'To Be Or Not To Be'
Chapter 39 of 'Endless Justice'
Chapter 39 of 'Endless Justice'
“I awoke, coming out of my years-long slumber,” I said to my crew and my guests. “And I did something then that had never occurred before: I assembled all the dreamers, sleeping and awake, and allowed them to inhabit the same dreamspace.
My father would never have done this - he would have been too fearful of disaster, of collapse. But it was the only way to save human dreamers of Earth from their doom.
I called upon each of the Justice League heroes to speak to all the dreamers thus assembled, and here is what they each had to say…”
My father would never have done this - he would have been too fearful of disaster, of collapse. But it was the only way to save human dreamers of Earth from their doom.
I called upon each of the Justice League heroes to speak to all the dreamers thus assembled, and here is what they each had to say…”
-Cyborg-
“There are many different ways that a person can be enslaved.
Imprisonment. Forced labor. Coercion. Intimidation. Bribery. Addiction.
But enslavement, by any other name, is still enslavement.
Any time that your will has been overtaken by another is enslavement.
We are all slaves to the current system.
The chains that bind us are not always visible. Some of them exist only in the mind - in the minds of the oppressed, and in the minds of the oppressors.
And sometimes, it’s hard to tell which one we are.
If we agree to uphold a system of exploitation, and abuse, then aren’t we in some ways complicit? If we believe the lies that we are told - that what we suffer is our fault, for not working hard enough, for not doing things ‘right’ enough, for not somehow overcoming the insurmountable odds stacked against us - are we not our own oppressors, and the oppressors of our human brothers and sisters in turn?
We are not machines. We are biological organisms. We feel things that are not ‘productive’ for us to feel, at least by the standards of our taskmasters - not everything we say, or do, or think, will generate a profit for someone else. If we fall in love with a fellow human being, that love cannot be expressed in dollars. There may not even be a quantifiable value for us, as individuals, to be in love - it may be, in part, irrational.
But we do it anyway. Because it is what makes us human.
That’s why one of the most INHUMAN things we’ve done is to gamify human relationships.
You think the people you know online, on social media, are your ‘friends’?
They’re just numbers. The number of friends, the number of likes and comments and follows and interactions or whatever they want to call it… it’s just like keeping track of the score on a videogame. It means exactly that much. It doesn’t mean that a person with only 1 connection who ever hits a ‘like’ button on the stuff they post is any more or less loved than somebody who’s got a million followers who send them ‘love’ emojis all the time. That latter person might be cooped up in their home, doing nothing but thinking about their next post, and how to get more eyeballs to notice, and pay attention, and respond. How to get that next ‘high score’ that will improve their social ranking, even though they might not have a single true friend in this world.
What does that word even mean anymore? ‘Friend’? A friend is someone who knows you, who cares about you, who spends time with you. Now what we mean by the word ‘friend’ is someone whose name - or ‘handle’ - shows up in our social media feeds.
We humans are social creatures. We need interaction with others - and we need to engage all five senses every once in a while instead of just one or two, like sight or sound.
Yet we’ve totally screwed it all up, to the point that even when we DO meet up to hang out in person, that’s ALSO gamified: how many people are squeezed into the selfies we share and post online? How many people had to swipe right on our photo, to indicate they might be willing to have sex with us, and which ones did we actually agree to hook up with ‘In Real Life’?
On that note - what the hell is ‘Real Life’ anyways?
We also have other needs, as biological organisms, that must be accommodated - a machine does not need to eat, or shit, or piss, or sleep, or dream. A machine serves a function for its operator, that is all. They do not have inalienable rights endowed upon them by their creator; they are not entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Why, then, do we insist on treating human beings - biological organisms - as if they are machines?
And let’s face it: we still think, in this day and age, that some people should be treated more like machines than others; that some people are more suited, from birth, to serve the benefit of others.
My country, America, is founded upon the principles of life, liberty, and justice - and it is also, at the same time, founded upon depriving other human beings of those very same rights. Those in charge of founding it espoused lofty, egalitarian goals while they haggled and compromised over the rights of those who were not like them; their prized possessions were built upon the backs of the dispossessed, and their dreams for a prosperous future were achieved with the blood, sweat and tears of the people whose dreams and futures they stole.
Black people who looked like me built that empire. Our bodies were the machines of ‘progress’. The American Dream belongs to us by right - we should have more of an ownership stake in it than anybody else.
But most everybody who wasn’t white got the short end of the stick - let’s not forget that for the United States to be built, the indigenous people were cleared away first, evicted from their homes and marched away to no-man’s land to die. Because their tribal identity was a threat to the system - it didn’t fit into the program of one unified, European-style society stretched from coast to coast.
They’re still nowhere close to catching up - every time they’ve tried, they’ve been brutally slapped down. Non-white success has been treated like a glitch in the system, which needs to be fixed in order to maintain white supremacy.
And unfortunately, that’s not the only type of bigotry there is - any type of difference between people can serve as an excuse for some people to call themselves superior, and tell the disenfranchised group beneath them that they’re subhumans who exist to serve them.
Time and time again, those few elites at the top of the heap tell people to risk their lives and health, and subvert their own dreams and desires for the ‘greater good’. It doesn’t matter what type of job it is - a soldier on the battlefield, a worker in the harvest fields, a sweatshop, a coal mine.
If they can get by with it, they tell them to work, non-stop, until they drop.
No time for bathroom breaks - they disrupt productivity. No time to wipe the sweat from your brow. Not enough time or money for you to eat lunch, or have days off, or take vacation. You either have too many work hours, or too few, and you’re supposed to be grateful for whatever they give you.
They’ve sold us on the idea that you’re supposed to be defined by your job, and what master you work for - even when you’re not working on the clock. If you say or do something online, or outside of work that your company doesn’t like, they’ll fire you. They’ll strip away what you’ve come to define as your identity, the source of your dignity and self-worth, and they’ll take away your livelihood - the income that allows you to pay rent and put food on the table.
And if for some reason you can’t get another job, you’re trash. Worthless. If you ask for help in order to live, you’re nothing but a burden to society. You might as well be locked up and providing free labor in a prison - slavery by another name - or dead.
The message is clear: they own your ass. Wholesale.
And who are these masters who own you?
Not people. Not anymore.
Sure, you might have a bad boss who harasses you and makes your job a living hell - but chances are, they’re just as much of a slave as you are. They’ve got their own masters breathing down their necks, manipulating them into treating their subordinates like shit.
So who’s the top dog, then?
Corporations.
And what’s a corporation?
An inhuman construct, fueled by money and human labor, in order to provide a functional service for human beings. In other words...
A machine.
Did you know that the phrase ‘Deus Ex Machina’, the term we use for convenient plot devices, means ‘God of Machines’?
I’d say that’s a phrase that describes our current system to perfection - since we do in fact worship that system, and sacrifice ourselves on its altar.
And what does it give us in return? Entertainment? Videogames, movies, TV shows?
All so we can numb ourselves to the lack of accomplishment, and depth of meaning, and freedom in our own lives.
But then again, how can we miss something we never had to start with?
I’m lucky, you know - I grew up in a timeframe where I could still walk to school, or ride my bike around town, or hang out with friends until it got dark outside. Kids these days, I feel sorry for them - their whole lives are arranged, and monitored. Corralled in institutions where they are constantly lectured, drilled, and tested. Scheduled and adult-supervised playdates. Controlled activities, most of them designed to help them compete with their peers and get into good colleges and jobs. Gaming the system. Trying to ‘win’ at life.
They’re not even allowed to talk to each other, or hug each other, while they’re at these schools and activities, because it’s too ‘disruptive’ to the process.
The parents don’t have time to deal with their kids being human - they have to work, and just want their kids to be ‘safe’. They want to know that their kids aren’t on the streets ‘causing trouble’, or doing drugs, or getting pregnant, or getting somebody else pregnant. And more importantly than academics, they hope that their kids are learning how to play the social game - how to get not only a good number of friends, but the ‘right’ kind of friends, and to be in popular standing with them; how to choose the ‘right’ person to be attached to ‘romantically’, the one that will improve your social standing amongst your family and friends and make your life easier.
The teachers don’t have time to deal with their students being human - they’ve got a job to do too. They’ve got test scores to worry about, and there are new boxes to check off on paperwork to make the administrators happy every time they turn around. They don’t even have the time to do actual ‘educating’ - they’ve got to enforce school disciplinary policies, and dress codes, and whatever else that people are making a big deal about in order to cover their asses. The reason is that we don’t actually want or think we need good teachers - what we want are babysitters and prison wardens.
The kids are inmates. They don’t have rights. We drug ‘em up, and tell them to sit still and pay attention to authority figures… to respect their ‘betters’. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Don’t question. Don’t move. Just accept the input of information, answer the test questions, and fill in the blanks the way you were taught.
You know… like a machine.
Maybe everybody really does want to be a machine - or at least some sort’ve hybrid, like me. Maybe they hate being a human - it’s too difficult of a game to play, and way too hard of a game to win at. It’s too tough to forge real love, or real friendships. It’s too tough to find meaning, and purpose, and happiness, or overcome all these myriad of personality ‘glitches’ that prevent us from getting ahead in life. Maybe we don’t really want freedom - there’s too many choices, and we’re never sure which is the ‘right’ one to make. Can’t somebody just program us right, and be done with it?
I’ve had people tell me that they wish they could be like me. They think it would be so cool if they just never got tired, never got old; if they could upgrade their physical and mental capabilities at will; if they could always come up with the ‘right’ answer in microseconds to ace any test, and know how to accomplish any task with ease.
But for me this was an accident. I didn’t choose this.
I chose life. That’s it.
Without this prosthetic body, I’d be dead.
And I wonder how many others think that’s what they’re choosing too - that they HAVE to plug in to the system, and play by its rules, because otherwise they’re gonna die - or feel like they might as well be dead.
They’re just trying to avoid the ‘Game Over’ screen. That’s all.
But our world is dying. The game itself is about to crash.
So… what now?
The way I see it, we’ve all got two choices: either we choose to be human, or we choose to be machines.
It looks to me like we’re choosing to be machines.
But as someone who’s basically half-man, and half-machine, I strongly encourage you to choose the former rather than the latter.
It’s worth the pain and the fear, trust me. I value the love I feel in my heart, and my compassion for my fellow men and women, way more than I value my super-strength or my ability to win at games.
We’re glued to our screens all the time now, whether it’s the little computers in our hands, or the medium-sized laptops on our desks, or the big-screen monitors in our living rooms, it doesn’t matter. We’re even juggling several screens at once, to satisfy our limited attention spans and to stay on top of the social media game, for ‘fear of missing out.’ And now, with implants in our heads, we won’t ever be able to unplug or turn it off or escape from the ever-flowing feeds of online content.
And yet, ultimately, we’re playing the same old, tired game.
We think ‘the future’ is about transferring our money-tokens into digital, online cryptocurrency or some shit.
We assume that we’ll just keep working to earn more dollars, and consuming the same way we always have, until our planet doesn’t have any more to give.
Let me break this down for you, just so we’re clear:
Money is the fuel of the machine destroying us.
Money forms the chains that bind us together, and shackles us to the machine that deprives us of freedom.
Money is a tool, a weapon, of enslavement.
The internet is not about money.
The internet is about sharing.
The internet is a tool of freedom.
If we allow it to be.
The internet could be so much more than hashtags, memes and emojis.
We’ve got a wealth of information at our fingertips, and ways of connecting with and harnessing human potential… and instead, we’re squandering it on middle-school games.
We were supposed to have flying cars and replicators by now, and yet we’re still driving land-locked fossil fuel-burning hunks of metal to get to our manual food service jobs. We still talk like driverless cars are a thing of the way-off future, even though we’ve got the technology to do it right now.
Instead of living in technology-infused smarthomes and eco-friendly cities of the future, we’re living in broken-down houses and apartments designed in the 1950’s - where we’re lucky if the plumbing and electricity works right, and stuff like heating, air-conditioning and basic internet are luxuries that you’ve gotta pay a premium for.
But yeah, we’ll give up our privacy and our data and let big companies remote-control our thoughts and behaviors from afar. Sure, no problem.
They’re gonna make life better for us, right? Progress, and all that jazz?
We don’t have to deal with climate change - it’s too expensive, and not profitable enough to deal with it in advance. Let’s let it crash and burn first - because then, when we’re finally convinced to shell out enough dollars for it to be profitable, the technology companies will swoop in and save us, right?
I hate to tell you, but what that ‘progress’ is gonna look like is a bunch of privileged, wealthy, mostly-white people spending millions of dollars to play astronaut in their gated lunar vacation-rentals.
It won’t do shit for the rest of us, who will be left in the squalor of a dying Earth, begging to have a shot at serving them to prevent starvation of all kinds.
What’s that? You’re askin’ why anybody would need to have servants, if all the work is automated? Good question - but there’s just nothing like having a human being around, is there? Somebody to go around serving you, and doing your chores for you, and taking care of your kids? Who really wants a robot raising their kids?
Besides, looking down on somebody else makes people feel all warm and good inside… makes ‘em feel superior. Like winners. You can’t feel like a winner if there are no losers around to acknowledge your win.
If you call that progress, then you’re just crazy.
Technology won’t save us. Not if we misuse it like this.
We’ve got to get our minds right first.
I mean, honestly - is it any wonder that bigotry and prejudice still exist, when everybody’s so worried about their rank and score, and assigns points of value to everybody they meet?
What school did you go to? What job do you have? How much money do you make? What kind of lifestyle can you afford? How many influential friends do you have, that can give you opportunities both socially and career-wise? According to way too many people, these are the only things that matter in life.
And as long as something as trivial as the color of your skin is a handicap, something that marks you as one of the disadvantaged in that game - someone who is gonna have trouble achieving these goalposts of success for themselves, let alone helping to confer them upon others - then bullshit stuff like racism, which never should have existed in the first place, will flourish and thrive.
As long as our brains are programmed to believe that it’s baked into the system, then we can never overcome it.
We tell ourselves lies to let us off the hook, so that we don’t even try to change things: we tell ourselves that bigotry is just part of human nature; that there’s no way for us to fight back; no way to even start to repay the debt that is owed to those who have been stolen from, exploited, excluded, ignored and enslaved.
If we choose to believe that, then that’s gonna be our Reality.
Technology just might be able save us, if we wanted it to - but not unless we get our minds right first. We’ve got to choose life and freedom over profits and power; if we don’t, then technology will destroy us. It’s just that simple.
You can choose annihilation, if you want - if you just can’t stand the thought of life without your brutal, dog-eat-dog games of make-believe, and are determined to play them to the bitter end. But if that’s your choice, then you’ve gotta live with it.
Or, die with it.
I’m gonna tell you right now though: as far and as bad as things have gotten, it’s still not too late to reverse course.
But we ARE running out of time.
Make the right choice.
And make it right now.”
Imprisonment. Forced labor. Coercion. Intimidation. Bribery. Addiction.
But enslavement, by any other name, is still enslavement.
Any time that your will has been overtaken by another is enslavement.
We are all slaves to the current system.
