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https://freedomain.com/freedomain_books/the-future/

Centuries in the future, an old man awakes from cryogenic sleep to face the judgement of a utopian society that barely survived his past abuses of power. In the vein of 'Atlas Shrugged, philosophy, philosopher Stefan Molyneux has created a compelling and powerful work of imagination. He vividly describes the wonderful future that mankind can achieve - and the barriers to getting there - and all that we need to leave behind to finally live in peace...

Transcript
00:00 The Future by Stéphane Molyneux, chapter 33.
00:04 I take a deep breath. I want to know it all.
00:09 David sits and nods. "Where do you want to start?"
00:14 I muse for a moment. Now is the time to begin scanning this new world for opportunities, for
00:23 weaknesses, for... yeah, fear and praise and respect. I know myself well enough to accept my vanity.
00:31 Well, the standard question for someone waking up from a coma, I guess this has been a very long
00:38 coma, is "How long has it been?" A little over 500 years.
00:48 I inhale sharply and suddenly remember some VR game my grandson had strapped me into
00:54 more than half a millennia ago now, where I floated above the rings of Saturn. I remembered,
01:02 and remember now, the feeling of looking at the tiny sun and feeling so terrifyingly far away
01:12 from everyone and everything that I involuntarily ripped the helmet off and never put it on again.
01:18 The idea of floating in a dead void countless miles from the teeming ball of life that gave me
01:25 strength was unendurable. David says, "It's a lot to process. We can stop here if you want time to..."
01:38 I raise an imperious hand. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm a grown man."
01:45 A harsh laugh escapes my lips. "Perhaps the oldest man in history."
01:50 I don't remember much about my last days, but I guess I wanted to live, and they froze me.
02:02 "And you found a cure?" "And I'm back to life now."
02:05 "Dear God, I don't even know how old I am." "You are 76."
02:11 I furrow my brow. "That's... What is the longevity here?"
02:16 "With luck, you could have another 50 years." I clap my hands together, rubbing the palms furiously.
02:23 "By God, this is a brave new world. That's fantastic!"
02:26 Something in his eyes flickers, a kind of vague warning that I should not be too happy about my
02:35 future lifespan. But again, he is so hard to read that I decide to avoid any puncturing of my sudden
02:41 savage joy. David purses his lips. "I want to correct you on something, though. We didn't just
02:48 find the cure for your illness. It was found centuries ago, but we didn't know about your
02:52 existence until recently." I nod slowly. "So there must have been a significant
03:01 discontinuity in the history of my nation." David stares at me. "The greatest possible
03:09 discontinuity, I would say." A slight chill flickers through my heart. "It's been taken over,
03:18 then? I assume... China?" A slight chill flickers through my heart. "It's been taken over, then?
03:29 I assume... China?" "Your nation no longer exists, but it has not been taken over."
03:37 I laugh involuntarily. "Oh, so a tank under the sea? Global warming? CO2? No,
03:46 your nation was not destroyed by plant food." I feel an odd shimmering mixture of despair and hope.
03:58 I gain power by lying, but not having to lie, I could see that being a sweet relief of a kind.
04:07 I don't know what to ask next. "Well, you have a lot of physical needs to attend to. We have
04:16 been stimulating your muscles, but you will still need to learn how to walk again. There's going to
04:20 be a lot of physical therapy. I assume you don't want to use a sky chair. A wheelchair, I mean. A
04:27 sky chair? It's a floating chair, controlled by your eyesight." I ponder this for a moment.
04:33 My extended zombie life was like falling asleep in 1600 and waking up in the 21st century.
04:42 I feel a sudden attack of strange giggles. Imagine me zooming over a crowd,
04:48 gesturing while giving a speech like some comic book villain from the future.
04:55 I then feel a sudden stab of regret because I have not asked about my family.
04:59 Damn it! That does not make me look very good. I make my dutiful inquiries, but David informs me
05:06 that no other member of my family was found in the underground facility they discovered
05:10 quite by accident, and that every other capsule was broken. To be honest, we had some discussion
05:18 about whether to raise you at all, since you are alone, and we had no contractual obligations to do
05:22 so. But we still have some work to do absorbing and understanding the past, and you can be a
05:30 crucial part of that process. I feel dizzy. "Tell me what kind of world I'm in." David takes a deep
05:41 breath. "It's glorious." He gestures outside my room. "It's very different from how you grew up.
05:51 Society is run on a series of voluntary contracts, everything from police to courts to prisons to
05:58 geographical defense. I'm using old terms, you get the idea. And everyone competes to give you
06:04 services, and you can cancel at any time." He stops, noticing my expression. "Say it. You can
06:12 be frank, whatever you're thinking." I snort. "You really want to know what I'm thinking?" "I do."
