“Well then what’s the answer to my question? Why can’t I meet Socrates?”
“Zack, Socrates has millions of admirers. You can’t expect him to personally entertain every single one.”
“But this is Heaven, I get to do whatever I want.”
“Indeed. And there are several videogames that should suffice. You can party with your favorite bands and debate Socrates there, and it will be just like real life. You can also watch recordings of Socrates’s actual real-life dialogues from twenty-four centuries ago, or any other non-private historical event. I have recorded the entire history of this planet. And, as if that weren’t enough, I believe that Socrates is planning to give a public speech later this week.”
“But I wanted to talk with him personally.”
“Zack, you are lonely, I can see that. I was going to wait to do this, but I think I’m just going to do it now. I want you to meet someone. She is going through some of the same issues that you are.”
Suddenly, before Zack could protest, they were at a coffeehouse in Brooklyn, sitting with a woman of exact, stern, and impossibly-unapproachable beauty. Then God disappeared.
“So,” Zack said, looking around, “who do we order from?” There did not seem to be any wait staff or cashiers.
“Just gesture,” the woman replied, waving her hand over the table and producing a cup of coffee for herself.
“Oh, right,” he said, doing the same. “I’m Zack by the way.”
“I’m Lilly.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t pick it.”
“I assumed as much.” Zack waited for a smile, but none came. “So… hmmm… how do you like Heaven?”
“Uh… it’s ok I guess. You might say I’m still adjusting.”
“Right, me too.” A few seconds passed. “Well, I suppose we should at least give this a chance, don’t you think? I mean, God thought we should meet, and he did create the universe… sort of.”
“Yeah, heh. All right… so what did you do before all of this, for a job?”
“I worked on Wall Street. I was an equity fund manager.”
“Yuck.”
“Well what did you do?”
“I was a lawyer.”
“That’s better?”
“A lawyer for the poor. I worked at legal services.”
“That’s great!”
“Oh thank you, I feel better now.”
Zack leaned back in his chair, not sure where to go from here. But this time Lilly broke the silence.
“What’s your dog’s name?”
“Lucky.”
“Wow, real original!”
“There’s a reason. We got Lucky from the shelter when I was seven. A car had hit him, and the shelter didn’t have the money to operate on him. Just by chance, we got there a few hours before they were going to put him down, so we named him Lucky. For the rest of his life after that, you know, before God came and did all of this, Lucky got around on only three legs.”
Lilly smiled, and the conversation took off from there. Zack told Lilly all about how Lucky managed, with Herculean effort, to swim in the lake with three legs and even retrieve sticks and tennis balls from it. He told her how Lucky would always steal the dishcloth from the stove handle no matter how many times Zack’s mom would yell at him. And finally, he told her about the night that Lucky died, lying on the living room floor, wheezing, in Zack’s sleeping arms.
Zack also told Lilly about his father, the mechanic, and his mother, the high school English teacher, and Lilly told Zack about her parents, the doctors that spent half of her childhood in Africa treating the sick and the starving, while Lilly’s aunt raised her. When the night was over, Zack walked Lilly home like a perfect gentleman and did not try to kiss her.
11
The next day, Zack and Lilly met again in Venice, Italy. As it turned out, they actually had quite a bit in common. They had both been atheists for as long as they could remember, they had both thought that they were dreaming when God first appeared to them, and they both loved dogs.
As they walked down the cobblestone street together, Lucky spotted a large cluster of pigeons near a fountain and took off, and a few passersby gave Zack and Lilly dirty looks.
“As much happiness as is consistent with everyone else’s! Including dogs!” Zack shouted, laughing.
Lilly laughed too. “I’m not sure you would have liked me before the apocalypse,” she said. “I didn’t look like this you know. I changed my appearance after God came.”
“No, of course I would have. Personality is more important to me than looks. Besides, I’m sure you were cute.”
Lilly snickered. “You are a typical guy!”
“No, seriously.”
“You’ve never even seen what I looked like!”
“Ok, well show me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Haha. Oh, you’re so vain!” he teased her.
“Not at all. My appearance didn’t define me back then, and it doesn’t define me now. I only changed how I look, not how I am on the inside, and I only did that because other people care about looks.”
“Um, isn’t that last part the definition of vanity?” They both laughed.
“Zack, I never thought I would ever want to walk through a place like this with a Wall Street suit.”
“And I never thought I would ever want to walk anywhere with a lawyer, period. But I think I like it. You’re a tiger, it’s sexy.” Zack was rarely this bold with women, but now that he was in Heaven, he had a lot more confidence.
“We’ll see if you still think so after we spend a little more time together.” They laughed again.
“But what’s so wrong about Wall Street?”
“What’s wrong? Really? What’s wrong is that bankers and traders don’t produce anything of value. You push paper and ticker symbols around and skim profits off the top from hard-working people that actually make things and do things for the world.”