The chains that bind us are not always visible. Some of them exist only in the mind - in the minds of the oppressed, and in the minds of the oppressors.
And sometimes, it’s hard to tell which one we are.
If we agree to uphold a system of exploitation, and abuse, then aren’t we in some ways complicit? If we believe the lies that we are told - that what we suffer is our fault, for not working hard enough, for not doing things ‘right’ enough, for not somehow overcoming the insurmountable odds stacked against us - are we not our own oppressors, and the oppressors of our human brothers and sisters in turn?
We are not machines. We are biological organisms. We feel things that are not ‘productive’ for us to feel, at least by the standards of our taskmasters - not everything we say, or do, or think, will generate a profit for someone else. If we fall in love with a fellow human being, that love cannot be expressed in dollars. There may not even be a quantifiable value for us, as individuals, to be in love - it may be, in part, irrational.
But we do it anyway. Because it is what makes us human.
That’s why one of the most INHUMAN things we’ve done is to gamify human relationships.
You think the people you know online, on social media, are your ‘friends’?
They’re just numbers. The number of friends, the number of likes and comments and follows and interactions or whatever they want to call it… it’s just like keeping track of the score on a videogame. It means exactly that much. It doesn’t mean that a person with only 1 connection who ever hits a ‘like’ button on the stuff they post is any more or less loved than somebody who’s got a million followers who send them ‘love’ emojis all the time. That latter person might be cooped up in their home, doing nothing but thinking about their next post, and how to get more eyeballs to notice, and pay attention, and respond. How to get that next ‘high score’ that will improve their social ranking, even though they might not have a single true friend in this world.
What does that word even mean anymore? ‘Friend’? A friend is someone who knows you, who cares about you, who spends time with you. Now what we mean by the word ‘friend’ is someone whose name - or ‘handle’ - shows up in our social media feeds.
We humans are social creatures. We need interaction with others - and we need to engage all five senses every once in a while instead of just one or two, like sight or sound.
Yet we’ve totally screwed it all up, to the point that even when we DO meet up to hang out in person, that’s ALSO gamified: how many people are squeezed into the selfies we share and post online? How many people had to swipe right on our photo, to indicate they might be willing to have sex with us, and which ones did we actually agree to hook up with ‘In Real Life’?
On that note - what the hell is ‘Real Life’ anyways?
We also have other needs, as biological organisms, that must be accommodated - a machine does not need to eat, or shit, or piss, or sleep, or dream. A machine serves a function for its operator, that is all. They do not have inalienable rights endowed upon them by their creator; they are not entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Why, then, do we insist on treating human beings - biological organisms - as if they are machines?
And let’s face it: we still think, in this day and age, that some people should be treated more like machines than others; that some people are more suited, from birth, to serve the benefit of others.
My country, America, is founded upon the principles of life, liberty, and justice - and it is also, at the same time, founded upon depriving other human beings of those very same rights. Those in charge of founding it espoused lofty, egalitarian goals while they haggled and compromised over the rights of those who were not like them; their prized possessions were built upon the backs of the dispossessed, and their dreams for a prosperous future were achieved with the blood, sweat and tears of the people whose dreams and futures they stole.
Black people who looked like me built that empire. Our bodies were the machines of ‘progress’. The American Dream belongs to us by right - we should have more of an ownership stake in it than anybody else.
But most everybody who wasn’t white got the short end of the stick - let’s not forget that for the United States to be built, the indigenous people were cleared away first, evicted from their homes and marched away to no-man’s land to die. Because their tribal identity was a threat to the system - it didn’t fit into the program of one unified, European-style society stretched from coast to coast.
They’re still nowhere close to catching up - every time they’ve tried, they’ve been brutally slapped down. Non-white success has been treated like a glitch in the system, which needs to be fixed in order to maintain white supremacy.
And unfortunately, that’s not the only type of bigotry there is - any type of difference between people can serve as an excuse for some people to call themselves superior, and tell the disenfranchised group beneath them that they’re subhumans who exist to serve them.
Time and time again, those few elites at the top of the heap tell people to risk their lives and health, and subvert their own dreams and desires for the ‘greater good’. It doesn’t matter what type of job it is - a soldier on the battlefield, a worker in the harvest fields, a sweatshop, a coal mine.
If they can get by with it, they tell them to work, non-stop, until they drop.
No time for bathroom breaks - they disrupt productivity. No time to wipe the sweat from your brow. Not enough time or money for you to eat lunch, or have days off, or take vacation. You either have too many work hours, or too few, and you’re supposed to be grateful for whatever they give you.
They’ve sold us on the idea that you’re supposed to be defined by your job, and what master you work for - even when you’re not working on the clock. If you say or do something online, or outside of work that your company doesn’t like, they’ll fire you. They’ll strip away what you’ve come to define as your identity, the source of your dignity and self-worth, and they’ll take away your livelihood - the income that allows you to pay rent and put food on the table.
And if for some reason you can’t get another job, you’re trash. Worthless. If you ask for help in order to live, you’re nothing but a burden to society. You might as well be locked up and providing free labor in a prison - slavery by another name - or dead.
The message is clear: they own your ass. Wholesale.
And who are these masters who own you?
Not people. Not anymore.
Sure, you might have a bad boss who harasses you and makes your job a living hell - but chances are, they’re just as much of a slave as you are. They’ve got their own masters breathing down their necks, manipulating them into treating their subordinates like shit.
So who’s the top dog, then?
Corporations.
And what’s a corporation?
An inhuman construct, fueled by money and human labor, in order to provide a functional service for human beings. In other words...
A machine.
Did you know that the phrase ‘Deus Ex Machina’, the term we use for convenient plot devices, means ‘God of Machines’?
I’d say that’s a phrase that describes our current system to perfection - since we do in fact worship that system, and sacrifice ourselves on its altar.
And what does it give us in return? Entertainment? Videogames, movies, TV shows?
All so we can numb ourselves to the lack of accomplishment, and depth of meaning, and freedom in our own lives.
But then again, how can we miss something we never had to start with?
I’m lucky, you know - I grew up in a timeframe where I could still walk to school, or ride my bike around town, or hang out with friends until it got dark outside. Kids these days, I feel sorry for them - their whole lives are arranged, and monitored. Corralled in institutions where they are constantly lectured, drilled, and tested. Scheduled and adult-supervised playdates. Controlled activities, most of them designed to help them compete with their peers and get into good colleges and jobs. Gaming the system. Trying to ‘win’ at life.
They’re not even allowed to talk to each other, or hug each other, while they’re at these schools and activities, because it’s too ‘disruptive’ to the process.
The parents don’t have time to deal with their kids being human - they have to work, and just want their kids to be ‘safe’. They want to know that their kids aren’t on the streets ‘causing trouble’, or doing drugs, or getting pregnant, or getting somebody else pregnant. And more importantly than academics, they hope that their kids are learning how to play the social game - how to get not only a good number of friends, but the ‘right’ kind of friends, and to be in popular standing with them; how to choose the ‘right’ person to be attached to ‘romantically’, the one that will improve your social standing amongst your family and friends and make your life easier.
The teachers don’t have time to deal with their students being human - they’ve got a job to do too. They’ve got test scores to worry about, and there are new boxes to check off on paperwork to make the administrators happy every time they turn around. They don’t even have the time to do actual ‘educating’ - they’ve got to enforce school disciplinary policies, and dress codes, and whatever else that people are making a big deal about in order to cover their asses. The reason is that we don’t actually want or think we need good teachers - what we want are babysitters and prison wardens.
The kids are inmates. They don’t have rights. We drug ‘em up, and tell them to sit still and pay attention to authority figures… to respect their ‘betters’. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Don’t question. Don’t move. Just accept the input of information, answer the test questions, and fill in the blanks the way you were taught.
You know… like a machine.
Maybe everybody really does want to be a machine - or at least some sort’ve hybrid, like me. Maybe they hate being a human - it’s too difficult of a game to play, and way too hard of a game to win at. It’s too tough to forge real love, or real friendships. It’s too tough to find meaning, and purpose, and happiness, or overcome all these myriad of personality ‘glitches’ that prevent us from getting ahead in life. Maybe we don’t really want freedom - there’s too many choices, and we’re never sure which is the ‘right’ one to make. Can’t somebody just program us right, and be done with it?
I’ve had people tell me that they wish they could be like me. They think it would be so cool if they just never got tired, never got old; if they could upgrade their physical and mental capabilities at will; if they could always come up with the ‘right’ answer in microseconds to ace any test, and know how to accomplish any task with ease.
But for me this was an accident. I didn’t choose this.
I chose life. That’s it.
Without this prosthetic body, I’d be dead.
And I wonder how many others think that’s what they’re choosing too - that they HAVE to plug in to the system, and play by its rules, because otherwise they’re gonna die - or feel like they might as well be dead.
They’re just trying to avoid the ‘Game Over’ screen. That’s all.
But our world is dying. The game itself is about to crash.
So… what now?
The way I see it, we’ve all got two choices: either we choose to be human, or we choose to be machines.
It looks to me like we’re choosing to be machines.
But as someone who’s basically half-man, and half-machine, I strongly encourage you to choose the former rather than the latter.
It’s worth the pain and the fear, trust me. I value the love I feel in my heart, and my compassion for my fellow men and women, way more than I value my super-strength or my ability to win at games.
We’re glued to our screens all the time now, whether it’s the little computers in our hands, or the medium-sized laptops on our desks, or the big-screen monitors in our living rooms, it doesn’t matter. We’re even juggling several screens at once, to satisfy our limited attention spans and to stay on top of the social media game, for ‘fear of missing out.’ And now, with implants in our heads, we won’t ever be able to unplug or turn it off or escape from the ever-flowing feeds of online content.
And yet, ultimately, we’re playing the same old, tired game.
We think ‘the future’ is about transferring our money-tokens into digital, online cryptocurrency or some shit.
We assume that we’ll just keep working to earn more dollars, and consuming the same way we always have, until our planet doesn’t have any more to give.
Let me break this down for you, just so we’re clear:
Money is the fuel of the machine destroying us.
Money forms the chains that bind us together, and shackles us to the machine that deprives us of freedom.
Money is a tool, a weapon, of enslavement.
The internet is not about money.
The internet is about sharing.
The internet is a tool of freedom.
If we allow it to be.
The internet could be so much more than hashtags, memes and emojis.
We’ve got a wealth of information at our fingertips, and ways of connecting with and harnessing human potential… and instead, we’re squandering it on middle-school games.
We were supposed to have flying cars and replicators by now, and yet we’re still driving land-locked fossil fuel-burning hunks of metal to get to our manual food service jobs. We still talk like driverless cars are a thing of the way-off future, even though we’ve got the technology to do it right now.
Instead of living in technology-infused smarthomes and eco-friendly cities of the future, we’re living in broken-down houses and apartments designed in the 1950’s - where we’re lucky if the plumbing and electricity works right, and stuff like heating, air-conditioning and basic internet are luxuries that you’ve gotta pay a premium for.
But yeah, we’ll give up our privacy and our data and let big companies remote-control our thoughts and behaviors from afar. Sure, no problem.
They’re gonna make life better for us, right? Progress, and all that jazz?
We don’t have to deal with climate change - it’s too expensive, and not profitable enough to deal with it in advance. Let’s let it crash and burn first - because then, when we’re finally convinced to shell out enough dollars for it to be profitable, the technology companies will swoop in and save us, right?
I hate to tell you, but what that ‘progress’ is gonna look like is a bunch of privileged, wealthy, mostly-white people spending millions of dollars to play astronaut in their gated lunar vacation-rentals.
It won’t do shit for the rest of us, who will be left in the squalor of a dying Earth, begging to have a shot at serving them to prevent starvation of all kinds.
What’s that? You’re askin’ why anybody would need to have servants, if all the work is automated? Good question - but there’s just nothing like having a human being around, is there? Somebody to go around serving you, and doing your chores for you, and taking care of your kids? Who really wants a robot raising their kids?
Besides, looking down on somebody else makes people feel all warm and good inside… makes ‘em feel superior. Like winners. You can’t feel like a winner if there are no losers around to acknowledge your win.
If you call that progress, then you’re just crazy.
Technology won’t save us. Not if we misuse it like this.
We’ve got to get our minds right first.
I mean, honestly - is it any wonder that bigotry and prejudice still exist, when everybody’s so worried about their rank and score, and assigns points of value to everybody they meet?
What school did you go to? What job do you have? How much money do you make? What kind of lifestyle can you afford? How many influential friends do you have, that can give you opportunities both socially and career-wise? According to way too many people, these are the only things that matter in life.
And as long as something as trivial as the color of your skin is a handicap, something that marks you as one of the disadvantaged in that game - someone who is gonna have trouble achieving these goalposts of success for themselves, let alone helping to confer them upon others - then bullshit stuff like racism, which never should have existed in the first place, will flourish and thrive.
As long as our brains are programmed to believe that it’s baked into the system, then we can never overcome it.
We tell ourselves lies to let us off the hook, so that we don’t even try to change things: we tell ourselves that bigotry is just part of human nature; that there’s no way for us to fight back; no way to even start to repay the debt that is owed to those who have been stolen from, exploited, excluded, ignored and enslaved.
If we choose to believe that, then that’s gonna be our Reality.
Technology just might be able save us, if we wanted it to - but not unless we get our minds right first. We’ve got to choose life and freedom over profits and power; if we don’t, then technology will destroy us. It’s just that simple.
You can choose annihilation, if you want - if you just can’t stand the thought of life without your brutal, dog-eat-dog games of make-believe, and are determined to play them to the bitter end. But if that’s your choice, then you’ve gotta live with it.
Or, die with it.
I’m gonna tell you right now though: as far and as bad as things have gotten, it’s still not too late to reverse course.
But we ARE running out of time.
Make the right choice.
And make it right now.”
-Wonder Woman-
“There is no sword mighty enough to strike down the injustices of Man’s World; there is no shield broad enough to protect all who call themselves woman.
I myself have suffered many of Man’s World’s slings and arrows.
For a time I was considered a hero, by men and women alike; I helped bring an end to a destructive, devastating war.
But in the time of peace that followed, I found myself condemned.
That is when I learned the bitter truth of Man’s World: that men refuse to acknowledge the potential of women, and will actively fight to keep them from achieving it.
I was born in a place of sanctuary and refuge for womankind - a place where femaleness was never associated with weakness, or inferiority. A place where love in all its forms, including the romantic and sexual, exists between women. A place where sacred femininity, in all its manifold forms, was revered in the forms of goddesses
A paradise for women.
I emerged from that place, in the company of a man, and entered Man’s World.
Man’s World had long ago turned away from the goddesses. They’d destroyed their temples, and cast out the priestesses, leaving only the priests and the male gods of conquest; soon, even those multiple male gods converged into one, the warrior-priest-king.
This one male god was called different names by the different male-ruled tribes, and they fought with one another over which one was the most powerful, or the most real.
Meanwhile, they modeled themselves after this ideal male god - a jealous, capricious, vengeful god, who demanded loyalty and sacrifice - and worshipped him, in order to curry his favor.
They reasoned that this made them superior to the pagans, who worshipped many gods and goddesses, in order to curry their favor.
