Yesterday I read an article about a group of people (among them a US lawyer) who paid a minor in Indonesia to send them videos of monkeys getting tortured in the most cruel ways imaginable. It made me think for quite a long time. Of course, most people would not do such a horrible thing. But I believe the phenomenon is actually the tip of a huge iceberg. And in such cases the iceberg in its entirety is much more interesting than only the tip.
Therefore I decided not to write much about the monkey torturers today but rather about you.
Recently you went to a restaurant. You had earned enough money to force some people to cook for you there and serve you (yes, force: they would actually prefer to spend time with their kids at home). You tasted the „risotto milanese“ and felt that there was not enough of the expensive saffron in it. And you thought: „if these stingy morons would not have saved money on me, the risotto would have tasted better and I would have enjoyed more!“. And you thought: „I need to earn more money, so I can force someone else with it to cook properly for me“. And so you spent the rest of the week updating your stock market and crypto investments. You worked on your business idea which would allow you to loot some people by selling them some useless product or advice they don’t need.
I don’t want to talk about the moral of it. How elegantly you have abstracted away the process of torturing (the money you want must come from someone else. Possibly a rich guy but maybe also a young woman in china which has to sew your „Temu“ clothes for 16 hours a day to survive). No, enough has been written about this. And I don’t believe in moral anymore.
I want to talk about you. You believe that it is a great luxury to go to a restaurant. To have the privilege to complain about the unsatisfactory risotto. And exactly this is what’s worrying me. That you don’t know about much much greater pleasures: like somebody might cook the risotto for you because he/she loves you.
And even better: you could cook a risotto for someone you love. And you could feel how happy you make this person. You could watch him/her enjoying it to the fullest. The taste of your risotto but also the feeling of being loved by you.
You think it's cool to have expensive clothes or drive a Ferrari. You are content from enjoying the stale pleasure of making others jealous. You don’t even dare to think about the possibility that someone (or maybe even many people!) could love you truly and madly instead.
Why is loving by far the most rewarding activity for humans? I believe it comes from the finiteness of our lives. Have you ever found a lost candle in a drawer? You would never put it to the garbage, or? You would put it back to the other candles. A candle is supposed to be burned down and not to be discarded without having ever created some beautiful light. And you are a candle too, a candle which is slowly decaying, a candle which is only able to burn for a limited number of years. Burning in pain and creating nice light on earth is your only alternative to a meaningless decay. Therefore it is our deepest wish to burn. To find somebody who lights our wick to start the process. A man who makes a woman pregnant for instance. Who starts a slow and painful process of infinitely rewarding, slow and inevitable self destruction for something which is beyond oneself.
But today, so many people simply don’t understand this. They, metaphorically, polish the outer wax layer of themselves every day with expensive polish and make sure no fire can come close to the wick. Do they really not know that they will be put to the garbage one day anyway? Even if they have never ever burned for anything?
The monkey torturers (to come back to them for a last short time) have discovered the „pleasures“ of cruelty. Cruelty is something we all have in us. It’s a product of evolution which even served a purpose in our past. And because of this purpose there are circumstances in which humans can enjoy this to some extent (otherwise humans would not have done it so many times in history). And yes, when we are doing it, we are able to increase the „pleasure“ by increasing the intensity of the cruelty. But, and this is the important thing, this „pleasure“ can be experienced only on an very low level. The pleasure is designed by evolution in a way that you let go of cruelty as soon as you see an opportunity for much greater joy. Cruelty should be reserved for rare situations where there is no alternative to it. Cruelty is, in mathematical language, a low level local optimum of pleasure. And, if we are willing to ignore the huge tragedy of the monkeys for a second, the monkey torturers become tragic figures themselves: they believed to have found an exclusive and extraordinarily intense source of pleasure when they have in fact (compared to what could be found) found only some small pile of stinking shit. They were, ignorant of true pleasures, feeling privileged when they actually forced themselves to eat dog shit.
And this what you share with the monkey torturers: you don’t know what you would really enjoy. Or you started to believe it is not possible to get what you really want. You are either not able to see the alternative anymore or you stopped to believe in it for some reason.
Evil is modesty. Involuntary modesty (out of ignorance) or intentional modesty (out of resignation).