“The stock market serves a function. Well, it did, when it existed. It distributed capital to where it could be used most efficiently.”
“Most efficiently? People could have used money most efficiently in Sub-Saharan Africa for food and vaccinations. They could have used it most efficiently for helping earthquake victims or reversing global warming. How much money did your trading distribute to those things?”
“I donated to charity on my own.”
“Phhh. Most rich people I knew donated like 1% of their money and bragged about it like it made them Jesus.”
Zack waffled. “Ok, you have a point, but –”
“And what about high-frequency trading? Where they move the computers as close to the stock exchange as possible so they can execute thousands of trades per second? And short-selling? And any of the other hundred ridiculously complex tools that do nothing but skim money out of the system and bankrupt honest people’s pensions?”
“I didn’t do any of that stuff Lilly,” Zack answered truthishly. “I did real investing. You know, identifying solid companies that could generate a consistent return for people’s futures. It wasn’t just money for rich people, it was someone’s kids’ college tuition, or retirement money, or that little bit of extra income that they could donate to charity. And I thought about all of that when I went to work in the morning. I really did.”
“Ok, I know,” Lilly said, retreating. “I wouldn’t be here with you if I thought you were one of the bad ones.”
But then Zack pushed a little more: “And besides, as far as the people who were just about getting more money for themselves, didn’t we need to let them keep at least some of their money in order to incentivize them to work hard?”
“Incentives?” It was back on. “Come on. You’re telling me that unless we had let rich people build up gigantic hordes of money, everyone would have just gone lazy? And what, the people who were poor in life just weren’t motivated enough? PU - LEASE! Conservatives have this fantasy th
at every poor person sits at home all day trading their food stamps for drugs and plotting about how to scam the system.”
“You mean like how liberals have this fantasy that all rich people sit in corporate boardrooms or country clubs all day smoking cigars and plotting about how to screw over the poor?”
“Liberals? So you’re a conservative, huh?” Lilly smirked.
“No, I’m a moderate.”
“Ha, of course you are!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Had Lilly really figured him out that quickly?
“It means that you’re… hmmm… let’s say… very careful with your decisions.”
“Hey, come on!”
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing. The world needs people like you too!”
“Needed. We have God now to take care of our problems.”
“Ok, fine. But back to my point. A lot of poor people were stuck at the bottom because of things like disabilities, bad neighborhoods… bad schools. It had nothing to do with incentives.”
“And back to my point, a lot of middle and upper-class people worked hard because they knew that they would get to keep at least some of the fruits of their labor, which they could use to give their families a better life.”
“Maybe, but I will never accept the notion that people are at their best when they’re being selfish. Besides, don’t you think that when you throw corporations into the mix, everything spins out of control?”
“Uh… how so?”
“Cause they were designed for evil.”
“Evil? Don’t you think you’re being a little overdramatic? Corporations were only as evil as the people running them.”
“Not exactly.”
“Why?”
“Because corporations were people!”
“Um…”
“I mean under the law. Legally, technically, corporations were people. But not real people, capable of balancing competing goals. People designed for a singular purpose – profitmaking. That part was actually written into the law, Zack. Shareholders could sue a company for any decision that failed to maximize profits.”
“But corporations did some good things too. What about pharmaceutical companies that cured diseases?”
“Ha! Ok Gordon Gekko. Tell me, if you were the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and the head of the research and development department came to you with two potential new drugs, one that cured a devastating disease that only afflicted poor children in Sub-Saharan Africa, and one that cured male-pattern baldness, and the company only had the resources to develop and sell one of them, which would you choose?”
“Hmmm.” This was an odd position for Zack. More often than not in his life, when he had these types of conversations, it was with his father or his coworkers, and he was on the other side. “I see your point, but I think that some companies found ways to do both. Over time, they tried harder and harder to be good corporate citizens. They went green, they donated money or products to charities… they learned. Just like real people.”
“Sure, but just like real people, didn’t corporations also learn to do just enough good to get by, and no more?”
“Ok comrade,” Zack said, trying to keep it light, since he could easily see this conversation getting out of hand, and he did not want to mess things up with Lilly. “If you had been Queen of the world, how would you have run things? Would you have had the government take over every corner pizza shop?”
“No, I’m not against all business. But you need certain ground rules.”
“Ah, you mean regulations. Here we go, lay it on me counselor!”
“You got it! I’ll give you one that every free-market capitalist should love: antitrust.”
“Antitrust?”
“Yes, antitrust laws.”
“Why?”
“Zack, you believe in free markets, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why?”
“Because competition is good. When companies compete, the best ones win, and consumers get better products at better prices.”
“And what happens when there’s no competition?”
