In the end, the truth will out. It always does.
In any case, I took apart an only-I-am-smart-enough-to-live-so-we’re-all-doomed! argument lately, and my reward was yet another unpersoning — with the usual full helping of cowardly silence. I saved nothing of what I had said except for this, alas:
The essence of these kinds of despairing laments is that there is some ontological difference between the humble-bragging champion of ennui and other people. This is false to fact.
There is nothing you can know that other human beings cannot learn. The obvious proof is that virtually everything any one of us knows was discovered by other people, and each of us was lucky enough to master those hard-won discoveries in Fathertongue, in man-made notation systems.
If other people make choices you don’t like, that’s their business. If you want for them to learn what you know, in the hope that they will choose differently going forward, what are you doing to share your putatively better knowledge?
If the answer is nothing, you may have found the reason for your despair. But the sky will not fall, no matter how cloudy your mood.
Organisms seek to thrive. Us, too. People can be fooled, but no one wants to be fooled. In the end, the truth will out. It always does.
If you do not intend to shove yourself into a gas chamber, if you want to live your life, I recommend you read Man Alive repeatedly until you see for yourself why evangelizing egoism to everyone you know is the best means you have of changing the world now, while there is still time.
Or: You can stick your fingers in your ears and make believe your problems are someone else’s fault. My fault, perhaps, for holding you accountable to your humanity. Feel free to shun me if that helps.
Either way, everybody’s gotta take a side…