Yes, you are actually a monkey torturer in spirit. I’m really sorry to tell you. But don’t worry. I have been one too for a long time and it's not your fault. I'll explain you why. I’ll do this by telling you how you being a monkey torturer in spirit affects my life:
I’m not stupid. I know only too well: if I will be in trouble one day, you will want money for your help. And if I can't afford your help, you will not help me. I’m scared of this day which will sure come as I’m getting older. So you make me want this money too. I feel that I should save some of it and invest it well too. Make it steal efficiently from some poor women in Bangladesh. You force me, at least to some extent, to think like a monkey torturer too. And I hate it to the core.
And this is why you are actually „right“. Because most people are ignorant or have resigned like you. Because you people are the majority! You have made it so damn difficult not to become like you. Today, it seems to be the logical choice, the only choice.
People like you have shaped the world into a Kafkaesque torturing machine: scammers from Nigeria looting American pensioners, exploiting the fact that these pensioners would love so much to loot people in Africa (and elsewhere) with super profitable investments. Looting others has become totally accepted. Even respectable companies do it all the time (like increasing prices for essential medication by 1000%). And we even admire those who excel at looting others and often even elect them into political power.
And all your laws, your moral, your good manners. All these things don’t help. Because they are lousy crutches invented and designed to prevent only the very worst in a world without love. A world full of fools which could have everything but pretend to be super happy while eating shit every day.
Even your „solidarity“ (in case you are leaning to the political left) is, I’m sorry, completely worthless. What you mean with this nicely sounding word is that money should get redistributed. That being able to force others to serve them on a restaurant table should not be a privilege for only a few. No, everybody should have the right to torture others. Everybody should have the right to fly to a hotel in a developing country once a year (which has a slum directly behind the fenced beach).
Please, please stay away with this sad joke from me! And please don’t dare to present this crap to the young generation as a „solution for a better world“. Why should they suffer like you only because you lack the fantasy and/or the courage to imagine something truly worth living?
And please, please also don't mention the love of your God. The God you insult every day by claiming that he fits into that little book of yours. The God you believe small, so you can hope to control him. Which you need to control because somehow you have to blackmail him for an ounce of hope every day. Hope you need so desperately because you have turned his creation into a hell. Something you achieved by praying to books (your own weird ideas!) instead of his creation.
This is how you make me more and more sad. It’s not your lack of moral. Interestingly, the contrary is true: a very healthy dose of pure egoism would be perfectly sufficient - and even preferable! - if you only knew what you really desire! But sadly, you have no damn idea what would make you happy. You are dreaming about a big house which would finally allow you to isolate yourself from the rest of us. Instead of grilling with me on the lake you want to swim alone in your little chlorine filled pool. You want to earn a lot of money to be able to perpetuate the current miserable state indefinitely into the future. You force your kids to study the art of looting at a business school so they can „enjoy“ the same shitty life like you. You want a big car which allows you to travel faster (so you can make even more money) and make your friends jealous. You need that money to force prostitutes to have sex with you when you actually could enjoy the extreme pleasure of dissolving your wife in an ocean of overwhelming lust.
But your world will not break me. I’ll always be able to afford to do at least sometimes what I enjoy most: I’ll invest my time (the only resource of any value which I possess) into other people. Not because I want something back or because I want to improve my reputation in the community. I never cared much about my reputation (and I have probably destroyed the little which was left of it with my blog). No. I will continue to write on my free blog, cook for people, help my friends and others, write open source software, organize free workshops for kids, try to be a good lover, be kind to strangers. Not because I want you to see me as a „good person“. Fuck that, I’m in no way better than anybody else (not even better than the monkey torturers!).
No, I will do it because I enjoy it. Because this is what makes me truly happy. It’s what I desire most. All this is extreme luxury for me and I know that I will always be able to afford it to some extent.
I will be always rich.
And when I will give you, a stranger, a few hours of my time, I will enjoy your confusion. I will savor your desperate (and hopeless) attempts to pay me with money or to give something back immediately so you don't have to suffer from owing me something. I'll enjoy your despair. It will be my little cruel gift to you.
Image on top: DALL-E, prompt "Extreme Luxury"
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