Preamble

This article seems to be an impossible task. I want to make the argument that nothing exists besides you, dear reader. The extreme in egocentricity.

But, you might interject, I am reading it, so there must be somebody there who wrote it. But have you ever had a vivid dream, in which you communicated with a person that – at that time in the dream – was very real to you?

Only after you woke up, and before you forgot all about that dream, did you realize that this person only existed in your imagination.

The dilemma is that, as you are reading this, you might be dreaming and the existence of I, yours truly, is just your imagination.

And the dilemma continues – for me!

I am writing these lines, and I am aware that I exist, but I do not know if there is ever anybody out there who will read my words. Sure, I know that you exist; I have met some of you in person, but this might also be just in my imagination.

To summarize our dilemma, here is I, the author of these lines, not knowing if there is an audience outside of my imagination, and then there is you, dear reader, who does not know if there is an author outside of your imagination, or if you just made up the author and the article.

Now, if this is the case, there is no point in writing this piece, as there is nobody to read it. I could say that it can work as a reminder, should I get lost in the appearances of this world, that there are others interacting with me.

But then what about you, reading this? The only way my argument would make sense is if you yourself wrote this – or had the idea about this subject, and you invented this very writer to write this article to remind yourself at some point how the universe really works.

Hmmm… yes, this might work, so let’s get started!

As I was contemplating life, the universe, and everything (again!), Schrödinger’s cat hit me. Not literally, but in the form of thoughts like “Will everything around me, and what I think is important, continue to exist when I am not a member of this realm any longer?”

My train of thought was jump-started by an article I read recently that claimed there now is scientific evidence that objective reality does not exist. I have entertained this line of thinking for a while, but coming to it from the area of spirituality or metaphysics – not physics.

Mr. L. Ron Hubbard introduced me to the concept of individual reality, which can vary greatly between different entities, and a type of ‘objective’ reality which would be a reality with which we are in agreement. Later I encountered A Course in Miracles, which can be interpreted as telling us that everything we perceive is an illusion – or at least could be.

That reminded me that in my very early emotionally involved discussions with my father, we often had come to the conclusion that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.

Extrapolating from there, I had realized early on that perceiving something with our senses is no proof of anything. Imagining a blue elephant does not make it more or less real than seeing one with my eyes open, because if I can imagine a blue elephant, I can also imagine seeing a blue elephant. Seeing, really seeing, things in lucid dreams, convinced me of that. As real as it felt being able to fly in my dream, that reality turned out to be an imagination after I woke up.

To understand my train of thought better, we have to look at quantum physics a little bit more – no, it is actually not that difficult to understand as it is made out to be. Currently, the consensus is that quantum physics applies only to very small particles, like electrons, protons, and atoms. Here it can be observed that those particles sometimes behave as particles and sometimes as waves. One further element of quantum physics is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which teaches us that for a given particle, both its location and speed cannot be precisely known. 

This, by the way, was the finding that broke classical physics in the early 1900s. Up to that point, scientists believed that a theoretically infinitely powerful mind (the Laplace Demon) would be able to know the location and motion of any and all particles in the universe and from that point know the future of a deterministic world. This, fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, was broken by the Heisenberg Principle, which does not allow the simultaneous knowledge of location and motion of a particle and which rendered the Laplace Demon impossible.

So, now we had an indeterministic world. Particles’ location and motion could only be described in terms of the probability wave function, which tells us the probability of location and motion of a particle. But, you might demur, we can and do measure particles; that is what CERN and all the other particle laboratories do at great costs.

And you are right!

When we observe a particle, the ‘wave function collapses’, meaning that location and motion which had been blurred, suddenly, by the act of observation, become fixed. Notice here that an observer is required for this collapse to occur. 

This is hard to swallow for a hardcore materialist, who would not accept that the act of observation would have any special quality. It would require something like consciousness, and that, according to pure materialists, is nothing that exists, as it is something they can not measure.

