Do you want to know why I am “still” a
communist? It is because I don’t wish to be punished for my virtue. I do not
wish to be punished by my “equals”, constantly derided by them, either out of
envy for my “gifts” or out of pity for my “failings”. I do not wish to be
sabotaged by those I care about the most, those I am ready, time and time
again, to pledge my LIFE to, and to give it sooner than I give the sacrifice a
second thought. I love the North Koreans for their true egalitarianism,
untinged by the perverse will which condemns one to the arbitration of his
fellow’s perverse whims. I weigh them more generously against images of models
and celebrities, unattainable gods and goddesses of the entertainment class, a
new clergy that keeps their wealthy rulers in power. I can tolerate, I think,
the pains of hunger knowing that I suffer not alone but among millions of human
neighbours. But to be alone entirely!! To find that my place of employment is
no righteous institution, that my fellows work to serve their private ends and
not collective goals, and that my needs depend upon not only my abilities, of
which I offer without hesitation, but by arbitration from superiors who
represent THEIR interests. It is Hell. Wouldn’t you agree? I enter youthful,
full of vigour and conviction, and I leave a tormented and tattered husk of all
my prior optimism, seeing it for what it all ways was: sheer propaganda. The
gap is much too great to be ignored; it haunts me in both waking and in sleep,
driving me closer every day towards madness, a descent so maddening to watch in
itself. And if this gap is not between reality and fantasy, it is between THEIR
reality and mine. And then mine is the fantasy which represents the life they
really live, for which they are forever seldom held accountable, for ethics lie
beneath them. The only fantasy we share is that we are all equals, and if my
equality is simply “equal opportunity” I am forever slave to opportunists and
manipulators. Where I enter I enter at the lowest position, answering to
everyone though getting little answer for my own questions, deferred
perpetually to my superiors who in turn delegate to my peers, some of whom are
my most notorious oppressors. I know not why a government must be so ruthless
for its people to be better than this. But I have to hope that if someday my
government can truly live up to some semblance of a moral code, then I will be
rewarded for my virtue, not because I seek award or praise, but just because
without it those who fall short of that virtue and who hurt me and my fellows won’t
be punished*. If we can’t be equals, truly, owing to their shortcomings, at
least a better State would shelter me from the oppression of my peers.
[({Dm.A.A.)}]
*Clearly
I demonstrate that my longing for equality is pure and that my willingness is
great to make all the necessary sacrifices, to take all the risks, and to
accept the hardships; I simply can have no sympathy for those who do not feel
that longing for a human cause. If equality is truly impossible, I will accept
as well the burden of status, a most peculiar concept to me but one that
undoubtedly should favour me if I have remained blameless in service to my
fellows, instead of punishing me for the service at the behest of those same
fellows. This longing for justice is no different from my yearning for
equality, and if I should have to accept this reward at the expense of those
who are responsible for our depraved condition, then I will do so knowing that
I am protecting us by punishing them, for the most of us would surely never
question our human solidarity. My faith in our equality will not be mitigated,
and neither will my willingness to undergo the aforementioned hardships, risks,
and sacrifices. The embarrassment of holding status will be the fault of those,
then, who no longer have it, for it is only in their failure to accept our
universal solidarity that they would leave us no recourse except for such a
meritocracy. At that point, I will have then to accept the example set by North
Korea as the best worldly standard, a true practical Utopia, and you will never
be able again to call my integrity into question by suggesting an ulterior
motive. You will no longer hurt us with absurd and persistent disconfirmation,
forcing us to clear our names when it was we who were clear of all wrongdoing
from the beginning. Your petty projections will be meaningless before the law,
and I will not be blamed that this should have to be the way things are, for I
devised neither the problem nor its solution; I sought only refuge for all. As
certainly as I know that this is the Truth, I can expect others to hear it as
the Truth, without its being adorned or sold in order to accommodate a
self-entitled, narcissistic paranoiac skeptic. At any rate, I have all ready
answered any theoretical attacks against my dignity, with great expedience,
within the text itself, and no warrant remains to be produced against me.
Dm.A.A.
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