f0rrest | Entries tagged with empathy

I feel like I’m fucking up right now, so I feel the need to explain myself, maybe not so much to you, but perhaps to myself.

You see, recently I did something I consider to be a very bad thing. I did something I stopped doing over a year ago, something I told myself I would never do again, something I believed to be performative and soul-sucking and possibly the death of humanity as we know it. And that something is, well, I made a new account on the social media platform Mastodon. I rejoined the herd, so to speak.

I am, once again, an elephant.

This may not seem like a very big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me. When I tell myself I’m going to do something, or not do something in this case, I like to keep my word. This is especially true when it comes to my vices, of which I have many, and social media, like any bad habit, is most definitely one of those vices. My vices continuously make a hypocrite out of me, causing me no end of psychic dissonance, because when it comes to vice, well, I have a self-control problem. I have a problem keeping my word.

And to prove that I haven’t kept my word, the following are verbatim quotes from yrstruly, pulled from a number of essays and reader email responses.

“Social media does something to our fragile, validation-craving psyches. We cannot get enough of social media, and once we get a taste of the validation it provides, we bend and morph ourselves into whatever form is necessary to continue receiving that validation.”

“... these places are indeed echo chambers brought about by the human need for validation.”

“In short, on social media, we become fake versions of ourselves, all while comparing ourselves to fake versions of other people… It’s a feedback loop of fakeness.”

“Humans need community, real community, and social media is a false community. Our mental health declines because… we continue to believe that social media can replace actual fleshy people, when it obviously can't.”

“We have turned to the miasma (social media) for the very community that the miasma has destroyed, as if the poison is the cure.”

“... if we remove social media, we will become less polarized, because, at present, it’s far too easy to call for violence when we view those we’re targeting as fake, dehumanized avatar people instead of fleshy, real-life people that actually bleed.”

“People were not meant to communicate this way (i.e., social media).”

I could keep going, but I don't want to bore you with all the little details, and the more details I provide, the more figurative egg ends up on my face. The bottom line is, I was very much against social media for a long time. And I still kind of am. Yet here I am, an elephant, back in the herd, in the echo chamber, doing the whole performative song and dance, posting photos of my hip, retro CRT, passages I’ve underlined in paperbacks, and quirky one-liners in all lowercase because, one, I think it looks cool, like I don’t take anything seriously and that’s cool somehow, and two, I’ve convinced myself that social media doesn’t deserve proper grammar. Yet here I am, liking the posts, boosting the posts, compulsively checking the posts, getting those little shots of dopamine with every tap and click.

To quote Trent Reznor of the 7x-platinum industrial goth-rock band Nine Inch Nails, “I was up above it, now I'm down in it.”

So, if I dislike social media so much, why did I return? That’s a great question. First, let's examine those quotes up there, the ones I made a few years ago. Was I full of shit, or was I on to something, or maybe both?

I think this is true to some extent. I don’t think I was entirely off the mark. I think social media is a great source of validation, especially when you get none from the people around you. Perhaps the less validation one receives from those around them, the more one will end up retreating into online spaces. I don’t know. But if you’re anything like me, you probably feel like you don’t belong in the physical space you inhabit, you probably feel like a fucking weirdo. Perhaps, because your values and interests don’t align with those around you, you feel disconnected, alone, different in a bad way, so you’re withdrawn and maybe a little jaded and angry. Maybe you blend in with the crowd, maybe you don’t, but either way you feel like a stranger in a strange land, and you desire to escape, to a world filled with people who understand you.

Social media provides us a way to escape to this world, a way to join a herd of like-minded elephants. On the one hand, this is great, it makes us feel good and perhaps, by fostering a sense that we’re not alone, it can stave off despair, even save a life or two. On the other hand, we become performative, exaggerated versions of ourselves, sometimes flat-out fake versions of ourselves. Because when we receive validation, we lean into the behavior that provides us with that validation, and sometimes that behavior might not be so good, physically or mentally, or both. In the essay that the above quote comes from, I talk about right-wing echo chambers a good bit. I talk about how a withdrawn young man might receive validation from the wrong sort of people, maybe racists or sexists or whatever, and so then that young man might adopt the group’s hateful, extremist views, or at least pretend to, to continue receiving validation from said group. I think this is a common thing that happens. In fact, I’ve watched it happen to people in real time, several times. Like the quote says, I think we often bend and morph ourselves to fit in with the crowd. Maybe this isn’t always a bad thing. But the problem is, some crowds are not worth fitting into, but that’s hard to identify when that not-worth-fitting-into crowd makes you feel good. Another problem, however, and this is where I think I might have been a bit off the mark originally, is that this problem is not unique to social media, this happens in physical spaces as well, all the fucking time. So, perhaps, instead of deriding social media specifically, I should have been critiquing human behavior in general, or providing more guidance on how to think more critically about our shared human need for validation and where it might lead us.

All that being said, it does seem much, much easier to fall into the wrong crowd on social media than in the physical world. Social media disconnects us from reality, making it easy for us to flippantly adopt or espouse extreme views, whereas, in the physical realm, you run the risk of ostracization or literally getting punched in the face. I think this is self-evident just by browsing any online space for more than five minutes. People all over the world are calling for violence, based on political views, religious views, or whatever. There is barely any empathy anymore. Violent rhetoric seems far more common now than it did, say, 20 or 30 years ago. I don’t think it was like this back in the late ‘90s or early 2000s, when I was growing up. I’ve had the privilege of growing up in two different worlds, one before the internet, and one after the internet, and the after-internet world seems far more intolerant than the before-internet one, at least in my experience, which is ironic because, today, even though we’re obsessed with enforcing inclusive language and whatnot, we are more insular, echo-chambered, and hesitant to engage with those we don’t agree with than ever before. Perhaps, in our herd quest for online community, we have lost the ability to think critically?

So yes, I do think social media is dangerous, but only if you’re not able to think critically about yourself and the world around you. And this is where I may have erred in my previous writing. Perhaps I was not thinking critically myself. Instead of low-key shaming people for using social media, I should have been encouraging more critical thinking. The good news is that my writing, at least over the past year, does that in spades, at least I think it does. And perhaps, now that I’m back on Mastodon, I can share my views with more people. Maybe that will help the world in some way. Or maybe I’m just being a narcissist. Who knows.