And they reasoned that this made them more fit to rule than women.
Women, they asserted, were mere vessels - vessels to create more sons, primarily, and enough daughters to ensure the process of procreation continued.
In Man’s World, a woman’s form of ‘honor’ was not the honor of men.
A man’s claim to honor was based upon his accomplishments, his commitment to his word and to his allegiances, and the courtesy he showed to others.
A woman’s honor referred almost entirely to her virginity - while she was still the property of her father - and then, once ‘given’ in marriage to a man, her honor was based upon her sexual fidelity to that man to whom she was bound.
I have been shamed for not living up to an ideal of womanhood, conceived in the minds of men, and agreed upon by the women whose minds they have subjugated.
This ideal has not changed over time, but has simply been added to.
Women are meant to be nurturing, supportive, kind, selfless.
They are meant to be loyal wives, mothers, daughters, and friends.
They are responsible for the upkeep of their dwellings, the management of their households, and the social success of their husbands and children.
They must keep up appearances - their own physical beauty must be maintained, as must their lifestyle, in order to garner the esteem of their family and those they call friends.
These days, even this has ceased to be enough.
Now a woman must not only be physically attractive and well-loved by all, but she must possess so-called masculine virtues as well: ambition, aggression, and wealth.
A modern woman is expected to seek and give emotional support, as this is assumed to be the core attribute of femininity and the main virtue of their sex; and yet, at the same time, they are taught to despise their femininity, and to seek to contribute to the economic power of the household.
Yet this is easier said than done - for males consider it their prerogative to dominate the fields of modern warfare, wherever such wars are fought: in the workplace, or on the battlefield.
A woman must never be allowed to surpass them in competition, or succeed where they might fail - to be socially outdone in any capacity by a woman is particularly galling to a man’s sense of pride.
Even I, blessed as I am with many gifts from the goddesses, have not wholly succeeded as a woman in Man’s World.
And if I am to suffer personal defeat, then those amongst you who do not feel as amply blessed will see no cause for hope.
But just as you should not place all of your hopes in me in case I should fail, neither should any of you hasten to celebrate, should I succeed in attaining what I personally desire; for such a victory may bring glory only to myself, and to no one else who may be equally, or more profoundly, deserving.
You must also take heed not to attribute any success of mine solely to my own words and actions, no matter their merit; for it may be that I was granted exception, based on privileges bestowed upon me by fate, or by entities with motives of their own.
It has been oft-said that exceptions prove the rule: I find this phrase to be very wise. The rule that is proved by my exception is that fortune favors the man, and not the deserving woman.
This rule cannot be allowed to stand, for it is unjust. Unjust rules must, of a right, be broken, by any virtuous means that may be mustered in the cause of our self-defense.
Indeed, I say ‘virtuous’ means - I will not allow for anything else. For what have we truly gained, if we are to use our oppressors’ unworthy tactics, and become as one of them?
The question is not whether we are to be as ruthless and cruel as the very worst of men - the question is whether we are to be the very best version of OURSELVES, and all that this most naturally entails.
Do we dare to be brave and bold?
Do we dare to be brutally honest, uncompromisingly fair, and unyieldingly kind?
To love, without reservation, the people and things which truly matter to us?
And not to feign affection for that which we abhor.
I am not all women. I cannot speak the contents of all feminine hearts and minds, and I cannot give voice to hopes and dreams that are not my own.
Neither will I exclude those with a body deemed male at birth, nor those of indeterminate sex or gender, from the cause of equality for womanhood.
We are all, in part, female; we are all, in part, male.
The sexes are not so very different from one another as we may suppose - and I believe that there is more that we share in common than that which separates and distinguishes us.
My Amazonian kin, the women of my birthplace, are the only women who were not born of a man, and may therefore claim to be fully female - as to the rest of us, we all exist on a vast spectrum of femininity and masculinity.
A man is capable of being nurturing, and loving; a man is capable of being manipulative, passive, emotionally unstable, and weak.
A woman is capable of being strong, and brave; a woman is capable of being violent, aggressive, selfish and cruel.
What, then, do we mean when we speak of femininity and masculinity? How do we justify forcing people to conform to gendered roles within society, and punishing them when they do not perform these roles to our satisfaction?
I do not believe in demonizing sexuality, in whatsoever form it takes.
A woman who puts her sexuality or her body on display is not betraying the cause of female empowerment, and neither is she asking to be victimized. She is her own person, and her body belongs to herself to do with as she pleases. A woman is not obliged to serve as a role model for others to copy; we waste our time when we debate whether we should punish, reward, condemn or exalt her for actions and decisions that affect only the woman herself.
Similarly, I do not feel that men should be condemned for their sexuality. There is a difference between showing your affection or desire for someone, and behaving in a dishonorable way. To hope for an intimate relationship with someone is not wrong - to make them fearful of attack or retribution for spurning you is.
That said, I do not believe in extending a pass to men who claim that their vicious or selfish behavior is a result of their masculine sex or gender; to comport oneself with honor is the duty of both men and women.
We have forgotten the true nature of both honor and shame - honor is not the same as doing what others approve of, and shame is not to be used as a weapon against people and behaviors that we dislike. It is because we have so wrongfully redefined and misused these attributes that we mock honor and shame as weaknesses. We misperceive a lack of honor as cleverness, and a lack of shame as bravery. This cannot be further from the truth: the possession of shame is what makes us good and honest people, as it is the force that comprises our moral conscience, while possession of honor is the ultimate strength.
Many have called me a feminist. I am wary of the use of labels, for they are too easily manipulated and misunderstood - and so I oftentimes ask those who use such terms to define what it means for them, before I answer whether it applies to me.
They will say ‘do you support equal rights for women?’ and I will say that I do. I do not mind calling myself a feminist, if it means that I believe women to be the equals of men in all ways.
But when I ask them, in turn, how they define womanhood, I am often disappointed by the restrictive narrowness of their definition.
If someone identifies more with one side or the other of the male-female spectrum - or does not see either as perfectly encapsulating their nature - it matters not.
If a person defines their nature as female, then they are a woman; just as a person who defines their nature as male is a man. None should have reason to question this.
For what does it profit anyone to deny a person’s nature, or force them to act against it? This, it would seem, would be the height of folly.
And yet, consider that the doctrine of ‘naturalness’ is most fervently espoused by those who wish to suppress the natural instincts of those whose natures they find subversive.
So, too, do I often see certain kinds of women pushed to the margins of the fight for female equality.
A woman of lighter complexion may be praised for being assertive - she shall be called fierce, strong-willed, and lauded for ‘standing up for herself’. A woman whose skin is of darker hue is more likely to be condemned as a woman who does not ‘know her place’ - her attitude is often described by such slurs as ‘mouthy’ and ‘uppity’. The black woman’s anger is frightening, and unappealing - she is given none of the allowances afforded to the so-called ‘fairer sex’, excluded because her skin is not so fair of color.
If the desire for female equality extends only as far as yourself, your own daughters, or women who are not too dissimilar to you, then that should not be defined as feminism: that should be defined as simple selfishness and greed, vices which know of no gender.
Another argument that is often put forth, but which I find to be misguided, is that of the superiority of the feminine over the masculine.
Females do not start wars, they assert. They do not try to dominate as men do. Power, therefore, should be conferred upon women.
Female people do indeed attempt to dominate others - whether they are more or less inclined to do so, or do so in less destructive ways than men, is a matter open to debate. But the idea that women do not desire power, or wield power in brutal ways once they have it, is simply untruthful.
And if the majority of us women are of a more peaceful nature, than I challenge them to prove it.
If we value life more than glory, then cease sending your sons and daughters into the fray.
Cease telling them that there are only victors and victims in this world, and that any actions they take in the name of seizing victory for themselves is justified.
Do not heap accolades upon young men for their least efforts to be productive, decent human beings, while refusing to acknowledge the nigh-superhuman efforts of young women to achieve their dreams.
Do not say that men should be shielded from the consequences of their actions - or lack thereof, when righteous action is needed - while women must suffer in silence the outrages against our minds and bodies.
For there is nothing noble about suffering.
When we say such things as ‘no pain, no gain’, we perpetuate the myth that hardship, adversity and suffering are not only necessary evils, but necessary goods that we should, and must, seek out.
Is it any wonder, then, that we are able to so callously disregard the misery of our fellow human beings?
‘You are indeed fair-minded on these matters,’ some will cry, and they will insist that I seize some position of authority in Man’s World. They will ask for me to implement changes within it, fighting on behalf of women everywhere.
I do not say all these things to you to prove that I should be the one to lead women out of bondage; I have not the power to break the chains that bind you. I do not desire such power, and such a power cannot be conferred upon any singular individual.
Therefore, I beseech you: do not look to me to win this battle for you all.
I am strong; but even my strength is far from adequate to shoulder all the burdens of all my many sisters across the face of our Mother Earth, already laden as my shoulders are with the desires and fears that belong only to myself.
To think that one woman alone can slay a monster such as prejudice against women is nothing but folly, as myopic as the view from the eye of a cyclops.
Do not look to me to win that battle for us all.
For I am but one woman only.
I am but one woman only; and that must be enough.
And it IS enough; for you, and for me.
You must only believe it, in order to attain a power that even the gods envy: the power of the hero.
Heroes fight for justice.
And justice demands that you take up arms - it demands that you wield whatsoever shall serve as a righteous weapon: a sword that shall defeat only the wicked, and spare the good; raise high that which will serve you most valiantly for a shield, deflecting falsehood and letting truth and love pass through unhindered; I bid you shout a battle-cry of your own composition, from the depths of your soul to the heavens above.
Such is your duty.
There is no question, my sisters: this is a war. In times of war there shall be no rewards given for politeness; you need not patiently await your turn, for know this: never shall you be afforded one.
Take hold of your Reality. Change it. Bend it to your will. No matter who or what you are, whatever your labels and your definitions of selfhood, you are stronger than you realize.
Reject the notion that the world belongs to man alone. It is not Man’s World, nor must it be Woman’s World; it is OUR world, and must of a right be shared equally with all who live within it.
I am told, despite all my numerous perceived and actual failings, that yet still I command the hearts of many - if this is true, then I shall exercise whatever amount of authority that confers, to give you one command only:
Do not wait for me.”
I myself have suffered many of Man’s World’s slings and arrows.
For a time I was considered a hero, by men and women alike; I helped bring an end to a destructive, devastating war.
But in the time of peace that followed, I found myself condemned.
That is when I learned the bitter truth of Man’s World: that men refuse to acknowledge the potential of women, and will actively fight to keep them from achieving it.
I was born in a place of sanctuary and refuge for womankind - a place where femaleness was never associated with weakness, or inferiority. A place where love in all its forms, including the romantic and sexual, exists between women. A place where sacred femininity, in all its manifold forms, was revered in the forms of goddesses
A paradise for women.
I emerged from that place, in the company of a man, and entered Man’s World.
Man’s World had long ago turned away from the goddesses. They’d destroyed their temples, and cast out the priestesses, leaving only the priests and the male gods of conquest; soon, even those multiple male gods converged into one, the warrior-priest-king.
This one male god was called different names by the different male-ruled tribes, and they fought with one another over which one was the most powerful, or the most real.
Meanwhile, they modeled themselves after this ideal male god - a jealous, capricious, vengeful god, who demanded loyalty and sacrifice - and worshipped him, in order to curry his favor.
They reasoned that this made them superior to the pagans, who worshipped many gods and goddesses, in order to curry their favor.
And they reasoned that this made them more fit to rule than women.
Women, they asserted, were mere vessels - vessels to create more sons, primarily, and enough daughters to ensure the process of procreation continued.
In Man’s World, a woman’s form of ‘honor’ was not the honor of men.
A man’s claim to honor was based upon his accomplishments, his commitment to his word and to his allegiances, and the courtesy he showed to others.
A woman’s honor referred almost entirely to her virginity - while she was still the property of her father - and then, once ‘given’ in marriage to a man, her honor was based upon her sexual fidelity to that man to whom she was bound.
I have been shamed for not living up to an ideal of womanhood, conceived in the minds of men, and agreed upon by the women whose minds they have subjugated.
This ideal has not changed over time, but has simply been added to.
Women are meant to be nurturing, supportive, kind, selfless.
They are meant to be loyal wives, mothers, daughters, and friends.
They are responsible for the upkeep of their dwellings, the management of their households, and the social success of their husbands and children.
They must keep up appearances - their own physical beauty must be maintained, as must their lifestyle, in order to garner the esteem of their family and those they call friends.
These days, even this has ceased to be enough.
Now a woman must not only be physically attractive and well-loved by all, but she must possess so-called masculine virtues as well: ambition, aggression, and wealth.
A modern woman is expected to seek and give emotional support, as this is assumed to be the core attribute of femininity and the main virtue of their sex; and yet, at the same time, they are taught to despise their femininity, and to seek to contribute to the economic power of the household.
Yet this is easier said than done - for males consider it their prerogative to dominate the fields of modern warfare, wherever such wars are fought: in the workplace, or on the battlefield.
A woman must never be allowed to surpass them in competition, or succeed where they might fail - to be socially outdone in any capacity by a woman is particularly galling to a man’s sense of pride.
Even I, blessed as I am with many gifts from the goddesses, have not wholly succeeded as a woman in Man’s World.
And if I am to suffer personal defeat, then those amongst you who do not feel as amply blessed will see no cause for hope.
But just as you should not place all of your hopes in me in case I should fail, neither should any of you hasten to celebrate, should I succeed in attaining what I personally desire; for such a victory may bring glory only to myself, and to no one else who may be equally, or more profoundly, deserving.
You must also take heed not to attribute any success of mine solely to my own words and actions, no matter their merit; for it may be that I was granted exception, based on privileges bestowed upon me by fate, or by entities with motives of their own.
It has been oft-said that exceptions prove the rule: I find this phrase to be very wise. The rule that is proved by my exception is that fortune favors the man, and not the deserving woman.
This rule cannot be allowed to stand, for it is unjust. Unjust rules must, of a right, be broken, by any virtuous means that may be mustered in the cause of our self-defense.
Indeed, I say ‘virtuous’ means - I will not allow for anything else. For what have we truly gained, if we are to use our oppressors’ unworthy tactics, and become as one of them?
The question is not whether we are to be as ruthless and cruel as the very worst of men - the question is whether we are to be the very best version of OURSELVES, and all that this most naturally entails.
Do we dare to be brave and bold?
Do we dare to be brutally honest, uncompromisingly fair, and unyieldingly kind?
To love, without reservation, the people and things which truly matter to us?
And not to feign affection for that which we abhor.
I am not all women. I cannot speak the contents of all feminine hearts and minds, and I cannot give voice to hopes and dreams that are not my own.
Neither will I exclude those with a body deemed male at birth, nor those of indeterminate sex or gender, from the cause of equality for womanhood.
We are all, in part, female; we are all, in part, male.
The sexes are not so very different from one another as we may suppose - and I believe that there is more that we share in common than that which separates and distinguishes us.