06:17 "My first thought is that I took a nap in the afternoon, went mad, woke up in an asylum,
06:23 and you are my cellmate." David smiles. "I can totally understand what you mean.
06:29 If I had gone back in time, I would feel that I had woken up in a mental hospital as well."
06:34 So many questions are tumbling through my mind. I have a sudden, vivid memory of being a young
06:42 child in some ancient arcade in a wind machine trying to push my sister's blowing hair away
06:48 from my stinging eyes. "Well, who the hell is in charge then?" Annoyingly, enragingly even,
06:59 I get the sense that David understands my question perfectly, but avoids answering it.
07:05 "What do you mean?" "Oh, don't be obtuse," I snap in my ancient habit of escalating others
07:11 into crumbling deference. David spreads his hands. "You and I are separated by many centuries.
07:18 The language has remained similar, because it turned out that language usually mutated to escape
07:23 trauma, but many of the words have changed meanings, so I need to ask you, what do you
07:28 mean when you ask who is in charge?" I take a deep breath. Suddenly, I do not want to ask the
07:38 question directly, which is unusual for me, because my bluntness was always a great way to
07:42 get others to give way. "Who is the central authority?" David purses his lips. "All right,
07:55 you know that in some cultures, marriages are forcibly arranged by the elders, right?"
08:01 I scowl. "As a man over five times your age, I don't think I need any anthropology lessons."
08:08 I feel another thread of panic sowing its jumpy way through my heart. My ill temper and impatience
08:14 seem to have no effect whatsoever on this man, David. He says, mildly, "I'm choosing to use an
08:24 analogy as a path for you to walk, so that you can arrive at a clear understanding of the world
08:30 you have woken up to. I can certainly continue, or I can stop now. It's entirely up to you.
08:35 I want to respect your choices." I grimace. "Are you a Christian?" I ask, suddenly having no idea
08:44 where the question comes from. "That reference is probably the closest you can come to understanding
08:51 who I am and the world that exists." Once again, my words arise without my willing them. "Are you
08:58 an angel?" David laughs, "Probably a devil, a little bit, from your perspective." I scowl.
09:06 "If we brought my wife back in here, the one without a face, do you think that she
09:11 would answer my questions directly?" David pauses. "It's probably clear that I'm trying to
09:19 lead you somewhere, slowly, but I know that you are a strong-willed man, so it doesn't surprise
09:25 me that you are not easily led. Let me tell you a story. When I was little, I used to pick and boil
09:32 peanuts and sold them at a county fair for 25 cents a bag. I made enough money to invest in
09:39 barley when the price was down because the weather was good, and then I sold that barley for huge
09:43 profit. I then bought a series of houses from the county. I found out who had died from the mortician
09:50 and got the places for pennies on the dollar, because there was usually no next of kin.
09:54 I rented out these houses" -- it's just a kid, remember? -- "and bought three huge dogs with me
10:00 when I visited anyone who hadn't paid the rent. And I let the dogs loose if no one was home,
10:07 because I knew they would probably find the dead beets hiding in the woods up a tree or something.
10:13 And I got my money. Do you understand?" My voice was soft. "And I got my money,
10:23 because one time the dogs had their way, and word got around, and nothing happened to me because of
10:31 my father. And that was the basis of my money, my ambition, my understanding of how the world worked.
10:38 You either have dogs or you hide in a tree. Do you understand?"
10:43 David looks, what, vaguely nauseous, concerned about sharecroppers centuries dead?
10:53 It's a hard frame of reference for me to process, but I think I understand. I narrow my eyes.
11:00 "Well, the test of your understanding is whether you just tell me the direct
11:06 goddamn truth going forward. I turned dogs loose on dead beets, Sonny. I think I can just about
11:13 handle whatever syllables you want to shake out of your unwilling mouth."
11:17 I was going to say teeth, but I don't want to remind him of his power.
11:22 David pauses, then nods slowly. "Okay. When couples were forced to be married,
11:32 the elders were in charge. When that changed and couples could choose each other, who was in charge?
11:41 The couples themselves," I reply instantly, wanting to vault past all this abstract nonsense.
11:48 David nods again. "Your society worked, so to speak, because there was a small number of people
11:58 right at the center of everything that happened, and they had the law, and the laws were enforced
12:04 in the region, the country. If you raised taxes, of course, people had to pay or go to jail,
12:11 and if they refused to go to jail, they could be forced, and if they resisted being forced,
12:15 they could be shot. Your system worked on the escalation of violence against the general
12:23 population until they either complied or were killed." I snort. "I have no idea what kind of
12:29 ridiculous history you've been reading, but that is the most deranged and uncharitable interpretation
12:34 of my world that I could possibly imagine." David does not blink. "Go on." I wave my hand. "Oh,
12:42 God, I'm not going to give you some total explanation of how everything worked in the past.
