I mean, we should all have a chance, y’know…people suck, but the people, we all deserve a chance to suck. We all deserve a chance. Because we get pulled out of nothing. We get pulled out of the ether, into consciousness that we did not ask for, and that is not under our control. We are given facilities and abilities that are also not within our control. And then we are set loose in a world where we are going to have a very brief finite amount of time to love, and be loved, and to experience, and to think, and to exist, before that’s snuffed out. And that is something that every single one of us shares. That is a unifying human experience. That’s all we have. We have this brief moment, where we are called out of nothingness, for a fucking microsecond in the span of existence. We’re called into being, without our consent, we’re given abilities that we don’t have any fucking choice over, and we’re all unified by that. And since we all share that, can’t we make it a fucking world where everybody who is essentially…I mean I don’t want to get too Schopenhauer-y, but, y’know…cursed with that burden of consciousness, can at least experience as much richness, and love, and safety and security, as anybody else?

Like, how can you look at someone, who didn’t choose to be born, who did not choose their abilities and facilities in this world, and say “you deserve nothing but pain and torment until a horrible death. And I deserve everything. I deserve riches and I deserve greatness and I deserve comfort, for things that I similarly had no choice in. Had no influence in. I am a winner of a genetic lottery, and as a result of that, I should have everything and you should have nothing. And the difference between us is the flip of a fucking coin.” That is the monstrousness that I can’t abide! To think that there are people in this world who accept that, and think that’s how it should be! That you should condemn people, in millions, and billions, to torment, and agony, and death, and fear, and loneliness, because you need to have everything, because you were born with everything! The vile maxim…the vile maxim…Adam Smith’s vile fucking maxim. [“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” — Adam Smith]

And it’s hard to confront, because it is so monstrous, and so evil, but it’s something that your neighbors believe, that your parents believe, that your loved ones believe. It’s something that people accept as just the way it is. That is what life is. You’re shot out of oblivion, into consciousness, and you will either be cursed or blessed based on the whims of genes and geography. And that is that. And the people who say that that is that are of course the people who “achieved” the extraordinary beneficence of luck, and decide that they’re going to ascribe that into the universe, and turn that into an un-mutable truth. But it can’t be like that. It doesn’t have to. We have it in our power to make it different. And maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll keep burning carbon and killing each other until we all just cook in our own fuckin’ juices. Or maybe we’ll break outside of our bubbles of fear and distrust, to accept common humanity, and embrace the burden of that, but also the absolute liberation, the liberation from fear. 'Cause like, those alt-right [removed] who want to live in a world of racial holy war, the world that they imagine is a nightmare realm, where you can never be safe, you can never feel secure, you can never feel love, because you’re under constant siege. It’s a nightmare! But a world of solidarity, a world where every life that is brought into being without its consent, given facilities and abilities without their choice, can live surrounded by safety and love, instead of misery. That’s a world we can have.

—Matt Christman