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A Philosopher's Challenge
It was May 16th, the year was 2064. An old man sat on the steps to a local establishment wearing clothes that were once a bit on the expensive side made from brands known for producing long lasting and durable clothing, but now worn torn and ragged. An adolescent around age 14 to 16 approached him and asked what he was doing., "I am writing what I feel I'd be satisfied with being my last words". The boy then stated that he saw the old man sitting there often and asked what he meant by that to which the old man replied "I have given up on humanity and am writing on my criticisms to it, rather than die after seeing how no one will care what I have to say, I would rather breathe my last breath with a bit of hope that perhaps maybe what I have to say will have some level of an impact". The boy looked a bit confused and concerned and replied "Are you going to kill yourself?" to which the old man responded "Every purpose I have found to resonate with myself, though virtuous was always impeded by those of far lesser character than I myself had when at my absolute worse within my lifetime. A life without purpose deserves to end when the pain and lonliness becomes too much, so yes and I will likely shed a tear of joy when I do go".
This visibly bothered the boy as he was a highly shelteted optimist who had not seen the harshness of the world and so he was baffled. The boy had an idea and looked at the old man and asked "What would convince you to change your mind about killing yourself?". The man looked a bit annoyed at first but then his expression changed to a bit of a mixture between being confused and amused and so he replied to the boy "I have a challenge for you, if you can prove me wrong in my assessment of the world, I will not take my life but instead find a reason to live on". Looking somewhat pleased yet a little intimidated by how the tone the old man delivered made him feel like the old man was confident that his challenge would be an impossible one, he reluctantly responded "Deal, what exactly is this assessment you speak of?". The boy sits down attentatively after pulling a chair over to the steps where the old man sat, and the old man responds "Humanity really only has four problems in total that it inflicts upon itself, one being a major problem and the other three being amplified by said major problem, people would much rather kill and silence those with solutions than to work with them. Often times the solutions are only for problems caused by the four problems mentioned, and so it would seem that people are actually in love with their problems. Over two thousand years ago a first step to a solution to our biggest problem was proposed, the man's name was Socrates and he recieved the death sentence for his efforts, as a result the culture of inquiry that could have been was never truly realized, and so our primary problem was enabled to flourish as it was deemed more important to protect than the life of the man who promoted a means to resolve it. Now over two thousand years later, the problem still exists and brings more problems into the picture, and yet people are too in love with this core problem to do anything more than focus on the problems it brings rather than to focus on resolving the core problem itself, they are like a room full of people focused only on mopping up elephant blood while ignoring the gaping wound in the animal and yet people look at them and regard them as true problem solvers and those doing the mopping up are usually eating up every praise and often relying on that praise."
The old man paused for a bit and took from his pocket a plastic bag filled with loose pieces of gum, pulled out a piece and began chewing it giving the boy some time to ask a question the old man could tell the boy was waiting to ask. The boy takes a breath and then asks "What are these four problems and why do they bother you so much that you would be driven to want to take your own life over them?". The old man clearly pleased by the inquiry the boy provided then responded "Because the world is the only option for a home that I can see and yet I am homesick for a better world, the pain and suffering everyone needlessly faces regardless of our power to prevent such is simply too great to bear even enough for me to even so much as to know what home feels like and the sheer imbecility of people makes me far too often feel alone in this world. When I see how I am the only one homesick for a better world, what little hope for humanity I have dies out as if people were sincerely empathetic and considerate of others, they too would be homesick for a better world, the pain is simply too great and yet the problems are too few for any truly valid excuses as to why such is ignored. Our main problem is regarding arrogance, the other three problems are toxic superficiality, emotional immaturity, and defects in empathy and consideration for others". The boy looks a bit saddened and feels a bit hopeless in his ability to console the old man for his homesickness and so he instead focuses on the list of the problems provided by the old man and proceeds to inquiry once again "Why is arrogance our biggest problem when something as serious as defects in empathy and consideration for others is on that list, also, could you please explain what you mean by Toxic superficiality?".
