Why everything’s fine as it is

(Morgan, a 3rd-grade student, is here shown photographed beside a projection of her own future self.)

Dear diary,

Well now that we know how Rome fell, would we want it any different way?

NOTE: I myself am not sure that Rome ever did truly fall. It declined, that’s for sure; but should we actually label it fallen? If X swoons & we rechristen him once he gains consciousness, should we say we’ve witnessed the birth of a new creation? — Nevertheless I’ll bow to house style and speak of the problem as solved. For:

It indeed appear’d to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the Devils account is, that the Messiah fell. & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss...

[—The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, by William Blake]

Alright, so now that we know how Rome fell, would we wish it were any other way? All the bad stuff that happened: the maltreatment of multitudes in the Amphitheatre; making lions eat unseasoned humans & vice versa — if we could change all this somehow; if we could right these wrongs, now that they’re “history”; would we want to?

I’m sorta trying to hint that it’s more amusing to read about fearsome events than bland ones; so, when we learn from our school textbooks about that great barbaric harlot nicknamed Roma, altho it would probably be more comfortable for her bygone citizens if we allow them to live a bland existence — one without crushing debt, without savagery, slavery, etc. — it would make for very dull reading; therefore we refuse to help out those who are already dead. In fact, to this day, we haven’t bothered to invent any kind of time-reversal mechanism.

And when we read about the age of the Great Depression in the USA, isn’t it titillating!?—don’t you just wanna relive those times? Great grandma shooting a squirrel, & skinning & cooking it for this evening’s feast: the single daily meal, which serves thirteen. And great grandpa perpetually inebriated, surrounded by a bevy of women of the night, terrorizing his own children — the mere effusion of his proper loins — physically pummeling whoever dares question his right to make merry. While uncle Herzog eats his shoe.

Great Granny Ray prevailed over the squirrel with a sling and with five smooth pebbles. She smote the squirrel, and slew him; but there was no shotgun in the hand of Great Granny Ray. (1 Samuel 17:50)

Who would want to change even a detail of these events? Not I. Tho I recoil from the thot of human suffering in the present, I very much enjoy reading tragic news stories from the past. And for a tragedy to be inscribed upon a tablet, actual suffering must take place — and that means: in reality. For otherwise both its author and we of the audience are forced to imagine things that never did happen; and who wants to read some fanciful claptrap? Again, not I: I prefer nonfiction. That’s why I’m pleased that the novel is a dying artform.

And all the pains of existence are worth enduring, for the sake of those future generations who will skim in their history class’s e-book the sentence: “Bryan hid from the multinational businessmen inside the finished basement of the blood-red house of Rahab, one of the roughs, an American.”

And did you ever think about the French Revolution? Would you go back there and try to teach them not to hurt each other? Or do you prefer the story just the way that it is?

& if the ancient Egyptians hadn’t enslaved the Israelites, then what would Moses do with all his free time? He never would have gotten to see the wilderness, or meet God, or praise the golden calf that his brother Aaron made, or get buried by the LORD God who-knows-where. (The joke is that ancient Egypt used Israel as unskilled labor — very poorly paid, if at all — and this state of inequality provoked Moses to rise up from his place among the Egyptian elites and start a mass movement that culminated in his ushering the Israelite people out of Egypt; he ended up wandering with them thru the wilderness for a whole lifetime; and this downtime led Moses to stumble upon the LORD God near his mountaintop; and the two struck up an acquaintanceship, which eventually led to Moses inviting the elders from his constituency up to the top of Olympus with him, to meet Zeus in person: and this encounter got recorded in the Bible, which is so fun to read because it doesn’t sugarcoat anything — or rather it sugarcoats everything… what I’m trying to say is that there’s barely any blandness in the Bible.)

So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the outlands beyond Egypt, according to the will of the LORD, who buried him in a valley of the Old Testament, over against the New Testament: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. (Deuteronomy 34:5-6)

I just wanted to quote that verse for all the readers who doubted me when I said that God “buried Moses with his own bare hands, who-knows-where.” I also think it’s charming how much God likes to play in the dirt. He crafted the first man, Adam, from the mud, and then he personally interred his first legislator-judge: dust to dust, like a child replacing his favorite doll in the toy bin, after playtime is over.

And much is made about this fact that Moses never got to dwell in the Promised Land — he only got to look at it from afar, but he was barred from entering & participating in the slaughter to colonize it. But isn’t the tale more tall this way? It’s somehow more satisfying to watch a guy waste his whole life loitering around the outskirts: What would Moses even do if he got to settle with the ex-slaves that he persuaded to escape; does any reader really wanna see Moses living the Good Life again? No, then we’d be right back in Egypt, with TV and pyramid schemes. We don’t want to hear about Moses doing yardwork or milking his goat, Cheri, or smoking cigarettes while drinking spirits & blogging. We’d rather snow-globe our mythical heroes under the harshest conditions — we restrict our Abe Lincolns to log cabins: “You’re on house arrest, Abram; now wear this electromagnetic bracelet on your ankle at all hours, as a monitoring device; for you shall go no more a-roving!” — thus we beneficiaries of the struggles of those past patriarchs can privately conclude that what we lack in mettle is more than made up for by our latest creature comforts: the conveniences of modernity.

I besought the LORD at that time, saying, “O Lord GOD, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might? I pray thee, let me go over, and see the land that is beyond the Appalachians, those goodly mountains, and the Mississippi River.”
     But the LORD was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me: and the LORD said unto me, “Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter. Get thee up into the top of Pisgah (A.K.A. Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in mainland Northeast America), and lift up thine eyes and behold the land that thy successors shall settle: for thou thyself shalt not cross this red line that I now draw in the sand. Thou shalt NOT enjoy existence — that’s for the Oregon Trail Generation. I reserve for them alone the Good Life and the Promised Land. I forbid that their time on Earth shall consist in one Great Depression after another. (Deuteronomy 3:23-27)