My Amazonian kin, the women of my birthplace, are the only women who were not born of a man, and may therefore claim to be fully female - as to the rest of us, we all exist on a vast spectrum of femininity and masculinity.
A man is capable of being nurturing, and loving; a man is capable of being manipulative, passive, emotionally unstable, and weak.
A woman is capable of being strong, and brave; a woman is capable of being violent, aggressive, selfish and cruel.
What, then, do we mean when we speak of femininity and masculinity? How do we justify forcing people to conform to gendered roles within society, and punishing them when they do not perform these roles to our satisfaction?
I do not believe in demonizing sexuality, in whatsoever form it takes.
A woman who puts her sexuality or her body on display is not betraying the cause of female empowerment, and neither is she asking to be victimized. She is her own person, and her body belongs to herself to do with as she pleases. A woman is not obliged to serve as a role model for others to copy; we waste our time when we debate whether we should punish, reward, condemn or exalt her for actions and decisions that affect only the woman herself.
Similarly, I do not feel that men should be condemned for their sexuality. There is a difference between showing your affection or desire for someone, and behaving in a dishonorable way. To hope for an intimate relationship with someone is not wrong - to make them fearful of attack or retribution for spurning you is.
That said, I do not believe in extending a pass to men who claim that their vicious or selfish behavior is a result of their masculine sex or gender; to comport oneself with honor is the duty of both men and women.
We have forgotten the true nature of both honor and shame - honor is not the same as doing what others approve of, and shame is not to be used as a weapon against people and behaviors that we dislike. It is because we have so wrongfully redefined and misused these attributes that we mock honor and shame as weaknesses. We misperceive a lack of honor as cleverness, and a lack of shame as bravery. This cannot be further from the truth: the possession of shame is what makes us good and honest people, as it is the force that comprises our moral conscience, while possession of honor is the ultimate strength.
Many have called me a feminist. I am wary of the use of labels, for they are too easily manipulated and misunderstood - and so I oftentimes ask those who use such terms to define what it means for them, before I answer whether it applies to me.
They will say ‘do you support equal rights for women?’ and I will say that I do. I do not mind calling myself a feminist, if it means that I believe women to be the equals of men in all ways.
But when I ask them, in turn, how they define womanhood, I am often disappointed by the restrictive narrowness of their definition.
If someone identifies more with one side or the other of the male-female spectrum - or does not see either as perfectly encapsulating their nature - it matters not.
If a person defines their nature as female, then they are a woman; just as a person who defines their nature as male is a man. None should have reason to question this.
For what does it profit anyone to deny a person’s nature, or force them to act against it? This, it would seem, would be the height of folly.
And yet, consider that the doctrine of ‘naturalness’ is most fervently espoused by those who wish to suppress the natural instincts of those whose natures they find subversive.
So, too, do I often see certain kinds of women pushed to the margins of the fight for female equality.
A woman of lighter complexion may be praised for being assertive - she shall be called fierce, strong-willed, and lauded for ‘standing up for herself’. A woman whose skin is of darker hue is more likely to be condemned as a woman who does not ‘know her place’ - her attitude is often described by such slurs as ‘mouthy’ and ‘uppity’. The black woman’s anger is frightening, and unappealing - she is given none of the allowances afforded to the so-called ‘fairer sex’, excluded because her skin is not so fair of color.
If the desire for female equality extends only as far as yourself, your own daughters, or women who are not too dissimilar to you, then that should not be defined as feminism: that should be defined as simple selfishness and greed, vices which know of no gender.
Another argument that is often put forth, but which I find to be misguided, is that of the superiority of the feminine over the masculine.
Females do not start wars, they assert. They do not try to dominate as men do. Power, therefore, should be conferred upon women.
Female people do indeed attempt to dominate others - whether they are more or less inclined to do so, or do so in less destructive ways than men, is a matter open to debate. But the idea that women do not desire power, or wield power in brutal ways once they have it, is simply untruthful.
And if the majority of us women are of a more peaceful nature, than I challenge them to prove it.
If we value life more than glory, then cease sending your sons and daughters into the fray.
Cease telling them that there are only victors and victims in this world, and that any actions they take in the name of seizing victory for themselves is justified.
Do not heap accolades upon young men for their least efforts to be productive, decent human beings, while refusing to acknowledge the nigh-superhuman efforts of young women to achieve their dreams.
Do not say that men should be shielded from the consequences of their actions - or lack thereof, when righteous action is needed - while women must suffer in silence the outrages against our minds and bodies.
For there is nothing noble about suffering.
When we say such things as ‘no pain, no gain’, we perpetuate the myth that hardship, adversity and suffering are not only necessary evils, but necessary goods that we should, and must, seek out.
Is it any wonder, then, that we are able to so callously disregard the misery of our fellow human beings?
‘You are indeed fair-minded on these matters,’ some will cry, and they will insist that I seize some position of authority in Man’s World. They will ask for me to implement changes within it, fighting on behalf of women everywhere.
I do not say all these things to you to prove that I should be the one to lead women out of bondage; I have not the power to break the chains that bind you. I do not desire such power, and such a power cannot be conferred upon any singular individual.
Therefore, I beseech you: do not look to me to win this battle for you all.
I am strong; but even my strength is far from adequate to shoulder all the burdens of all my many sisters across the face of our Mother Earth, already laden as my shoulders are with the desires and fears that belong only to myself.
To think that one woman alone can slay a monster such as prejudice against women is nothing but folly, as myopic as the view from the eye of a cyclops.
Do not look to me to win that battle for us all.
For I am but one woman only.
I am but one woman only; and that must be enough.
And it IS enough; for you, and for me.
You must only believe it, in order to attain a power that even the gods envy: the power of the hero.
Heroes fight for justice.
And justice demands that you take up arms - it demands that you wield whatsoever shall serve as a righteous weapon: a sword that shall defeat only the wicked, and spare the good; raise high that which will serve you most valiantly for a shield, deflecting falsehood and letting truth and love pass through unhindered; I bid you shout a battle-cry of your own composition, from the depths of your soul to the heavens above.
Such is your duty.
There is no question, my sisters: this is a war. In times of war there shall be no rewards given for politeness; you need not patiently await your turn, for know this: never shall you be afforded one.
Take hold of your Reality. Change it. Bend it to your will. No matter who or what you are, whatever your labels and your definitions of selfhood, you are stronger than you realize.
Reject the notion that the world belongs to man alone. It is not Man’s World, nor must it be Woman’s World; it is OUR world, and must of a right be shared equally with all who live within it.
I am told, despite all my numerous perceived and actual failings, that yet still I command the hearts of many - if this is true, then I shall exercise whatever amount of authority that confers, to give you one command only:
Do not wait for me.”
-Batman-
“Many of you know my real name; and many of you know the name of the caped crusader who stalks Gotham’s streets at night.
But almost no one knows they are one and the same.
My father was Thomas Wayne, creator of Wayne Enterprises. The man who brought light to the darkness of Gotham, by distributing the technologies to its denizens.
For a price.
He was gunned down in a Gotham alleyway along with my mother, who most of you knew as the actress Silver St. Cloud.
I too received a shot from the killer’s gun that night; but somehow, I survived.
I did not know the identity of my parent’s killer for many years.
The man who pulled the trigger was a man named Joe Chill, who later came to be known by the name of Mr. Freeze.
But he was not what truly killed my parents.
Some say that if Batman prowled the streets at that time, they would not have been murdered; Batman would have apprehended Joe Chill before the gun went off.
I disagree.
I know what I am talking about.
Because I’m not only Bruce Wayne, the boy who survived the tragedy that unfolded that night; the boy who grew to be a man, and took over his father’s company.
I am Batman.
‘If only the cops of the Gotham PD had been there to save them’, some people said at the time, when I was still a young boy. ‘If only they weren’t so corrupt, and were a more active, vigilant presence on the streets, the Waynes would not have died…’
I once believed that as well.
So I took on the mantle of Batman, to do what the police could not - or would not - do to end the rampant crime in Gotham.
I could not, however, be everywhere at once.
And in most cases, I was too late to stop violent crimes-in-progress; too often, I dealt only with the aftermath.
I saw the horror, the trauma, the lives shattered as a result of cruelty and violence. It was as if I were seeing my own tragedy reflected back at me, over and over again.
It was surely a worthy thing to bring an end to crime sprees - the villains I helped lock up needed to be stopped.
But it was not enough.
I tried to go after the sources of crime itself: I took down members of organized crime syndicates. I brought the criminals of Gotham to justice - for my own sake, and on behalf of other Gothamites.
No, not justice - I thought it was justice, at the time. But the truth was I was exacting revenge.
Besides the acknowledgement that a wrong has been done, and assurances that the perpetrator will be unable to harm further victims by virtue of imprisonment, that is mainly what our ‘justice’ system is able to provide: the satisfaction that those who harmed us will, themselves, be harmed.
Revenge.
We relish the thought of criminals losing their freedom, their dignity, and their rights; that they will be stripped not only of comforts, but that they will be subjected to the same torments they visited upon others: the rapist will themselves be raped, the murderers will themselves be shanked by fellow inmates or executed by the state.
We justify this to ourselves by saying that this is a deterrent - that others will be less likely to commit wrongdoing, in order to avoid fines, jail, or execution.
But if crimes are most often committed by those in psychological distress, then what good are deterrents?
To intentionally harm another human being, or to take that which does not rightfully belong to you, is, at heart, a mental health issue.
To engage in illicit business because you see no better alternative is an economic and societal one.
Must we punish those who were abused with even more abuse?
Are we serving justice, when we arrest and incarcerate the drug user, who has inadequate healthcare for medicating themselves with the only substance they can find to dull the pain?
Is justice served by arresting and jailing the drug pusher for selling these illicit substances, or the prostitute for selling their body, when no better employment is available to them?
Is it illegal to be poor, or to belong to a marginalized group?
Is it correct to fight fire with fire, and fear with fear?
The Gotham PD is indeed corrupt; but then, what do we expect of them? We tell them to stand between us and those who threaten us, and to make arrests - nothing more. A cop cannot save you from societal ills. They are not social workers, or mental health experts; they are not empowered to truly help you.
All they are empowered to do is restrain you, ticket you, arrest you, question you, and take you to jail. That is their function.
As it currently stands, anyway.
A cop is only human. They have biases, and they have fears.
When a cop is given a weapon and told to keep the public safe from ‘bad, dangerous people’, their biases and their fears will come to the forefront in horrifying ways.
Perhaps they believe homosexuals and trans individuals are dangerous deviants, more likely to commit rape and pedophilia, or to transmit disease - it is no surprise, then, when they are brutalized by cops.
Perhaps they believe women are liars, or fear being accused of sexual misconduct themselves - it is no surprise, then, when a woman’s claims of rape are treated with suspicion and dismissal, even though police are supposed to remain impartial during investigations.
Perhaps they believe that black men are inherently bad, or more dangerous than other men; if they believe this to be true, and those they wish to ‘serve’ believe it also, then it is no wonder when they use excessive force to subdue them or to kill them. It is these wrong beliefs, combined with an overabundance of weaponry and authority, which leads to police brutality.
And we are to blame.
We send our cops into situations they are not trained for; we ask them to deal with problems they are ill-suited to solve, and risk their lives and their sanities on behalf of the wealthy and powerful. We do this so that we can rest easier each night, believing we are safer because of them; and that, if we should run into trouble, we may dial 911 and they will come to our aid.
Worse, we are so afraid of losing the meager protection they provide us that we are willing to give them more and more power, and shield them from the consequences of their wrongdoing.
Our ability to buy and pay for things is not what makes us privileged: it is a privilege to be believed by default, to be treated as though what we say is true until proven otherwise; it is a privilege to have the cops that arrive at your location help and assist you, rather than assuming that you are a criminal and treating you accordingly; privilege is to be able to walk about the city freely, without fear of harassment, assault, or being gunned down.
And what of redemption for those who are guilty? When punishment has been served, and the debt to society is paid, still we are not satisfied. We make it difficult for freed prisoners to find housing and employment, and then wonder why they re-offend and turn to a life of crime in bigger ways than before.
And we strip them of their right to vote, to make sure that they may never advocate for themselves and affect the laws that are written.
Our thirst for revenge is never satisfied.
I found this out when I at last apprehended Joe Chill.
Joe Chill was a desperate man pushed over the edge by a lack of the resources he needed to live, and to preserve the life and well-being of his wife. He had nothing; this is what led him, ultimately, to take the life of Thomas and Cecilia Wayne, who in his mind had everything that could be wished for.
Nothing would undo the damage that had been done. Nothing he could suffer would cancel out what I had suffered. There would have been only one way to satisfy me, and that would have been the restoration of my parents. This was the one thing Joe Chill could not do.
I spent every night dispensing my own brand of justice. But it was not enough. It could never be enough.
There was a rot in the heart of Gotham, and the criminals themselves were only a symptom of the problem.
The problem was inequity.
Poverty. Despair. The great disparity between the haves and the have-nots; this is what killed my parents.
This is what fueled the crime, and the corruption.
The citizens of Gotham knew it; and so they looked to people with money, power, and supposed ingenuity.
People like me; like Bruce Wayne.
Save us, they cried. Invent new ways to keep us safe. Give us employment, and industry, and this will save us.
I did what I could; but try as I might, the company I owned could not make up for the vast inequities between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the powerless.
I have never been poor, and except in the case of my parent’s murder when I was a child, I have never been powerless; I could sympathize with those who were, but I could never know what it was to be one of them.
Luck. That’s what we never fully account for when we talk about a person’s ‘success’.
Meeting the right people or circumstances at the right time, and being in a position - or of a nature - to take advantage of it. That’s all luck.
I was lucky to have rich and loving parents; I was unlucky to lose them at a young age.
I was lucky not to have been born with any mental or physical disadvantages, and luckier still that I never acquired any major debilitations as a result of my dangerous line of work; I was unlucky in that my work, along with my state of mind, rendered me unable to commit to relationships and make them last.
I was lucky that Wayne Enterprises stayed afloat financially, instead of going under - it could have at any point, due to the mismanagement of others when I was still a child, or due to my own foolhardiness when I came of age and took over.
I was a man whose wealth was inherited, from a man who was not as much of a genius as the people of Gotham - or the world - believed.
My father’s business was founded on technologies from Krypton.
Jor-El gave him the ideas and schematics for free, for the betterment of mankind on Earth; my father secured the patents to those ideas, claiming them as his own, and turning them into a financially profitable enterprise for himself and those he employed. He did not do this by disseminating the technologies and designs for free - he charged those who could afford the privilege.
My father was a great philanthropist - he gave away vast sums of his personal wealth for worthy causes. But how much more would the human condition have been improved, if everyone had access to these technologies at once, free of initial and ongoing charge? The mind boggles at the thought.
That is not to say that my father had the ability to give this gift to the world.
Had he offered this information to any entity with the means to manufacture, market, distribute and install the new inventions (all of these activities incurring their own overhead investment costs) then these entities would have charged for and profited from their services, while giving little to no compensation to Thomas Wayne; even if he did not financially profit from the enterprise of progress, others would.