Once again the old man appears to be pleased by the boy's inquiry and he responds. "No man can be skilled in all things and knowledgable of all things because life is short, intelligence is a matter of specialization, passion guides sincerity in effort to improve one's self, everyone has different passions, and and everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Because of this, we need to value the agency and positive potential of others, and not doing so is done in sheer arrogance while empathy and consideration for others would help, even where it exists people's arrogance is too great for real solutions to come, instead people simply either provide bandaids for gaping wounds rather than real solutions or they use the problem as a resource to feed their desire for virtue signaling. Toxic superficiality simply pertains to that in which is superficial and even the slightest bit inherently harmful, the superficial aspect can be a matter of deception, a matter of tradition, an irrational law or a rule people are forced to obey with threats of consequences, the sheer irrationality that people can see in our bureaucratic systems that as a result causes unnecessary stress, or even a matter of social or cultural norms that can not stand up to the scrutiny of a logical argument for discontinuing it as a norm."
The old man man takes out a canteen filled with tea, softly shuts his eyes and takes a long indulgent few drinks from it giving the boy time to ask another question. "When you said emotional immaturity, what exactly did you mean? I can make several guesses but if I am to meet your challenge, I will need to be sure." The old man perks up a bit, his expression mildly pleased and yet somehow saddened as if it somehow brought back painful memories and regrets. The old man then replies to the boy's inquiry "A long time ago, a philosophy called stoicism was created, there are many things we all failed to learn from and advance further from through this philosophy and much harm has resulted from that failure. There are three significantly dangerous and harmful emotions that we need to overcome through our standars of emotional maturity; hatred, anger, and jealousy. Hatred has no merit, it drains you of emotional energy while neither truly connecting you to an important aspect of your humanity, nor being a necessary motivator as anything that can bring you discomfort can motivate you. Hatred is a strong disliking for something, one could easily simply dislike and feel sorrow for such on the side and the discomfort of that sorrow would be a better motivator as through hatred malice often blooms for hatred is chaotic in nature and chaos of mind leads to poor decisions irrational thoughts and actions that were never even necessary and yet would often lead to harming others and even one's own quality of life. Anger and jealousy are both things people feel as a result of being overly self centered. Anger occurs when one's expectations for how the world should revolve around how they believe and percieve themselves and others to deserve are not met, their mind is unable to accept the reality and so the mind becomes chaotic and lashing out either internally at the organizational prowess of their own mind, or externally at people or objects.... in reality, it is no different than a temper tantrum, it just so happens to go by a different name that people have deluded themselves into believing as something different entirely. Jealousy has pretty much the same cause but is more self centered than that, the cause for jealousy is a conflict between how one believes the world to revolve around what they feel they deserve, and the reality of that not being the case for how thing work with the addition of the reality that someone else is recieving such while they are not and when they see this there is a hatred for the recipient of whatever it is said person is feeling they deserve. What should be occuring is the understanding that the world does not in the least bit revolve around you and that often what happens simply can't be helped along side a sort of satisfaction for knowing something to be obtainable and for that to inspire efforts to further one's own progress, instead like complete imbeciles they waste that energy through emotional channels that will get them no where and thus have little to no energy left for acquiring such for themselves. All these things considered I would have to say that I am completely justified in my cynicism".
The boy looked at the old man with a look conveying a loss of hope through his expressions, and then his mind switched to thinking that surely this man has made no significant efforts to resolve the problems he clearly has a grasp of, after all if I have no problem listening to this old man and can feel him influencing me, then surely there were others who would have happily followed and aided his supposed ambition to right the wrongs in the world as he sees it. The boy's mind did this switch, not because it was rational, but because it was more comforting than the horrifying image of the world that the old man was painting, if he could blame the inaction of the old man for his suffering, then surely the boy could leave this challenge without the emotional damage that taking in what this old man has to say would no doubt cause him. The young boy then proceeded to ask "If the world is as you have said, then how long have you been aware of these problems and what all have you done in an attempt to resolve these problems?". Clearly hoping to hear a response justifying in the boy's mind a means to emotionally detach from the old man as a means to protect him from said pain that the boy's empathy was bringing him the boy sat attentively awaiting the old man's response.
