WALLACE SHAWN
The Designated Mourner
She said something like, “I don’t understand your relationship to society. I don’t understand your relationship to the world.”
“You know what?” I said snippily. “I don’t understand my relationship to my own ass. I was standing naked in the bathroom and I saw my ass in the mirror and I said, ‘What is that? What is that? And what does it have to do with me?’”
WALLACE SHAWN
"Morality" from Night Thoughts
But I've actually lived long enough now to have figured out what the word "morality" really refers to. I do know what it means, although it's pretty outrageous. It refers to a very simple thought: we shouldn't accept this principle that strong inevitably triumphs over weak. Luck has distributed strength in an arbitrary way: this lion is stronger, this elk is stronger, this group of people lives closer to the river, this group of people lives farther away. Luck has given the person with the penis, the people with the guns, a bit more strength, and so they've trampled over everyone else. Morality says we shouldn't accept that. For the bigger kid to take the smaller kid's candy bar is not right; it's wrong. And if the bigger kid gives that candy bar to me, the process by which I received it was wrong, and it's wrong for me to have it, and it's wrong for me to eat it.
WALLACE SHAWN
"Teachers" from Night Thoughts
I myself still haven't escaped the desire for comfort. I like comfort, I like comfort enormously —even luxury, if I can get my hands on it. But my teachers softened me up, without any question. I'd say I'm halfway to decadence. My manliness gauge stands at more than half empty. And that's also true for many of my friends. And many of their friends.
If someone says to me, "Your air conditioner uses energy sources that are raising the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," I may take a hard look at the person who's saying it, think for a moment, and ignore what they said. But if all my friends gave up their air conditioning units, I wouldn't insist on keeping mine. And if some day next week or some day a few years from now, the great masses of the unlucky should come to my door and want to confiscate my air conditioner or even my entire apartment, I'm pretty sure that I won't fight them. I'm pretty sure I'll simply give up. I'll simply surrender. If some of my neighbors form an army of the lucky to fight the unlucky, I won't join. I'm much too lazy to fight for what I have, and what would make me an impossibly poor soldier in the army of the lucky is that I don't really believe I have a right to what I have. I know that my side is not the right side. I know that my life has always been wrong. So today I can very easily live my life and enjoy my life, even love my life, but if the moment comes, I won't kill for it, and I won't even fight for it.
In other words, I'm saying that one way that a great upheaval could possibly occur without the shedding of blood would be if those who are now the lucky elite could already, today, be privately at work on quietly melting and softening their own shells, to use a snail metaphor, so that ultimately they would all become small worm-like creatures who wouldn't fight and couldn't fight. And this is not a preposterous fantasy. The children of the most ruthless executives and military commanders very often turn out to be delicate aesthetes who want nothing more than to play with puppets or make long necklaces out of small colored beads.
I mean, all right, let's say, if I get a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant. Of course, even I have a tendency, I mean, you know, I mean, of course, I would hardly throw it out. I mean, I read it. I read it, and I just instinctively sort of ...You know, if it says something like, "A conversation with a dark-haired man will be very important for you.” Well, I just instinctively think, you know, "Who do I know who has dark hair? Did we have a conversation? What did we talk about?"
In other words, uh, there's something in me that makes me read it and I instinctively interpret it as if it were an omen of the future. But in my conscious opinion - which is so fundamental to my whole view of life - I would just have to change totally to not have this opinion. In my conscious opinion, this is simply something that was written in the cookie factory several years ago and in no way refers to me. The fact that I got it. I mean, the man who wrote it did not know anything about me. I mean, he could not have known anything about me. There's no way that this cookie could actually have to do with me. And the fact that I've gotten it is just basically a joke.
And I mean, if I were gonna go on a trip on an airplane and I got a fortune cookie that said "Don't go"... I mean, of course, I admit I might feel a bit nervous for about one second. But in fact, I would go because that trip is gonna be successful or unsuccessful based on the state of the airplane and the state of the pilot. And the cookie is in no position to know about that.
And you know, it's the same with any kind of prophecy, or a sign, or an omen. Because if you believe in omens, then that means that the universe … I mean, I don't even know how to begin to describe this. That means that the future is somehow sending messages backwards to the present. Which means that the future must exist in some sense already in order to be able to send these messages. And it also means that things in the universe are there for a purpose. To give us messages.
Whereas I think that things in the universe are just there. I mean, they don't mean anything. I mean, you know, if the turtle's egg falls out of the tree and splashes on the paving stones it's just because that turtle was clumsy, by accident. And to decide whether to send my ships off to war on the basis of that seems a big mistake to me. Well, what information would you send your ships to war on? Because if it's all meaningless what's the difference whether you accept the fortune cookie or the statistics of the Ford Foundation? It doesn't seem to matter.
Well, the meaningless fact of the fortune cookie or the turtle's egg can't possibly have any relevance to the subject you're analyzing. Whereas a group of meaningless facts that are collected and interpreted in a scientific way may quite possibly be relevant. Because the wonderful thing about scientific theories about things is that they're based on experiments that can be repeated.
