How to Disappear Completely

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Steer

"I let them be. I left the scene and I let... all of them be. Three complete strangers... four complete strangers... alone in a parking lot at the beginning of the end of their lives. This was after one of them pleaded with me—from soul to soul—laying bare before me all of the problems that they had. Asking for nothing but grace and respect from another human being. And I refused her.

"I refused her... not because I was fully incapable of helping her... but because I didn't want to. It would have been inconvenient for me. It would have upset my night... made me feel uncomfortable...

"And the truly sickening part about it is... when I did refuse her... she didn't fight it. She didn't demand that I change my mind. She didn't... bargain or haggle or beg for even smaller favors.

"I told her that I couldn't help her. And that's a lie. The fact of the matter is that I wouldn't... and she knew—as I knew—that it was just as well. She knew—like I knew—that if she was in my place... and she was driving home alone from the grocery store... and she was suddenly confronted—against her will—by three strangers suffering from a circumstance that would take unknown funds and resources to fix... ... ...she would have said the same thing that I did. Make no mistake. She was only asking for completely natural human empathy... and she knew that even that was asking too much.

"And what's even more disgusting is... if I told this story to others where I'm from... if I told other people in my world—friends and family—about being approached and my choosing not to help them... ... ... nobody would blame me. Nobody would blame me for being a selfish sack of shit with only my own interests in mind. They would have told me that I would have risked being mugged by one of the assholes she was with. Or someone would have implied that they got what they deserved... that they're somehow dumb or foolish for having gotten into that situation... and helping through through one rough patch wouldn't stop them from essentially falling into the same pit again as a result of their own inadequacies. Why should I suffer for mistakes that other lesser human beings made?

"And just why is this the way things are? Is everybody where I'm from completely self-serving and narrow-minded? No. Hardly. Sure, there are those who volunteer to feed the hungry and those who will donate to charities and other worthy causes and those who take unsavory jobs in the name of serving and supporting those who suffer...

"But when it comes to actually giving something that matters to you? Time? Profit? A meal and a bed? The shirt off your back? When it comes time to sacrifice the comfort and routine of your own way of life in order to help another person... when it comes time for you to give a piece of yourself—maybe even the entirety of yourself—so that those you've never owed anything to in the first place could benefit? How many people where I'm from would actually do that? Would actually seek to give... to offer what it takes to restore balance... to restore harmony among all living things that deserve it...?

"I'm telling you... it's only a tiny-ass number of people who would step up to the plate. And even those who claim that they'd be willing are full of it. Yeah, we've built philosophies and religions around the concept of altruism and selflessness. There are people out there who'll say stuff like 'Be like Jesus' or 'What would Jesus do?' But nobody ever expects anyone to actually become Jesus... to do what a true savior would do... to sacrifice everything—one's job, one's education, one's household, one's future—just to help out the first person you see.

"Every now and then, there are heroes who rock the boat... who shift the flow of the river. You'll have the teacher who'll jump in front of a bullet to protect his students. There'll be those brave dudes on a train who'll lay down their lives to stop violent racism in its ugly face. People like that are worshipped and praised for about fifteen minutes, because people adore the idea of being righteous more than the idea of actually becoming it. So heroes come and go, but then the filth and the ugliness and the selfishness of the world continues to roll its shitty way downhill.

"Because what changes?

"What ever changes?

"Human civilization has been waging wars and subjugating minorities and enslaving people for nearly ten thousand years. It doesn't ever get better... it just gets called something else and shoved heartlessly into the corner so that we'll ignore it. We've had centuries upon centuries of opportunities to change... to fix our problems and steer ourselves onto the path of harmony. And we've steered ourselves to brighter shores alright—so long as peace and prosperity is affordable to us and not to others—we've steered the course to where it's navigable. But nobody ever changes. Not enough to matter, at least. Nobody ever completely jumps off the boat to offer their space to someone who deserves it more... who's suffered more... who would be willing to do the same if they just had enough people to give an example... to instill a new pattern. Any attempt we've half-heartedly made to do something like this has been on some ludicrously grand scale through abstract autonomous bullshit where—of course—the damnable selfishness and paranoia of human nature bleeds through the cracks and takes over and ruins utopia before it can ever be achieved. There is no heart-to-heart attempt to reinvent the human struggle. Not with the path we've taken, where systems and habits matter more than sustaining innocent life—innocent life everywhere. Nothing gets better... not so long as we see one person eating a cheeseburger on one side of the globe and another person subsisting off of garbage on another side and everyone says 'This is normal; this is the way things have always been and things will always be... to some inescapably ugly degree.' And we lie back in the bed of all we've managed to accumulate for ourselves and we tell our cold lingering hearts that we're managing as 'best as we can' given the rocks and shoals of everyday living... when the actual truth is that each of us—when our time comes to go to bat for one person and by proxity the entirety of the human race—we fall upon the closest caveat we can seize and we do nothing..."

Comments

[IceKitsune]

Ok there House, sure nobody ever changes.

[Dracon_Pyrothayan]

Whew.

Here I was thinking that he ran her over.

[ZanyZapper]

8901890
You weren't the only one.

[Xanderfox]

8901838
more realistically no one notices they've changed, it sneaks up on you

[Winter Storm]

Seems that Flash could do with a few history classes to really see how far humanity has come in terms of empathy and overall doing good.

[ssokolow]

8902241

*chuckle* On that note, I was just about to share this Wikipedia synopsis of Steven Pinker's newest book.

The book contains a wealth of data simply documenting violence across time and geography. This paints a picture of massive declines in violence of all forms, from war, to improved treatment of children. He highlights the role of nation-state monopolies on force, of commerce (making "other people become more valuable alive than dead"), of increased literacy and communication (promoting empathy), as well as a rise in a rational problem-solving orientation as possible causes of this decline in violence. He notes that, paradoxically, our impression of violence has not tracked this decline, perhaps because of increased communication,
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature

[Phoen1x]

Okay, I think I understand, he's so caught up in the guilt he feels from not helping someone in need that it's warped his world view. He's projecting his demons on the world.

That makes this a lot easier to stomach.

[ADrunkChangeling]

Some bucko needs to clean their room...