some future world where they edited out all the cigarettes from old movies
children grow up never seeing a cigarette
and people develop a strange new mannerism of holding their hands to their lips - often for an extended pause - to give weight to their conversations...not remembering or knowing what the gesture had originally been for
the silly ways we live and don't ever know
the atheist answer to pascal's wager:
you say to bank on god: if you're wrong, you lose nothing
but if this is my only life, and the truth is nobody knows, I lose if I bank on there being more
*dedicated to the guy that fought with me about it when I was 10
there once was an asshole
the biggest asshole in all the world (at the time)
(there's always a bigger asshole)
and the asshole decided their way was the only best way
so they become ruler because they're the only asshole big enough to make themselves ruler
meanwhile somewhere else
others are playing in a garden
eating snacks and making up fairy tales
some of the gardens are secret
others are not
others still do other things
living out their own life stories
they tell only their friends and family
lives lived on display are too often commandeered for another's purpose (...probably the ruler asshole's...)
dissenters hide or disappear
and the intersection of forgotten, ignored, unwanted, misplaced,
poor,
go hungry
the dissenters needed to come back
the gardens needed to be free and open
the whole world a garden
the ruler needed to be stopped
and transparent power - mutual understanding - could be the story we share layered into each our own lives
but you would have to value life
human life
the full spectrum and possibility and futures we'd be living if the past had gotten it together...
you have to have that level of belief
even as an atheist
to dream of it at all
or make it real
