The Last Optimist

It seems the entire world has gone cynical.

And here I sit, seemingly the last person on earth with a positive outlook on humanity. Every day pop environmentalists decry our voracious rape of our planet, the news brays on about every violent or disturbing act, and men of the cloth berate the nature of their subjects in order to save their immortal lucre. The word human has become a dirty word, and that is deeply disturbing to me.

I’ve already established that I never really had faith in any god, and I believe when used in this way that faith is a very poisonous concept. But I’m not altogether opposed to the very idea of faith. In fact, I think faith is a very important thing for people to have, you just need to have faith in something real. For me, the easiest thing for me to latch onto was people. I believe in people. I believe that our species is doing just great, and that each day we’re better off than the day before. We’ve cured deadly diseases once thought incurable, we can cross continents in a matter of hours, and we can communicate with people on the other side of the world nearly instantaneously. We’ve raised our species’ life expectancy by 50 years. Suddenly, turning water to wine or making a whole bunch of fish and bread doesn’t seem so impressive. Not to mention that unlike those stories, I’ve personally witnessed humanity’s miracles, and so can anyone.

So I was understandably disinterested when while flipping through the radio the other day I came across coverage of the Pope’s visit to the US. After all, someone like Mark Twain can put more insight into a single sentence than that old coot has ever come up with in his entire life. But, every other station was on commercial break, so I continued to listen. And I have to say, of all the misanthropes out there, the Pope is by far the most vile.

As with all matters of the Catholic church, it was only a matter of time before the topic of molestation came up. The Pope did a spectacular job of covering his own ass, and placing the blame entirely on the priests who committed the acts. Now, I’m no big fan of molesting children, but let’s face it, those guys were as much victimized as the kids. When under stress, like say the stress of living your life with no form of sexual release, the mind finds it much easier to rationalize things. These priests have been taught that if they break their vow and defile themselves with women, that they will burn in hell for eternity. Children, on the other hand, are a loophole, more of an indiscretion than unpardonable sin, and they can be forgiven for that. Now that’s what I call a broken system, one where having consensual sex with an adult is a worse crime than raping a child.

And here’s why the Pope is the biggest cynic in the world: he can make this whole stupid, scary situation go away just by saying the following words, “I decree that priests can have girlfriends.” But he doesn’t say that, and one begins to wonder why. Actually, that wondering person is rhetorical, because I know exactly why. Because priests have been celibate since the church was founded, shit, it’s even in the Bible. To admit that they’ve been wrong for almost two thousand years would severely undermine their base of power. Admitting your organization is fallible when your whole claim to fame is based on divinity is definitely going to cause some upheaval. Sure, the Catholic church has had a lot of fuckups in the past which they’ve had to apologize for, but they’ve never had to go back on one of their core doctrines before. The Pope is scared shitless of this reaction, so instead he continues to ruin lives so he can keep wearing his fancy hat. If you’re not grasping the severity of the situation, I’d like you to note that following sentence contains absolutely no hyperbole. If you have the opportunity to end a great deal of suffering just by speaking a phrase, and you don’t, that makes you among the worst people in the world.

It only lasted a few minutes, but after hearing it I felt completely drained. It was depressing. Worst of all, I could feel myself starting lose my humanistic optimism. Because this was starting to feel like a pattern. I remembered when the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo scandals broke, and in a fit of ass covering, the sole guilt of these terrible practices was dumped on a bunch of innocent soldiers who were just carrying out their orders. I thought of how Utah leads the nation in unreported rape cases, because nobody wants to contradict the crazy old men who were considered prophets who said that a woman should choose death before surrendering her “honor.” It becomes very hard to remain hopeful of human nature when so many people independently do the same terrible things.

All the same, I refuse to accept it. Maybe I’m completely wrong, maybe the true nature of humanity is ugly, rotten, and evil. But I can’t live my life believing it. Because thinking this way is poisonous and abusive. You know how when you know someone believes in you, it makes you want to do your best so you won’t let them down? Well, I’ve decided that I’m going to be that person for the entire human race. So, against all evidence to the contrary, I’m going to believe in people. And even if it doesn’t do any good, then I’m still going to do it anyway, because I’m going to be way happier than the cynics. Because to me, the world is a more beautiful place than they can even imagine. And you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.