Apathy
v. The Church: 3 falls, no submission, cage match.
There is a DISTINCT and REAL difference between the
Church of Least Resistance and traditional APATHY. Giving up is not
the same as not trying. It is a subtle difference, but I will try
(horrors!) and explain.
Both are a reaction to the modern (yet ancient) sense
of impotence. Both are alternatives from the system we live under.
Both have a certain practical application and popular appeal.
Apathy, however, while considered rebellion,
is still swimming upstream. In this sense, it is not different from
the acquiescence most people engage in when they go to college, get a degree,
and slum off to some corporate job. Apathy is socially acceptable
rebellion; it serves our capitalist masters just as well as working does,
for the drones look at the apathetic young folk and get very, very afraid.
The church has a real problem with apathy.
Where is the wisdom in killing yourself slowly with drugs, alcohol, and
television? Again, it is little different from killing yourself slowly
with a job. Both provide certain pleasures, and both are easy, are
socially acceptable--it is this culture's wisdom that undue and unneeded
effort is commendable. Don't fool yourself--it takes as much effort
and dedication (and yet, a complete lack thereof) to be apathetic and self-destructive
as to take a job with the phone company.
And if, for some reason, you think you're "cool,"
you think you're BETTER than those corporate shmoes because you've GIVEN
UP, because you're APATHETIC, here's a little piece of advice: spend
all that free time you have doing lots of stretching exercises. Maybe
one day you'll be able to FUCK YOURSELF. That would be MUCH more
productive, AND original, than your current activities.
Maybe you hate your job-slumming parents because
you think they're PHONY. Jeezus. And what do you think you
are? Pretending you somehow think for yourself, that "I'm my own
boss, goddamn it!" Well, who do you think profits from your self-destruction,
from your booze and ciggies? Phony? You, my apathetic friend,
are the phony one. It's just a pose; you just pretend you know what
you're doing.
But
the Church can help.
You're obviously looking for
an answer, a way to avoid the life you look upon with horror. There
is a way. The Church of Least Resistance can tell you how to truly
achieve SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. It can tell you how to truly GIVE
UP, without the false pretenses you live under. It can tell you how
to stop trying, to truly not make an effort, to drift downstream unobstructed.
The Church can teach you to give up the effortful life and live a PURPOSEFUL
one.
O, believe me friends, I have seen what you have
seen and more. Lord knows I was apathetic as the rest of you for
some time: bitter, alienated, self-destructive. But there is
so much to life. There is poetry and beauty, destruction and violence,
death. All sublime, all perfect in their own way. Stop moving
and open your eyes. Come to the way of the Church of Least Resistance.