12:47 Lord above, what kind of social discontinuity happened where you have no idea how all of human
12:55 history actually worked? I mean, we knew a lot about the ancient Romans, how their society worked,
13:02 what their laws were, but are we deep underground?" "No, why?" I laugh silently. "Oh,
13:11 when I was a kid, there was all this propaganda, turned out to be total Soviet
13:15 agiprop, about how bad nuclear wars were and how everyone would end up living underground with
13:21 their skin falling off. I just guessed that maybe there had been some kind of nuclear war,
13:29 some kind of civilization or suicide, and we were hiding underground like a bunch of glowing moles.
13:35 There was no nuclear war." "Okay, then what happened?" It was David's turn to pause.
13:43 "Now, I have to say that I'm not going to give you an entire history lesson of the last few centuries,
13:51 some of which we really don't know much about, but I will tell you, if you like,
13:55 how the world works at the moment, at least most of it." I nod, my eyes cold.
14:03 David leans forward. "After a truly unbelievable amount of suffering throughout most of the world,
14:12 which we refer to as the cataclysms, everyone was so exhausted and broken that they decided,
14:19 or at least some of them did, to start with a clean slate. I think the same term was used in
14:26 your day?" "Yeah." "Good. Society gets into trouble when it takes universal moral commandments
14:36 and breaks them in two. David picks up a wooden tongue depressor from my bedside table,
14:43 breaks it, and snaps me one half. This is one piece of wood. It's supposed to be the same between us,
14:53 but it's the total opposite. Let's say that the wood is thou shalt not steal." David points at
15:00 his own chest. "That means, for me, I can't use force or fraud to take someone else's property."
15:07 He points at the piece of wood in my fist. "But for you, as the head of state, it means that you
15:16 can use force or fraud to take other people's property, which you call taxation or the national
15:22 debt or inflation." There were a lot of words for it, as you know. I hurled a stick aside. "Okay,
15:28 this undergraduate popsicle philosophy is... Well, you're like that libertarian roommate everyone
15:36 has for at least one semester who complains about the state, mostly because the laws interfere with
15:41 his drug habits. Taxation is theft. Don't tread on me. That crap. Like an objectivist friend I had
15:48 when..." And it's interesting, I guess. It's a kind of mental exercise, but you have to remember.
15:56 I say, leaning forward, "The people voted for me. I was popular because I did what the people
16:04 wanted. You complaining about me is like getting mad at Coca-Cola for being popular." I lean back
16:12 and smile. "I truly hope I have not woken up in a world where the general perspective is that
16:20 everyone who disagrees with you is a tyrant." David laughs shortly. "There's a lot to unpack
16:27 there." I think the saying used to go. "Look, I've been chosen to chat with you because of my
16:34 fascination with the old world. Not that I'm going to lecture you about how things worked in your
16:40 world from a practical standpoint, because you actually lived it, whereas I only study it. So
16:45 you know infinitely more than I do. My argument is moral." I scoff. "Yeah, yeah. I met those
16:54 libertarians on occasion. Even after college, sometimes they would razzle my speeches. But
16:59 it was so crazy, so impractical, that they might as well have been demanding that everyone come
17:04 and live with them in some Dungeons and Dragons renaissance fair. It was sad, really. I saw this
17:11 mind meme take down a few fairly brilliant people, some smarter than you, I think.
17:17 It's this platonic world of purity and abstractions. It turns people from brilliant
17:25 designers who could be great architects into people who never build anything, because the
17:29 bricks are jagged, and the mortar is porous, and nothing is perfect, so nothing can be done.
17:33 They all just kind of turn the world over to me, if you understand. People like me."
17:40 I feel an increasing annoyance, because David gives me no indication when he is about to speak.
17:49 He is all about the patient listening. And so I don't know how the hell to wind down my own
17:56 sentences. It's one hell of a power play. Well, given that, David says, "Is stealing wrong?"
18:07 I snicker. "If this world doesn't know the answer to that, just put me back to sleep and wake me up
18:16 on you controlled. Trillions of dollars, millions of enforcers, the education of children, the
18:23 creation of money, the price of money, the interest rates. You were at the very center of power.
18:31 Everything you did had moral implications. I've listened to your speeches. You were constantly
18:39 invoking the common good and the general welfare and charity for the underprivileged and sensitivity
18:45 to the excluded and kindness to the vulnerable. You were like a machine gun of morality, so to
18:52 speak." Again, David notices my expression and stops. "There is a strange intimacy between us,
19:03 as if two trapped miners found each other underground and hold hands as the air grows thin."
19:10 "We are right at the root of things," moans David. I nod again, involuntarily.
19:21 "Your skills will not help you here," he says gently. I shudder.
19:30 "Is stealing wrong?" I nod. "Why?"