But the point of the matter is, for all the good that my father did on behalf of Gotham and humanity, he had no idea how to ultimately save them - and I had even less of an idea, as I did not even have a hand in the company that he created.
Lex Luthor, another wealthy and powerful man in charge of a profitable corporation, said he had the answers.
He would give the people what they sought; they could all be rich, and they could all live in a shining new city - an extension of Metropolis - instead of the slums of old Gotham.
Some did become rich, and some Gotham neighborhoods were made better.
Many great things were available, to those who could afford them.
But many could no longer afford to live in Gotham.
The very rich became richer, and the poor became poorer.
Those in the middle scrambled and competed with one another for a foothold amongst the wealthy class, even as the opportunities dwindled, until there was simply no room left at the top of the hierarchy.
The elite class all but closed ranks; they kept opportunities available only to their own. Privilege begets privilege, and so nepotism reigned.
Those who could not find a way into a lucrative career, or faced a major setback that knocked them off-course before they could secure themselves within that class, fell amongst the working poor; meanwhile, the demands of those above them steadily increased.
Inequity was not resolved; it worsened.
The creation of more wealthy individuals, and the proliferation of luxury toys and goods for them to consume, did not elevate society in the least; and it most certainly did not end the corruption.
The biggest threat to Gotham was not street-gangs and armed muggers prowling nighttime alleyways, but thieves wearing suits, and oftentime committing their crimes in the broad light of day.
Lex Luthor’s plan was an abject failure.
But, much to my surprise and disappointment, many people did not see it as such.
The message was too perfectly suited to them - it flattered their sense of pride, to think that they could achieve riches and power through a combination of hard work, merit and grit; and it was satisfying to their sense of natural justice to believe that the lack of these qualities would result in failure.
But let me inform you of the truth.
The truth is that profit is always made upon a foundation of human misery.
Profit is not to be made from the happy and the content - those who are content with what they have are not motivated to consume more; profit is made from those who are desperate, desirous and bereft.
Profit is not made from the healthy - a healthy person does not need to buy expensive medication, or pay for expensive care; profit is made from those who are in mental or physical pain, or have fear of becoming so in the future. People are willing to give up a sizable portion of their income to protect them against the financial fallout of medical disaster.
Profit is not made from the financially solvent - those who have enough money left over after expenses, and save it rather than spend it, are not giving it to makers of goods, and service-providers.
Because of the charging of interest, debt is far more valuable than real capital.
The same goes for the bored, the lonely, the dissatisfied, the competitive, and those who hate and fear others - they are what drives the profit-based economy and our society at large.
There is even profit to be made from the crimes of others.
Police officers, lawyers, judges, jailers, politicians, and the accompanying administrative staff attached to the justice system - crime, perversely, is quite profitable for them. Crime gives them employment, funding, and campaign contributions.
If there were to be fewer people arrested and jailed for theft, rape, murder, drugs, and other crimes, opportunities for money-making would be proportionally curtailed - for we would not need so many jails, or courthouses, or massive, militarized police departments, if crime were to be significantly reduced.
States and cities need their citizenry to break the law - they need for them to pay tickets, fines, bail, and for legal counsel; they need them to fill the prisons, in order to receive funding from the government and from taxpayers.
And then there are the vast profits to be made from war.
It is generally agreed that war is a terrible thing - and yet it spurs invention, the manufacture and buying of goods, and the employment of a great many people. People are desperate during war, and they are willing to spend as much money as it takes to feel safe and comfortable once more. War, it would seem, is the best kind of business there is.
War, disease, crime, fear and inequity - these are the ingredients that wealth and profit are made from.
Why, then, do we cry out to those with wealth and power to save us?
Why do we give them more wealth, more power, more authority over our lives, by electing them for our leaders? Their goals are antithetical to ours, and they often do not merit their positions; and yet we allow them to take office, and tolerate their insolent abuses.
Those like Lex Luthor do not hear your cries for help, except perhaps to make note of it as a good sign for business; a desperation yearning to be satisfied, a demographic to be targeted, a niche to be exploited. The cries of wounded animals are music to the ears of predators.
They do not care about justice - for them, justice is a threat to their power.
They must be able to buy justice for themselves, and deprive it from others.
If justice were to be applied equally, they would find themselves bearing an unequal amount of the punishment. This is not just because of the exploitations they likely committed in order to attain their fortunes; those who commit the most crimes are those with everything to lose. They must, to preserve their positions, believe themselves to be above the law.
They do not want to end inequities - the factors which brought them to power, which allows them to maintain that power, would be undermined if they were required to lift up the disenfranchised.
You have heard my fellow members of the Justice League speak of Patriarchy and of White Supremacy - these institutions will never be brought down by the likes of Lex Luthor; instead the institutions of bigotry will be ruthlessly defended, with every dollar of their vast wealth if need be.
Yet even those with good intentions can only pave the way to Hell.
I cannot count how many well-meaning crusaders have attempted to seize power, only to find themselves stymied, compromised, bribed and threatened into joining the corruption.
Many are, themselves, susceptible to the myths and the lies that pervade our societies. If they cannot correctly identify the source of the problem, it will never be addressed with workable solutions.
Even if our priorities are corrected, and funds are diverted to more appropriate areas, still we will find ourselves unable to make a dent.
No amount of money will staunch a bleeding wound, or solve a systemic problem that our own desires and beliefs caused.
Both Bruce Wayne and Batman want to ensure that justice is achieved for all, equally, and they will never give up fighting for that cause. They both desire to help.
But neither one can.
They cannot give you the justice that you deserve - not with all their power, their influence, their money, or their toys.
They cannot make sure that you, or the world, are worth saving.
I want to save you.
But I cannot.
Save yourselves."
But almost no one knows they are one and the same.
My father was Thomas Wayne, creator of Wayne Enterprises. The man who brought light to the darkness of Gotham, by distributing the technologies to its denizens.
For a price.
He was gunned down in a Gotham alleyway along with my mother, who most of you knew as the actress Silver St. Cloud.
I too received a shot from the killer’s gun that night; but somehow, I survived.
I did not know the identity of my parent’s killer for many years.
The man who pulled the trigger was a man named Joe Chill, who later came to be known by the name of Mr. Freeze.
But he was not what truly killed my parents.
Some say that if Batman prowled the streets at that time, they would not have been murdered; Batman would have apprehended Joe Chill before the gun went off.
I disagree.
I know what I am talking about.
Because I’m not only Bruce Wayne, the boy who survived the tragedy that unfolded that night; the boy who grew to be a man, and took over his father’s company.
I am Batman.
‘If only the cops of the Gotham PD had been there to save them’, some people said at the time, when I was still a young boy. ‘If only they weren’t so corrupt, and were a more active, vigilant presence on the streets, the Waynes would not have died…’
I once believed that as well.
So I took on the mantle of Batman, to do what the police could not - or would not - do to end the rampant crime in Gotham.
I could not, however, be everywhere at once.
And in most cases, I was too late to stop violent crimes-in-progress; too often, I dealt only with the aftermath.
I saw the horror, the trauma, the lives shattered as a result of cruelty and violence. It was as if I were seeing my own tragedy reflected back at me, over and over again.
It was surely a worthy thing to bring an end to crime sprees - the villains I helped lock up needed to be stopped.
But it was not enough.
I tried to go after the sources of crime itself: I took down members of organized crime syndicates. I brought the criminals of Gotham to justice - for my own sake, and on behalf of other Gothamites.
No, not justice - I thought it was justice, at the time. But the truth was I was exacting revenge.
Besides the acknowledgement that a wrong has been done, and assurances that the perpetrator will be unable to harm further victims by virtue of imprisonment, that is mainly what our ‘justice’ system is able to provide: the satisfaction that those who harmed us will, themselves, be harmed.
Revenge.
We relish the thought of criminals losing their freedom, their dignity, and their rights; that they will be stripped not only of comforts, but that they will be subjected to the same torments they visited upon others: the rapist will themselves be raped, the murderers will themselves be shanked by fellow inmates or executed by the state.
We justify this to ourselves by saying that this is a deterrent - that others will be less likely to commit wrongdoing, in order to avoid fines, jail, or execution.
But if crimes are most often committed by those in psychological distress, then what good are deterrents?
To intentionally harm another human being, or to take that which does not rightfully belong to you, is, at heart, a mental health issue.
To engage in illicit business because you see no better alternative is an economic and societal one.
Must we punish those who were abused with even more abuse?
Are we serving justice, when we arrest and incarcerate the drug user, who has inadequate healthcare for medicating themselves with the only substance they can find to dull the pain?
Is justice served by arresting and jailing the drug pusher for selling these illicit substances, or the prostitute for selling their body, when no better employment is available to them?
Is it illegal to be poor, or to belong to a marginalized group?
Is it correct to fight fire with fire, and fear with fear?
The Gotham PD is indeed corrupt; but then, what do we expect of them? We tell them to stand between us and those who threaten us, and to make arrests - nothing more. A cop cannot save you from societal ills. They are not social workers, or mental health experts; they are not empowered to truly help you.
All they are empowered to do is restrain you, ticket you, arrest you, question you, and take you to jail. That is their function.
As it currently stands, anyway.
A cop is only human. They have biases, and they have fears.
When a cop is given a weapon and told to keep the public safe from ‘bad, dangerous people’, their biases and their fears will come to the forefront in horrifying ways.
Perhaps they believe homosexuals and trans individuals are dangerous deviants, more likely to commit rape and pedophilia, or to transmit disease - it is no surprise, then, when they are brutalized by cops.
Perhaps they believe women are liars, or fear being accused of sexual misconduct themselves - it is no surprise, then, when a woman’s claims of rape are treated with suspicion and dismissal, even though police are supposed to remain impartial during investigations.
Perhaps they believe that black men are inherently bad, or more dangerous than other men; if they believe this to be true, and those they wish to ‘serve’ believe it also, then it is no wonder when they use excessive force to subdue them or to kill them. It is these wrong beliefs, combined with an overabundance of weaponry and authority, which leads to police brutality.
And we are to blame.
We send our cops into situations they are not trained for; we ask them to deal with problems they are ill-suited to solve, and risk their lives and their sanities on behalf of the wealthy and powerful. We do this so that we can rest easier each night, believing we are safer because of them; and that, if we should run into trouble, we may dial 911 and they will come to our aid.
Worse, we are so afraid of losing the meager protection they provide us that we are willing to give them more and more power, and shield them from the consequences of their wrongdoing.
Our ability to buy and pay for things is not what makes us privileged: it is a privilege to be believed by default, to be treated as though what we say is true until proven otherwise; it is a privilege to have the cops that arrive at your location help and assist you, rather than assuming that you are a criminal and treating you accordingly; privilege is to be able to walk about the city freely, without fear of harassment, assault, or being gunned down.
And what of redemption for those who are guilty? When punishment has been served, and the debt to society is paid, still we are not satisfied. We make it difficult for freed prisoners to find housing and employment, and then wonder why they re-offend and turn to a life of crime in bigger ways than before.
And we strip them of their right to vote, to make sure that they may never advocate for themselves and affect the laws that are written.
Our thirst for revenge is never satisfied.
I found this out when I at last apprehended Joe Chill.
Joe Chill was a desperate man pushed over the edge by a lack of the resources he needed to live, and to preserve the life and well-being of his wife. He had nothing; this is what led him, ultimately, to take the life of Thomas and Cecilia Wayne, who in his mind had everything that could be wished for.
Nothing would undo the damage that had been done. Nothing he could suffer would cancel out what I had suffered. There would have been only one way to satisfy me, and that would have been the restoration of my parents. This was the one thing Joe Chill could not do.
I spent every night dispensing my own brand of justice. But it was not enough. It could never be enough.
There was a rot in the heart of Gotham, and the criminals themselves were only a symptom of the problem.
The problem was inequity.
Poverty. Despair. The great disparity between the haves and the have-nots; this is what killed my parents.
This is what fueled the crime, and the corruption.
The citizens of Gotham knew it; and so they looked to people with money, power, and supposed ingenuity.
People like me; like Bruce Wayne.
Save us, they cried. Invent new ways to keep us safe. Give us employment, and industry, and this will save us.
I did what I could; but try as I might, the company I owned could not make up for the vast inequities between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the powerless.
I have never been poor, and except in the case of my parent’s murder when I was a child, I have never been powerless; I could sympathize with those who were, but I could never know what it was to be one of them.
Luck. That’s what we never fully account for when we talk about a person’s ‘success’.
Meeting the right people or circumstances at the right time, and being in a position - or of a nature - to take advantage of it. That’s all luck.
I was lucky to have rich and loving parents; I was unlucky to lose them at a young age.
I was lucky not to have been born with any mental or physical disadvantages, and luckier still that I never acquired any major debilitations as a result of my dangerous line of work; I was unlucky in that my work, along with my state of mind, rendered me unable to commit to relationships and make them last.
I was lucky that Wayne Enterprises stayed afloat financially, instead of going under - it could have at any point, due to the mismanagement of others when I was still a child, or due to my own foolhardiness when I came of age and took over.
I was a man whose wealth was inherited, from a man who was not as much of a genius as the people of Gotham - or the world - believed.
My father’s business was founded on technologies from Krypton.
Jor-El gave him the ideas and schematics for free, for the betterment of mankind on Earth; my father secured the patents to those ideas, claiming them as his own, and turning them into a financially profitable enterprise for himself and those he employed. He did not do this by disseminating the technologies and designs for free - he charged those who could afford the privilege.
My father was a great philanthropist - he gave away vast sums of his personal wealth for worthy causes. But how much more would the human condition have been improved, if everyone had access to these technologies at once, free of initial and ongoing charge? The mind boggles at the thought.
That is not to say that my father had the ability to give this gift to the world.
Had he offered this information to any entity with the means to manufacture, market, distribute and install the new inventions (all of these activities incurring their own overhead investment costs) then these entities would have charged for and profited from their services, while giving little to no compensation to Thomas Wayne; even if he did not financially profit from the enterprise of progress, others would.
But the point of the matter is, for all the good that my father did on behalf of Gotham and humanity, he had no idea how to ultimately save them - and I had even less of an idea, as I did not even have a hand in the company that he created.
Lex Luthor, another wealthy and powerful man in charge of a profitable corporation, said he had the answers.
He would give the people what they sought; they could all be rich, and they could all live in a shining new city - an extension of Metropolis - instead of the slums of old Gotham.
Some did become rich, and some Gotham neighborhoods were made better.
Many great things were available, to those who could afford them.
But many could no longer afford to live in Gotham.
The very rich became richer, and the poor became poorer.
Those in the middle scrambled and competed with one another for a foothold amongst the wealthy class, even as the opportunities dwindled, until there was simply no room left at the top of the hierarchy.
The elite class all but closed ranks; they kept opportunities available only to their own. Privilege begets privilege, and so nepotism reigned.
Those who could not find a way into a lucrative career, or faced a major setback that knocked them off-course before they could secure themselves within that class, fell amongst the working poor; meanwhile, the demands of those above them steadily increased.
Inequity was not resolved; it worsened.
The creation of more wealthy individuals, and the proliferation of luxury toys and goods for them to consume, did not elevate society in the least; and it most certainly did not end the corruption.