Anyway. I think that last point, about returning to Mastodon to share my views with more people, is a nice segue into the “why” behind why I returned to Mastodon, so let's examine that a bit.

Spoiler alert, the following might reveal that I am, in fact, just a huge narcissist. This is something I’ve always suspected about myself. The silver lining here, however, is that at least I’m aware of it, at least on some level.

The idea to return to Mastodon came when my friend and I restarted our old gaming blog. Back when we were actively publishing, we would post our work on Mastodon, and it would get some traction there. In fact, I imagine most of our incredibly small reader base came from Mastodon. And some of the people I’ve met through Mastodon are some of the coolest people I’ve ever met in my life, honestly. So, when we decided to start publishing together again, I thought, “Hey, maybe we should post our stuff on Mastodon, like we used to, you know, so people will actually read it?”

Now, just to be clear, I don't need an audience to write. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be writing anymore, because I barely have an audience now. I mean, I’m lucky if one or two people read my long-form stuff. In fact, most of it goes entirely unread. I have the backend data to prove it. But again, I don’t need an audience to write. I’m not just saying that, either. I enjoy writing for a number of reasons that, if you've been following my writing or even this journal, which you probably haven’t, you already know. So, to repeat, I don’t necessarily need an audience to write. But, like most things when it comes to human psychology and life in general, things are never so black and white, everything is always complicated. Because, if I’m being honest, there is certainly a part of me that does like having an audience. There is a part of me that likes it when people read and praise my stuff. From a young age, I have had a desire to become a celebrity. I’ve written about this desire many times. In high school, I wanted to be a David Bowie-like pop star. Maybe my parents didn't give me enough attention when I was younger or something, who knows. But I’m willing to admit that this desire for celebrity is certainly an aspect of my personality, one that I don't particularly care for, but it’s an aspect for sure. And I don’t care for this desire because I know, if I were a Zen master or something, these desires for audience and praise would be purged entirely, or at least not indulged, because, like any desire, they come from a place of ego, insecurity, and longing. Every moment I seek praise, I am thinking of myself without praise. I am happier, in general, when I am not seeking praise from others. I know this to be true because, rarely, in those brief moments of Now Now clarity, when I’m momentarily enlightened, I don’t care about praise, because I know all the praise I would ever need is right here, inside of me. Plus, I know from experience that if you base self-worth solely on praise from others, you are bound for disappointment, envy, and resentment. Peace comes from within, not from compliments and five-star reviews. But nevertheless, these desires for audience and praise are part of me. They are like a Devil Gene. I recognize them, and I treat them as a vice. And, like we already covered, when it comes to vice, I have a problem with self-control, with keeping my word.

So that’s one reason I’m an elephant now, I’m indulging in a vice. And this vice, when indulged, manifests as me advertising my work and trying to appear like a cool and interesting person to people I barely even know online. In a sense, I am marketing, treating myself as a sort of product, a product being given away for free, but a product nonetheless. This makes me feel gross on some level. Human beings ought not be products. Yet here I am, treating myself as if I’m some sort of product, even though I know better. Go figure.

However, and this could very well just be the vice talking, I imagine other writers and artists have a similar desire for audience and praise. I imagine this is a very human thing. We are social creatures, after all. We like being surrounded by people who like us and make us feel good. So, when I was going through the whole dissonant “I know I probably shouldn’t return to Mastodon just to post my stuff and get praise, but I kind of want to?” routine, the last clause of the first sentence of this paragraph kept running through my head on repeat, being used as a counterpoint. “It's OK, you're only human, everyone else does it, why not you?” And eventually, I broke my word. I caved. I became an elephant, once again.

But, if you want to know the truth, that’s not the only reason I caved. It’s really not. In fact, if that were the only reason, I probably wouldn’t have returned to Mastodon. Like most things in life, things are not so black and white, everything is complicated. There was another reason, something deeper, something that, when compounded with my desire for audience, prompted me to return.

And that was, well, I missed you.

Current Mood: lonely
Current Music: "Stay (I Missed You)," Lisa Loeb

Why would anyone choose to be a serial killer?

I mean, consider how stressful that would be: sneaking around, killing people, hiding bodies, evading police, pretending you're just a normal, everyday dude in social situations. Even if we assume the serial killer doesn't feel anxiety about any of these things, think of all the mental effort involved in just doing them to begin with. It just doesn't seem worth it, especially when considering that, if you get caught, you’re socially ostracized, kept in a cell your whole life, or just flat-out killed by the state. So then why do it?

One can only assume that, for whatever reason, the serial killer enjoys doing what he does. This is a chilling thought. But again, why?

You and I both know that, for quote-unquote “normal people,” even the very thought of killing another living person makes our stomachs churn and our skin crawl. Killing people just feels wrong. Yet, there are some people out there who kill their own children. What the hell is wrong with those people? Doesn't that fly in the face of almost everything we know about human behavior and biology, killing your kids? If, by some evolutionary urge, we are driven to reproduce, to make new little versions of ourselves, to propagate the species or whatever, then why would anyone ever, on purpose, kill their own children? It just doesn’t make any sense. So why? Why would anyone choose to be a serial killer? Why would anyone choose to kill their own children? Why would anyone choose to do something that so flies in the face of both evolutionary biology and societal norms?

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer, but I have a few guesses, and my main guess is that, well, these people are just fucked up. I know this isn’t a very scientific answer, so please forgive me, but this seems to be the most logical conclusion. For the serial killer, the child murderer, the pedophile, and so forth, something has just gone horribly wrong in these people’s brains. I might even go as far as to say that these people just can’t help themselves. That’s the only explanation. They are driven by some insatiable Mephistophelian urge to kill.

Of course, this begs many questions, all of which fall squarely within the realm of philosophy. Meaning, today I’m going to talk about free will and determinism.

Determinism is this philosophical idea that everything, including human action, is determined by prior causes, or “antecedents,” and because of this, literally everything is predetermined, meaning “free will” is an illusion, i.e. it does not exist. Think of a ball rolling down a hill. Once the ball starts rolling, we know what’s going to happen next, it’s going to keep rolling until it loses momentum, as per the laws of physics, which should be noted are also outside of the ball’s control.

So now you may be thinking, “OK, but I’m not a ball,” and my response would be, “Well, are you sure?”, and then you’d look at me like I’m a crazy person before trying to find some way to leave the room as quickly as possible. Because, yes, a human being is not a ball, that’s true. Fair. But consider this, maybe we are, though? We may not physically be balls, but perhaps our actions are not so different from balls rolling down hills? This is certainly something to consider.

