Today I have decided to resign from the world. I've had enough. I've been thinking about this for a while and it's the right time. I may have to be here physically, but I don't have to be subject to all those horrible frustrations one feels when watching the News or reading a newspaper or interacting with the general public. I'm freeing myself from any moral and ethical obligation to care about anything. I feel I've earned the right.
I'm informing the world through this blog and the United Nations who I felt should be made aware of my position through the letter below, that I'm on my own now and my problems are my problems and your problems are yours. So don't come running to me if you can't prevent the polar ice caps from melting, or prevent the spread of AIDS, or your concerned cause George W Bush is back on the drink. It's none of my beeswax. Not anymore. Nu-uh.
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Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary General
United Nations Headquarters
760 United Nations Plaza
New York City
New York, 10017
United States
CC: Mother nature, Santa
January 16, 2007
Dear Mr Ki-Moon,
It is with absolutely no regret whatsoever that I hereby give notice of my resignation from the world with immediate effect and in doing so surrender all my obligations to give a shit about it’s future and the well being of those unfortunate suckers who happen to have been dumped here without any prior warning or consultation.
My reasons for resigning are threefold.
1: George W Bush. The American people have essentially elected Homer Simpson to office, not once, but twice. I cannot possibly be expected to give even half a crap about a world in which it’s most powerful man who holds sway over all our lives, can almost choke on a pretzel while watching sports. Any man who is incapable of feeding himself should not be entrusted with the future of our planet.
I cannot blame the American people for electing this man twice. As a consequence of beef induced obesity they have become mentally incapacitated and unable to make intelligent decisions. The United Nations however exist to facilitate co-operation in international law, international security, economic development, and social equity. It was founded in the hope that it would act to intervene in conflicts between nations and thereby avoid war. You failed.
After the United Nations there was only Superman to safeguard our future and protect us against alcoholic megalomaniac religious fruitcakes. Sadly, Mr Reeves has passed on and this leaves us at the mercy of Mr Bush’s crusades and Cheney fuelled catastrophic foreign policy and I for one can no longer bear to look. This leads me nicely onto reason number 2.
2: Religion. The world we are asked to picture in John Lennon’s song “Imagine”, is a beautiful place even if we have to share it with Yoko. A world without religion would have saved us centuries of bloodshed. No crusades, no holocaust, no ethnic and religious cleansing in the Balkans, no 9/11, no 7/7 no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Iraq war, no Afghanistan war and no Cliff Richard.
John Lennon does not ask us to consider a world without science. Perhaps the idea of no modern medicine or technology and no attempt to satisfy our curiosity about how everything works other than a shrug of the shoulders and an insistence that it must all be down to one omniscient, omnipotent, unreachable, unaccountable sky-fairy is not so beautiful to the scouse songsmith. Quite right too. Anyone with even half an IQ point, even if they collected vouchers from a cereal packet and sent away for it, ought to be able to deduce that although there are many things in our world which cannot yet be explained with real-world scientific evidence, it is far more likely that these things can be explained using these methods, we just don’t quite understand them enough at this time, rather than that it must just be God. The argument that because something is unexplained means it has to have been Gods work has no more place in an intelligent debate than “it is cause I said so”.
Yet it is science that is being asked to move along when the problems facing the planet are being debated and solutions formulated. Religion on the other hand is given the comfy chair and the final say and I say final because if this continues it will be responsible for the end of the world. Which, no doubt, will also be Gods will and not some terrible fuck up by people who choose to live there entire lives according to a series of Chinese whispers instead of actually having any real knowledge.
I have no problem with an individual’s decision to base his decisions in life on a faith rather than intelligent reasoning. If he wishes to sit at home and rub Bovril on himself in the belief that it will boost his ability to connect with God, then good luck to him. But when his beliefs encroach on my life and certainly when such beliefs endanger my life and absolutely when those beliefs endanger the future of the planet, I’m afraid I’m gonna need a little more than just “I believe”.
If you want to believe in something extraordinary, fine, but if you want me to believe it too, then the burden of proof is on you. You have to convince me God exists, I don’t have to prove he doesn’t. Extraordinary beliefs require extraordinary proof and until it’s provided, religion should have no more respect in our society than the belief of garden fairies and the Loch Ness monster. But it does, and it seems it will continue to do so and so this is my second reason for my resignation.
3. A good idea gone bad. My final reason (of which the first two reasons regress) is that the Human race was a good idea in theory, but the reality has proven otherwise. There can be very few people who can genuinely believe that the world, as Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “is a great place and worth fighting for”. Unfortunately there are many people who believe fanatically in the second part, but very few people in both assertions.
Here in the UK, we are expected to pay a license fee to finance the BBC. However, we don’t have the option of not paying and thus sacrificing our access to it. I think this unfair. Similarly, I was not offered a preview of life before I was plucked from a blissful nothing without consultation to begin mine and offered the opportunity of opting out, which I feel is equally unfair. I do now have the option however, having seen how things work, of abandoning my moral obligations towards my fellow man and the safeguarding of the future of the planet. It’s too late for all that anyway.
I don’t want to have to explain to Mother Nature why her planet has been destroyed and why a city was built on her favourite bit of forest. I don’t want to be left to explain where all the Panda’s have gone and why it’s so fucking hot all the time. Who knows what she may do to me. I am far more afraid of her wrath than I am of my own guilt I may feel as I watch the fight to prevent the world from collapsing around itself under the weight of greed, ignorance, religious arrogance and fat Americans from the safety of my Anderson shelter style conscientious objection,
So in conclusion, I’m on my own from now on. You can do what you want, but the planets problems are no longer mine. I tried to make a difference, but I can no more affect the consciousness of the Human race than a pinch of salt can affect the taste of a huge shit pie. I do not now have any obligation to realise those barmy notions we once held true; Peace on Earth, good will to all men etc etc. Fuck all that. I’m all about the me. It’s much better this way.
I have the honour to be, sir, my own man,
With absolutely no regards, kind or otherwise,
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