19:36 I open my mouth and close it again. "I have a sudden urge to call a lawyer,
19:45 as I had to many times in my political life." "Your government threw millions of people in
19:53 jail for stealing. Your government used force and fraud to take trillions of dollars.
19:59 But you don't know why stealing is wrong? And there's a very good reason for that.
20:08 We are adults enough not to simply take religious absolutes as moral understanding,
20:15 and you will see a world that truly understands why stealing is wrong the moment you get out of
20:22 this bed and walk through that door." I force a laugh. "How much will it cost me to go back to
20:30 sleep?" David stares at me and says, "How do you know you were ever awake?" Again, chills run
20:40 through me. "Okay, Morpheus." David smiles. Like the ancient meme says, "I understand that reference."
20:48 He takes a deep breath. "Are you ready for more cryptic questions?"
20:55 Stealing is wrong because it cannot be universalized. Morality is universally
21:06 preferable behavior. We refer to it as UPB, obviously. There are three classifications
21:12 of human behavior. Neutral, like running for a bus. Aesthetically preferable, like being on time.
21:20 And universally preferable, like respecting property rights and not initiating violence.
21:25 Neutral behavior is not the subject of morality. Aesthetically preferable behavior is the subject
21:34 of social norms, politeness, and so on. Universally preferable behavior is the subject of morality.
21:41 UPB examines the nature and content of morality,
21:46 validating which behaviors can be universally preferable. I hold up a hand, yawning.
21:53 These undergraduate assertions rest on the assumption that there is such a thing as
22:01 universally preferable behavior in the first place. David lifts up his hand and ticks off
22:06 his fingers. "If I may, you were going to say that people and cultures believe different things,
22:12 that people disobey morality, and that there is no such thing as universally preferable behavior
22:17 to begin with. Am I right?" "More or less," I say, grudgingly. "Do all cultures believe in
22:25 the scientific method? Of course not. Do some people, even scientists, disobey the scientific
22:31 method? Of course. Does the scientific method exist objectively, like a tree or a cloud? Of
22:37 course not. Does that mean that the scientific method is invalid or subjective? No. Some people
22:46 avoid math. Some people are bad at math. And some people cheat at math. That doesn't mean that
22:51 mathematics is subjective or arbitrary. It's the same with morality." I snort. "Sonny, I'm not even
22:59 giving you your first premise. Morality isn't universal." "So your argument is that there is
23:06 no such thing as universally preferable behavior?" I smile. "That's enough for government work.
23:12 And you believe that I should stop making false arguments?" "It would be a damn good start."
23:19 David purses his lips. "So people should make true arguments and should reject false arguments?"
23:29 "Yes," I state confidently. David snaps his fingers. "UPB, right there."
23:34 You cannot tell me to reject UPB without asserting that it is universally preferable
23:42 behavior to reject falsehood. You need UPB to reject UPB. It's like trying to use a scientific
23:50 method to invalidate the scientific method or logic to disprove logic. It does not work.
23:56 I notice that my lower lip is jutting out and self-consciously pull it back in.
24:02 "What if I just avoid the topic altogether?" David smiles. "But you didn't."
24:09 "You corrected me. You told me that I was wrong, that I was incorrect. Not subjectively,
24:17 not according to your personal or aesthetic preferences, but objectively, according to
24:21 the universal rules of reason and evidence. The moment you did that, you affirmed UPB."
24:27 I laugh. "Permission to strike from the record?" David looks a little sad.
24:36 "You are more right than you know." I scowl and shift between my sheets.
24:41 "Ah, we are back to the cryptic." It takes a while to understand and absorb the former argument.
24:49 "Let's just leap over that for the moment and talk about stealing."
24:53 "I make no concessions." David smiles, duly noted.
24:59 "If the proposal is that stealing is universally preferable behavior, then we run that through
25:07 the machinery of UPB to see if the proposal can be universalized. It's kind of a tautology,
25:14 but that which cannot be universally preferable behavior cannot be universally preferable
25:19 behavior. That's not a kind of tautology. It's the very definition of one."
25:24 David shrugged. "More of an A is A thing. So let's talk about the idea of stealing
25:31 as universally preferable behavior. The proposition fails on two counts. First of all,
25:37 it is physically unachievable. If stealing is UPB, then respecting property rights,
25:45 the opposite of stealing, must be immoral. That which conforms to UPB is moral. That which is
25:52 the opposite of UPB is immoral. Just as that which conforms to the scientific method is science,
25:59 and that which is the opposite of the scientific method is unscientific, or to be more precise,
26:05 anti-scientific. If stealing is UPB, then not stealing must be immoral, which means that anyone
26:14 not actively engaged in stealing is evil." David points at me, his dark eyes intense.
