Book's

I've been reading for a long time.  It's a useful skill, and its interesting that our brains have adapted the ability to preform this skill without conscious thought.  I read everything I move my eyes to, regardless of whether it was my intention or not.  It is a reflexive motion, like breathing.  Over the years, my tastes have changed gravitation's slightly.  At eleven or so I started reading novels, there wasn't any of this "Teen Fiction" crap we have today, so I was reading, well, real books.  Stuff that probably shouldn't have been given to a small child.  But I read them.  When I was sixteen, I started reading more philosophical work and was very interested in Shakespeare (not for the whiny teen angsty crap, but because the verse is really quite amazing).  Stuff having to deal with the tiny thoughts people have. Love, hate, need, greed, want, lust, apathy, revenge, anger, vengeance, justice, sadness, melancholy, depression, repression, inception, and every other subconscious mental meandering that someone thinks they might have an insight to. 

Then (I'd say finally, but it isn't really an end, just another page break), I started reading things on science.  NeuroLinguistics, Rationality, Logic, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy (Never Never Never astrology) Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Statistics, Economics.  All of this stuff is still interesting to me, even the stuff from my teen years.  Through it all though, has been an unhealthy smattering of fantasy and science fiction books.  I say unhealthy because I realized something, starring at my bookshelves the other day.

I realized that these book lie to you.  They're all the same, there is your hero, and your "Bad Guys".  Some of them maybe have the misunderstood guys, or the 'they-might-be-good-if-we-had-just' guys.  There is the crew of supportive friends, maybe a few role models.  And while there is some horrible battle or confrontation to be done, at the end, everything is fine and everyone is happy, and deep down, even the bad guys are basically good people.  This is a load of shit.  We all know full well that there are some people in the world, and actual percentage of people, who are not good and decent.  But lets forget about that 2% (yes ladies and gentlemen 2% of the male population are psychopaths) who have no concept of pain, fear or any other emotions outside of themselves.  What about the politicians, the spin doctors, the advertising executives, the C.E.O's, the Stock Jockeys, professional sports players, big business owners, small business owners, drug addicts, drug pushers, dirty cops, dirty judges, racists, bigots, hypocrites, abusers, movie producers, movie stars, all the self involved self important nincompoops?  That's a huge list of people that at one point or another, we've all looked at and said to ourselves "How can they/we live like/with them(selves)?"

Well, lets face it, its really really easy to be a terrible person to someone.  We're rude to people all the time, we plot and scheme, talk about people behind their backs, work out ways to cut out the competition at work or in a love life.  It's just a fact that people don't get along all the time.  We don't feel shame about these things, or beat ourselves up.  It isn't in our nature.  The only difference between most evils we hear about is scale, or possibly inventiveness, but the base motivation is the same.  We all have them, the desire to do well, to out do others, to be the best, be recognized, honored and remembered.  There are no people who are wholly good, every level of a persons behavior is really motivated by one thing, to be human.  So yes, there is shame in kicking a man who's down, or pushing an old grandma, but most every evil we face isn't some amorphous controlling entity, its just humanity. 

Its our humanity that makes us great as a species, but its also our greatest flaw.  There is good and bad in everyone, that's the rub.  It's easy to look at a person who defrauded us and assign them evil status, and to look at our own 'unselfish' deeds and proclaim ourselves good.  But I've found, the best of people are the ones who accept their own flaws.  They're the ones who are most comfortable with themselves, but atypically, cannot fit into society.  They see all people as human, not one thing or another, not a singular persistent trait, but a collection of mutable, changing ideas, feelings, and actions.  Being human isn't just altruism, courage, selflessness, and all the other good things we can be, its also being some of the worst.  Self-serving, jealous, hording our time and feelings.  You can't grow as a person if you cannot accept the fact that sometimes, things have to be about you.