The Lotus Eaters

Chapter Ten

Along with all the other illusions and frauds of human existence, there have been and are the millennial philosophies, those reform movements who promise us a paradise in this life, if only we would X or Y or Z. There are at least three common problems with these philosophies. One is the Year Zero problem. Another is the assumption of a closed system problem. The third, related to the second, is the illusion, perhaps better said, delusion, of the possibility of permanence.

It is the last, the delusion of permanence, that allows the millennialist to avoid the need to realistically define and measure good and evil not merely by their intensity and scope, but also by their practical duration. Assuming permanence, an infinity of good results, allows the millennialist to accept, even to advocate, any and every practical amount of evil because, measured on the scale of a presumed infinity, any good, however trivial, must outweigh any evil, however vile, done to achieve it. Kill twenty million. Nay, kill two hundred million. Even these levels of atrocity cannot compete with even a tiny permanent improvement in the lot of mankind. That this is intellectually sloppy bothers the millennialist not at all.

Of course, nothing is permanent without being in a closed system. Millennialist philosophies are illegitimate for that reason alone.

The Year Zero problem, the problem that society and custom are as they are and will carry their effects over into the future, can, of course, be overcome . . . provided one is able to identify and willing to kill everyone whose values are conditioned by having, unfortunately, been born prior to the millennialist turning back of the clock to some presumed, and mythical, Golden Age. Unfortunately, even were it possible, this leaves alive only people with no values whatsoever.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,

Historia y Filosofia Moral,

Legionary Press, Balboa,

Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468