26:22 "However, a sleeping man is not actively stealing, and it seems strange to say that a sleeping man
26:29 is evil. A man in a coma, a man frozen for centuries, these men cannot be evil, although
26:36 they are not stealing. So UPB cannot be a positive action. Morality cannot command people to do
26:46 things, because there are many times in life where it is impossible to initiate action, which means
26:52 that it is impossible to be moral and inevitable to be evil against one's will and desire. That is
26:58 the first objection. The second objection has nothing to do with sleeping or action, but with
27:07 logical possibilities. Stealing is taking someone's property against his will. But if stealing is UPB,
27:19 then everyone must want to steal and be stolen from at all times. However, if you want to be
27:28 stolen from, if you want someone else to take your property, then that is not stealing. Stealing
27:37 is unwanted property transfer. UPB would demand that everyone wants to steal and be stolen from,
27:45 which eliminates the entire concept of stealing. If you want to be stolen from,
27:52 no one can steal from you. Thus, we know that the proposition that stealing is UPB
28:02 is invalid for both behavioral and logical reasons. On the other hand, if we say that
28:12 respecting property rights is UPB or not stealing is UPB, then we are in the right realm.
28:24 First of all, a sleeping man is not violating property rights. Secondly, not stealing can be
28:32 universalized. It is possible for all people at all times under all circumstances to not
28:38 violate other people's property rights. "But they will!" I exclaim. "Stealing is a constant
28:45 in human society, which is why we have had laws against it." "I don't know what the hell you're
28:50 doing now!" David nodded energetically. "Of course people steal, or at least they used to. People
28:57 also want to eat food that is not good for them and often don't like to exercise. That's why we
29:02 need nutritionists and physical trainers." The fact that people do not conform to abstract ideals
29:09 does not mean that those ideals are invalid. It's exactly why we need those ideals in the first
29:15 place. As I said before, some scientists, many in your world, were corrupted by money and power to
29:23 falsify data and create future models that served, well, people like you, politicians in power.
29:29 And we know that those scientists deviated from the scientific method because of the scientific
29:35 method. I pause. Don't make the mistake of thinking that I am stupid or anti-intellectual.
29:44 That's just a cliche. I don't believe that. But have you ever noticed that people in power have
29:50 a habit of constantly attacking philosophers? I snort. "Is that what you call yourself?" I do.
29:56 But it's more of an inheritance than a profession. I am empirical philosophy,
30:07 UPB manifested in the real world. A curious phrase of my long-dead grandson floats
30:14 into my mind. "Grandiose much?" David sits back in his chair.
30:21 It's the same with rape. Rape is unwanted sexual contact. Therefore, rape can never be universally
30:31 preferable behavior because if rape was UPB, then everyone would want to rape and be raped at the
30:38 same time. But if you want to be raped, then it's not rape since rape, by definition, is unwanted
30:45 sexual contact. Assault works the same way. Assault can never be universally preferable behavior
30:53 because assault is unwanted physical violation, unlike, say, boxing or surgery.
31:00 So if everyone wanted to assault and be assaulted, then the category of assault
31:04 would cease to exist. Behaviors which cannot be universalized cannot be moral.
31:12 If universalizing them turns them into a kind of mirage that crumbles to sand in your hand as you
31:20 approach them, then they cannot be a valid mental construct. Murder works the same way. Murder is
31:28 unwanted killing. If everyone wants to kill and be killed at the same time everywhere,
31:34 then not only would this be impossible to achieve, but wanting someone to kill you is not in the same
31:41 moral category as being murdered. It would be more in the vein of euthanasia.
31:49 I stare at him. I can feel these words washing over me like a spring melt over pebbles,
31:58 but they don't reach any part of me that has any depth. Hamlet's famous words, words, words,
32:12 washes over me as well. I tip an imaginary hat at David. "My God, you must have some
32:22 desperately dangerous impulses deep within you." David's eyes remain attentive. "Go on."
32:29 "Ugh. In my experience, moralists are always using these weird philosophical abstractions to just
32:38 strangle their own demons in the crib. What terrible things you must want to do to the world
32:43 to feel the need to create all these windy nothing gods to restrain you."
32:47 David smiles. "By that reasoning, scientists follow the scientific method in order to,
32:54 what, subdue their own inner witch doctors?"
32:58 "I was advised by a lot of scientists back in the day."
33:04 "It's not as bad an argument as you think." "Perhaps, as you say, way back in the day."
33:10 "A writer is not combating blank pages. A singer is not combating his hatred of music."
33:18 "These kinds of twisted reversals were common in the past, as far as I can see,
33:23 but they don't really exist in the present." I shrug. "But what is the point of all this?
33:31 Philosophy might be a fine way to while away a dull winter's evening before the invention of
33:35 electricity, but words have never stopped a single bullet in the history of the world."
33:40 "No? We could argue that, but it might be outside your current frame of reference. No offense."
33:49 I ponder this for a moment, surprised that I do not react more strongly.