The biggest threat to Gotham was not street-gangs and armed muggers prowling nighttime alleyways, but thieves wearing suits, and oftentime committing their crimes in the broad light of day.
Lex Luthor’s plan was an abject failure.
But, much to my surprise and disappointment, many people did not see it as such.
The message was too perfectly suited to them - it flattered their sense of pride, to think that they could achieve riches and power through a combination of hard work, merit and grit; and it was satisfying to their sense of natural justice to believe that the lack of these qualities would result in failure.
But let me inform you of the truth.
The truth is that profit is always made upon a foundation of human misery.
Profit is not to be made from the happy and the content - those who are content with what they have are not motivated to consume more; profit is made from those who are desperate, desirous and bereft.
Profit is not made from the healthy - a healthy person does not need to buy expensive medication, or pay for expensive care; profit is made from those who are in mental or physical pain, or have fear of becoming so in the future. People are willing to give up a sizable portion of their income to protect them against the financial fallout of medical disaster.
Profit is not made from the financially solvent - those who have enough money left over after expenses, and save it rather than spend it, are not giving it to makers of goods, and service-providers.
Because of the charging of interest, debt is far more valuable than real capital.
The same goes for the bored, the lonely, the dissatisfied, the competitive, and those who hate and fear others - they are what drives the profit-based economy and our society at large.
There is even profit to be made from the crimes of others.
Police officers, lawyers, judges, jailers, politicians, and the accompanying administrative staff attached to the justice system - crime, perversely, is quite profitable for them. Crime gives them employment, funding, and campaign contributions.
If there were to be fewer people arrested and jailed for theft, rape, murder, drugs, and other crimes, opportunities for money-making would be proportionally curtailed - for we would not need so many jails, or courthouses, or massive, militarized police departments, if crime were to be significantly reduced.
States and cities need their citizenry to break the law - they need for them to pay tickets, fines, bail, and for legal counsel; they need them to fill the prisons, in order to receive funding from the government and from taxpayers.
And then there are the vast profits to be made from war.
It is generally agreed that war is a terrible thing - and yet it spurs invention, the manufacture and buying of goods, and the employment of a great many people. People are desperate during war, and they are willing to spend as much money as it takes to feel safe and comfortable once more. War, it would seem, is the best kind of business there is.
War, disease, crime, fear and inequity - these are the ingredients that wealth and profit are made from.
Why, then, do we cry out to those with wealth and power to save us?
Why do we give them more wealth, more power, more authority over our lives, by electing them for our leaders? Their goals are antithetical to ours, and they often do not merit their positions; and yet we allow them to take office, and tolerate their insolent abuses.
Those like Lex Luthor do not hear your cries for help, except perhaps to make note of it as a good sign for business; a desperation yearning to be satisfied, a demographic to be targeted, a niche to be exploited. The cries of wounded animals are music to the ears of predators.
They do not care about justice - for them, justice is a threat to their power.
They must be able to buy justice for themselves, and deprive it from others.
If justice were to be applied equally, they would find themselves bearing an unequal amount of the punishment. This is not just because of the exploitations they likely committed in order to attain their fortunes; those who commit the most crimes are those with everything to lose. They must, to preserve their positions, believe themselves to be above the law.
They do not want to end inequities - the factors which brought them to power, which allows them to maintain that power, would be undermined if they were required to lift up the disenfranchised.
You have heard my fellow members of the Justice League speak of Patriarchy and of White Supremacy - these institutions will never be brought down by the likes of Lex Luthor; instead the institutions of bigotry will be ruthlessly defended, with every dollar of their vast wealth if need be.
Yet even those with good intentions can only pave the way to Hell.
I cannot count how many well-meaning crusaders have attempted to seize power, only to find themselves stymied, compromised, bribed and threatened into joining the corruption.
Many are, themselves, susceptible to the myths and the lies that pervade our societies. If they cannot correctly identify the source of the problem, it will never be addressed with workable solutions.
Even if our priorities are corrected, and funds are diverted to more appropriate areas, still we will find ourselves unable to make a dent.
No amount of money will staunch a bleeding wound, or solve a systemic problem that our own desires and beliefs caused.
Both Bruce Wayne and Batman want to ensure that justice is achieved for all, equally, and they will never give up fighting for that cause. They both desire to help.
But neither one can.
They cannot give you the justice that you deserve - not with all their power, their influence, their money, or their toys.
They cannot make sure that you, or the world, are worth saving.
I want to save you.
But I cannot.
Save yourselves."
-Aquaman-
"My life’s ebbing away.
It’s the same for all you people out there, even if you’re too fried up to notice.
A steady stream of drugs is the only thing making me comfortable at all; maybe they’re what’s giving me the chance to talk to you guys now? I dunno. It’s all a great, big, washed-out blur.
I’m not just taking the meds they’re giving me; a few bros of mine have supplied me with the good stuff that the docs can’t legally sign off on, and the docs themselves have been most righteous in turning a blind eye.
The upsides of celebrity, I guess.
The drugs are the only thing that give me a brief glimpse of my friends and family who are gone now, as well as my lost underwater world, all of them and all of it swirling around in the dizzy whirlpool that is wrecking the inside of my skull right now.
Hey kids… this is your brain on drugs…
Too bad you’ll never know about how cool the REAL world was, way back when you didn’t even NEED drugs to trip out.
Ya know, I remember when the real world used to be absolutely drenched in color - like an iridescent rainbow of dancing forms, shimmering scales, sea-grass blowing in the breeze of underwater currents, and whole cities made out of coral.
Now that stuff is all gone - there’s nothing but a freakin’ wasteland of grey, dead emptiness underneath the waves now, a desert stretching out for miles and miles into infinity.
But the drugs, man... the drugs bring back the COLOR. They bring back the unfathomable darkness of the ocean depths and the gorgeous, transcendent light breaking through the shallows.
It’s a real trip… and more than my body is capable of.
These days, I’m lucky if I make it as far as the toilet.
It wasn’t enough to clear the land of air-giving and life-sheltering trees; it wasn’t enough to blow up the mountains, or to dig up minerals, gas and oil from deep within the earth in order to burn and feed our machines; it wasn’t enough to blow our putrid smoke into the skies and foul up the air that we breathe until we choked.
Nah, we couldn’t stop there, with just our own human habitat.
We also had to toss our trash into the ocean. We had to relieve ourselves, and our machines, and defecate our poison into its waters.
The great blue ocean and all the seven seas could be a universal toilet, a sewer for all we cared - same goes for the lakes and the rivers that run like veins throughout the land. We didn’t live there, after all. Outta sight, out of mind.
It’s not our habitat, we said.
It’s just water, we said.
Except, water IS TOTALLY part of our habitat.
And it is most definitely part of mine.
It makes up our bodies, too - 70% of ‘em, in fact.
For sentimental reasons, I personally don’t eat fish - but for thousands of years, our human species has preferred to live on the shores of the ocean, and relied upon its bounty in order to keep themselves going strong.
We sail the ocean for treasure and for pleasure - on boats and ships, in order to ship goods around, to research stuff… the list goes on and on.
We enjoy swimming and diving and surfing, the ultimate activities of rejuvenation - for some of us as a way of life - but for most this is especially the case during weekends, spring breaks and summer vacations.
The ocean regulates the temperature of the air, and rains down fresh water for all the land-lubber life-forms to drink.
We build homes and hotels at the water’s edge, at least until the waters rise from the melting ice and swallow them up, turning them into dwellings suitable only to Atlanteans.
We’re very basic creatures, really - we don’t need much in order to survive. But somehow, we’re astoundingly adept at sabotaging the most important of our own life-support systems.
It really splits my skull trying to understand why humans have such a superiority complex - we’ve got nothing to be superior about.
What kind of barbarians shit where they eat, drink, breathe and play?
What kind of animals work so hard to destroy their own habitat? Their own lives? It’s absolutely mental.
Maybe it’s because we’re not in love with life the way we should be; we certainly don’t make it a priority.
And we are most definitely not all on the same wavelength when it comes to this idea we call ‘progress’.
When I hear people talking about progress, it’s all mixed up with descriptions about machinery and tall buildings; we brag about our mad skills at conquering and showing up Mother Nature, making artificial stuff that’s ‘better’ than the real thing.
By ‘better’, we mean better suited to humans.
...Or so we think.
And before we’re even done glutting ourselves on our own planets’ resources, or fully exploring and mapping out our own ocean depths, we’re already turning a lusty eye to space: we talk about colonizing the moon and the planets and the stars, and strip-mining them for valuable material.
By valuable, we mean money.
Profit now, pay the costs later - it’s the name of the game.
And then, when we inevitably hit the rocks and tear ourselves up, we’ll profit from it again by charging for the fixes.
Can’t breathe? Here’s a spray of chemicals.
Can’t sleep? Here’s a pill.
Can’t think, or regulate your emotions the way we say you can? Countless hours of therapy, and a cocktail of more legalized drugs should chill you out.
Need to eat? No problem, we’ll hook ya up - here’s a gnarly batch of chemicals we’ve dressed up to look like food. They’re tasteless, nutrient-less and will make your body fat and unhealthy, but whatever - you rubes’ll eat anything as long as it’s sweet or salty enough, right?
Ya sick, brah? We’ll dope you right up, just as long as it’s OUR kind of dope and not yours.
This planet all used up? We’ll just assume that we can find another one to remake in our own image before we all wipe out.
I kept fighting the good fight as long as I was able.
They called me crazy, radical, a dangerous extremist; I didn’t care. I knew who the real mondo crazies were.
People laughed at me for being ‘the super-powered fish whisperer’, the weakest and the lamest of the Justice League; I didn’t mind, not really. I wasn’t in the League to compete with the likes of Superman, or anybody for that matter - there’s always a bigger fish. I only cared about defending my friends and my turf, that’s it.
Besides, being the smallest fish in Justice League STILL meant I was in the top .001% of all humans and metahumans alive.
While I was in my prime, I never had a ‘dry spell’ - I was neck-deep in babes, booze and drugs the entire time.
Not to mention that if I completely cashed out my bank account and liquidated my assets, I could fill an Olympic-size pool with my money and swim in it, Scrooge McDuck-style.
But I’m done with sex and drinking and blowing my money with late-night parties. Over it. Done.
No amount of fame or popularity or wealth is going to make a difference now.
It won’t save my life.
It won’t bring Atlantis back from its watery grave.
It won’t bring back the coral or the breathable air and the sunshine, or restore the world to the Garden of Eden that it once was.
You know what? I’d give it all up, everything that I ever had, to save even a fraction of the things that actually matter.
And I did try my best to save the world, for as long as I was able.
I took up arms against the rising sea of troubles… and got pounded into the surf. Note to self: you can’t fight the sea and win, especially not with a freakin’ trident.
Not even an awesome, magical one.
I wasn’t going with the flow like a good hippie beach-bum should, I was swimming upstream… like the salmon used to do, so they could breed and die.
Except I won’t be doing any breeding.
All the poisons I’ve been soakin’ in - whether it’s the beer that got me drunk, the drugs that got me high, the preservatives and pesticides they’ve laced my food with, or the medicine that keeps me just barely alive - all of it has ganged up on me, to make sure I’ll be the last fish-man on Earth.
Now I’m just sick and tired, man.
First I lost my swimming and breathing underwater privileges - next I lost the ability to breathe air, and then the ability to get around on land without tremendous help. Even sponge baths from the prettiest nurses my money and fame could buy can’t even come CLOSE to making up for what a drag my life has become.
I’m more tube than man at this point: if you could see me now, I’ve got tubes running up my nose, down my throat, and directly into my bloodstream, to make sure I stay fed, hydrated and aerated.
And that’s just the PG stuff - you don’t don’t even want to KNOW where else they’ve shoved their plastic tubulars.
I feel like one of those sea birds or sea turtles, choking on straws and shopping bags.
The currents of my being have gone, most officially, awry.
On the upside, it won’t be long now before I’ll get to cast off this dinged-up humanoid shell, freeing me up to make my last dive into the great unknown depths.
Wish me bon voyage, as I make my way to the deep blue waters of the other side, to join my Atlantean sisters and bros.
To those that I’m leaving behind… I know that the world’s a mess, and I don’t blame you for being bummed out about it. But I tried, I really did. I tried to warn you guys, but you just didn’t wanna listen. I tried to save you from yourselves and play life-guard for you, even though you were all dead-set on drowning.
Sorry I couldn’t do more.
Hope your death isn’t too gnarly.
Peace out."
It’s the same for all you people out there, even if you’re too fried up to notice.
A steady stream of drugs is the only thing making me comfortable at all; maybe they’re what’s giving me the chance to talk to you guys now? I dunno. It’s all a great, big, washed-out blur.
I’m not just taking the meds they’re giving me; a few bros of mine have supplied me with the good stuff that the docs can’t legally sign off on, and the docs themselves have been most righteous in turning a blind eye.
The upsides of celebrity, I guess.
The drugs are the only thing that give me a brief glimpse of my friends and family who are gone now, as well as my lost underwater world, all of them and all of it swirling around in the dizzy whirlpool that is wrecking the inside of my skull right now.
Hey kids… this is your brain on drugs…
Too bad you’ll never know about how cool the REAL world was, way back when you didn’t even NEED drugs to trip out.
Ya know, I remember when the real world used to be absolutely drenched in color - like an iridescent rainbow of dancing forms, shimmering scales, sea-grass blowing in the breeze of underwater currents, and whole cities made out of coral.
Now that stuff is all gone - there’s nothing but a freakin’ wasteland of grey, dead emptiness underneath the waves now, a desert stretching out for miles and miles into infinity.
But the drugs, man... the drugs bring back the COLOR. They bring back the unfathomable darkness of the ocean depths and the gorgeous, transcendent light breaking through the shallows.
It’s a real trip… and more than my body is capable of.
These days, I’m lucky if I make it as far as the toilet.
It wasn’t enough to clear the land of air-giving and life-sheltering trees; it wasn’t enough to blow up the mountains, or to dig up minerals, gas and oil from deep within the earth in order to burn and feed our machines; it wasn’t enough to blow our putrid smoke into the skies and foul up the air that we breathe until we choked.
Nah, we couldn’t stop there, with just our own human habitat.
We also had to toss our trash into the ocean. We had to relieve ourselves, and our machines, and defecate our poison into its waters.
The great blue ocean and all the seven seas could be a universal toilet, a sewer for all we cared - same goes for the lakes and the rivers that run like veins throughout the land. We didn’t live there, after all. Outta sight, out of mind.
It’s not our habitat, we said.
It’s just water, we said.
Except, water IS TOTALLY part of our habitat.
And it is most definitely part of mine.
It makes up our bodies, too - 70% of ‘em, in fact.
For sentimental reasons, I personally don’t eat fish - but for thousands of years, our human species has preferred to live on the shores of the ocean, and relied upon its bounty in order to keep themselves going strong.
We sail the ocean for treasure and for pleasure - on boats and ships, in order to ship goods around, to research stuff… the list goes on and on.