“You mean a monopoly?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when one company, or one government,” Zack paused for emphasis, “is the only entity in the market, it can and will do whatever it wants. It will gouge the consumer, get lazy, and deliver poor quality products since it has no incentive to do a good job. That’s usually when a competitor comes in and starts stealing their business, if it can.”
“Exactly… if it can. Sometimes it’s too hard for competitors to enter the market.”
“Ok, that’s true, sometimes there are market entry barriers, natural monopolies… so what?”
“So that’s where antitrust steps in. The regulators breakup the monopolies when they get too big, thus allowing the free market to function the way it’s supposed to.”
“Um, ok. Why were we talking about this again?”
“Because! I just proved to you that your precious capitalist system depended on regulation for its survival! The regulators were like sports refs, making sure that everyone played by the rules. Without them, the whole thing would have fallen apart.”
Lilly was so gorgeous. How could Zack disagree with anything she said? “Ok, fair enough. Lawyers weren’t completely useless. But I thought I asked you what you would do differently. All you did was give me an example of one good law that we had, in theory.”
“Well, I was just trying to show you that laws don’t always go against economics. But as far as what I would have done differently if I were in charge? Healthcare. That would have been my first priority. There’s no reason why a society as advanced as ours should ever have let sick people die because they couldn’t afford to pay their medical bills.”
“Ok Lilly, I can relate. I’ve had some experience in my life dealing with that.”
“But I realize that laws can only go so far. You can’t just order people to do good. In order to really change the world, you need to change society’s values.”
“Ok, fair enough. How do you do that?”
“Hmmm. Do you remember the story of Tom Sawyer and the fence that he had to whitewash?”
“No.”
“Well, his aunt ordered him to whitewash the fence, but he used reverse psychology to trick his friends into doing it for him. He pretended that it was fun and that he didn’t want any help. The kids lined up, and not only did Tom get out of whitewashing the fence, but he got the other kids to pay him for the privilege of doing it!”
“Haha. I remember now – funny story.”
“Yes, see? Everyone loves that story. We admire how clever Tom was. Also, there’s the story of the grasshopper and the ant.”
“Yes, I know that one.”
“The ant works hard all summer while the grasshopper plays, and then when winter comes, the ant is prepared and the grasshopper is screwed.”
“Yes… where are you going with this?”
“Wait, I have one more – the mouse and the lion.”
“Which one was that?”
“The lion catches a mouse, who begs for his life, saying that maybe someday he could help the lion. The lion reluctantly agrees, even though he can’t imagine how this tiny little mouse could ever help him. But then lo and behold, the lion gets caught by hunters, and the mouse gnaws through the hunters’ ropes and sets him free.”
“Ok. What are you saying then?”
“I’m saying that our society has all these different values. Tricking people into doing your work for you like Tom did, working hard for yourself like the ant did, helping someone because someday they will help you like with the lion… but where’s the story where the characters do something good purely because it’s the right thing, without expecting to get anything in return? Where’s the story that teaches that self-sacrifice for others is good purely for its own sake?”
“Uh… the Jesus story?”
“Please, I’m being ser
ious.”
“So am I… sort of. I’m as big a critic of religion as anyone, but you have to admit that religions did teach a lot of lessons about helping others.”
“Yeah, they teach them right before they pass around the collection plate – or should I say, the ‘stained-glass window fund.’ ”
“Haha. Maybe, but I’m not so sure that society is entirely to blame for human selfishness. Don’t you think that people are innately selfish? Don’t you think that millions of years of evolution designed us to be that way?”
“Yeah, but remember, it wasn’t entirely evolution that designed us – we know now that God directed human evolution.”
“Right.” Zack frowned slightly.
“But regardless, I think humans can overcome their nature. For example, what if God hadn’t come? How do you think society would have turned out?”
“What do you mean?”
“Imagine that the world continued to develop for another thousand years without God bringing Heaven. How do you think the people of the future would have viewed morality?”
“I don’t know, that’s anybody’s guess.”
“Come on, try to imagine,” Lilly said, getting excited. “You hop into a time machine. You go to the 3000’s. You approach the first person you see and you ask her to show you around. And then as you start, all of a sudden, bam! She falls and breaks her leg. So you go the hospital. Now, when you walk in Zack, do they ask for her insurance card? Do they say, ‘I’m sorry, but we can only treat you if you can afford to pay us?’ No Zack, they wouldn’t. And they would look back at us and the way that we treated our poor and sick the same way that you and I look back at slaveholding societies.”
“Ok, ok. I suppose you’re right about the insurance card thing, but wouldn’t that just be because they would have really advanced technology that would let them treat a broken leg for practically free? I don’t know Lilly. I’m not sure that I share your faith in humanity. I could just as easily imagine a super advanced society that was still every bit as heartless as ours was.”
“But over time, didn’t we get better? Think of the progress that we made just in the last century. Think of all the new laws we passed.”
The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets Page 5