The Douchebag Bible (19 page)

Your girlfriend meanwhile, seeks out her friends to assure

her that she is not a skank, but that she acted out because you

neglected her. Her friends will support this idea and there are

plenty of TV shows, movies, books and role-model super-

reinforcers to back up her narrative as well.

Unfortunately because your narrative casts her as a slut

who can’t say no to any offer of cock and her narrative casts you

as a cold and distant shell of a man who is incapable of love, you

will not reinforce each other’s narratives. It is this, more than the

pain of any indiscretion, that will drive you apart.

This is why honor is such an effective control mechanism.

It promises to turn all perception against you if you behave

disobediently. It says to you—if you deviate from our idea of good,

then you will be devoid of reinforcers.

Honor uses reverence as a currency—those who adhere to

the given code are given ample amounts of reverence. Those who

do not adhere are given none of the currency of reverence. They

are, in fact, denigrated and despised by the people. This

sometimes culminates in a sickening ritual, practiced mostly by

Muslims, called honor killings.

Honor killings are when a female 7 is murdered by her

family for dishonoring the code of their religion8. According to a

leading website on honor killings9 “Over 5,000 women and girls

are killed every year by family members in so-called 'honor

killings', according to the UN. These crimes occur where cultures

believe that a woman's unsanctioned sexual behavior brings such

shame on the family that any female accused or suspected must

be murdered. Reasons for these murders can be as trivial as

talking to a man, or as innocent as suffering rape”10

What man, other than a violent sociopathic, would murder

his own daughter because she was raped? A religious one.

Religions have codes, and if one doesn’t adhere to those

codes, one will seem dishonorable. And apparently, for 5,000

families each year, the loss of daughter seems a small price to pay

to avoid the loss of honor.

So, when a politician or a commentator gets on the

airwaves and starts weeping and wailing that honor is a dead

7 There are a decent number of instanced of males being killed in honor killings, but

it’s not nearly so widespread.

8 I say religion, rather than society or culture (which is what the political correctness

police would have me say), because honor killings seem to transcend culture.

Even here in the US, honor killings seem to have started taking place.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080709/cm_huffpost/111549

9 http://www.stophonourkillings.com/

10 Spellings have been Americanized.

concept here in America, my response is, “good.” When the

reverence of others is more important to people than their own

loved ones, something sick is happening.

Honor has the right to exist only as a guideline, pinning

you to your own ethical standards. When you replace your own

will and desire with another man’s will or desire solely to

maintain honor in the eyes of others, you have become a puppet.

You’ve allowed your own dissent to be weaponized against you

and you have undermined your individuality.

Where’s the honor in that?

Instant Gratification

This section is dedicated to Scotty and Evelyn, respectively the

smartest and cutest accidents I know.

It’s my belief that people are basically selfish to the point of self-

defeat, that in their attempts to secure their personal happiness

they destroy everything that could ever bring them happiness.

We’re always willing to make the worst bargain in the

world: a little bit of here-and-now-joy for a heaping helping of

down-and-out-misery down the road. As a species we pollute our

planet because cars and factories are spiffy conveniences; we

don’t give a tall glass of fuck that our children might grow up in a

world made of shit and smoke.

As individuals we have unprotected sex, resulting in

diseases to wipe us out and in kids we can’t afford (because we

spend all our money on worthless impulse buys that consistently

fail to live up to their promises of making our lives complete). We

do this for nothing more than a single moment of bliss—an

orgasm lasting no longer than a few seconds. From that pursuit

of tiny happiness comes massive misery!

We drink now, saying “fuck you!” to our future livers. We

smoke now, saying “eat shit!” to our future lungs.

This is not an original observation by any stretch of even

the imagination. Pundits and other assorted fuckwits have

yammered on about our culture of “instant gratification” for as

long as I can remember. So why am I bothering to harp on this

old and established bit of cynicism?

Because I aim to defend it.

Intellectuals may oft lament the limited long-term

planning abilities of their fellow human beings, but rarely have I

heard folks extol the many virtues of our widespread inability to

prioritize on a large timescale. Not once have I heard a man or

woman give thanks to our tendency to make the devil’s deal of

short term pleasure at the cost of long-term contentment. The

benefits of our instant gratification tendency, hereafter referred

to as IGT, are largely unsung.

The first and most obvious thing that IGT provides for us

are children. In 2001, 49% of all pregnancies in America were

unintended11. As a man who hates babies and usually cares even

less for the adults that they grow into, I must still begrudgingly

admit that it’s a good thing that they exist. The continuation of