I am not you.
You are not me. I don't give a flying fuck about you or your problems. If your children are starving then, like the pope, I will look on with great wisdom and compassion thinking how that sausage I had for breakfast is giving me gas.
Your tears will be the ocean that I will bathe in. Your sweat will grease the path of my success. And your love will be my just due.
Yet am I really so different from everyone else you know? Is my refusal to care slightly amusing and stylish when compared with politicians that have been mastered, not by right and wrong, but by the organizers of the focus groups who will tell them what "the people" are thinking with the great magic of statistics. For a price; not the one of money, but the one of you and truth. For that is what ultimately suffers when you refuse to question and change your own world.
No I am not different at all.
Except in that I will think and feel before I tell you that I care.

If you are lonely then you are alone. If you are poor then you have nothing of value. If you don't care then you can't get hurt.

It can be really really hard to do something stupid. That is why pushing a man (or woman! I'm all for gender equality just as long as I can watch the people go splat!) off a cliff or praying when someone kicks your sorry ass as they go by are both dumb things in my book. Religion won't give you truth. It might give you comfort but thats just economics. Giving slaves warm clothing and hearty food makes sense! Some of you may be confused as to who is being a slave to whom in the matter of religion. You are not a slave to the peple in the magic television box when they take your money. You are not a slave to the preacher on Sunday when he wastes your time and prevents you from standing up on your own two feet without using him as a walker. Or what do I know? You might be.

Are pacifism and truth required to live in a great civilized society? (Or maybe it is pacifism and lies?) All I can tell you is if they were then America would not be a great civilized society. That reminds me of what I think freedom is: A bitter and paranoid man living in a wonderfull free state will think he is ruled by tyrrany and injustice. He is. Is America, your country, free?
	The average american breaks the law every twenty minutes. If I were a lawyer the first thing I would do is try to increase this frequency. After all I would need to make a living. I have a great idea! Why not make telling the truth against the law? Of-course I have not had time to read the library that governs every single thing I am allowed to do; for all I know it already is. And make no mistake; with all great civilization come lawyers; and with lawyers come laws; and laws always tell you what you CAN do not what you can't.
The truth is that people have changed in only a couple of very small ways in the last thousands of years. The number of other opinions that the average person is exposed to has increased and work might have become slightly less repetative and slightly more creative. That is why I see religious and social and political slavemasters claiming that they are backed by the power, majesty, righteousness of american intellect and civilization in their true setting. In mideival times if the local noble tried to tell me that he would have his way with my daughter on her wedding night I would have chopped his head off, lead a peasant revolt and cleverly disguised what happened when the king's men came around. (I might have been a coward but are you sure you are not projecting yourself onto me?). Lets make it Roman times. Maybe that would be more civilized and believable.
Lies or pacifism and truth or violence are both good for civilization. If you loose the ability to change your own situation and change it fast you are not civilized. ANd lies and pacifism are still the best way of improving your lot at the expense of silly little buggers.