The Most Dangerous Person in the World

I am still coming to grips with the fact that I live among the most dangerous people in the world. And what makes it extremely difficult to cope is the fact that I love most of them.  And yes, I know, people aren’t dangerous, ideas are.  But you have to understand that where I live one rarely encounters an idea outside of a human brain, and it almost never happens that musings and reveries are found alone in the park.  No, I agree with the early world that saw human beings as the cause for the most beautiful or heinous effects. And though I understand why they thought it necessary to attack the thinker to diminish the thought, I can appreciate their logic while disagreeing with their policies.

I remember teaching a class on ethics where an enlightened individual thought it about time to take his stand against all things authoritarian.  This included he told us, politics and religion and ethics and even human language as it too was an instrument of control used to violate the uneducated masses. If I was given the chance I am sure that I would have mentioned great minds such as Josef Pieper who also felt it necessary to write about the latter subject. Instead, our new instructor carried on with a passion that could shame many poets, ‘this is why I can call myself an atheist and yet believe in a divine being; or I could condemn a person to life in prison but fight to the end never to be judged. In short, I am free and I refuse to be bound and boxed in by anyone.’

When it was finally my turn and the class had generously been handed over to me, my reply I admit was quite plain.  ‘Whether you are an atheist or not I do not know, but there is no doubt in my mind about one thing. You are quite possibly the most dangerous person in the world.’ The class, including this fellow looked at me with interest until what was being thought was finally given voice. ‘Why? Why is he the most dangerous person in the world?’

In response I merely stated the obvious. ‘Because while it is true that today you are all his classmates, tomorrow you can be his footstools, and for no better reason than ‘he feels like it.’

More and more this is the position of many.  More and more this is how the people I love speak.  As long as they ‘feel’ it then it should happen.  As long as someone can remember a sappy story then it should be heard.  Truth? What is truth anyway?