Secrets..
Everyone has them.. But if you tell someone then it is no longer a secret. But if you keep them inside they will slowly eat your liver and then eventually give you the Herpies (or was it Harpies) either way its bad to keep these things in too long! But help is here, share some secrets, stuff no one knows about you preferably (it's not cool telling other peoples secrets).
I will get the ball rolling I guess. When I was young (like ten or so) I would ... steal Dungeon & Dragon Books from the book store. Terrible I know.. I am a monster. I have never stole anything since those days believe it or not, and every time I see those books I feel deep shame. In fact I must hide them away in a box of books so that I do not get reminded of my foolishness, but I cannot just throw them away or even give them away because I still like having them.
Hmm I guess that wasn't really a very juicy secret. How about I will share a better one if more people share some of theres.
I will get the ball rolling I guess. When I was young (like ten or so) I would ... steal Dungeon & Dragon Books from the book store. Terrible I know.. I am a monster. I have never stole anything since those days believe it or not, and every time I see those books I feel deep shame. In fact I must hide them away in a box of books so that I do not get reminded of my foolishness, but I cannot just throw them away or even give them away because I still like having them.
Hmm I guess that wasn't really a very juicy secret. How about I will share a better one if more people share some of theres.
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One day, I had this irresistible urge for a couple of slices of this pizza and I wrestled with whether I should get it. In addition to spending the money for it, it is also possible to get stuck waiting one to three hours for your pizza, depending on how busy they are.
So I decided to drive by, resolving that, provided that it doesn't look busy, I will stop in and order a couple of slices. As fate would have it, a very rare occasion presented itself with very few cars in the parking lot. Seizing upon this opportunity, I waltzed in, excited and antsy. I ordered my three slices (what was planned for two became three when I was asked what I wanted) and was assigned number 34.
So they're in the back, slicing up these trays of pizza and putting them into boxes. They then call out "17" and the person next to me takes her three boxes and leaves. I think, "Well, even though I'm '34', maybe no one else will come in and I'll be served next."
Of course, as soon as I get my hopes up, people just start pouring in now. Number 27. Number 11. Number 83. Etc. Etc. Etc. All numbers prior to mine and they get served first because they called ahead. The clock continues ticking, I'm starving, an hour has passed by, and all I can think about is my long drive home, tempting me to surrender and leave...if only I hadn't already paid.
Fortunately, I think someone decided to have mercy on me since I was one of the few small orders amidst a sea of large ones and I had been there for a while. I was finally served my pizza, out of order mind you. A glorious day it proved indeed for victory was mine.
I went out to my car, peaked into the box, and laid my eyes on some of the best-looking slices of pizza I had seen in a while. At this point, a little angel appeared on my shoulders and said, "You should just head home now and share with your wife." No sooner had she completed that sentence, a devil appeared on the opposing shoulder, admonishing me for even entertaining such a stupid proposition, reasoning, "Look at these slices of pizza! Do you think if you wait an hour and a half they're going to get any better? NO! Enjoy them now! They're there for the taking. Nobody has to know. Indulge! Besides, she probably already has her own plans for dinner tonight and, well, you can't miss what you don't know is missing."
Moved by his impeccable reasoning, I listened to the devil. As soon as I returned home, I began to fret about what to do with the boxes like Lady Macbeth and her hands. "Leave them in the car? No way! Then my car will smell like pizza when I return to it, reminding me of my misdeeds like the Tell-tale Heart. But if I take them inside with me, I may as well be wielding the murder weapon in front of the police station. What do I do?"
The devil, sensing my distress, returned to my shoulder and politely pointed out, "Relax. There's a recycle bin by your front entrance. Break down the boxes and place them in the recycle bin under some of the items, branding side down. No one will ever know."
And so I did....
If the store is a chain store, nothing would prevent you from sending a check or money order to the corporate office with an explanation. That might save you the awkward moments when you go back. Even if you were to send it anonymously, that would at least resolve the financial component. Another option would be to simply buy the books again (or whatever the equivalent is today) and then donate the books to a local library.
@Son_of_Imoen There are three responses that a defender of this theory could give.
(1) An anecdote is not weighty enough to weaken the theory unless one was making the claim that it is universally true. A single counterexample from a sample of n=1 simply illustrates an exception to a general rule rather than a refutation of it.
(2) Because you exhibit the symptoms of this biological response, it doesn't follow that there is a single cause for it. Just like a fever can be triggered from exposure to different kinds of pathogens, misanthropy too has different causes.
(3) Age is irrelevant to a degree in the determination of biological processes starting or stopping. While it's true that grey hair and bad eyes usually accompany older age, some have hair that turns grey or eyes that go bad at very early ages (teens and twenties). Biological processes begin and end when they begin and end. For some, some of those processes start much earlier and for others much later.
@mlnevese There are two things our hypothetical defender might say:
(1) This is a theory not only about how we view others strictly, but life in general. This biological response is not therefore restricted to feelings of misanthropy. It might begin there (or anywhere), but with time and the acceleration of the aging processes, we will grow to dislike more and more. Colors become dull and sounds become muffled, causing us to find less and less joy in life in even the so-called simple things. It's all a slow and steady process of gradual detachment so that when the inevitable arrives, one is psychologically at peace with it.
(2) That is just a reason that you're giving yourself, but our reasons are sometimes misleading and other times alternative descriptions of the same underlying cause. In this case, it's likely the latter. For example, a neurobiologist observes your behavioral response of anger to your friend Jones and claims, "You felt angry because a great amount of activity was generated in the areas of the amygdala and periaqueductal gray, and your response was dictated by the activity generated in the medial frontal cortex." You respond, "No. I was angry because Jones stole my stamp collection and burned it. My tackling Jones and punching him in the face was a response to hearing that he burned it." Does it follow that one of these descriptions is the "right" one and one the "wrong" one? No. They're both correct; they're also just two different kinds of description for the same observable phenomenon. In the case of misanthropy, the "programmed biological response" theory is equivalent to the neurobiological description of anger in the example above.
As you might be beginning to see, I'm not confident that this theory is falsifiable, and that, if anything, certainly creates a serious obstacle for any aspirations it might have to be a scientific theory. This means it's kind of stuck in "faith-like status." Ultimately, either you believe or you don't.
But i just can't believe anymore that there is a way humanity as a collective entity will change because of those few. History just proves we still act today as we did thousands of years ago. The only thing that seems to evolve is our technology.