33:55 I sigh. "I suppose I have to get used to being told that I am but a babe in the
34:00 robot woods of the future." David narrows his eyes. He gestures, and the light grows.
34:06 "Do you remember why you wanted to be preserved?"
34:15 I think for a moment, back to my tumbling up of consciousness when I was thawing out all of the
34:22 rolling dice of ancient history. I was not done with the world. "What does that mean?"
34:31 I take a deep breath. "I'm not sure how frank I can be. What is private in this conversation?"
34:40 "Nothing is being recorded, and nothing will be revealed by me about what you say."
34:45 "And is anyone else listening in?" David shook his head.
34:50 I sigh. "You would not believe the number of secrets I've had to keep.
34:57 I disliked it intensely. I had to avoid it in my mind all the time."
35:03 You can talk to your wife. You can talk to your priest. You can talk to your lawyer, or lawyers.
35:11 I had whole teams of them. But you can't talk to your friends about what is really going on
35:18 in your life, who you really are, what you really want. Because the best way to get to where I got
35:29 to is to live right here on the surface, to turn into a teleprompter, to pour yourself into what
35:36 you're saying, so it becomes your entire self. I lean forward, feeling the easing of a great
35:43 tension within me. The people, we all participated, I suppose. Everyone said they cared about the
35:54 common good. Everyone grabbed all the free money we willed into existence, covering themselves
35:59 with words like a chameleon covers itself with the background. This is all nonsense, of course,
36:10 but I understood so much about the world I ran that I didn't want to just fade into nothing and
36:18 take all these secrets with me. I am, of course, quite delirious, so none of this makes any sense,
36:25 and none of it is true in any way. But these are the words that are coming out of me, obviously.
36:35 David Nance, "I love history, but you could never talk to anyone in the past,
36:42 anyone who mattered, because they were either dead or lying.
36:47 Anyone who mattered became prominent or famous because they kept secrets. They lied.
36:57 You read an autobiography from the past, it's mostly just a bunch of self-serving propaganda.
37:05 Only charming weaknesses were revealed. Everything else, even those, was just a kind of
37:11 self-portrait of self-conscious magnificence. I don't know what Socrates really thought,
37:18 or Plato, or Diogenes, or Alcibiades, or Napoleon, or the Duke of Wellington, or you.
37:24 I made a very strong case for returning you to life. There were many who opposed it.
37:34 "I am your Dr. Frankenstein, your necromancer." "Why were they opposed?" David pauses,
37:43 and I feel a certain iridescent delicacy in his oblique considerations.
37:50 And once more I curse my inability to read people in this mad future realm."
37:58 He takes a deep breath and stands. "I've given you some bare details about the world you've
38:08 woken up to. You will take a long time to absorb how things are, how they work.
38:14 And when you went to sleep as a prominent man, a president, the world's most powerful man,
38:21 some would say, you had an expectation of waking up in a world where you would still be,
38:28 I don't know if revered is the right word, but you would be a historical figure, prominent, weighty.
38:33 I mean, if Napoleon were to come back to life, if we found him frozen in a glacier or something like
38:39 that, then, well, what would you think?" I smile inwardly. "I would have a lot of questions.
38:47 I wouldn't agree with everything he had done, of course. But he had his time, he had his reasons,
38:54 and no one can doubt his importance in European history, French history, legal history,
38:59 world history." David puts his hands on the railing at the foot of my bed and leans forward slightly.
39:05 "And how would you judge him?" I shrug. "I don't know that judgment would have anything to do
39:15 with it. What am I going to do, cast my morals back a couple of centuries and try to catch him?
39:21 I would be curious. He would be a forceful personality, you can imagine, and I guess he
39:27 would make and break some historical controversies. But I suppose historians would either believe him
39:33 or not believe him, depending on their own beliefs." David leans forward slightly more.
39:39 "And what about a slave owner?" I start and shrink back, almost imperceptibly, I hope.
39:48 "Slave owner?" I whisper. "Yes." "Those were very real questions in my day, I know."
39:56 I laugh suddenly. It would have been a pretty wild thing to hear a living man make the case.
40:03 One would have driven the lefties wild. He never would have made it out of wherever he was
40:09 speaking. What was legal in his day was so utterly immoral in your day that--my
40:17 face freezes suddenly. It hits me like a comet. "Oh my god, I'm a war criminal."
40:27 David's eyes widen slightly. He pauses. "Not necessarily, Judgement at Nuremberg."
40:41 "There will be a trial, and you will have your defense. But you and your son set the cataclysms
40:49 in motion, and humanity, the billions dead, require a reckoning. I snort with false courage.
41:00 This future world of crystalline abstractions seems too delicate, too refined, too--I
41:08 can't think of the words, but I can feel my way through the ideas."
41:11 "Unspoiled," came the thought, but to me that was more about childhood than nature.
41:17 I forced my distractions aside. "You would put Napoleon on trial?"