Most learned individuals in the field of psychology seem to agree that something has gone terribly wrong in the serial killer’s brain. But where and when did this “wrong” happen? When the serial killer popped out of the womb, was his brain already fucked up, or did it happen later? This is where some doctors or philosophers or whatever seem to disagree with each other. Some believe that, due to genetics or whatever, the serial killer’s brain is just fucked up right from the get-go, they’re just screwed right out of gate. Others believe that the serial killer’s psychology is molded through their environment and upbringing. And some believe that it’s a mixture of both of these things, that maybe certain people are born with certain brain chemistries that make them predisposed to becoming a serial killer, but also that their environment and upbringing sort of fosters this predisposition toward serial-killerdom, meaning, if you have a serial-killer-leaning brain, you may not end up being a serial killer after all, or maybe you will, based on a number of environmental factors.

If I had to pick, I’d probably land in the latter bucket, i.e. serial-killerdom is probably a mixture of both nature and nurture. Now one may assume that, if this is the case, a combination of both nature and nurture, then the serial killer is not predetermined from birth to be a serial killer, that there’s some level of outside control over them becoming a serial killer. Perhaps there is even some level of free will involved in choosing to become a serial killer, too.

But is there, really? Remember: ball, hill.

Let’s say you’re born with a predisposition toward becoming a serial killer. What that means is there’s already one strike against you having free will, or having a choice in the matter. The ball has already been pushed down the hill, so to speak. Now let’s say your father is an abusive asshole, and his abusive behavior rubs off on you in some way, and since you’re already predisposed to psychopathy or whatever, you start abusing people yourself, until eventually you do indeed become a serial killer. Or let’s flip it around, let’s say you’re born to a loving family, and they foster you in such a way that sort of “suppresses” the psychopathy, therefore you don’t become a serial killer. The problem is, in both of these scenarios, serial-killer disposition or not, you didn’t have the luxury of choosing your brain or your parents. None of us did. I mean, we didn’t even choose to be born, right? What this means is that, regardless of nature or nurture or both, whatever happens still seems to be predetermined, you don’t have much say in the matter. Your biology, your parents, the environment around you, these are all parts of “the hill,” so to speak, the hill that the ball is rolling down, “the ball” being “you” in this hypothetical.

So, basically, it’s looking really bad for “free will” here. It seems like everything is predetermined. It seems like we’re fucked.

But I think we’re doing one thing a disservice here, that thing being your choice in the matter.

You and I both know that, in the present moment, we are thinking about stuff and making choices about things. For example, you have chosen to read this journal entry, you have made it this far, and that seems like a conscious choice on your part, does it not? Yes, I may have influenced you to read this, maybe you saw the link posted somewhere, or maybe this entry popped up in your RSS feed, so perhaps your seeing this entry was not entirely your choice, but you did not skip over it, you chose to read it. That was your choice. It seems intuitively true that, at least in the present moment, we can make choices that determine our immediate outcomes. It does not seem like our choices in the present moment are controlled by our abusive fathers or whatever, for example. And if that’s true, that seems to suggest that “free will” is actually safe, that we can choose our own destinies, so to speak.

But if we examine this closer, perhaps this sensation of “choice,” or “free will,” or whatever you want to call it, is actually just an illusion. Let me explain.

I wrote a short story recently, and in that story, there’s this concept called “The Devil Gene.” It’s this plot device from this one game, Tekken 3, where the main character, Jin Kazama, is born with this “Devil Gene,” and it sometimes takes control of his mind and body. To quote the short story, “He had the Devil Gene. He was born with it. He couldn’t control it. When he’d get really mad, his eyes would go dark red, he’d sprout feathery black wings, and he’d shoot lasers out of a third eye on his forehead.” The reason the Devil Gene is important is because, well, I think we all have the Devil Gene inside of us, on some level. Obviously, we don’t sprout wings and shoot lasers, but we all experience unwanted bouts of rage, envy, despair, and so on. And when these emotions pop up, they often feel uncontrollable, as if we’re possessed by some ancient evil, as if we have the Devil Gene.

But it's not just the Devil Gene that feels spontaneous and uncontrollable: less-extreme emotions, minor annoyances, simple pleasures, random wants and desires, these all seem to flash in our minds without our express permission, which begs the question: are we really in control if we can’t fully control our own thoughts and feelings?

The immediate counter to this is, “Well, even if I do feel spontaneous emotions sometimes, I can still choose to respond to those emotions in different ways.” And yes, that seems true. For example, let’s say your friend makes you angry, so you choose to punch him in the face, or maybe, instead, you choose to leave the room, sit down in the lotus position, and practice your breathing, to calm down. It seems like we have a choice in the matter here. But the problem with this is that however we respond to the anger, we are still having to respond to that anger to begin with, meaning we are still being controlled by that anger. So whether you choose to punch your friend or sit in the lotus position, either choice would have been inspired by an emotion that popped up without your express permission. The emotion, which was outside of your control, was the antecedent to your behavior, and therefore your behavior, regardless of whatever that behavior actually was, was outside of your full control. So, even when we’re quote-unquote “controlling” our emotions, we’re still being controlled by them, otherwise we wouldn’t have to “control” them to begin with.

How this relates to you reading my journal entry is sort of tangential, but basically, you had a desire to read this entry, and then you chose to read the entry, but the initial desire was sparked by my posting of the entry to begin with, therefore your decision to read my journal entry was not entirely of your own choosing. I’m sorry to say this, but you were manipulated into reading this journal entry, at least on some level.

This reminds me of this one great lyric from one of my favorite songs, and it goes, “Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body? I don’t know.”

To answer Morrissey’s question with something better than “I don’t know,” perhaps the mind and the body are not separate things at all, perhaps they are one and the same? I realize I just answered a question with a question, which is probably bad form, but again, I don’t really know the answers here, and I don’t want to pretend like I do. This is just philosophy, after all, which is pretty much just semantics and metaphysics and language games, i.e. pretty much bullshit, so you, reader, are free to disagree. Perhaps that’s your choice. That’s fine.