We enjoy swimming and diving and surfing, the ultimate activities of rejuvenation - for some of us as a way of life - but for most this is especially the case during weekends, spring breaks and summer vacations.
The ocean regulates the temperature of the air, and rains down fresh water for all the land-lubber life-forms to drink.
We build homes and hotels at the water’s edge, at least until the waters rise from the melting ice and swallow them up, turning them into dwellings suitable only to Atlanteans.
We’re very basic creatures, really - we don’t need much in order to survive. But somehow, we’re astoundingly adept at sabotaging the most important of our own life-support systems.
It really splits my skull trying to understand why humans have such a superiority complex - we’ve got nothing to be superior about.
What kind of barbarians shit where they eat, drink, breathe and play?
What kind of animals work so hard to destroy their own habitat? Their own lives? It’s absolutely mental.
Maybe it’s because we’re not in love with life the way we should be; we certainly don’t make it a priority.
And we are most definitely not all on the same wavelength when it comes to this idea we call ‘progress’.
When I hear people talking about progress, it’s all mixed up with descriptions about machinery and tall buildings; we brag about our mad skills at conquering and showing up Mother Nature, making artificial stuff that’s ‘better’ than the real thing.
By ‘better’, we mean better suited to humans.
...Or so we think.
And before we’re even done glutting ourselves on our own planets’ resources, or fully exploring and mapping out our own ocean depths, we’re already turning a lusty eye to space: we talk about colonizing the moon and the planets and the stars, and strip-mining them for valuable material.
By valuable, we mean money.
Profit now, pay the costs later - it’s the name of the game.
And then, when we inevitably hit the rocks and tear ourselves up, we’ll profit from it again by charging for the fixes.
Can’t breathe? Here’s a spray of chemicals.
Can’t sleep? Here’s a pill.
Can’t think, or regulate your emotions the way we say you can? Countless hours of therapy, and a cocktail of more legalized drugs should chill you out.
Need to eat? No problem, we’ll hook ya up - here’s a gnarly batch of chemicals we’ve dressed up to look like food. They’re tasteless, nutrient-less and will make your body fat and unhealthy, but whatever - you rubes’ll eat anything as long as it’s sweet or salty enough, right?
Ya sick, brah? We’ll dope you right up, just as long as it’s OUR kind of dope and not yours.
This planet all used up? We’ll just assume that we can find another one to remake in our own image before we all wipe out.
I kept fighting the good fight as long as I was able.
They called me crazy, radical, a dangerous extremist; I didn’t care. I knew who the real mondo crazies were.
People laughed at me for being ‘the super-powered fish whisperer’, the weakest and the lamest of the Justice League; I didn’t mind, not really. I wasn’t in the League to compete with the likes of Superman, or anybody for that matter - there’s always a bigger fish. I only cared about defending my friends and my turf, that’s it.
Besides, being the smallest fish in Justice League STILL meant I was in the top .001% of all humans and metahumans alive.
While I was in my prime, I never had a ‘dry spell’ - I was neck-deep in babes, booze and drugs the entire time.
Not to mention that if I completely cashed out my bank account and liquidated my assets, I could fill an Olympic-size pool with my money and swim in it, Scrooge McDuck-style.
But I’m done with sex and drinking and blowing my money with late-night parties. Over it. Done.
No amount of fame or popularity or wealth is going to make a difference now.
It won’t save my life.
It won’t bring Atlantis back from its watery grave.
It won’t bring back the coral or the breathable air and the sunshine, or restore the world to the Garden of Eden that it once was.
You know what? I’d give it all up, everything that I ever had, to save even a fraction of the things that actually matter.
And I did try my best to save the world, for as long as I was able.
I took up arms against the rising sea of troubles… and got pounded into the surf. Note to self: you can’t fight the sea and win, especially not with a freakin’ trident.
Not even an awesome, magical one.
I wasn’t going with the flow like a good hippie beach-bum should, I was swimming upstream… like the salmon used to do, so they could breed and die.
Except I won’t be doing any breeding.
All the poisons I’ve been soakin’ in - whether it’s the beer that got me drunk, the drugs that got me high, the preservatives and pesticides they’ve laced my food with, or the medicine that keeps me just barely alive - all of it has ganged up on me, to make sure I’ll be the last fish-man on Earth.
Now I’m just sick and tired, man.
First I lost my swimming and breathing underwater privileges - next I lost the ability to breathe air, and then the ability to get around on land without tremendous help. Even sponge baths from the prettiest nurses my money and fame could buy can’t even come CLOSE to making up for what a drag my life has become.
I’m more tube than man at this point: if you could see me now, I’ve got tubes running up my nose, down my throat, and directly into my bloodstream, to make sure I stay fed, hydrated and aerated.
And that’s just the PG stuff - you don’t don’t even want to KNOW where else they’ve shoved their plastic tubulars.
I feel like one of those sea birds or sea turtles, choking on straws and shopping bags.
The currents of my being have gone, most officially, awry.
On the upside, it won’t be long now before I’ll get to cast off this dinged-up humanoid shell, freeing me up to make my last dive into the great unknown depths.
Wish me bon voyage, as I make my way to the deep blue waters of the other side, to join my Atlantean sisters and bros.
To those that I’m leaving behind… I know that the world’s a mess, and I don’t blame you for being bummed out about it. But I tried, I really did. I tried to warn you guys, but you just didn’t wanna listen. I tried to save you from yourselves and play life-guard for you, even though you were all dead-set on drowning.
Sorry I couldn’t do more.
Hope your death isn’t too gnarly.
Peace out."
-Superman-
"Alien.
A word that perfectly describes who and what I am.
I’m an immigrant from a foreign country, who arrived in America illegally; I’m a space alien from a distant planet, who crashed my first vehicle before I could talk let alone get a driver’s license… and that vehicle wasn’t a car or a tractor, it was a flying saucer.
I’m a proud American, a Kansan, whose life began in earnest on a farm in Smallville, where I grew up. I’m also something of a New Yorker, having left my hometown behind to live and work in the big city of Metropolis.
I’m also proud to call myself Kent - Clark Kent, son of Jonathan and Martha Kent, the nicest, kindest, hardest-working people you could ever hope to meet, but never will: my pa died in a dust storm, and my ma died of old age, alone in the old farmhouse while waiting for me to bring home a daughter-in-law and grandchildren who would never come.
But I’m also a Kryptonian, of the House of El, from the planet Krypton.
And like any good space-alien, I bear a message from my planet - a warning to the humans of Earth:
Don’t let your own hubris get the best of you, and destroy what you love most.
Because it will: the only thing there is left of my home planet, and the people who gave me life, are radioactive chunks of rock and dust floating around in space.
The Kryptonians did what we on Earth often do: they didn’t want to listen to their scientific experts, and failed to act upon their dire warnings to protect their citizenry.
They thought they knew better; or that it didn’t matter; or that their experts weren’t telling them the truth for political gain; or that they would deal with it later, because other things were more important.
Whatever they thought, they paid the ultimate price for their inaction.
Their planet’s ability to support life was in trouble; and yet, instead of tackling this vital issue of universal importance, they chose to build weapons of mass destruction, turning all their attention and efforts to the cause of war.
Petty divisiveness and issues of cultural identity ruled the day. Strong men sought to be even stronger. Some quested for peace, but these swell folks were too few and far between; too many people thought that war was patriotic, and good. If it had been left up to the Kryptonians, who knows how long the war would have continued.
But it wasn’t up to them: the choice was taken away from them when the planet blew up.
Then it was all over.
There was no longer anything to fight for: the world they each wanted to conquer was lost to all of them.
Peace had come at last to Krypton, but in the worst way imaginable.
The greed and arrogance of the Kryptonians is not foreign to you; I see it in action every day.
But we don’t call it greed, arrogance or hubris, or use any words that sound like anything bad.
We call it something else that we like better, to reframe it: gumption, grit, pluck, mettle, nerve, confidence, boldness, steel.
We pride ourselves on our hard work and ingenuity; it seems only right, therefore, to encourage and foster the desire for success among our young, and reward them for their meritorious efforts.
We cheer them on as they struggle to achieve greatness.
‘Greatness’. Golly, what a word! It really puts it all altogether, under one nice and neat umbrella.
At the end of the day, what is ‘greatness’? What is this thing we’re all trying to achieve?
Is ‘greatness’ the same thing as being powerful?
If so, is being powerful a good thing to strive for?
We all want to see might used for right, but we all know it doesn’t always go that way.
See, we like to think we can have it all, if only we can get the right person in charge: someone with brains, courage and compassion, who we empower to make decisions for us.
Gee, a savior, a champion, a good king… that sounds real super, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to have somebody like that in charge of things?
We wouldn’t have to put any limitations on a good king - after all, if everything he does is for a good cause, with all our best interests at heart, why would we try to stop him or get in his way?
That’s what people wanted me to be, many years ago: a good king of limitless power.
I would have tried, believe me - if I thought it could work.
But, sad though it is, I wouldn’t have been a good king; I would’ve been a tyrant.
When one has power, one uses it to enforce their will.
One man imposing his will upon an entire world is the very definition of tyranny. No amount of good intentions on my part would have staved off moral corruption, or prevented the collapse of society into something we wouldn’t want or recognize.
But surely you could argue that use of force is justified in the service of a good cause - people’s health, safety, well-being?
Ah, but that’s the key issue: the lesser of two evils is still evil.
And I refuse to do evil.
I was taught since my youth, by my parents and my pastor, to never steal, kill or tell falsehoods - because these were sins against my fellow men and women, and against God himself.
I still believe they were right.
Unlike people, not all sins are created equal - telling a lie to protect life and well-being, for example, is not the same thing as lying in order to cheat and exploit. Same goes for stealing, or yes, even killing somebody. Intentions do matter.
But they sure can pave the way to Hell.
It’s a slippery slope to believe that the ends always justify the means; it’s just too darn tempting to reach for this as an excuse whenever you find yourself in a bad way.
We must always consider whether the ends truly are worth the means, and whether the use of evil will taint it all to the point of being moot.
If your actions are evil, then you will become evil; and evil doesn't deserve to grow and thrive.
If a good cause requires evil actions in order to be accomplished, then it stops being good - any cause that forces me to go against what I believe to be right is not a righteous one.
I will therefore turn my back to it.
That is what I did by refusing to become a World Leader.
I’m not a naive kid - I realize the world is complicated, and we don’t always get an ideal set of options. Every action we take has consequences, for good or bad - in order to go on living, we are constantly faced with moral calculations that must be made.
But, if I can help it, I won’t put myself in a position where I have to make too many of the more significant moral calculations on behalf of other people, or have an undue influence on which direction the scales of justice tip.
I believe each individual must decide for themselves what is right and wrong, and choose to come together for agreement on matters that concern them. The idea of people abdicating their personal responsibility in order to blindly follow my command, replacing their moral judgement with my own… it’s a scary prospect.
Though a lot of the blame for the fate of Krypton can be placed upon one man, General Zod, it took the actions and inactions of many to bring about its ultimate demise; one man, no matter how powerful or how virtuous, could have saved it single-handedly on the day of its doom.
Even if I had all the powers imaginable, the cold hard fact is that I’m not able to save Earth, or humanity, from a similar fate.
Believe me, I understand wanting power - all of us feel powerless in some way or another, to make the world the way we want it to be; we all fantasize about having the power to make it work to our benefit, and for the people around us to behave the way we feel they ought to. Gosh even I feel this way, a great deal of the time, though I reckon I’ve already got more than my fair share of powers.
We’re all endowed by our Creator with the gift and the burden of free will. No one can take that away from us.
Outside forces, or your own fears and desires, may attempt to influence you this way or that - they may try to use bribes, threats, or funny reasoning to get you to act in a particular way, but ultimately the decision to act is yours.
We always have a choice, whether we like it or not - and that includes doing nothing at all.
Sometimes that’s the right choice - sometimes, rather than to do something you know deep down in your heart to be wrong, it is better to leave it up to God, and let the pieces fall where they may.
But sometimes it’s not - if it’s only the simple fear of the unknown that is holding you back, then you must pluck up your courage and choose to do the right thing in spite of it all. ‘Better the devil you know’ is never a good answer - I’ll always go with the better angels of our natures, even if the road they take makes me awfully nervous.
The choice to deal with evil - rather than to risk it all for the sake of good - is, in my book, both craven and faithless.
And honestly, does the true risk lie where we think it does?
I know that if I follow righteousness, I will never be in danger of losing my soul; if I take part in wickedness, the loss of my soul is certain.
Don’t let the amount of evil and complication in this world get you down; if there is one ultimate truth that no one can reasonably deny, it’s this: while we live and breathe, there is always hope for a better tomorrow.
Hope. I think it’s a much better word than ‘greatness’.
I represent the hopes of my parents and my people, Kryptonian or Earthling.
Our children represent our hopes, as well as their own.
I know how you feel. I know that despair is weighing you down, sapping away your energy and strength… maybe even your will to live.
I’ve got to confess, I’m running powerfully low on hope myself: right now I’m sitting here, in absolute solitude, feeling like any day now it’ll be my time to die.
But I also know that this is the wrong attitude to take - each of us is responsible for nourishing, fostering, cherishing and protecting hope in any form it comes. We must not keep hope grounded by our own anxieties.
In fact, I say we should let her fly."
A word that perfectly describes who and what I am.
I’m an immigrant from a foreign country, who arrived in America illegally; I’m a space alien from a distant planet, who crashed my first vehicle before I could talk let alone get a driver’s license… and that vehicle wasn’t a car or a tractor, it was a flying saucer.
I’m a proud American, a Kansan, whose life began in earnest on a farm in Smallville, where I grew up. I’m also something of a New Yorker, having left my hometown behind to live and work in the big city of Metropolis.
I’m also proud to call myself Kent - Clark Kent, son of Jonathan and Martha Kent, the nicest, kindest, hardest-working people you could ever hope to meet, but never will: my pa died in a dust storm, and my ma died of old age, alone in the old farmhouse while waiting for me to bring home a daughter-in-law and grandchildren who would never come.
But I’m also a Kryptonian, of the House of El, from the planet Krypton.
And like any good space-alien, I bear a message from my planet - a warning to the humans of Earth:
Don’t let your own hubris get the best of you, and destroy what you love most.
Because it will: the only thing there is left of my home planet, and the people who gave me life, are radioactive chunks of rock and dust floating around in space.
The Kryptonians did what we on Earth often do: they didn’t want to listen to their scientific experts, and failed to act upon their dire warnings to protect their citizenry.
They thought they knew better; or that it didn’t matter; or that their experts weren’t telling them the truth for political gain; or that they would deal with it later, because other things were more important.
Whatever they thought, they paid the ultimate price for their inaction.
Their planet’s ability to support life was in trouble; and yet, instead of tackling this vital issue of universal importance, they chose to build weapons of mass destruction, turning all their attention and efforts to the cause of war.
Petty divisiveness and issues of cultural identity ruled the day. Strong men sought to be even stronger. Some quested for peace, but these swell folks were too few and far between; too many people thought that war was patriotic, and good. If it had been left up to the Kryptonians, who knows how long the war would have continued.