There is the accepted fact in macro-physics that measurement will have an effect on the thing that is measured. If you have, for example, a glass of water of some, yet to be determined, temperature and you dip in a thermometer which has its own but different temperature, the temperature of the water in the glass probably changes, if only by a very tiny amount, simply by exchanging some heat with the thermometer. If the water is warmer, some of its heat energy will be used to warm up the thermometer, thus cooling the water itself just a tiny bit. Vice versa, if the water is colder than the thermometer, some of the heat of the thermometer will warm up the water just a tad.

But this is fundamentally different than the concept that simply the act of observation by a conscious being will affect the measurement! We investigate more a question like “does the falling tree in the forest still make a sound if nobody is listening.”

For the materialist, there is no question – certainly, it makes a sound! But we can not leave it at that because the realm of quantum physics and its reach into the macro-cosmos is not something a materialist would be an expert in.

Let us now look at the problem by combining the ideas of the collapse of the wave function and the influence of a measurement on the result of that measurement. We start with the hypothesis that the collapse of the wave function is also occurring in the macro-cosmos. This would require that the wave function is not collapsed when nobody is looking, which would, therefore, require that there is no sound from falling trees in the unobserved forest.

But as soon as we have an observer, the wave function collapses, and we have the crashing of the falling tree. 

The obvious problem is what happens when there are two observers? This could invalidate the whole hypothesis, as the wave function could not be collapsed for one person and not for another. 

But what if there is no other? Humbug, you might exclaim, I see all those other observers, and they report or tell me what goes on in the forest!

Or don’t you?

Basic philosophy teaches us that there is no way to prove that the other people or observers are in fact there. The expression ‘in fact’ would require an absolute reality, existing independent and separate from me – the only observer that I am completely certain about based on René Descartes’ “cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am).

It is pure faith that anything exists, beyond the certainty of my own existence. There is no possible proof for the thinking and existence of another entity, simply because I perceive this other entity through my senses and they are – or at least could be – just created in my mind. Think of the very real person you saw in your last dream.

Just last night I had a very vivid dream that my car had been towed from the front of the building that belonged to the company I had my first job with. It seemed totally normal that the Jeep that I had for the last several years in the Los Angeles area had been parked in front of a building in Frankfurt, Germany, some forty years ago. It was also of no concern to me that my sister was with me, who now lives in the Northern part of Germany, and it was not at all strange that there were big trenches in the floor next to the elevator so that I had to use a door into the elevator from the other side of the elevator shaft. All that was completely reasonable and did not make me pause to notice how illogical all this was. Important was only my concern about how I would prove that this was my car and how to pay the fees of the impound yard.

I am aware of the awkward situation I am putting myself into by writing these lines – I am addressing another person that does not exist, or at least whose existence I could not prove. So, I might be talking to myself.

Good afternoon! Allow me to introduce myself – my name is Merlin – Merlin Silk – and I was born and raised in Germany, at that time called West Germany.

At the young age of fifteen or sixteen, I somehow got my hands on a colorful booklet with a big title “Perry Rhodan” across the top. These sixty-page novellas were considered ‘Schundliteratur’ (trash literature) and the publishing format was called ‘Groschenheft’ (dime booklet or pulp magazine) and my parents did not condone reading such trash.

I did it anyways, just kept it mostly to myself.

These Perry Rhodan booklets were serialized novels that put the reader in the far future of the 2400s. The Perries, as we—I had one other classmate who also read them–-usually referred to the booklets, had started in 1961 with a weekly publishing cycle and had reached booklet 300+ at the time of my first encounter. “When I met Perry, the publisher was also selling a second edition, that had by then reached 80s booklets, playing in the 2040s.”

Now imagine, you dive into a world of wonder and mystery—and you have no idea how it all started. Fortunately, my encounter with Perry had been well-timed, as around that time, the publisher had started to sell the booklets starting with number one all over again.

This is how I found out how Perry Rhodan, an American astronaut, in 1972 (eleven years in the future from the publishing of this story), was the first human to reach the moon. He, and his companions, found a stranded and damaged spaceship belonging to an alien race, unified mankind, and started us on the way to reach the stars.

One of the most fascinating facets of these stories were the mutants—good mutants, mind you, not those with three legs and four eyes. A mutant with the special talent of mind-reading was called a telepath, or a teleporter who had the power to move himself instantly from place to place with just his mind.