However, if we choose to believe modern science, which claims that there’s gray matter up there in our skulls, then that gray matter is certainly part of the biological construct we call “the body.” So if our thoughts, and by extension our “minds,” are simply the result of synapses firing off in the ol’ gray matter up there, then “the mind” would indeed just be another part of “the body,” similar to our hands and feet. To deny this, we’d have to reject modern science and instead take a religious or spiritual approach, which would be fine, there’s no judgment here, but these alternative approaches come preloaded with their own deterministic quandaries, for example, look up “theological fatalism.” My point being, "free will" is beset by challengers from all sides, regardless of whatever ideology you might subscribe to.

When it comes to “free will,” most of us like to believe that the mind rules the body, that we are in full control of our actions, that we hold fate in our hands and can mold it like clay. This belief gives us purpose, meaning, and drive. If we were to hold the opposite belief, i.e. that we’re solely driven by uncontrollable thoughts and feelings, life would seem pretty meaningless. After all, if we have no control, if everything is just biologically driven, then what’s the point? If whatever is going to happen happens regardless of whatever we say or do, then why should we even care? This is a depressing thought, which is why the majority of us believe we have some choice in the matter, some sort of “free will.” This belief shields us from despair, sometimes even suicide. But the problem is, there’s a conflict here, because we have a vested biological interest in holding this belief. If this belief were not hardwired into us, we probably wouldn’t make it very far in life, we’d just waste away or kill ourselves or whatever. And according to modern science, “evolution” doesn’t like organisms just wasting away and killing themselves. Life must go on, I guess. So, considering this and also everything else we’ve discussed so far, it seems possible that this belief in what many of us call “free will” might just be a biological illusion created for the express purpose of self-preservation.

So let’s recap what we’ve discussed so far. First, some people might be born with brains that predispose them to being serial killers, and these brains were not of their choosing. Second, the would-be serial killer’s upbringing and environment, both of which are outside of the their control, may have an impact on them becoming a serial killer. Third, although it seems like we can make choices in the moment, many of these choices are driven by prior antecedents, like me linking this journal entry to you in some way or all the seemingly uncontrollable emotions, thoughts, wants, and desires we experience on the daily, so, regardless of how we respond to these things, it seems we are still being controlled by them to some extent. The conclusion here seems to be that we are just balls rolling down hills, and therefore "free will" is an elaborate biological hoax, does it not?

But what I keep coming back to is this: I cannot shake the feeling that I have some sort of choice in the present moment, or at least I feel a sensation that seems like “choice.” Even if some of my thoughts and emotions are unwanted and often influenced by other people, how I choose to respond to those thoughts and emotions seems to be within my control, at least to a certain degree. I cannot shake the feeling that there is something more to this. It may be the case that many, if not all, of my choices might be in response to some external stimuli, some prior antecedent, but I’m still choosing how to respond. I guess, maybe, this could all be some sort of biological trick, but that just doesn't feel right to me.

Another thing I can’t shake is the sense that viewing “free will” through this “free will vs. determinism” lens is an overly dualistic perspective. It seems very black or white to me. I don’t like black or white. I am morally opposed to black or white. Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why can’t we have some “free will” and some “predetermination?" Why can't that be the case?

I was talking to my friend the other day about this same topic. He’s much smarter than me. He’s got a something-or-other in philosophy and teaches literature and writing at a high school. And when I asked him about free will, specifically bringing up the ball-hill thing, he said, “You know about the cylinders, right?” And I’m like, “What? No. What about cylinders?” And he’s like, “There's this one Greek philosopher, I forget his name, but he says that, yes, at the beginning of our lives, we may be balls rolling down hills, but he says we can change our shapes. The hill is like all the external stuff, how you’re born, how you’re raised, how others treat you, the world around you, that sort of stuff. But the ball is you, and through self-reflection, meditation, and how you respond to things, you can change your shape, to a cylinder, or a square, or whatever you want. He says that we may not have control over everything, but we do have control over our shape. And when we change our shape, we roll down the hill at a slightly different angle.”

This struck me as incredibly poetic and insightful. I thought to myself, yes, this seems true, it’s not black or white, this or that. It’s not “you either have full control or you don’t,” instead it’s “you have some control, but not full control.” And when I thought about this further, I came to a weird realization.

The realization was, hypothetically, if we did have free will, that would mean we’re 100% accountable for everything we do, since we would have complete control over our own actions, obviously. But if that’s the case, then why would anyone become a fucking serial killer?

The answer is, no one would become a serial killer if they were in full control of their own actions. The social consequences of being a serial killer would be too great. It wouldn’t make any sense. It’s obvious that serial killers, and other deranged people, are dealing with the Devil Gene, they have fucked-up brains, and they sometimes have traumatic upbringings, and these antecedents have changed their shape, molded them into something dark. Therefore, they are not 100% accountable for their actions. Then, I started looking at things in terms of hills and paths. For example, at the beginning of a serial killer’s life, they were pushed down a certain hill, and at that point they started rolling down a certain path, and they’ve been rolling down that path for a long time. It’s a dark path, but it’s a path nonetheless. You and I, we are also on a path. We are on much lighter paths, but our paths are still paths nonetheless. We did not choose our paths. In a way, we lucked out. We weren’t born with fucked-up brain chemistry, for example. Our paths are easier than a serial killer’s path. It’s easier for us to change our shapes into a cylinder or a square or whatever, but some paths make it much harder to change shapes than others.

When I thought about this, it filled me with a sort of universal empathy. Instead of looking at certain people as being “monsters,” I started thinking of them as unfortunate souls who were pushed down a dark path. And no, I don’t think this means that serial killers should get a free pass, they have still broken the mortal laws, committed the highest of moral crimes. They’re fucking dangerous, so of course they should be dealt with accordingly, but I wonder sometimes, since we’re so focused on treating these people as monsters, maybe that treatment is just putting them further down their dark path? When we dehumanize people, are we really surprised when they start to behave like monsters?

When you throw away this notion of “free will” and accept that nothing is fully within our control, that all of us are influenced by external stimuli, this fosters a certain level of compassion that is absent when we solely believe that everyone makes their own decisions all the time and that they are in full control, because that belief encourages us to reduce people to their worst actions and hold them wholly responsible without considering the conditions that shaped them, their paths.