The old man then began telling the boy of his plans and attempts to achieve them. "I had an ambition to change the world, I even created a custom set of social and cultural standards that would embody, preserve, and ensure the advancement of the very changes that were needed without harming anyone in the process. The plans were to create a communal guild for self-actualization and community service, it would have replaced the bills people would normally have with community service hours and sustainabile living utilizing contracts with the city in which the project would start out in as a means to provide community service tasks that would save the city money while ensuring a channel for diplomacy with the local government. The project would have been funded through multiple means, but would in a sense be self sufficient though relying on a non-profit tax exemption status to cut the costs of operations and help secure its future and advancement of goals. For early funding I had no other choice than to rely on crowfunding, from there the plans were to purchase a plot of land sufficient for enough space to house 150 people along side space to produce ten times the amount of food they would need to be able to survive using a subterrain vertical aquaponics facility that could produce food year round as a primary source of food. The excess food would be made into preserved dishes and stored in case of an emergency, the rest would be either donated to those in need or sold off for money to invest in the project depending on whichever could be deemed to make a better impact for the greater good, in other words more often than not, donated. In this setting people would have been counciled as to help them find their passions and talents and through such understand whatever the best version of themselve would look like and after passing some tests on emotional and psychological maturity and self-discipline, they would then be prioritized for services and financial assistance in becoming that version of themselves. Once they would achieve a state of self-actualization there would be reason for rejoicing as such would mean that said person's passion was a resource through which the project could be enriched. As the saying often goes, if you enjoy what you do for a living, you never have to work a day in your life. Maslow's extended hierarchy of human needs was a perfect model for attempting to create such a society on, and dunbar's number was a useful model for helping to ensure stability in terms of civility amongst the project residents as well as ensure the ease of management for such. I wasn't going to stop with just one location, no the plan was to duplicate such, and even obtain funding through the creation of an additional non-profit that would own a monolithic dome style stripmall where we would subsidize rent for small bussinesses that might otherwise struggle to get a foot up to be able to compete and strive in our economy. I even had plans to contract with Netflix for producing a reality TV show that would spread awareness of the project to create a sort of glass wall effect and ensure transparency. The idea there was that when the culture and environment would stabilize, the ideas it would represent would be infectious and influence upon the freewil of some to adapt said cultural standards as their own and thus help lubricate the project's ability to spread. I had everything figured out.... and even understood the patterns and shared failures of utopian attempts others made prior to what I had preposed."
Looking like a lightbulb went off in his head while starting to look a little emotionally drained, the boy replied "It sounds like you may have bitten off more than you could chew, if you had so much figured out, then what aside from that obvious problem went wrong? Also, much of the words you used I don't even know what means....." The old man frowned and replied "Yes and I suppose my failure to find a suitable person to edit and reword my many writings and manefesto was perhaps one of the major points where I failed, due to my neurodivergence I am not very skilled with words when it comes to simplifying things for others to be able to understand and as you can see there are a lot of aspects to my plans that are actually quite necessary for it to function, what you may not be aware of there is I only named about half of such in an attempt to keep it a bit shorter. As for your statement that I should have started small, I tried to do that but as soon as I would make any headway people took advantage of the fact that I was accumulating resources to enact the plans I had set in motion and wanted such for themselves, I kept making and losing progress and allies kept coming and going until I decided to try and take a risk to leap forward, it was all or nothing 50/50 and I ended up losing everything as a result. The way people's arrogance fead their greed proved too much for me to overcome, like piranhas looking for blood they sought to ruin the plans I had and efforts I was making. Religious people offended by many of the things my project stood for zealously targeted my organization as often as they could, frequently draining the resources we had been accumulating through frivolous lawsuits making us unable to make any real progress. Unable to consistantly pay the people on the board of directors for the non-profit I established, too many of them just up and quit before the internal revenue service decided my project was no longer a certified non-profit, it was simply too unsustainable and we never even so much as got to the point where we were able to purchase the plot of land we needed. I was too well known for the standards I embodied, hiring me was considered controversial and so I had to rely on government assistance but then prejudice against me from the workers employed to run those government assistances eventually assigned me a caseworker that knew of my work and efforts and wished me to suffer for the influence I was trying to gain for implementing changes I had in mind to implement. I eventually got cut off from such services and ended up homeless and reliant on what little kindness remained in people."