How it all started

The one that fascinated me most was Ernst Ellert. He was a teletemporarier. He could leave his body and travel in space and time.

That wasn’t too unrealistic, right? So I started to practice because, “Why shouldn’t I be able to do what Ernst could?”

So, every night, after going to bed, I relaxed my body, cleared my mind, and attempted to leave my body. I could feel it a bit below me, slowly increasing the distance, until I perceived my body lying beneath me. It was not a particularly stable location – one wrong thought and I snapped back into my body, with my center of perception right behind my eyes.

But I did not give up!

Practice makes perfect, they say – so I practiced and practiced, widening the distance from me, my center of perception, further and further away from my body. After initially just moving upward out of my body, I then proceeded laterally, out through the door, down the hallway, and into the kitchen.

But there was always that little nasty thought that caused me to snap back into my body, with the center of perception again right behind my physical eyes.

Really hard to overcome!

It became more manageable once I stopped beating myself up about it. I just let the snap happen, did not judge myself for it, and went right back to where I had been, or, at least, moved along the same path back to where the snap had happened.

The next milestone I reached was the ability to feel myself flying, with the full perception of flying in three-dimensional space, combined with the sensation of rolling, pitching, and jawing – including the occasional loop.

I liked those loops and tight turns.

Still, these moments of full perception of the “Me”—“Myself” or “I”? — doing these maneuvers remained short, often interrupted by a quick visit at the location right behind my physical eyes.

Fortunately, getting back to the point from where I had snapped back, became faster as well, so not much time was lost – and who cares about time if you can travel through it, as was still my goal.

Ernst Ellert could do it!

No, really — the fact that he was a character from a pulp magazine, invented by K.H. Scheer and Clark Darlton, made no difference. Fortunately, I was young enough so that things did not need to make sense.

If these lines you are reading here would be your run-of-the-mill story, then it would now continue with me telling you how I got older, went to college, got a job in science but still continued reading my ‘Perries’—generally just growing up—becoming a proper adult.

But this is not what happened!

Instead, I noticed that my out-of-body ventures did not really need time—I could make a trip to the moon, maybe swing around the sun for good measure, and be back in my body the moment I left.

Unfortunately, the experiences outside faded from consciousness rather quickly after I took my place behind my physical eyes again, just as if it had been a dream.

To the oblivious observer, it appeared as if I indeed did all the standard ‘growing-up’ – including going to college and getting my degree in physics. Most of the time, I myself, was such an oblivious observer.

Fortunately, once I went out onto an excursion, all the info on what happened on earlier trips and what the combo of me and my body had been up to since the previous adventure, was readily available. Once I was back from a trip the impressions of that trip faded quickly like a dream and my so-called regular life was not affected – except for some little things, but more about that later.

I liked it that way – the combination of me and my body needed the oblivion to function properly, but now that this combo is aging fast and is on its last leg, something has to change.

One idea was to write this story, that may or not be fiction.

Laying the Foundation

When I had started to zoom around with no regard for any physical laws, it was just pure fun, but I soon realized that this whole world was not based on a firm foundation – two German writers had invented a character that now allowed me to jilt physics.

Something had to be done about that.

To my dismay, interaction with the so-called real world was difficult when free of my body, to say the least. I could easily receive a stream of information, but causing an effect in the outer world seemed impossible. Even moving the smallest piece of matter was futile.

I got the idea that this way the world protected itself from the butterfly effect.

But wait, if I could roam free of physical restrictions, why should not somebody else – everybody in fact – be able to do the same?

So, like a creep, I started to hang out around K.H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting, trying to catch one or both just between falling asleep and drifting into dreamland. I pretended to be that Ernst Ellert that I needed them to create for me, to become my idol.

And then one afternoon, after he and Canon-Herbert had a long phone conversation about the upcoming Perry Rhodan story line, I caught him when he was just dozing off.

“Hey, it’s Ernst – Ernst Ellert!”

“I just thought about you and how I would create you. What are you doing in my dream?”