To me, the empathetic path is the one without “full control,” because when we view people in terms of their biology, their upbringing, and all the other prior antecedents that influence their behavior, we start to see the root causes of that behavior, and this fosters a level of compassion that is absent when we simply assume everyone is in full control of their own actions. And taking this further, if we consider the fact that we are part of a larger system, that our actions may influence the actions of others, we begin to be more critical of our own behavior, because in a world without full control over our outcomes, we quickly realize how our own behavior may carry long-term deterministic consequences for the people around us. This encourages a greater sense of responsibility, not just for what we do, but for how our actions ripple out, impact other peoples' paths, like a small pebble thrown into a large body of water.

I realize I’m using a very inflammatory example here, that being “serial killers,” and perhaps that’s a rhetorical mistake on my part, as I imagine it elicits a sort of immediate “Treat murderers with empathy? What the fuck? Try saying that to a serial killer, they’d just stab you in the throat” type response from some people. And maybe I will get stabbed in the throat, perhaps that’s the price we must pay for being universally empathetic, who knows? But I could replace the term “serial killer” with a more down-to-earth example, like “Trump supporter” or something, and still make the same case.

For example, let’s say, hypothetically, you have an aunt who’s a huge Trump supporter. Let’s say you’ve distanced yourself from this aunt, because you don’t agree with her politics or whatever. But do you really think she had full control over her decision to become a Trump supporter? Do you not think that, perhaps, her upbringing had something to do with it? Or maybe the media, with all their insidious propaganda? Or her friend groups? Social media? Maybe, if we’re being a little mean here, maybe your aunt was just born with a very low IQ. Maybe she’s frankly just a dumbass. Maybe that’s why she’s a Trump supporter. She can't help being a dumbass, she just is. Now, considering all that, do you still feel good about shunning your aunt? When looking at your dumbass, Trump-loving aunt through a more deterministic lens, does that lens not encourage a little more empathy than viewing the situation through a lens of free will where everyone is 100% accountable for their own actions?

Your aunt, she’s on a path, just like you or I. So maybe, instead of shunning her, instead of treating her like some sort of leper, maybe you should try to help her change her shape?

I’ve found that many people believe themselves to be empathetic, but more often than not, their empathy is selective, reserved only for those they deem worthy of it. But as long as empathy remains selective, cruelty and division will continue to fester. Only universal empathy can save the world.

So, that’s why I used the “serial killer” example, because if you can have empathy for a serial killer, then you can have empathy for literally anyone. In a way, having empathy for a serial killer is the final boss.

We must never forget that everyone, including you and me, is on a path. Through empathy and compassion, we must encourage others to change their shape.

So I’m an empathetic cylinder now, hopefully I don’t get stabbed in the throat.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: "Still Ill," The Smiths

After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that I guess I would have been a Nazi.

Yes, I know that opening sentence is inflammatory, click-baity even, but please bear with me, because I think this topic, which is actually more of a hypothetical thought experiment, is really worth discussing, as it reveals something about our personal ethics.

Last night, a friend and I were talking about current events, particularly the ICE situation, and the conversation inevitably landed on Nazi Germany. After some lengthy back and forth, the conclusion we came to was that, yes, back in the 1940s, if I had been a German citizen, I would have likely been a Nazi, maybe not ideologically, but I would have been labeled one.

And yes, again, I know this sounds really evil. And maybe it is, I don’t know. I'm still unsure myself. The question of “good” and “evil” was actually the catalyst for this whole conversation, which is something I’ll get into here shortly.

But first, some background. On March 16, 1935, Adolf Hitler introduced universal conscription, basically a draft: any man between the ages of 18 and 45 was subject to military service. Those who denied the call to serve the Nazi war machine were labeled Wehrdienstverweigerer, or “military service refuser,” arrested by the Gestapo, and prosecuted for Kriegsverrat, or “treason in wartime.” And it wasn’t just the refusers who were labeled as traitors, but also their families, the Nazis called this idea “Sippenhaft,” the idea that if someone defied Hitler, that person’s entire family shared moral guilt. The Nazis used this idea to prosecute the families of traitors, evicting them, imprisoning them, and sometimes even sending them to concentration camps.

So, back to my friend’s and my conversation, which was prompted by the recent murders carried out by ICE agents, which we both agreed were unjust and awful. During that conversation, my friend said something that bothered me. He said, “Anyone who works for ICE is evil.” I didn’t, and still don’t, agree with this assertion. Being pretentiously entrenched in Buddhist ideology, I told him that, first, this idea of “good” and “evil” is a harmful duality, that simply labeling people “evil” leads to bad outcomes, as it dehumanizes people and leaves no room for nuance. Second, I told him that these things are more complicated than they seem, that not everyone has a choice in their occupation. To this, my friend retorted, “Sure they do, everyone has a choice; they either enlist for ICE or they don’t. It’s that simple.” And sure, in our current time, maybe he’s right, maybe it is that simple, after all, there is no ICE draft, so maybe he got me there. But, being stubborn, I thought the point I was trying to make was still valid, though I might have been using a bad example, so I posited a hypothetical to try to illustrate my point further. I said, “Let’s say there’s a draft, and all people between this and that age are subject to serve ICE. Would you dodge this draft, labeling yourself a traitor and potentially landing yourself in prison, or would you enlist?” And he said, “Of course I would dodge the draft. What kind of question is that? That’s the only right thing to do.” And I said, “What if, in dodging the draft, your family would also be labeled traitors, and they too would be thrown in prison?” I was trying to illustrate my original point: that these things are more complicated than they seem. And still he said, “I would do the right thing and dodge the draft.” To which I said, “But is that truly the right thing to do here? Isn’t there now more at stake than just yourself?” And he said, “Maybe, but you should always act in accordance with your values and the greater good of society.” So I said, “Even if it gets your family killed?” And it was at this point that my friend assumed, I guess, that I was defending ICE, so he brought Nazis into the mix to illustrate his own point, as evoking Nazis is often the most extreme rhetorical move one can make in these types of debates, so he said, “You’re pretty much saying that if you lived in Nazi Germany, you would be a Nazi.” And me, having a wife and two children, I said, “Yes, maybe I would.” And he said, “Wouldn’t that compromise your values, make you feel terrible?” And I said, “Maybe, but I think I would feel worse if my wife and children died in a concentration camp.” And that’s kind of where we left it.