Looking a bit confused and in disbelief, the boy simply asked "Why would religious people target you?". The old man let out a sigh and explained "When I proclaimed anger, hatred, and jealousy to be aspects of emotional immaturity, they took that in offense as the deity they worshipped also had those traits, sermons on television even spoke ill of me for that. When I defined toxic superficiality, they got upset and targeted my organization claiming we stood for cultural genocide. When I explained how arrogance was culturally normalized and even encouraged, they recieved my words as an attack on them and their very way of life". Still a little baffled, the young boy replied "Why would the religious have a problem with your stance against arrogance?". The old man sighed andd too a sip from his canteen of tea and answered "Because faith is just a culturally encouraged form of intellectual arrogance, and when you explain it as such using logic and actual official definitions back up your claim, you press a button with them that brings out the very chaos inherant to their beliefs, some religious groups had expressed no problem with my argument, however that was only and specifically the groups I saw no signifcant chaos in".
Looking defeated and exhausted, the boy replied once again. "There are few religions left, time has eroded most of them.... why not try again if the problems that held you back at that point were the religious?" The old man sighed and lifted up his shirt showing what was once a gaping wound, partially healed but now starting to look like it was infected and replied. "I am in much pain, and can not afford the help I need, my real drive was a selfish one, to know what home felt like, this pain is too great to continue much longer". The boy then looked rather depressed and responded "I need some time to process all of this, I will leave you in peace for now."
The boy walked away never to see the old man again, when the old man died the boy inherited the from the old man a book that he had written. The boy read and studied the old man's writings and decided to carry on his work as the boy saw it as the only and proper way to respond to the old man's challenge. On the old man's grave marker the epitaph read the following; "You deserve your rest and one could only hope that another would succeed where you failed".
© Lokeal Votaro
This visibly bothered the boy as he was a highly shelteted optimist who had not seen the harshness of the world and so he was baffled. The boy had an idea and looked at the old man and asked "What would convince you to change your mind about killing yourself?". The man looked a bit annoyed at first but then his expression changed to a bit of a mixture between being confused and amused and so he replied to the boy "I have a challenge for you, if you can prove me wrong in my assessment of the world, I will not take my life but instead find a reason to live on". Looking somewhat pleased yet a little intimidated by how the tone the old man delivered made him feel like the old man was confident that his challenge would be an impossible one, he reluctantly responded "Deal, what exactly is this assessment you speak of?". The boy sits down attentatively after pulling a chair over to the steps where the old man sat, and the old man responds "Humanity really only has four problems in total that it inflicts upon itself, one being a major problem and the other three being amplified by said major problem, people would much rather kill and silence those with solutions than to work with them. Often times the solutions are only for problems caused by the four problems mentioned, and so it would seem that people are actually in love with their problems. Over two thousand years ago a first step to a solution to our biggest problem was proposed, the man's name was Socrates and he recieved the death sentence for his efforts, as a result the culture of inquiry that could have been was never truly realized, and so our primary problem was enabled to flourish as it was deemed more important to protect than the life of the man who promoted a means to resolve it. Now over two thousand years later, the problem still exists and brings more problems into the picture, and yet people are too in love with this core problem to do anything more than focus on the problems it brings rather than to focus on resolving the core problem itself, they are like a room full of people focused only on mopping up elephant blood while ignoring the gaping wound in the animal and yet people look at them and regard them as true problem solvers and those doing the mopping up are usually eating up every praise and often relying on that praise."
