Post
by Unblinking » Tue Sep 27, 2011 2:55 pm
I was really digging the story when it began, of the world where random corpses follow people around. And it was an interesting premise, especially when I realized after the line about "actuarial balance" that this was all apparently meant to show people the effect they're having in the world. It touched on quite a few interesting themes:
1. Many live gluttonous, wasteful lives, despite there being plenty of documentation of terrible living conditions in many places across the world. Would we continue to do this if we were confronted by those we failed to help?
2. When he tries to bribe the ghost, this felt very real life to people who try to write a check to assuage their own guilt. Not that writing a check to a worthwhile cause isn't a good thing, but when it's a thing only to assuage your guilt and not for the actual people you're helping, it has interesting moral side to it. If you can spare the money without missing it, and you're only donating to keep it off your conscience, should it really be a weight off yoru shoulders?
3. The lessening of guilt by comparing one person's level of guilt with another's, and how ludicrous this can be. This reminds me of a couple years ago when I had the gall to complain that President Obama had flown Air Force One all the way from DC to Chicago to spend two hours there and then flew back to DC, and how much money and fuel that burned for him to fly that giant airplane for such a short trip. Man did I get a lot of flack for that, most along the lines of either "Do you want him to stay isolated in his office?" or "George W. Bush did _____ and he was way worse." The latter argument especially bothered me, because I wasn't trying to compare him to Bush, I was trying to point out how wasteful such a short trip halfway across the country was. Why not get enough Chicago-related stuff to do so that you can spend a day or three there instead of flying there for a two-hour stop? So apparently now, no President can be criticized for anything as long as there is a previous President who has done worse--that's going to be a downward spiral if I've ever seen one. Anyway, that's what it reminded me of--Oh, that couple at that table has 3 corpses around them, what terrible people they are, aren't I so superior because I only have a single shambler.
Anyway, so it obviously had plenty of food for thought for me, but after a while it just started to drag. Once it had shown me this really interesting metaphor it just kept going on and on pointing out how awesome its metaphor was and I wanted to tell teh story "Okay, I get it. I get it. Can something happen now?" And then the story ended at an apparently random place.