The whole point I was trying to make was that I have a hard time labeling someone as “evil” without understanding the full systems at play or the person’s entire decision-making process. Like the example above, if there were a draft and your family could be punished if you refused this draft, are you comfortable refusing the draft? At that point, you would not only be making a choice for yourself but also for your entire family, and this choice comes with heavy consequences for everyone involved. Is it fair to force such a choice, such a consequence, on your entire family? In refusing the draft, you may feel good about having stood up for your ideals, but will your son feel good when he’s dying in a concentration camp? “I may be starving, but at least my dad stood up for what he believed.” Sure, you could take your family and try to flee the country, but this also carries a huge risk. And sure, you could say that, in refusing the draft, you’re not the one actually sending your family to the concentration camp, the Nazi state is, and that’s true, you didn’t create the diabolical systems at play here, and those who did create it are more likely the “evil” ones in this scenario, but it’s also true that you’re aware of the consequences in this situation, you’re aware of the fact that if you refused to enlist then your family might be killed, and given you have that awareness of the consequences, your choice now carries a certain responsibility, specifically a responsibility for the wellbeing of your family. So, knowing the consequences, would you still choose to risk your family’s lives, for your own personal ideals? Ideals that, in the grand scheme of things, won’t make any difference? If you refuse the draft, what happens? You die, your family potentially dies, and then the Nazis just recruit some other dude to fight for them, and thus the war machine rages on. Is this individual act of defiance truly worth it?

The potential responses to the draft may be simple in principle, either “yes” or “no,” but the decision tree for those responses is not so simple. You could deny the draft and potentially get your family killed, maybe run away, take your family with you, or you could compromise your values, enlist, and fight for the Nazis, at which point maybe you could do a bad job on purpose, avoid killing people on the battlefield or whatever, sneakily clinging to your idealism while working within the confines of the diabolical system. But which choice is the right one here? It seems morally abhorrent to join the Nazi army, but it also seems morally abhorrent to knowingly risk the lives of your family by not joining the Nazi army.

At some point in the conversation with my friend, I got the impression that he was just not getting it, that maybe my hypothetical was too complicated. So I crafted a new one, a distilled version. I said, “let’s say the Nazis gather you and your family up, put you in a room, hold a gun to your head, then tell you, ‘join the Nazi army right now or I kill you and your entire family.’ What would you do in that situation?” But my friend refused to engage in this new hypothetical; he didn’t even bother to answer the question, instead he said, “That’s ridiculous, that would never happen.”

Oh, but it did happen, my friend. It happened all the time. In Nazi Germany, there may have been a few levels of abstraction between the guns and the heads of your loved ones, but the guns were still squarely pointed there. This happened to millions of people back then. So, knowing this, can we truly call a man “evil” if he’s simply doing what’s best for his family?

I would love to say that if I had been a citizen in Nazi Germany, I would have rebelled against the fascist government and died for my ideals, and maybe I would have done this if I were a single guy with no dependents. But are things ever that simple?

Like the concepts of “good” and “evil,” we often approach these situations from a black-and-white perspective, which leaves no room for nuance, and I believe this kind of thinking leads us down a dark path, a path in which we view those who don’t always make the “morally righteous” choices as vile monsters deserving of nothing more than death.

And is this not the same path as the Nazi ideology, a path totally devoid of empathy?

It was a gray day. I had spent most of the early afternoon trying to write something, but my head was full of clouds as dark as those outside, so I ended up deleting about two thousand words and playing Zelda until my son woke up from his nap. After an hour of play and Paw Patrol and lunch, my son grew restless and unhinged, so I decided to get us out of the house, go to the playground, so I buckled my son up in his overly complicated car seat, got in the driver’s seat of the Toyota, revved up the engine, played “Nice to Know You” because I was on an Incubus kick again and it's like one of the best songs ever recorded no joke, backed out of the driveway and avoided ducks wading in a pool of hours-old rainwater while doing so, and then floored it out of the neighborhood at a brisk five miles per hour, stopping at all neighborhood stop signs and causeway traffic lights like a law-abiding citizen, passing all sorts of barely drivable junkers and politically incorrect bumper stickers along the way because this town is southern as hell but that's OK because I'm just trying to stay in my lane here.

Singing along, “To obtain a bird’s eye is to turn a blizzard to a breeze,” I drove to the playground by the abandoned school, the one surrounded by two little league baseball fields that get used by the local church about twice a month, the one with the Coke-sponsored scoreboards quantifying every American boy’s dream of making it to the big leagues and getting out of this backwoods southern town, the one where homeless people take shelter in the dugouts overnight. It must have been about 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. The clouds were a dusty old quilt draped over the planet, everything damp, yellow, and pale. I unbuckled my son from his seat and let him run unfettered through the mostly empty parking lot. There were only two cars, mine and some purple van parked a few spots down. The playground was just a few feet away, one of those small kids’ playgrounds with low slides, protective railings, miniature rock-climbing walls, paths of colorful raised plastic, and safety swings that look kind of like those things they strap astronauts-in-training into, all enclosed by a tall wire fence, containing the boundless energy of youth. There were three other kids there, climbing all over everything. Girls, Hispanic, I think. As my son approached the playground gate, he veered off, like he always does, toward one of the empty baseball dugouts, determined to step on some used syringes or empty beer cans or whatever, which is when I caught up to him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and gently steered him toward the playground. And that’s when I saw her, standing there, right by the dugout nearest the playground.

She must have been around thirty years old. Hispanic. She was wearing a black dress, and her blue-black hair flowed waistward in purple highlights. She was holding her phone way out, pointing it at the empty parking lot for some reason, and she was standing behind one of those cheap folding tables you can buy at Walmart. She was totally alone. The table was decorated with black and orange paper tassels, pumpkins and bats made of papier-mache, Halloween-themed grab bags full of candy and snacks, a large basket tagged with the word RAFFLE stuffed with cheap pencils and a Nightmare Before Christmas thermos and some Keurig coffee pods for some reason, two books propped up on little wooden bookstands, and a sign that said BOOK SIGNING in edgy cursive font, hanging from the table with two pieces of clear tape.

