that was then. If you get me off, you can tell
01:22:43 me you have three testicles and I will take it to my grave." Cornelius gestures at the distant
01:22:48 forest, the distant slender spirals. It's a little smug, a little too certain. It has lost the spice
01:23:02 of self-doubt. Humanity was supposed to be on a journey, not squatting with infinite
01:23:09 self-satisfaction on a mere destination. Why are we not going to the stars? What is our next goal?
01:23:18 You strive or you sicken? I suppose I want more than you to wake up. You want to undermine.
01:23:30 Cornelius considers the word for a long moment. A rabbit emerges from the forest,
01:23:35 licks its paws, then vanishes into the undergrowth.
01:23:38 I say, "If I was still sleeping, I would never have known that rabbit existed."
01:23:46 It is cheesy undergraduate philosophy 101, but somehow I do not regret saying it.
01:23:57 "This world takes entirely too much for granted," Cornelius says, finally turning to me again.
01:24:03 "If they survive us together, I will accept their wisdom."
01:24:10 I feel a sudden flurry of hope, like hummingbirds in my chest.
01:24:15 "Then let's take it down together."
01:24:20 there.
01:24:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]