The old man paused for a bit and took from his pocket a plastic bag filled with loose pieces of gum, pulled out a piece and began chewing it giving the boy some time to ask a question the old man could tell the boy was waiting to ask. The boy takes a breath and then asks "What are these four problems and why do they bother you so much that you would be driven to want to take your own life over them?". The old man clearly pleased by the inquiry the boy provided then responded "Because the world is the only option for a home that I can see and yet I am homesick for a better world, the pain and suffering everyone needlessly faces regardless of our power to prevent such is simply too great to bear even enough for me to even so much as to know what home feels like and the sheer imbecility of people makes me far too often feel alone in this world. When I see how I am the only one homesick for a better world, what little hope for humanity I have dies out as if people were sincerely empathetic and considerate of others, they too would be homesick for a better world, the pain is simply too great and yet the problems are too few for any truly valid excuses as to why such is ignored. Our main problem is regarding arrogance, the other three problems are toxic superficiality, emotional immaturity, and defects in empathy and consideration for others". The boy looks a bit saddened and feels a bit hopeless in his ability to console the old man for his homesickness and so he instead focuses on the list of the problems provided by the old man and proceeds to inquiry once again "Why is arrogance our biggest problem when something as serious as defects in empathy and consideration for others is on that list, also, could you please explain what you mean by Toxic superficiality?".
Once again the old man appears to be pleased by the boy's inquiry and he responds. "No man can be skilled in all things and knowledgable of all things because life is short, intelligence is a matter of specialization, passion guides sincerity in effort to improve one's self, everyone has different passions, and and everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Because of this, we need to value the agency and positive potential of others, and not doing so is done in sheer arrogance while empathy and consideration for others would help, even where it exists people's arrogance is too great for real solutions to come, instead people simply either provide bandaids for gaping wounds rather than real solutions or they use the problem as a resource to feed their desire for virtue signaling. Toxic superficiality simply pertains to that in which is superficial and even the slightest bit inherently harmful, the superficial aspect can be a matter of deception, a matter of tradition, an irrational law or a rule people are forced to obey with threats of consequences, the sheer irrationality that people can see in our bureaucratic systems that as a result causes unnecessary stress, or even a matter of social or cultural norms that can not stand up to the scrutiny of a logical argument for discontinuing it as a norm."
The old man man takes out a canteen filled with tea, softly shuts his eyes and takes a long indulgent few drinks from it giving the boy time to ask another question. "When you said emotional immaturity, what exactly did you mean? I can make several guesses but if I am to meet your challenge, I will need to be sure." The old man perks up a bit, his expression mildly pleased and yet somehow saddened as if it somehow brought back painful memories and regrets. The old man then replies to the boy's inquiry "A long time ago, a philosophy called stoicism was created, there are many things we all failed to learn from and advance further from through this philosophy and much harm has resulted from that failure. There are three significantly dangerous and harmful emotions that we need to overcome through our standars of emotional maturity; hatred, anger, and jealousy. Hatred has no merit, it drains you of emotional energy while neither truly connecting you to an important aspect of your humanity, nor being a necessary motivator as anything that can bring you discomfort can motivate you. Hatred is a strong disliking for something, one could easily simply dislike and feel sorrow for such on the side and the discomfort of that sorrow would be a better motivator as through hatred malice often blooms for hatred is chaotic in nature and chaos of mind leads to poor decisions irrational thoughts and actions that were never even necessary and yet would often lead to harming others and even one's own quality of life. Anger and jealousy are both things people feel as a result of being overly self centered. Anger occurs when one's expectations for how the world should revolve around how they believe and percieve themselves and others to deserve are not met, their mind is unable to accept the reality and so the mind becomes chaotic and lashing out either internally at the organizational prowess of their own mind, or externally at people or objects.... in reality, it is no different than a temper tantrum, it just so happens to go by a different name that people have deluded themselves into believing as something different entirely. Jealousy has pretty much the same cause but is more self centered than that, the cause for jealousy is a conflict between how one believes the world to revolve around what they feel they deserve, and the reality of that not being the case for how thing work with the addition of the reality that someone else is recieving such while they are not and when they see this there is a hatred for the recipient of whatever it is said person is feeling they deserve. What should be occuring is the understanding that the world does not in the least bit revolve around you and that often what happens simply can't be helped along side a sort of satisfaction for knowing something to be obtainable and for that to inspire efforts to further one's own progress, instead like complete imbeciles they waste that energy through emotional channels that will get them no where and thus have little to no energy left for acquiring such for themselves. All these things considered I would have to say that I am completely justified in my cynicism".