And of course, I was instantly intrigued by this. I had so many questions. But, being kind of naturally standoffish and weird, and having to tend to my son, I tried my damnedest to seem disinterested, passed the BOOK SIGNING table, and made my way through the playground gate, closing it behind me. Then I proceeded to climb the playground equipment and chase my son around. We played for a good twenty minutes, but the whole time I was like compelled to look over my shoulder every few seconds at the book-signing table, where the woman in black was pacing back and forth, phone extended, presumably filming the parking lot, totally alone. The whole scene made me feel weird, sad almost, embarrassed in that sort of hyper-empathetic way you sometimes get when something is just so embarrassing that you yourself are embarrassed just by witnessing it. Vicarious embarrassment, cringe, fremdscham, whatever they call it. But I also felt a sort of kindred bond with this woman. After all, I also like to pretend that I’m a writer sometimes, so I sort of respect anyone who makes an effort to write, regardless of the contents of their writing. To me, the desire to write sort of elevates people, romanticizes them in my mind into a more thoughtful, interesting person. So there I was, contradictorily feeling both fremdscham and kinship with this woman, and this created a sort of dissonant pressure in my head, which eventually became so intense that I had to walk over and talk to the woman, so that’s what I did. I walked right up to her and said, in a blunt, almost dumbfounded tone, “What’s going on here?”

She lowered her phone and said, in a chipper tone, “Hello, thanks for asking, I’m having a book signing. I’m the author of two books. I write romance horror thrillers.”

I plucked one of the books off the stand and observed it closely.

SHADOWS BELOW. The glossy cover featured a cloaked young woman standing in a dark forest. She wore a solemn expression and held a dagger real close to her chest. It looked like something you’d see on a high school girl’s Pinterest feed or something, that sort of brooding, semi-realistic, Twilight-esque artwork that may or may not have been AI-generated because like who can even tell anymore, the line between reality and irreality blurring more and more each day.

Then, awkwardly, and already knowing the answer, I said, “You wrote this?”

And that's when the woman's wine-colored lips curled into a smile. “Yep, that’s the first one. I’m almost finished with the trilogy.”

The book itself was thin, papery, light in my hands. I turned it over. It had a barcode and an ISBN number on it and everything. I wondered to myself if maybe she just came up with the ISBN number herself, like was any of this even legit or what? Is she just out here pretending to be a serious author? With no audience? Has she even sold one book? Don’t you need to like ‘graduate’ to book signings? Gradually work your way up to it? Don’t you need to sell at least a couple hundred copies? Don’t you need to be like an established author for people to even want a signature? I started thinking to myself, wasn’t she skipping steps here? The balls on this woman. What was she thinking? What truly motivated her behavior here? I found the audacity of this woman somewhat offensive but also somehow admirable. But that feeling of fremdscham was not going away, because despite her vaguely admirable qualities, there was something pitiful about the whole thing, but it was a sort of pity I could relate with, like the shared burden of authors unknown. And for some reason, I started thinking maybe she was actually like some sort of well-respected local author, because who in their right mind would be out here at an abandoned playground on a gray day holding a book signing event? I started thinking maybe she was an established author just having an off day or whatever, so I read the synopsis on the back of the book, hoping it would support my hypothesis, but lo and behold, it was riddled with grammatical errors.

“Never Sleep-some Secrets stay buried. Others wake you screaming.

When Luica Ashbourne returns to her hometown after a decade away, she finds more than dust and old photographs waiting for her, she finds the door to her sister sabine's room stilled locked, and her name still whispered in hushed tones. Sabine disappeared without a trace. Everyone has moved on.

Expect the house.

Except mirrors.

Expect Luica.

As buried memories resurface and old friends turn into strangers, Lucia begins to uncover the truth: what happened to her sister wasn't an accident and someone is willing to kill to keep it hidden. In a town that's forgotten how to speak the truth, Lucia will have to tear through layers of lies, family secrets, and her own fractured past to survive.

Because the dead don't rest.

And secrets never sleep.”

This was not helping. My fremdscham was worse, much, much worse, and now also mixed with something like disgust. “Expect the house,” it says. “Expect Luica,” it reads. I mean, did she even proofread any of this? The blurb on the back of a novel is like the solitary draw of the novel, the hook to catch the reader, and she didn't even bother to proofread it? I mean, was the character's name “Luica” or “Lucia”? And “Expect the house”? Are you fucking kidding me right now? I mean, I get it, I'm dyslexic, I mix up “expect” and “except” all the time, among a whole slew of other words, but this is a printed novel, something for people to take seriously, so wouldn't you extensively proofread the thing before publishing it? I started getting kind of pretentious, like does this woman even care about the craft? Is this some sort of joke? I wanted to get in my Toyota and punch the gas, get the hell out of there, make it all go away before I accidentally said some real nasty shit to her, but I felt locked in at this point, unable to escape, and I could hear my son having a blast, screaming his head off with the three girls behind the locked gate of the playground, so I had no legitimate excuse to remove myself from the situation. And after a long period of silence, all I could think to say was, “How long have you been writing?” which was a sly question asked almost solely from a place of mean-spirited judgment.

“About three years. I love writing.”

Her tone diffused my annoyance somewhat. Despite her black dress, goth makeup, and combat boots, her tone was actually quite cheerful, and her aura was very pleasant. She spoke in a matter-of-fact way but had some sort of speech impediment with her S’s going on, which I found to be endearing. She watched me with big, brown, expectant eyes. She was very still but gave off a sort of nervous energy. She seemed to be out there, at the book signing, at the playground by the abandoned school, totally unaware that this was like objectively the worst possible place to have a book signing, because like what is the audience you’re trying to target here, toddlers? And yet there was nothing furtive or creepy about her. She seemed confident in herself and what she was doing.

At a loss for words at this point, I started flipping through pages of SHADOWS BELOW. “Sabine vanished on a warm July night with no shoes, no phone, and no goodbye.” The formatting was awful. There were no line breaks between paragraphs. It was almost all dialogue, no descriptive text or mood-setting or anything, and the dialogue was neither line-broken nor consistently housed within quotation marks, and not in a stylistic way, but in a careless, inept way. The text was filled with ellipses and cliches. It read like some sort of high school girl’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fiction. “Some monsters don’t knock. They bled through the walls.” Her tenses were all fucked up. There were several instances of repeated pronouns at the beginning of sentences. Words were consistently misspelled. Whole chapters were just walls of text. I felt my fremdscham growing, my eyes widening, as I flipped through those pitiful pages. There were like three or four spaces at the start of every sentence for some reason. Em dashes were often used in place of commas. She constantly misused “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” The book read like it was written by someone who barely knew English, frankly. She obviously didn’t know the difference between “its” and “it’s.” I felt my face turning red on her behalf. She called herself a horror author, but the real horror was having to read her awful prose.