“No, no, this is real, not a dream. I just wanted to get in touch to make sure, you bring me into this world properly, with all the necessary abilities.”

“Ha, that’s funny, are you trying to create a time loop that will last forever – that’s actually an idea I could have had on my own – – in fact, I think I did. But, you know, Herbert wants you to die soon because these all-knowing characters will kill a story.”

“True,” I said, “just like nobody likes those deus ex machina endings of a story – they are just witnesses of the author’s inability to develop a logically consistent idea. This will be different, though. In a few decades, science will come up with theories of parallel universes that are continuously spawned whenever a decision is made. I can see ALL those possible futures, so anything just far enough ahead will be indistinguishable from not knowing the future at all.”

“Some might be more likely than others,” I continued, “but there is no danger of me, as an omniscient man, killing the story. And I like the idea of dying soon—but only physically. This would create more options for how I will still survive and have my adventures.”

“Good point! But, please, now I am going to sleep. I have a long evening of work before me, and I need my beauty-sleep.”

“Sure, go ahead. I just stopped by to make sure my existence is assured. Sweet dreams now!” I concluded.

He, very quickly, left the state between awake and dreaming and was off to Lala Land, where he hopefully came up with some good ideas for Ernst Ellert’s adventures.

My job here was done! I could be sure that Ernst Ellert would be there for me to learn from in six to seven years.

Mars Base

All my practice moving me—the essence of me—out of my body, made progress, but that progress was slow, too slow for me at least. After all, I was in my teens and had not yet had my class in patience.

I started to look for a shortcut, something that would enable me to be out of my body and pursue other challenges.

Mars had always had an unusual attraction for me. I roamed the surface one night after my body had gone to sleep and came upon a deep canyon that reminded me a bit of images I had seen of the Grand Canyon here on earth.

To be continued…

We had just arrived at our vacation destination. We, that was Gigi, a friend of hers, and I.

It was a nice enough place with a sandy beach and a pier above the beach. That pier had spaces for vendors and had the feel of a small mall. Where the promenade was a few feet above the beach, stone stairs every hundred feet or so led down to the sand.

Small waves lapped up onto the yellow sand – it was peaceful.

Gigi and her friend went off to check out the vendors, and I walked down to the farther end of the dam after parking the Jeep. I used my crutches, but today they did not bother me too much. I walked by quite a few of vendor stands, then climbed down some stairs to the sandy beach and seated myself on the lowest step.

While watching the sea and the people strolling along, another person joined me on the stairs, sitting a bit above me. He seemed nice enough and did not bother me.

I had been in charge of all our belongings and had a few bags with me. When I noticed a metal door just a bit to my right, I made sure all my stuff was safely in the bags and that they were safely closed. I opened the metal door, stepped through, closed it behind me, and found myself on a slippery deck of a big ship.

My foothold was not very secure, so I did not go to explore; I went back through the door and towards my stairs. To my horror, the guy who had been there with me was gone, and with him all my belongings.

Somehow also the steps were not there anymore, so I had to climb up to the about four feet high pier. Despite my crutches, I managed that much, but I still had no idea what to do now. Everything was in those bags: money, passports, clothing – everything for this vacation.

I started toward the mall entrance, hoping to find Gigi. And I did – and confessed that I had lost all our belongings. She and her friend were pretty pooped about this and left me standing there, uncertain what to do.

I decided to go back to the car, sit down in it, and think about what I could do next. I found the mall’s exit and went out, but it all looked different than the area where I had parked the car – no sign of the Jeep. I imagined that I must have gotten the wrong exit from the mall and headed back in to find the right exit.

But when I entered the mall again, that also looked unfamiliar – I had been unable to trace back where I had exited the mall, and I now really started to get worried and nervous. I left the mall again and crossed the street to a path lined with some benches. Next to one of those benches was a pad-mounted electric transformer shed. I leaned my crutches on it and slumped over it in rising despair – all my things lost, Gigi hates me, and no idea what to do!

But right there, a thought hit me – I remembered that I had had dreams in the past where I had been unable to trace back my own steps and got lost more and more, the harder I tried.