But it wasn’t up to them: the choice was taken away from them when the planet blew up.
Then it was all over.
There was no longer anything to fight for: the world they each wanted to conquer was lost to all of them.
Peace had come at last to Krypton, but in the worst way imaginable.
The greed and arrogance of the Kryptonians is not foreign to you; I see it in action every day.
But we don’t call it greed, arrogance or hubris, or use any words that sound like anything bad.
We call it something else that we like better, to reframe it: gumption, grit, pluck, mettle, nerve, confidence, boldness, steel.
We pride ourselves on our hard work and ingenuity; it seems only right, therefore, to encourage and foster the desire for success among our young, and reward them for their meritorious efforts.
We cheer them on as they struggle to achieve greatness.
‘Greatness’. Golly, what a word! It really puts it all altogether, under one nice and neat umbrella.
At the end of the day, what is ‘greatness’? What is this thing we’re all trying to achieve?
Is ‘greatness’ the same thing as being powerful?
If so, is being powerful a good thing to strive for?
We all want to see might used for right, but we all know it doesn’t always go that way.
See, we like to think we can have it all, if only we can get the right person in charge: someone with brains, courage and compassion, who we empower to make decisions for us.
Gee, a savior, a champion, a good king… that sounds real super, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to have somebody like that in charge of things?
We wouldn’t have to put any limitations on a good king - after all, if everything he does is for a good cause, with all our best interests at heart, why would we try to stop him or get in his way?
That’s what people wanted me to be, many years ago: a good king of limitless power.
I would have tried, believe me - if I thought it could work.
But, sad though it is, I wouldn’t have been a good king; I would’ve been a tyrant.
When one has power, one uses it to enforce their will.
One man imposing his will upon an entire world is the very definition of tyranny. No amount of good intentions on my part would have staved off moral corruption, or prevented the collapse of society into something we wouldn’t want or recognize.
But surely you could argue that use of force is justified in the service of a good cause - people’s health, safety, well-being?
Ah, but that’s the key issue: the lesser of two evils is still evil.
And I refuse to do evil.
I was taught since my youth, by my parents and my pastor, to never steal, kill or tell falsehoods - because these were sins against my fellow men and women, and against God himself.
I still believe they were right.
Unlike people, not all sins are created equal - telling a lie to protect life and well-being, for example, is not the same thing as lying in order to cheat and exploit. Same goes for stealing, or yes, even killing somebody. Intentions do matter.
But they sure can pave the way to Hell.
It’s a slippery slope to believe that the ends always justify the means; it’s just too darn tempting to reach for this as an excuse whenever you find yourself in a bad way.
We must always consider whether the ends truly are worth the means, and whether the use of evil will taint it all to the point of being moot.
If your actions are evil, then you will become evil; and evil doesn't deserve to grow and thrive.
If a good cause requires evil actions in order to be accomplished, then it stops being good - any cause that forces me to go against what I believe to be right is not a righteous one.
I will therefore turn my back to it.
That is what I did by refusing to become a World Leader.
I’m not a naive kid - I realize the world is complicated, and we don’t always get an ideal set of options. Every action we take has consequences, for good or bad - in order to go on living, we are constantly faced with moral calculations that must be made.
But, if I can help it, I won’t put myself in a position where I have to make too many of the more significant moral calculations on behalf of other people, or have an undue influence on which direction the scales of justice tip.
I believe each individual must decide for themselves what is right and wrong, and choose to come together for agreement on matters that concern them. The idea of people abdicating their personal responsibility in order to blindly follow my command, replacing their moral judgement with my own… it’s a scary prospect.
Though a lot of the blame for the fate of Krypton can be placed upon one man, General Zod, it took the actions and inactions of many to bring about its ultimate demise; one man, no matter how powerful or how virtuous, could have saved it single-handedly on the day of its doom.
Even if I had all the powers imaginable, the cold hard fact is that I’m not able to save Earth, or humanity, from a similar fate.
Believe me, I understand wanting power - all of us feel powerless in some way or another, to make the world the way we want it to be; we all fantasize about having the power to make it work to our benefit, and for the people around us to behave the way we feel they ought to. Gosh even I feel this way, a great deal of the time, though I reckon I’ve already got more than my fair share of powers.
We’re all endowed by our Creator with the gift and the burden of free will. No one can take that away from us.
Outside forces, or your own fears and desires, may attempt to influence you this way or that - they may try to use bribes, threats, or funny reasoning to get you to act in a particular way, but ultimately the decision to act is yours.
We always have a choice, whether we like it or not - and that includes doing nothing at all.
Sometimes that’s the right choice - sometimes, rather than to do something you know deep down in your heart to be wrong, it is better to leave it up to God, and let the pieces fall where they may.
But sometimes it’s not - if it’s only the simple fear of the unknown that is holding you back, then you must pluck up your courage and choose to do the right thing in spite of it all. ‘Better the devil you know’ is never a good answer - I’ll always go with the better angels of our natures, even if the road they take makes me awfully nervous.
The choice to deal with evil - rather than to risk it all for the sake of good - is, in my book, both craven and faithless.
And honestly, does the true risk lie where we think it does?
I know that if I follow righteousness, I will never be in danger of losing my soul; if I take part in wickedness, the loss of my soul is certain.
Don’t let the amount of evil and complication in this world get you down; if there is one ultimate truth that no one can reasonably deny, it’s this: while we live and breathe, there is always hope for a better tomorrow.
Hope. I think it’s a much better word than ‘greatness’.
I represent the hopes of my parents and my people, Kryptonian or Earthling.
Our children represent our hopes, as well as their own.
I know how you feel. I know that despair is weighing you down, sapping away your energy and strength… maybe even your will to live.
I’ve got to confess, I’m running powerfully low on hope myself: right now I’m sitting here, in absolute solitude, feeling like any day now it’ll be my time to die.
But I also know that this is the wrong attitude to take - each of us is responsible for nourishing, fostering, cherishing and protecting hope in any form it comes. We must not keep hope grounded by our own anxieties.
In fact, I say we should let her fly."
-Green Lantern-
"My name is Hal Jordan. To my knowledge, I am the sole remaining Green Lantern of the Green Lantern Corps, pledged to protect and serve humanity.
I am also the supreme leader of an independent coastal city-state.
It was with a heavy heart that I led Coast City to secede from the Union of the United States of America. I believed in the ideals of what America stood for, and I was willing to give my life for them.
I believed that the only thing to fear was fear itself. I truly did.
Some have accused me of going mad. I have not gone mad - it is my country and the world that has gone mad, not I.
But, I will admit to going a bit blind.
Not blind in the physical sense, as I can still see everything around me.
My power - the power of the Green Lantern - is fueled by imagination. If I cannot imagine it, I cannot bring it to be.
I can no longer ‘see’ a desirable future for the human species; everything I see happening, as we move forward in time, seems to be leading away from my cherished values, and everything I hold dear. Everything that the futurists seek, design, and plan for us is abhorrent to me.
I despise the future. I do not want it.
I can imagine the past with far more clarity than I can the future, or indeed the present time.
I’m not crazy. I know that we cannot truly return to the past, and I know that the past wasn’t perfect - it had many, many faults, and was far from the ideal form imagined by our country’s founders.
As I have many personal faults, and have committed many sins for which I am ashamed.
But I know which things of the past were undesirable to me, and I know which things I find to be worth salvaging and protecting.
The perfect place to grow up as a child; the perfect place to work and raise a family as an adult; the perfect place for the elderly to retire.
And nothing ever changes.
It is exactly how I imagine a perfect, idealized world to be.
But I also admit that my idealized world is not suited to all.
It is not best suited to those who do not look like me, or believe as I do; who enjoy different pleasures than I do, or who desire things that I do not desire.
It is suited to me, to Hal Jordan.
I wanted for the world to be at peace - a world without war, and hate, and poverty. I wanted for the streets to be safe at all hours of the day and night. I wanted a community where people knew each other, and cared for one another. I wanted good schools to educate our young people, and for those same young people to be able to go outside - to breath fresh air, and ride bicycles, and run around, exploring the town or the wilderness with their friends, without fear of attack or abduction.
Most of all I wanted to be surrounded by the Green - by nature. I wanted there to be trees, and animals, and parks for children and adults alike to play in and enjoy.
And for lovers.
I wanted the kind of place the lovely nymph Jade would have liked… perhaps enough that she would have stayed on Earth as part of the Green Lantern Corps, instead of fleeing to the faraway refuge of Oa.
These things that I have described to you are what I would call my ‘American Dream’, but I suspect that it is a dream shared by many across the planet Earth.
The details might differ from group to group, or person to person - the architecture and the cultural aspects of my dream-world are unique to me and people like me. But surely, the ideas of health, safety and a loving community are universal - the dream that all of humanity shares in common.
And I used the power bestowed upon me as the Green Lantern to make my dreams come true.
But listen to me now: if you wish it, this same power of imagination can be yours.
You don’t like the world I have created? Then imagine YOUR own idealized world, and make it become real for you. Create your own undiscovered country to explore. Do what I cannot, and imagine a bright and beautiful future.
You do not even need my Power Ring or my Lantern to do it.
Simply imagine it. That’s the first step. The rest will follow.
If you can imagine it, then it can happen.
And if you WANT it to happen, then it will.
As the saying goes, where there’s a will there’s a way.
Dream it. Share that dream with others. Speak it, write it, do it.
Stop waiting for someone else with power, authority and determination to do it for you.
Stop waiting to be given permission.
Stop waiting to be ‘empowered’.
You already have the power right now.
Use it.
My dreams are born of sorrow, and of disappointed hopes; kill them.
My existence, and those of your other so-called superheroes, is nothing more than an illustration of failure, an exercise in futility - if you simply took personal responsibility for yourselves and your world, you would have no need for superheroes.
For make no mistake, you created us - you created us to deal with problems of such supercharged magnitude that non-superpowered humans didn’t stand a chance of remedying them. We diligently obliged, and inadvertently let you off the hook for your mess; and like a misbehaving child that is shielded from paying the consequences of their actions, you continued blithely along your destructive path and repeated your offenses endlessly.
You created the problems; you created us; you created the supervillains which oppose us, thwarting all our attempts to preserve the good in this world.
And now we’re failing. We’re losing this fight, and you will pay the price in the end.
Enough! Clean up your mess.
I have lived a long, and for the most part prosperous and happy life - though I also have many regrets, I have had my time and I am grateful for it.
It is no longer my time - it is yours.
Even if it destroys me, ends my life and my dreams, and undoes all that I have strived for… I look forward to what you create.
But first you must kill this unending nightmare, before it kills us all.
As the great Bard once said, in my favorite of his immortal plays: “For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come…”
I am also the supreme leader of an independent coastal city-state.
It was with a heavy heart that I led Coast City to secede from the Union of the United States of America. I believed in the ideals of what America stood for, and I was willing to give my life for them.
I believed that the only thing to fear was fear itself. I truly did.
Some have accused me of going mad. I have not gone mad - it is my country and the world that has gone mad, not I.
But, I will admit to going a bit blind.
Not blind in the physical sense, as I can still see everything around me.
My power - the power of the Green Lantern - is fueled by imagination. If I cannot imagine it, I cannot bring it to be.
I can no longer ‘see’ a desirable future for the human species; everything I see happening, as we move forward in time, seems to be leading away from my cherished values, and everything I hold dear. Everything that the futurists seek, design, and plan for us is abhorrent to me.
I despise the future. I do not want it.
I can imagine the past with far more clarity than I can the future, or indeed the present time.
I’m not crazy. I know that we cannot truly return to the past, and I know that the past wasn’t perfect - it had many, many faults, and was far from the ideal form imagined by our country’s founders.
As I have many personal faults, and have committed many sins for which I am ashamed.
But I know which things of the past were undesirable to me, and I know which things I find to be worth salvaging and protecting.
The perfect place to grow up as a child; the perfect place to work and raise a family as an adult; the perfect place for the elderly to retire.
And nothing ever changes.
It is exactly how I imagine a perfect, idealized world to be.
But I also admit that my idealized world is not suited to all.
It is not best suited to those who do not look like me, or believe as I do; who enjoy different pleasures than I do, or who desire things that I do not desire.
It is suited to me, to Hal Jordan.
I wanted for the world to be at peace - a world without war, and hate, and poverty. I wanted for the streets to be safe at all hours of the day and night. I wanted a community where people knew each other, and cared for one another. I wanted good schools to educate our young people, and for those same young people to be able to go outside - to breath fresh air, and ride bicycles, and run around, exploring the town or the wilderness with their friends, without fear of attack or abduction.
Most of all I wanted to be surrounded by the Green - by nature. I wanted there to be trees, and animals, and parks for children and adults alike to play in and enjoy.
And for lovers.
I wanted the kind of place the lovely nymph Jade would have liked… perhaps enough that she would have stayed on Earth as part of the Green Lantern Corps, instead of fleeing to the faraway refuge of Oa.
These things that I have described to you are what I would call my ‘American Dream’, but I suspect that it is a dream shared by many across the planet Earth.
The details might differ from group to group, or person to person - the architecture and the cultural aspects of my dream-world are unique to me and people like me. But surely, the ideas of health, safety and a loving community are universal - the dream that all of humanity shares in common.
And I used the power bestowed upon me as the Green Lantern to make my dreams come true.
But listen to me now: if you wish it, this same power of imagination can be yours.
You don’t like the world I have created? Then imagine YOUR own idealized world, and make it become real for you. Create your own undiscovered country to explore. Do what I cannot, and imagine a bright and beautiful future.
You do not even need my Power Ring or my Lantern to do it.
Simply imagine it. That’s the first step. The rest will follow.
If you can imagine it, then it can happen.
And if you WANT it to happen, then it will.
As the saying goes, where there’s a will there’s a way.
Dream it. Share that dream with others. Speak it, write it, do it.
Stop waiting for someone else with power, authority and determination to do it for you.
Stop waiting to be given permission.
Stop waiting to be ‘empowered’.
You already have the power right now.
Use it.
My dreams are born of sorrow, and of disappointed hopes; kill them.
My existence, and those of your other so-called superheroes, is nothing more than an illustration of failure, an exercise in futility - if you simply took personal responsibility for yourselves and your world, you would have no need for superheroes.
For make no mistake, you created us - you created us to deal with problems of such supercharged magnitude that non-superpowered humans didn’t stand a chance of remedying them. We diligently obliged, and inadvertently let you off the hook for your mess; and like a misbehaving child that is shielded from paying the consequences of their actions, you continued blithely along your destructive path and repeated your offenses endlessly.
You created the problems; you created us; you created the supervillains which oppose us, thwarting all our attempts to preserve the good in this world.
And now we’re failing. We’re losing this fight, and you will pay the price in the end.
Enough! Clean up your mess.
I have lived a long, and for the most part prosperous and happy life - though I also have many regrets, I have had my time and I am grateful for it.
It is no longer my time - it is yours.
Even if it destroys me, ends my life and my dreams, and undoes all that I have strived for… I look forward to what you create.
But first you must kill this unending nightmare, before it kills us all.
As the great Bard once said, in my favorite of his immortal plays: “For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come…”