From Zombies, Vampires, Sleepwalkers, Psychopaths, Monopolists
- See you later. You didn't forget your phone in the cafe? Leave it charging again?
- No, I only charge it once a week, hardly use it. It's only to warn the people I live with I'm coming home.
- You don't want anyone to call you?
- No one calls me.
- Why? You don't give out your number?
- No one is interested. They don't like hearing about the world I live in.
- What world?
- The world of the bible where the first thing that happens when we start thinking about life is one brother kills another for the sake of an idea. I live with people who act like they'd just been ejected from the Garden of Eden.
- You live with the Guru. You told me. The messiah who spends his days praying and giving away a few dollars to people on the street and nights going to strip clubs buying prostitutes.
- That's him. Last night he was on the phone for two hours trying to get this crazy old prostitute over to his house.
- To sleep with her?
- Yes. The problem is last time she was over she, as they they put it in legal parlance, sexually assaulted the Guru's eighty year old demented mother. The Guru's sister found out, called the police, now the crazy prostitute is afraid to come over. The Guru laughed hysterically when the prostitute recounted for him the reasons she couldn't come over, clearly proud of his achievement: a mother without a mind sexually attacked in his home by an elderly schizophrenic prostitute leading up to having sex with her.
- With his mother?
- Maybe in a future episode. Unlike me, the Guru's telephone never stops ringing. He's very popular.
- He gives away money. No one calls you because you are from the times of the bible and don't give away money. You're the unlucky guy born on the wrong side of the garden fence about to be murdered.
- I'm the guy about to be murdered trying to understand what the hell is happening. In the bible story as soon as you start thinking you establish a role for yourself and you put others into roles, then you try to monopolize power.* You establish an idea of who you are and force everyone to pay tribute to it. The Guru is the Messiah of Beverly Hills, He demonstrates his power by desecrating all other roles in life: mother, brother, husband.
- He's married?
- Separated. When we start to think we lose the ability to sympathize and think really badly. We think really badly because we've lost the ability to sympathize. The first thing that happens in history we become murderers. We become murderers because we think without sympathy. Our way back to the garden is to understand we've lost the ability to sympathize and to think our way to regaining the ability.
- Which is what the bible stories are about.
- Meanwhile...
- Psychopaths, zombies, sleepwalkers, vampires, monopolists...
Further Reading:
Totalitarianism, Public & Private
At The Spiritual Film Festival
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* Eve In The Garden Of Eden