Was I just dreaming all this now – was I just in a bad dream, just like those other ones I now remembered?

I recalled that in the last of those dreams I had pounded my chest with a fist (just as in the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”) and that had woken me up.

I straightened up and pounded my chest with my left hand as hard as I could.

I did not wake up!

Again!

Nothing!

Full despair kicked in now – I cried, snot and tears streaming down my face – THIS WAS ALL REAL!

And then I woke up! Cozy under my blanket and relieved, nothing had been stolen.

I struck me – and still does – how real this all felt, even though, looking back, some of the things were nonsensical. There would not be a metal door on the beach that led to the deck of a ship, and stairs coming down from a promenade would not suddenly disappear.

And above all, how could I remember a former dream – in a dream??

But while I was in the middle of that other world, it all was very normal – – – just like the reality in which I now write this essay……..

I found the essay below in the “nice things” folder on my computer and decided that this is not a good place for this gem to live – from hence forward it shall live on this blog.

But before I introduce you to Budd’s essay, first my own little remark that it’s not only CUBs that have this effect. My Warrior and I had a similar relationship developed, and we certainly had some good adventures together. One memorable outing was an event that got logged in my logbook simply as “PAM to Catalina for lunch” on May 26, 1993, but what actually happened was asking permission to date this girl – and I guess I got it.

Without further ado, here is …

CUB THERAPY By Budd Davisson

Does it bother you when an airplane turns around, takes one look at you, and starts smirking? Or, as is often the case with J-3 Cubs, it breaks into an out-and-out laugh? Cubs laugh a lot, especially when they feel they are being herded around by a pilot who needs to lighten up on life a bit.
Cubs, the right ones anyway, have a way of ignoring B.S. They don’t believe in pretense. Or hours flown. Or stature in life, checkbooks, or corporate standing. They cut right through to the essence of flight, the same way they cut right through to the essence of the person. They seem to know that, once they are in the air, what seemed important on the ground really doesn’t mean anything.
It has always mystified me how, or why, Cubs have this whimsical way of gently poking an overly serious pilot right between the eyes and making him wake up to what’s really important in life, They are rag-and-tube psychiatrists with a sense of humor.
Part of the Cub’s ability to be a three-dimensional shrink may be that they look past the pilot to the person. They ignore the mechanical and go for the emotional and are most likely to do their best to cheer up a down-in-the-mouth pilot if he is one of their kind of people, a grass-roots type who fits the Cub and the Cub’s way of thinking. On the other hand, Cubs can, if in the right mood and they sense the pilot is a rag-leg, Spamcan driver who thinks flying a Cub is slumming, do their best to make a fool out of him.
Cubs, like a sensitive lover, know by touch when the match between aviator and flying machine is right. They know when the pilot is truly in his element because they sense when the act of flight is a form of making love.
On this flight, however, this particular Cub wasn’t up to practicing either philosophy or psychiatry. In fact, as soon as the little Continental started clattering, the airplane turned around, took one good look at me, and said to itself, “Is this guy for real?” I thought I was, but the Cub knew better and was practically going into hysterics.
For reasons known only to the two of us, when I walked out on the ramp that day, I bypassed my beloved Pitts Special and climbed on board this little clipped-wing clown. The Pitts and I have a torrid love affair dating back two decades. But my mood was not into torrid. Actually, I was in a weird mood: seriously introspective with a touch of Groucho. But the Cub wasn’t going to let me get away with anything serious. It was going to do its best to rehabilitate me.
The Cub started working its magic almost as soon as the throttle hit the stop and the slipstream through the open door began messing with my hair. Yeah, I know this sounds corny, but I actually felt something inside of me begin letting go. It was as if something had been squeezing increasingly harder for a long time, and I didn’t even know it was there until it was gone. As soon as those 800x4s left the ground, whatever it was that wasn’t supposed to be there suddenly turned me loose, and part of me absolutely lit up and wanted to yell out the open door, “All right, all right – all right!” I felt good and was loving it!
With 90 horses in the nose, the little clipped Cub pointed its nose up and kept going, lifting my spirits with every foot it put between me and the Earth. It knew where to go to set me free. Cubs always seem to know.
Answers come to different people in different places, but they almost always come to me somewhere in the first 50 feet of certain flights. The flight in the clipped Cub was one of those. I had been sitting on an emotional fence, so grave and profound I had begun to think my problems were real. I was so, so serious.
Then along came the Cub.
Obviously, Cubs don’t take life seriously. In fact, they don’t take anything seriously, with one big exception: They are very serious about a pilot’s willingness and ability to understand what the airplane is telling him, and they expect the pilot to make decisions and define the path, rather than blithely riding from crisis to crisis. A Cub isn’t going to be a crutch for a weak pilot any more than life is going to offer the weak individual a ready fix or a quick way out.
The Cub, just like much of life, isn’t going to wait around. It responds to a firm but gentle hand, and the finesse it shows in flight is a direct reflection of the finesse and control shown by the pilot. If the pilot knows exactly where he wants to go and clearly understands the role his hands and feet play in these decisions, then the Cub will respond and become his partner, not his crutch. Otherwise, it will meander around, slipping and sliding and generally performing a poor imitation of flight. Life reacts to a weak hand the same way. But I had forgotten that. It was a momentary brain glitch, but one the Cub clearly saw, so it forcibly whacked me up alongside the head until I remembered how life actually worked.
Don’t you hate it when the machine you are operating is smarter than you are?
As it happens, the front seat was occupied by one of my closest friends. Barbara with the ready laugh and understanding soul, and she happened to turn around and saw this goofy grin on my face. She took one look, shook her head, and silently mouthed something about “I never will understand boys.”
That’s okay, we don’t understand us either. But Cubs do. And, at that particular moment, that’s all that mattered.

