Month: December 2016

Chapter 69: Fear

1. Fear is the mother of safety and the father of courage.
2. They who fear you present, will hate you absent.
3. Fear is the parent of cruelty.
4. Fear is stronger than love.
5. Fear springs from ignorance.
6. Fear kills more than disease.
7. Foolish fear doubles danger.
8. Share your courage, keep your fear to yourself.
9. Nothing is as rash as fear.
10. Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
11. The fearless man is his own salvation.
12. To fear the worst can cure the worse.
13. Fear tames lions.
14. If many fear you, fear the many.
15. Fear does not guard duty.
16. Fear makes people believe the worst.
17. Fear, not mercy, restrains the wicked.
18. Fear feels no pity when extreme danger threatens.
19. It is torment to fear what cannot be overcome.
20. Terror closes the ears and eyes.

The Good Book: A humanist bible made by A.C. Grayling

I mentioned that I saw this place as part cave drawing, part message in a bottle, and part sacrificial altar. So far, I think I’ve done enough of the first two and not enough of the third.

It’s time to sharpen the knives.

Who’s on the menu?

It’s best not to ask of others what you’re reluctant to do yourself. Looks like I’m going to have to shuffle up the steps of the ziggurat.

I also said that I’ll always tell you the truth as best as I can discern it. Hopefully, you’ll see that I mean business.

I am an excellent liar. Always have been. You could even say I was particularly trained to it.

I like to think people who have known me (ex wife excluded) these last two decades would chuckle if they heard me say this, because I’ve also been told my entire life that I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Hell, I had a staff sergeant say it to me when I was standing in the induction line after I enlisted, hair freshly gone and waiting for my new clothes.

“Kid, you better learn to hide your emotions or they’re going to eat you alive.” His exact words. I’m still not sure if he meant the emotions would eat me alive or the upcoming drill sergeants. Maybe he meant both.

And he said it out of the blue, as he was walking by.

But even by then, I was an excellent liar. I’d learned far before how to use my lack of a poker face as an advantage. Not only that, but long prior to his advice I took to heart something I read from Heinlein when I was 12.

One of the best ways to lie is to tell the truth. Or at least as closely to it as you can hew.

That’s why I added the qualifier to my vow to you: …as best as I can discern it.

Let me give you an example of telling a lie while also telling the emotional and factual truth.

I completed basic training a few days after my 19^th birthday. A couple weeks later I was stationed in Germany. I loved Germany; my being stationed there was one of my conditions for enlistment. It’s the one time you can make a deal with the military. It’s also one of the reasons why they recruit as young as they can. But that’s another story, let’s fast forward a bit.

I was in Germany for about 8 months when my roommate and I were woken by a pounding on our barrack’s door. This wasn’t anything new, as my squad leader could attest. This time though, it was at 3 am, which is unusual even for the infantry, alerts excepted.

This was a surprise urinalysis test.

You need some historical context here, I feel. I’m 50 years old at the time of this writing. The mathematically inclined will already have done the subtraction and or addition and placed this event squarely in time. I’m not one of those people.

I was in the army when Reagan was president. That was the guy who was married to the woman who wanted me to just say no. Oh baby, I not only had burnt that bridge, I took the smoldering ruins and built a shrine to hedonism. I only hadn’t said no, I was always on the lookout for the opportunity to say yes.

Once, I dropped acid on a regular work day, in the army, just to break the monotony. It’s a special kind of fun when your buddies know you’re tripping and they try to provoke a response while you’re standing in formation at attention. For all you righteous assholes out there who think I disrespected the uniform, fuck you. I grew up watching MASH and reading Catch-22. I know what deserves respect, I think.

But that’s not what they found in my urine. You couldn’t detect LSD in urine back then. I’m not sure you can now. But I digress, my apologies. No, they found, from what I can remember, the fantastic Lebanese hash I’d been smoking.

I wasn’t the only one who got caught. But I was the lowest ranking one who got caught. This turned out to be important, I think.

Because here’s where we get to the part where I told a lie using both emotional and factual truth.

There’s six of us. We’re sitting outside the C.O.’s office, waiting our turn to be called in.

Five go in. Each come out, looking let’s say, properly chastised. Or to put it in military terms, each with a company grade Article 15. The military has their own legal system called the UCMJ, the uniform code of military justice. A company grade article 15 is the highest punishment you can get short of, if I recall correctly, a brigade grade Article 15. In this case, loss of rank, loss of pay on top of that, one month of extra duty (that’s the part which really sucks), and confined to barracks for the same time.

I thought I could do better.

Top – that’s the first sergeant, the highest ranking NCO of the company -calls me in. I enter and stand at attention.

The company commander reads the charges and asks me if I want to appeal.

I decline.

He then reads me the consequences of a company grade article 15. You already know that part.

And here it comes. He then asks me, is there anything I would like to say that he should take into consideration before he decides if I get the full weight of the article 15.

I then ask him for permission to speak freely. He doesn’t grant it.

So I tell him this, and I mean every damn word.

“Sir, I knew exactly what I was doing. I rolled the dice and I lost. I accept the maximum penalty whatever that may be.”

You thought that I was trying to get less punishment, not more. Oh no, I was hoping he’d see exactly how much I meant what I said, and kick me out of the army altogether.