I put the book back on its stand, stared down for a few terrible seconds, then looked up at her with a forced blank expression on my face, trying to think of something to say that wasn't just flat-out mean. The whole time she was blinking at me with those big expectant eyes of hers.

Not knowing what to say, I said, “Anyone show up, you know, other than me?”

Her smile died for a second but came right back. “Yeah,” she said, sort of fidgeting, “a few people.”

She was obviously lying, but I wasn’t going to get into it with her, so I just asked, “What were you doing earlier, with the phone?”

“Oh, I was livestreaming, to Facebook.”

She was livestreaming to Facebook? To what, an audience of zero people? She was showing an audience of zero people on Facebook an audience of zero people at the abandoned-playground book signing? Was this like some sort of Schrodinger's book signing event or something? Some tree-falls-in-the-woods-with-no-one-around-to-hear-it type thing? Like, if no one shows up to the book signing event, and no one knows about it, then maybe actually the book signing event was a smash hit, because no one would know otherwise? I guess me and her being there kind of screwed that up, but the point is, what the fuck? All these incredibly judgmental, mean-spirited quips were running through my head, all while she was standing there, expectant eyes and all that, in her weirdly confident way.

Then she said, “So, did you like what you read of Shadows Below?”

And this was like a mental blow to the head, because no, I absolutely did not like what I read, but I didn’t want to crush this woman’s dreams, at least not out here at the abandoned playground with my son nearby, but I couldn’t not say anything, so I figured maybe I would let her down gently, and that's when I started rambling off the first things that came to mind.

“The thing about writing these days is that your work is probably going to be read by like two or three people, tops, and you're never going to get the recognition you think you deserve. That's just the sad truth of it. I mean, like, I read that the latest Battlefield game sold more copies than all of the books sold in the United States in 2024. Isn't that crazy? People are reading less and less. They're turning to these like quick-hit entertainments, stuff they don't have to think about too hard, you know? You can fact-check me if you want, but I think the Battlefield thing is true. Writing is just not the enterprise it once was. So, like, if you're trying to get famous on like BookTok or whatever, it's probably not going to happen. Reading is like a dying form of entertainment, and writing is a dying craft.”

Her smile was quivering at this point, cracking, starting to break, but I just kept going for some reason.

“That’s just something I’ve had to come to grips with, you know? Do I want people to read my writing? Sure. Do I want them to say it’s amazing, the most genius thing they’ve ever read? Yes, deep down I do. But I know it’s not going to happen. It’s a stupid dream, is what it is. And it’s sort of discouraging to think about, it really is. I’m not going to sugarcoat it here. Your books, probably no one is going to read them. That’s just how it is. Maybe your best friend might read them, maybe, but more likely they’ll just tell you they read them when they really haven't, to like make you feel better or whatever. There are also a bunch of free tools out there for spell check and grammar check nowadays that people who do read expect a certain level of polish to the writing, you know? Your stuff has to be readable, is the thing. Not that your stuff isn’t readable, I’m just, like, saying, it has to be readable. You can’t like mix up the tenses and use past perfect incorrectly and screw up ‘their’ with an I E and ‘they’re’ with an apostrophe R E, or else the people online are going to eat you alive. I’ve learned this the hard way, believe me. It’s not pretty. That’s all I’m saying.”

Her smile was no longer a smile but a sort of seriously straight line. She seemed to be listening very carefully. Her big expectant eyes locked on my face. So I kept going.

“So there are, like, two things working against the aspiring writer these days. The first thing is, like, one, it might be easy to start writing, but writing is very, very hard, there are rules at play here that are both punishing and difficult to master, and then, once you know those rules, knowing when to break them takes a whole ‘nother level of skill. I’m talking years of practice. And the second thing is, like, two, you’re not going to get famous writing, no one is going to care, no one is going to read your shit, and by ‘no one’ I mean, like, ‘not many people,’ you know? You’re not going to get famous writing. It’s just not going to happen. I mean, like, the best you can probably hope for is someone significant discovers your stuff after you die and suddenly you’re like posthumously famous, but of course you’ll never know because you’ll be dead. And there’s always going to be people out there that tear your stuff down, laugh at you, call your work shit, and that hurts. It hurts a lot. You know? Taking criticism is really hard.”

She had averted her eyes to the table at some point during my ramble, so I had no hint as to what she was thinking, but I kept going anyway.

“But the thing is, and this is the kicker, I think, the thing is, if you still choose to write, despite knowing that it’s hard as hell, despite knowing that you’ll likely never become famous doing it, despite knowing that people are going to tear you down, if you still choose to write, despite all this stuff, then maybe that’s what makes someone a real writer or whatever, you know? Maybe that’s the hallmark of a true writer. I don’t know.”

She was still looking down, at the table, nodding her head in a sort of contemplative way, like she had paid full attention and was internalizing everything I had said, even though I felt like I was being kind of a pretentious asshole, because I kind of was. Then, after a few seconds, she looked up at me with this sad, pensive look on her face. But she didn’t seem sad herself, more like she felt sad for me, like she actually felt sorry for me or something, and that caught me off guard. I was at a loss for words. And it was around this time that I heard my son shout, “DADDY, DADDY, COME LOOK,” so I waved my hand at the woman and said, “Anyway, sorry for rambling. Good luck with your books,” then started to turn toward the playground, but as I was walking away, she shouted, “HEY,” so I turned around and saw her holding a book out to me, and that’s when she said, “Please, read the back of this one.”

So I stepped up to the table, took the book from her hand, SECRETS NEVER REST, which featured the same semi-realistic, Twilight-esque, possibly AI-generated woman on the cover, flipped the book over in my hands, and started reading the description on the back.

“This story was born from late nights and quiet questions about memory, about home, about what it means to lose part of yourself and still fight to reclaim it. Vaela's journey is one of courage, but not the loud kind. It's about the bravery it takes to return to the places that hurt you, to face the shadows of your past, and to choose your own future.

Through Vaela and Sabryn, I explored the strength of sisterhood, the complexity of identity, and the danger of buried truths. Magic is real in this world but it often looks like love, grief, or memory. Writing this book helped me understand that stories are how we pass down our fire.

I hope this one lights a spark in you, too.”

And that’s when I bought signed copies of both of her books.

Current Music: "Nice to Know You," by Incubus

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just words

"How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words."

Entries tagged with empathy

i am once again an elephant

on changing shapes

a path totally devoid of empathy

the shared burden of authors unknown

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