"Human? I've been studying your world's history, as much as I safely can, why is it so many people seemed so happy to kill each other for a piece of colored cloth?" -- Anon Guest
Human Van thought, very briefly, about saying, Oh, it got worse than that. There had been those perfectly willing to indirectly murder the weaker of their own kind just so they could "live pure". There were those who were ready and eager to use an army's worth of guns to "protect their nation" but stopped at wearing a piece of fabric to protect their neighbours.
Things got really strange before Humanity discovered the plethora of one-way wormholes that - more or less - allowed the nuts to sort themselves into their own cans.
Instead of all that, Human Van took the higher road. They said, "It was like... team sports. Win or lose, you support your team. You cheer for them, buy the merchandise, celebrate and riot when they win, just riot when they lose. Call every foul against them and ignore the ones they perpetuate. Y'know... because, if the team you love did something wrong, that makes you a bad person by association." At Companion Aradd's blank stare, they added, "Human Illogic."
"Aaaahh..." They did the slow pseudo-understanding nod of I Don't Get This. "Human Illogic. I still do not understand."
Van took a breath and tried another analysis. "Tribal think. There is Us. We all want to be Us, and Us is good. With me so far?"
"Yes. We all want to be Us."
"Exactly. Anything the greater powers of Us do is for the greater good of Us. It has to be. They wouldn't do anything to hurt Us, we elected them to their seats of power. It has to be good for Us. Even when it's demonstrably evil."
"That is the illogic I do not understand," admitted Aradd, they were air-washing their hands in anxiety. "How can an act of demonstrable evil be seen as good?"
"Spin," answered Van, and then realised they had to explain. "It's all in how they explain it. It's not a pipeline ruining the water of indigenous peoples, it's the freedom to have oil processing happening in Our Fair Nation so that other people can have jobs and look after their families. If you don't like it, or protest, then you're one of Them and not with Us at all. And so on and so forth." Van made a face. They hated this part of Human history. "With the right spin, you can have people believing: war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. They got very good at it before the end."
"It did end, did it not?"
"Sort of. As I like to say, the wormholes happened. All the nuts sorted themselves into their own cans. The only people left were the ones who refused to make a new world, but rather fix the old one. Or the people who were just stuck there."
"No more of the spin, yes?"
"After a while, yeah. There's a lot of people who like repeating the mistakes of history," by the Powers, they were going to need some comfort snacks after this. "And that's why we have so many Greater flakkin' Deregulations."
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / PicsFive]
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