Not only did it not work, for a long time I thought it backfired to my benefit. Years later, I wondered if I only got what I gave. Because here’s what happened after I told my lie carefully shrouded in truth.

He said, “Hero, every one of those guys came in here and told me some hard luck story. I was running with the wrong crowd. It was the first time I ever did it. I was just around those who were smoking it and I must have breathed it in. All bullshit. You’re the only one who didn’t. Effective immediately, you’ve got the maximum penalty under Article 15. Keep your nose clean from now on and you’re going to be the first one to get his rank back. Dismissed.”

What followed was a month of the shittiest detail I can ever remember doing. You know, scrubbing toilets shitty. And that was after working all day. Every day, weekends too.

Two months after that, I was a PFC again. First one to get my rank back.

For a long time, I thought the story ended there. But I was too young at the time to know better.

Because shortly after I got my rank back, I was taken out of the motor pool, where I drove a freezing cold armored personnel carrier equipped with a TOW missle launcher, and was reattached to supply. Where I did paper work in a warm, cozy office. Oh, also, anyone who works in supply gets their ass royally kissed. Need a fluffier pillow? Out of toilet paper? Go see Hero.

I just remember being asked if I could type. Years later, I think it was more than that.

I think, my company commander read me like I did my favorite book. He not only didn’t kick me out, which is what I wanted, he rewarded me for my “honesty” by giving me my rank back quickly. Not only did he not kick me out, he moved me to supply. Give me a nice cushy job and see if I rise to the challenge. He had access to my personal record, all the tests and scores that start getting tallied even before you take the oath. He probably thought I’d figure it out.

Except I didn’t. Not until long after my honorable discharge.

That’s just one example of how to lie using the truth. There are others. Take it from a master.

My point is, and this is true no matter who says it, that the truth can be a shifting proposition. Sometimes the truth changes over time. Some truths are as old as the universe itself. The important thing is your relationship with the truth. Do you dress it up like an expensive escort, issue it a uniform and march it up and down the square, or do you worship it like a god?

And make a sacrifice on the altar.

Yesterday I wrote a bit about how I felt about religion.

You can imagine my surprise when I opened my mailbox today and found a flyer from the [name redacted] Baptist church, cordially inviting me to their services. It was addressed “Resident.”

One is almost tempted to see providence.

Again, I’m a firm believer in manners, so I took the time to write the [name redacted] Baptist church, thanking them for their concern.

Here is the letter, sent mere moments ago.

Dear [name redacted] church,

Thank you for the flyer I found in my mail. It was unexpected and very welcome.

I was a member of a Baptist church in Arizona and I learned a great many things from church.

But the most important thing I learned is that you should be ashamed of yourself.

We humans are a selfish, arrogant, mean spirited, petty, back stabbing, short sighted, foolish, irresponsible, two faced, ignorant, irritating, close minded, self deceiving destroyers of God’s green Earth.

And you’re part of the reason why.

This is where you’re going to stop reading and that’s a shame.

You thought it was perfectly ok to send me a flyer asking me to attend your church. The least you can do is listen to my reply. If you had a sliver of courage you’d read this aloud during your next service.

Maybe I’m out there, listening to see if you have the testicles.

I doubt it.

Because the truth is, you, and I’m talking about you, Pastor whoever you are, are a grifter.

I mean, look at the money you spent on that mass mailing. I’m sure that money came from parishioners, am I right? Or was it donated by a single, moved by the spirit, benefactor? You know, to get people to come to the church and give more…um, I mean worship.

Maybe you even believe what it is you preach. That makes you no better.

Because even if you live a life of poverty, which is you know, what Jesus told you to do, then you’re still stealing something. Something more precious than money.

You’re stealing people’s ability to think for themselves. When you say God did it, all questioning ends. If you knew anything at all, you would know the beginning of wisdom is the question, the end of wisdom is acceptance.

And that’s what you’re selling right? Wisdom?

Your product is defective.

It had a good run, I’ll give you that.

But it’s well past its shelf life.

Your religion invented a disease and the cure at the same time.

You state on your website that good deeds are not enough to get into heaven.

Which means, we need you, right?

How convenient. I need neither your bible nor your god to be or do good in this, the only world, the only life, any of us ever get.

To waste any time listening to the oldest con in the history of mankind is a tragedy.

I know I’m shouting into the void here but I’ve gone this far so I might as well go whole hog.

To you, the good people out in the audience who will never hear this, I say:

There is good and evil in this world. That is undeniable. It all comes from us. No devil is there lurking over your shoulder, nor angel. There is no one who can hear your thoughts but you.

You still have a duty to do good in this world. We all know it when we see it. You know you do. The bible doesn’t have the answers you need. You don’t need this charlatan to tell you how to love, live, and die.

Go home, pick up a book other than the bible. Any book, just about.

Read it.

Repeat with a different book. Don’t stop.

Go in peace.

The resident.

After sending this off and leaving the unredacted name of the church up for a bit, I was convinced that in dangerous times wise men keep silent. The same source paradoxically advises that even the wise must at times play the fool. I hope I’ve struck the right balance.

I hope I delivered the mental equivalent of a sharp kick to the shins towards the pastor of [name redacted]. More likely, it wasn’t even read.

Still, felt good to say.