41:24 "Would you put a slave owner on trial?" "We're not talking about slave owners," I say evenly.
41:31 "You did not correct me when I referred to Nuremberg. We're talking about national socialists,
41:36 Nazis." "Not really," said David. "No? It sure as hell seems so." He purses his lips.
41:44 The national socialists were tried. Most of them were sentenced to death,
41:50 and of course the soldiers were let go because they were only obeying orders.
41:54 It was the military and civilian leaders who paid the highest price.
41:59 And no one could resurrect that deadly movement. Humanity had learned its lesson.
42:04 History and morality won in that case. But it was those who thought that all the evils were in the
42:14 past, and justice had been done, and the final lessons had been learned, who created the worst
42:20 possible world. Whoever genuinely questions morality is incapable of great evil, because
42:28 doubt clouds their resolution. Those who believe that the morality of the moment is like eternal
42:36 physics are the ones who set fire to the world. Tell me, Mr. President, did you ever doubt what
42:42 you were doing? I do not answer. "I bleed the fifth," echoes in my mind, said to the opening
42:51 notes of Beethoven's most famous symphony. I don't mean the strategy, or the tactics,
42:57 or whether you would win or lose, but deep down, the entire system, the lies you talked about, the
43:04 unsustainability of it all. You had to know that your country was coming apart, that bad actors
43:11 operated at every level of your government. You had to know mathematically that which cannot
43:18 continue will not continue. The schools kept getting worse. The unfunded liabilities were
43:23 twenty times the size of the entire economy. The media lied with impunity. Foreign billionaires
43:29 corrupted your entire legal system. What did you do with the knowledge that it could not continue?
43:34 I laughed suddenly. "Are you really saying that you have no politicians in your world?"
43:42 David nods. "Your world now, by choice." "I believe you. I truly do."
43:52 He cocks his head. "Why is that?"
43:55 We didn't think that long in that way. We talked about giant abstractions,
44:04 I guess like you do, but for an entirely different purpose, I bet. But we just operated
44:11 minute to minute. I inherited these unfunded liabilities from, what, two or three generations
44:17 before me? Everyone just wanted the ride to continue for another year, another month,
44:23 another minute. "Like addicts," murmured David. I sigh. "No, not like addicts, David."
44:32 Yeah, we inherited a mess, and anyone with half a brain knew that it couldn't continue forever.
44:38 But I tried to grab the reins, perhaps to slow things down a little bit before...
44:46 And here's the thing. In the world that was, the world that I won, you couldn't tell any truth at
44:54 all. For reasons I could never really understand, but which I'm sure you will lecture me to death
45:00 about one day, quite soon, people had just become enraged by the truth. The body politic, the voters,
45:11 the citizens, were like an immune system, and the truth was like a deadly virus to everything that
45:17 was. A couple of people, every generation, would somehow escape this basic fact and sail confidently
45:26 into social discourse, especially after social media, I'm sure you know what that is. And they
45:30 would cling to and grip the truth as if it was some kind of magic shield that made them bulletproof or
45:37 invulnerable to blowback. It was like watching a kid. I don't know if you have kids. Probably you
45:44 do. You have that air. But when kids are little and they're playing hide-and-seek, and they cover
45:49 their eyes and squeal that you can't see them because they can't see you. I guess that's cute
45:55 for a toddler, not so cute for a middle-aged man. I laugh. These truth-tellers would hold up their
46:06 arguments and diagrams and charts and data, all very well sourced, all totally impeccable,
46:12 and they would summon this intergalactic crap storm. And you could see them. You could hear
46:18 the creak of their eyes widening, and they would hold up their facts like that would stop the bombs
46:23 falling on them. And really, it was, ah, pitiful, really. You'd think that somebody who claimed to
46:33 deeply understand the truth would actually know that the truth didn't mean a damn thing in the
46:41 world. The truth had value if it served power. That's about it. And anyone who spoke any truth
46:51 that interfered with power, well, we utterfoot soldiers, we could just target paint these heroic
46:57 truth-tellers and just nuke them from orbit. So you knew what was true. I snort impatiently.
47:07 What was true, maybe not now, I can't imagine it. What was true was that the truth didn't help you
47:21 at all. Quite the opposite. Look, if you're a sailor, a captain in the middle of the ocean,
47:29 and for some reason the Earth's magnetic pole reverses, well, you just have to go the opposite
47:36 of what your compass says. I had a friend when I was younger, really cynical guy, but very funny.
47:45 Well, he got into old-timey photography, developing actual negatives, no computers.
47:52 He got so good at looking at these negatives that he could literally see the actual picture
47:58 in the negative, in the opposite of what it was. When the truth becomes a landmine, you just
48:06 dance in the opposite direction. And believe me, there were way worse people than me circling the
48:14 throne, way worse. One of my uncles was a trauma surgeon on the battlefield. Sometimes he just had
48:24 to hack and slash people because everything was an emergency, every body was falling apart.