The boy looked at the old man with a look conveying a loss of hope through his expressions, and then his mind switched to thinking that surely this man has made no significant efforts to resolve the problems he clearly has a grasp of, after all if I have no problem listening to this old man and can feel him influencing me, then surely there were others who would have happily followed and aided his supposed ambition to right the wrongs in the world as he sees it. The boy's mind did this switch, not because it was rational, but because it was more comforting than the horrifying image of the world that the old man was painting, if he could blame the inaction of the old man for his suffering, then surely the boy could leave this challenge without the emotional damage that taking in what this old man has to say would no doubt cause him. The young boy then proceeded to ask "If the world is as you have said, then how long have you been aware of these problems and what all have you done in an attempt to resolve these problems?". Clearly hoping to hear a response justifying in the boy's mind a means to emotionally detach from the old man as a means to protect him from said pain that the boy's empathy was bringing him the boy sat attentively awaiting the old man's response.
The old man then began telling the boy of his plans and attempts to achieve them. "I had an ambition to change the world, I even created a custom set of social and cultural standards that would embody, preserve, and ensure the advancement of the very changes that were needed without harming anyone in the process. The plans were to create a communal guild for self-actualization and community service, it would have replaced the bills people would normally have with community service hours and sustainabile living utilizing contracts with the city in which the project would start out in as a means to provide community service tasks that would save the city money while ensuring a channel for diplomacy with the local government. The project would have been funded through multiple means, but would in a sense be self sufficient though relying on a non-profit tax exemption status to cut the costs of operations and help secure its future and advancement of goals. For early funding I had no other choice than to rely on crowfunding, from there the plans were to purchase a plot of land sufficient for enough space to house 150 people along side space to produce ten times the amount of food they would need to be able to survive using a subterrain vertical aquaponics facility that could produce food year round as a primary source of food. The excess food would be made into preserved dishes and stored in case of an emergency, the rest would be either donated to those in need or sold off for money to invest in the project depending on whichever could be deemed to make a better impact for the greater good, in other words more often than not, donated. In this setting people would have been counciled as to help them find their passions and talents and through such understand whatever the best version of themselve would look like and after passing some tests on emotional and psychological maturity and self-discipline, they would then be prioritized for services and financial assistance in becoming that version of themselves. Once they would achieve a state of self-actualization there would be reason for rejoicing as such would mean that said person's passion was a resource through which the project could be enriched. As the saying often goes, if you enjoy what you do for a living, you never have to work a day in your life. Maslow's extended hierarchy of human needs was a perfect model for attempting to create such a society on, and dunbar's number was a useful model for helping to ensure stability in terms of civility amongst the project residents as well as ensure the ease of management for such. I wasn't going to stop with just one location, no the plan was to duplicate such, and even obtain funding through the creation of an additional non-profit that would own a monolithic dome style stripmall where we would subsidize rent for small bussinesses that might otherwise struggle to get a foot up to be able to compete and strive in our economy. I even had plans to contract with Netflix for producing a reality TV show that would spread awareness of the project to create a sort of glass wall effect and ensure transparency. The idea there was that when the culture and environment would stabilize, the ideas it would represent would be infectious and influence upon the freewil of some to adapt said cultural standards as their own and thus help lubricate the project's ability to spread. I had everything figured out.... and even understood the patterns and shared failures of utopian attempts others made prior to what I had preposed."
