So what can we make of it? Do we have a conscience or not, if many can suppress it at will and act as if they had none? Who needs a conscience in this world anyway. We all know god never existed, or is long dead by now. I wonder, or am I jumping the gun? The very one pointed at your head, forcing you to believe, to be what you are not and will never be. Faith is everything nowadays, as it always was, at gunpoint.
It seems to me that the only ones who still have a conscience these days are Catholics, and I am not talking about their religious leaders. I'm joking of course, as I always did, but it leads to what I want to say. It seems to me that people only have a conscience if it has been pre-programmed in their mind, whether as a child or at some turning point in their life, most likely once they discover a rehabilitation program or some religious or new age movement along the way.
Otherwise, what need do we have for a conscience? I feel that if we were all left to our own devices, as animals, none of us would have a conscience. At that point you can only have a conscience by convention, if we decided that somehow you should have one implanted within your mind through teachings, motherly talks, nanny states' discourses, probation officers and other methods of conditioning.
I'm afraid, I have a conscience, a powerful one too. I cannot allow myself to intentionally hurt another in any way, be it an animal, a human being or even an insect (often I am unable to make the distinction between those three). I have to admit that perhaps the thought of being good would never have occurred to me if I had not been told it was wrong to be bad.
I could have perhaps understood it by myself, witnessing how much I suffered when people hurt me. I may then have thought it was a bad idea to hurt in return or to hurt others at all. That sums me up. History and our daily existence however tell us that usually if someone hurts you, you hurt them back, and even, you don't care anymore and you can start hurting everyone else as a result, in some great chain reaction.
When some 20 so-called terrorists attacked New York and killed something like 3,000 of our citizens, we instantly went to war for a decade at least, destroying a few countries in the process and killing over a million people. That is one way of responding to it, which never required a conscience. Or will we live to regret it? I suppose we always do overreact in any such situation, so ready we are to go to war on any pretext, especially personal wars on an individual basis.
I have to admit, I fought against my conscience. My books and articles are filled with hurting stuff, but in real life you would have to search deep to find any occurrence of me hurting anyone, I am such a gentle soul. I wish I had no conscience at all, it would have helped me a great deal to survive the world we live in.
And yet perhaps the Third World War will finally offer me on a platter my secret wish I can't even admit to myself, this wish to kill people on a massive scale. To drop a nuclear bomb over a populated area and in one time swoop annihilate millions of them, I'm thinking of Iran. I am only being ironic here in order to make a point, but it is true that in war soldiers get to love to kill, and cheer each others as they annihilate villages and entire cities. How one nuclear bomb could end this war right now, conscience is far gone by then.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