“You don’t love me anymore!” is a very weird accusation to make.

I have been contemplating this whole subject of love since one memorable evening of an intense Constellation session. These constellations are a very new-age way of trying to understand the world. They are sessions with several people, all tuning into the epigenetic field that connects us all. Each of the participants picks a character from the situation being investigated, slips into this persona, and lives and acts through a scene, in order to understand the situation better.

In this particular session, I assumed the role of my father and found out that he did not have this fuzzy feeling of love towards his children – one of them would be me – but that he just did his duty. 

I don’t remember the details of that session and its outcome but I remember telling my sister about it and she was very concerned that I might be hurt by the fact that our dad did not really love us but just did his duty.

But I was completely OK with that.

For quite a while I had realized that love is not that fuzzy feeling you have towards another person that prompts you to finally whisper “I love you” and which crushes you if you don’t get a “I love you too” back. In my world, love is an action that I volunteer for; it is a decision I make – to care for someone without any expectation of reciprocity.

This fuzzy feeling you hope will be returned in kind is mostly just infatuation, at best ‘liking.’

In the game of “I like you if you like me,” you are not in control because liking will wither when not returned. Loving, on the other hand, puts you completely in control, nothing another person can change.

Stopping to love a person would be wholly your own decision, but if it really was love, I don’t think such a reversal is even possible.

I just recently found out that the bible agrees with me:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13)

I particularly like the “it does not boast.” It reminds me of an early lesson I learned from my parents who pointed out how often my grandmother stressed all the good deeds she did. It was explained that it was not a good thing to do. This still sits strong with me and I really don’t like to remind my fellow humans of the good things I did, among all the alleged crimes I undoubtedly committed. This must be a common sentiment as, in court, it is much better to have a lawyer defend you instead of doing it yourself.

A to be unnamed philosopher once defined Greatness in Man in a similar fashion:

The hardest task one can have is to continue to love his fellows despite all reasons he should not.

The first time I read this definition it created such an emotional turmoil that my water broke; and I have to admit that this turmoil is not quite handled even now, more than four decades later.

Now that we have a better understanding of Love, what is that fuzzy feeling that prompts you to whisper “I love you?”

My current understanding is that it is an expression that you want to be near a person, share things with him or her, that you want the distance between you to be small. As liking is measured in one over feet (the more you like something the smaller you want the distance to be) this fuzzy feeling must be Liking or its short-lived cousin infatuation.