Looking like a lightbulb went off in his head while starting to look a little emotionally drained, the boy replied "It sounds like you may have bitten off more than you could chew, if you had so much figured out, then what aside from that obvious problem went wrong? Also, much of the words you used I don't even know what means....." The old man frowned and replied "Yes and I suppose my failure to find a suitable person to edit and reword my many writings and manefesto was perhaps one of the major points where I failed, due to my neurodivergence I am not very skilled with words when it comes to simplifying things for others to be able to understand and as you can see there are a lot of aspects to my plans that are actually quite necessary for it to function, what you may not be aware of there is I only named about half of such in an attempt to keep it a bit shorter. As for your statement that I should have started small, I tried to do that but as soon as I would make any headway people took advantage of the fact that I was accumulating resources to enact the plans I had set in motion and wanted such for themselves, I kept making and losing progress and allies kept coming and going until I decided to try and take a risk to leap forward, it was all or nothing 50/50 and I ended up losing everything as a result. The way people's arrogance fead their greed proved too much for me to overcome, like piranhas looking for blood they sought to ruin the plans I had and efforts I was making. Religious people offended by many of the things my project stood for zealously targeted my organization as often as they could, frequently draining the resources we had been accumulating through frivolous lawsuits making us unable to make any real progress. Unable to consistantly pay the people on the board of directors for the non-profit I established, too many of them just up and quit before the internal revenue service decided my project was no longer a certified non-profit, it was simply too unsustainable and we never even so much as got to the point where we were able to purchase the plot of land we needed. I was too well known for the standards I embodied, hiring me was considered controversial and so I had to rely on government assistance but then prejudice against me from the workers employed to run those government assistances eventually assigned me a caseworker that knew of my work and efforts and wished me to suffer for the influence I was trying to gain for implementing changes I had in mind to implement. I eventually got cut off from such services and ended up homeless and reliant on what little kindness remained in people."
Looking a bit confused and in disbelief, the boy simply asked "Why would religious people target you?". The old man let out a sigh and explained "When I proclaimed anger, hatred, and jealousy to be aspects of emotional immaturity, they took that in offense as the deity they worshipped also had those traits, sermons on television even spoke ill of me for that. When I defined toxic superficiality, they got upset and targeted my organization claiming we stood for cultural genocide. When I explained how arrogance was culturally normalized and even encouraged, they recieved my words as an attack on them and their very way of life". Still a little baffled, the young boy replied "Why would the religious have a problem with your stance against arrogance?". The old man sighed andd too a sip from his canteen of tea and answered "Because faith is just a culturally encouraged form of intellectual arrogance, and when you explain it as such using logic and actual official definitions back up your claim, you press a button with them that brings out the very chaos inherant to their beliefs, some religious groups had expressed no problem with my argument, however that was only and specifically the groups I saw no signifcant chaos in".
Looking defeated and exhausted, the boy replied once again. "There are few religions left, time has eroded most of them.... why not try again if the problems that held you back at that point were the religious?" The old man sighed and lifted up his shirt showing what was once a gaping wound, partially healed but now starting to look like it was infected and replied. "I am in much pain, and can not afford the help I need, my real drive was a selfish one, to know what home felt like, this pain is too great to continue much longer". The boy then looked rather depressed and responded "I need some time to process all of this, I will leave you in peace for now."
The boy walked away never to see the old man again, when the old man died the boy inherited the from the old man a book that he had written. The boy read and studied the old man's writings and decided to carry on his work as the boy saw it as the only and proper way to respond to the old man's challenge. On the old man's grave marker the epitaph read the following; "You deserve your rest and one could only hope that another would succeed where you failed".
© Lokeal Votaro