48:30 Was that ideal medicine? I don't know how to answer that. I don't even know what the question
48:36 would mean. I'm sure he cost some lives, he told me so himself. But what was the choice?
48:43 The price of saving lives was costing lives. There wasn't any other way.
48:46 I forced myself to stop talking. And I realized something about myself.
48:54 My general habit of conversation was to speak words while constantly scanning the heart,
49:02 the mind, and soul of my opponent, or conversation partner, I guess I should say.
49:10 But David's face was a wide pool of listening, still and deep. And my own concentrated,
49:18 sky-skidding manipulations began to emerge from his still eyes.
49:22 I had a sudden urge to scratch them out knuckle deep. David says, "You are wondering if it was a
49:32 good idea to wake up?" I jet out my lower jaw. I was about to say that it was not my choice,
49:39 but I suppose it was because I chose to go to sleep to begin with.
49:43 More words came. "But I will say this, though." I clear my throat suddenly.
49:50 "No, it's a question. My question." Other people wanted to let me sleep,
50:01 perhaps forever. I don't know who's paying the bills anymore. "But you say this is a
50:08 kind world, a gentle world, I suppose. But you also say that there was a lot of debate
50:15 about waking me and that you won. And I don't imagine you have a death penalty for whatever
50:23 the hell I'm going to go on trial for, because there wouldn't be much point waking me up just
50:27 to kill me. But do I have the option of you putting me back to sleep? You want to escape
50:37 judgment." I laugh harshly. "For all I know, David, I died the moment I was frozen, and this is the
50:48 trial that everyone talked about when I was a child."
50:52 David's face has grown unusually attentive, and my words scatter. "The trial. If I were Peter."
51:06 My words scratch their way out of my throat in a hoarse whisper.
51:09 "Everyone. Everyone. It didn't matter if you were in church or not. Everyone I knew. We all
51:16 gambled. Like the opposite of Pascal. That all of this, that all of this maybe would,
51:23 was never going to come to pass. That it was all just a scary story invented by wolves and
51:31 shepherds to keep the sheep in line. And we were proud to be above it. That gave us strength like
51:37 superheroes. The people who feared that this could happen, they had to tell the truth. They had to
51:46 keep it in their pants. They lived in fear, but we didn't want to live in fear. But now I wake up in
51:53 a white room. I cannot leave, and my wife has no face, and you are standing there with your goddamn
51:58 frozen face talking about good and evil and trials and guilt and punishment. Punishments, I assume.
52:04 And I am scared, and I don't admit that very easily. Is this the future, or is this hell?"
52:13 David's eyes sharpen further, and I can see, almost like scrolling text, the phrase,
52:24 "Why not both?" He leans even further forward, almost over my legs.
52:29 It's horrible to sound cryptic, but it's a complicated question.
52:36 Heaven is hell for the devils. Maybe it's the same place. You love it if you're good. It's hell if
52:48 you're... I used to think when I was younger, when I read about it, that hell was not a lake of fire,
52:58 but the absolute certainty that you had been evil. The stripping away of every delusion about
53:09 virtue, every manipulation of morality, nothing but mirrors and regret for eternity.
53:19 He gestures at me, "You lived in a world that supported and reinforced everything we now
53:30 condemn. You chose, I suppose, to navigate according to approval, popularity, the success
53:43 that would have been denied you if you had asked any real questions. And it's tough. I understand
53:49 that. I sympathize with that. But the truth is that the world that woke you up, the world that is,
54:00 only came into existence because people rejected approval and popularity and conformity.
54:08 You know the stories of Jesus, of Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and countless others,
54:16 and all the scientists and doctors who were condemned for advancing their disciplines.
54:25 If you can't be hated, you can't help the world. And you had a choice, because there were many,
54:34 many people in your world, in your day, who chose the truth over success or popularity, over power.
54:48 And that's why we have this world that we love. If everyone had been like you,
54:58 there would be nobody left to wake you up.
55:02 The power would have failed and you would have rotted in your icy box.
55:10 You would be dead in a dead world. So you are alive. It's a strange paradox,
55:20 because people were the opposite of you. They only exist to judge you.
55:30 The world only exists to judge you, because they were nothing like you at all.
55:38 David shakes his head with a little shiver, as if clearing water from his ears.
55:42 No, Mr. President, this is not hell, and you are not dead.
55:51 Although by the end of the trial you might disagree. I feel a sudden ancient strength
56:01 flow into my arms. I reach over and pull my sheets aside. I swing my legs over the side
56:12 of the bed and struggle to stand. David catches my elbow and helps me up. I turn my scornful face to
56:20 him. I've slept enough. I rise to my full height. Judge me and be damned!