Other than love, liking does make demands; it wants reciprocity.

In my world telling somebody “I love you” is just a statement of fact and the best reply would be “Thank you!” or, as Han Solo said to Princess Lea after she informed him of that fact, “I know!”

In our culture telling somebody “I love you” has become customary but it is, in my opinion, based on a misunderstanding of what love really is. What the speaker really means is “I like you more than others.”

Have you ever been viciously attacked out of the blue by a friend or loved one, and just stood there completely bewildered “What did I do??”

You feel completely innocent!

But let me tell you – you did something, so you are not THAT innocent. Sure, it is not necessarily something you actively did, but you missed to do something.

Let me explain.

I start with the premise that we all never intentionally do something wrong but this does not always work out and sometimes we do things that are not considered to be ethical or right. Maybe we based our decision on false data, or we simply misunderstood a situation and acted incorrectly.

Another premise that I base my arguments on is that we don’t like to be wrong. From this follows that we try to hide any wrongdoing. And the best way to do this is to simply forget that misdeed ourselves. Unfortunately forgetting is not that easy, and there remains an access point to that secret, still very well hidden but not well enough to be triggered by something that resonates with it.

That trigger could be a sound, an expression, the tone of a voice, or even a mannerism. Do you remember a person whose voice inexplicably drives you crazy? – Like That!

Now imagine you triggered such a misdeed in a loved one by using the word ‘rambunctious’ while standing just the right way in the sunlight and looking at him over your left shoulder with slightly squinted eyes. There were just enough similarities in that scene to the circumstances of his or her big unethical behavior.

There is a moment of tension but then you move away out of the sunlight and make a remark about something completely unrelated, so the threat of being exposed disappears for your loved one. But what stays is the question or uncertainty “Does he know??”

You just created yourself a big problem by missing to find out his or her big secret that NEEDS to be kept under wraps at all cost. You now have an enemy because you need to be put down at every opportunity just to minimize your credibility and worth – just in case you know the secret.

There you have it – how to get yourself some enemies without knowing what you did.

I start with the provocative thesis that the act of forgiving is egotistical.

A bit of background is in order. 

Let us first establish the meaning of the words in the title of this essay:

The Forgiver is the one who has something to forgive, and
the Forgivee is the one to whom forgiveness is granted because he is alleged to have done something to Forgiver that should warrant forgiving.

There are two levels to this business of forgiveness. The first is ‘granting pardon‘ to somebody who has done wrong. This “granting of pardon” should only be done if asked for and we are not obligated to forgive if there is no remorse that he as the perpetrator has done wrong. Dwayne, a wrangler turned YouTube celebrity-philosopher argues that point very succinctly.

The second element of forgiving concerns only the Forgiver, the Forgivee does not even have a role. This might be recognized in Jesus’ famous last words “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” At first glance, this seems to contradict the idea, that forgiveness should be only granted if asked for, and those Romans who nailed Jesus to the cross certainly did not ask for forgiveness. 

In my interpretation, how the Forgiver sees himself is essential. Does he see himself as a victim or is he above and beyond being harmed? Jesus was not a victim, God is not a victim, so there is nothing even there to forgive. 

Only if somebody does FEEL like a victim, even for something as mundane as being short-changed at the store, or somebody not waiting their turn in line at Starbucks, could make him BE a victim and demand an apology.

It is always our choice what we are and what effect we allow others to have on us. Looking for an apology is a sure sign that we allowed the perpetrator to turn us into a victim. I must strongly state that I don’t like to be a victim and I do not allow others to turn me into one. I do not disagree with Dwayne that forgiveness should only be granted if asked for, but for your own sake, demand an apology only to help the Forgivee become a more valuable member of society, and not because you “deserve” that  “I’m sorry”.

My conclusion is to recognize that, if I feel that I have to forgive somebody for something, I already went off the rails.

Forgiving in itself, or the realization that no forgiving is due is thus very egotistical, as it makes me more free – and that, in turn, makes it so much easier to “Love Thy Neigbor as Thyself”.