The Source of Optimism

Ever wonder why a soldier walks into the face of fire in a battle? Ever wonder why a smoker slips outside and lights up outside the hospital where inside his best friend or father lays dying of lung cancer? Ever wonder why people do extreme sports, or race along the highway, weaving in and out of traffic at extreme speed?

I'll tell you why. Scientists don't have to search out addiction genes or adrenaline junkies genes, none of that shit. Cause I already know why we do such things.

It's the hungry mouse syndrome. That's what I call it. The "it won't be me" syndrome.

See everybody wants to eat mice. Cats, foxes, coyotes, hawks, owls, snakes, skunks...the list is huge. Goes with being on the bottom of the food chain.

But, still, out go the mice, in search of food. "It won't be me" they must think. "I'm special, immune" they think. And out they go. Often right into the jaws or claws or beak of something.

But that "it won't be me" attribute is what keeps us from hiding away in a bunker until we starve to death. Some people don't have the "it won't be me" gene. They are the "it will be me" people, the realists. These people suffer serious mental conditions like anxiety and agoraphobia, to name a few. At least, that's how we "it won't be me" people label them. In reality, they're saner than the "it won't be me'ers". Because for each of us, one day, "it will be me", literally, "his or her time to go", others later say to console, or "God took him". Some people are extremely endowed with the "it won't be me" attribute, so much so they extend "it won't be me" to "It won't be us".

These are the optimists.

Religion is a side mutation, but part of the "it won't be me" attribute just the same. Let's you get out there. Religion lets one think "It won't be me, but if it is, I'm covered." Drugs can achieve a similar affect. Drugs let one think "I don't care if it's me or not because I feel good."

Smooths things, religion does, for some, so you can get out there. Those religious people should be affable with the marijuana people and vice versa. Both acheive about the same affect, I'd say. They got lots in common, those two groups. You got to have a way to go out, like that hungry mouse, despite all those monsters waiting.

So there you go. I"ve explained some things to you tonight you might not have fully understood before. Hahahahaha.

I got this thing tonight, burning on my mind, an image. This is the image. Those folks who wouldn't help trap their cats for fixing, who are going to be missionaries. They're going to be missionaries to the Navajo. That just didn't set on my mind right at all. It's screaming WRONG in there. We white people screwed over the native Americans royal and now we go down and push our religion on them? Sure, some of the Navajo have problems. But hey, have you seen the problems people have right here in Albany? See, it seems vastly racist or classist or, well something, for white Christians to seek out a particular race of people to "save", a group whites screwed over, a group white Christians screwed over. Especially when the morality of so many here in Albany can be totally questioned! If they wanted to be missionaries, they could stay right here and do so here. I guess that's the crux of it.

See I know these folks from way back, too, which doesn't help much in the vision at all, ok. Of them converting the Navajos. It just seems so darn arrogant in so many ways I need to find a way to get the vision of it from my mind.