We Get The World We Deserve - Part 1

We Get The World We Deserve!

A Posthumous Autobiography

By Bill Ferguson

I – ‘Pandora’s Box’ and the sprite ‘Hope’

My strong suspicion is that we get the world we deserve!

I know I can’t be alone in my thinking. For example, I can think back thousands of years to the origins of people’s thinking and read about myths and legends such as ‘Pandora’s Box’ as a fantastic case in point. According to this wonderful myth (there are multiple versions), at the beginnings of humanity everyone was happy. There was no sadness, no anger, no anxiety or fears; just joyful prancing and dancing and singing – all day every day! One day Hermes, the trickster God, was travelling past Pandora’s home carrying a very heavy box. He was sweating and panting and looking quite distressed. Pandora offered Hermes water and food to help him recover and to aid him on his long journey. She also offered to look after the box for him because it looked heavy and cumbersome and he still had far to go. Hermes agreed on one condition – that Pandora was not to open the box under any circumstance. She happily agreed and Hermes went on his way.

Almost as soon as Hermes left, Pandora started hearing noises coming from the box. She asked her husband about it and he told her to stop worrying about it and to come outside to sing, dance and be merry. But Pandora didn’t and stayed near the box listening to the quiet noises. She concluded that they were voices and she became quite distressed at the possibility that creatures were trapped inside the box. Crucially, Pandora stopped being merry and joyful. She wouldn’t go outside; she wouldn’t eat, and wouldn’t sleep. She became completely fixated on the box.

After a few days of this the local community staged an intervention in an attempt to free Pandora from this obvious addiction. I digress, but could this have been the first addiction that humanity suffered from? Regardless, the intervention didn’t work, and Pandora decided that the voices in the box were asking to be rescued; not only that but they claimed they had been unfairly imprisoned and desired to be freed from their jail.

In the end Pandora couldn’t handle the stress anymore and opened the box. Ultimately she had been correct because there were imprisoned creatures, but she was wrong to think that these sprites were nice and deserving of their freedom. You see these creatures had names – and their names were pain, fear, anger, desire, anxiety, envy, sadness, etcetera; all these winged beasts were charged with destroying people’s merriness and joy. The people closest to Pandora were struck first and they either started arguing with each other or began weeping. Upon seeing this Pandora slammed the box shut, but she heard another voice in the box asking to be freed with the others; and that’s when Pandora made her only good decision in days – she reopened the box, and out came hope.

Pandora released 100 sprites into the world that day with only one charged with good; and my HOPE is that the people reading this book are that one in a hundred that the world needs to save us from ourselves. Are you humanities 1/100 HOPE?

But before we get to that you need to know more about me. Prepare yourself though because it aint pretty!

II – Middle Fingers and Black Puddings

Well I finally went and did it… out of spite? A solid middle finger ‘Fuck You’ to the world. I told you so; I told you I was going to do it. Some of you might suppose that it was just my time? That last statement might seem strange seeing as I drove off a perfectly good hill… on purpose! I can still picture the shocked faces of the picnic goers at the BBQ area near the Hassan’s Wall lookout, plus the terrified face of one particular young boy. They can go fuck themselves though because they know nothing about me. And come to think of it, neither do you. I do feel bad about that young boy though… I can’t get his face out of my mind. I do however, need to backtrack just a smidge.

And yes, I will include the part about how I am writing an autobiography when I am dead. And not just a little dead either. That was a seriously high hill and I somehow managed to miss all of the trees on the edge of said hill. I plummeted 1130 metres to the ground below. My Nissan X-Trail deployed its half a dozen airbags on impact but of course they were going to do fuck all for my health and wellbeing. The Nissan essentially turned into a pancake and then exploded for good measure. I’m pretty sure I ended up looking like one of those ghastly things on Scottish breakfast buffets – what are they called again? Ah yes, Black Pudding. Fuck that shit is disgusting. I tried it once – and only once. Well that’s what I imagine I came out looking like after my ‘Middle Finger Fuck You World’ suicide.

But I digress! Where to start? Let’s start with the word ‘life’! Is it possible to have a one word oxymoron? I think so because the simple fact is that as soon as we become life we start to die. So in a sense as we are living, we are also dying. And how do a lot of you actually live during your dying? Do you work hard or play hard? Do you lay in bed at night and smile? Or do you live in regret for things you would have rather seen and done? Do you take life seriously or do you try and stay free-spirited? Who is happier – the person swinging their tanned willy as they peacock (haha… I just noticed the pun!) along a nudist beach? Or the CEO of some high-end investment company working 115 hours a week?

I don’t have the answers for you in case you were hoping I did. I wasn’t that philosophically clever when I was alive and I haven’t suddenly become some Aristotle type black pudding upon my death (from life) either.

So how did I get to this point where I am writing this? And what is the point of writing this? I did caveat this autobiography with ‘we get the world we deserve’ and I doubt I have failed to live (dead) up to my end of the bargain so far. But I must also say that a lot has happened since I became a charred pancake at the bottom of Hassan’s Wall. Experiences that may seem hard to believe no doubt; and that is why I am writing this for you all. If you can grin and bear my crude attempts at humour and my negative view of humanity in general you may just find some diamonds in the rough.

I don’t have a low opinion of all of humanity; just 99% of it. But I also believe that the remaining 1% can save you from yourselves. I also believe that the 1% will be the people that read this autobiography; and perhaps feel compelled to stand up and actively inspire change. It’s what I was saying earlier – you are humanities 1/100 HOPE. The planet won’t cop another 100 years of poor treatment by us humans. It will shit itself… mark my words. In this place I am in… whatever ‘this’ is… I can see all. I can see the past of everyone and everything that has ever come before on our planet Earth. More importantly, however, I can see the future/s. And that wasn’t a typo either because there are multiple futures that humans are gearing themselves up for. Moreover, I don’t know which one will play out. It’s a flip of the coin job, but it’s a coin with 100 sides. And it’s heavily stacked in favour of the house because 99% of you fuckers will have the coin flipping onto a BAD side. There is only one side that has an outcome satisfactory to planet Earth and to the people inhabiting it. That’s right, you heard me correctly, 99 sides of this magic coin are unimaginable horrors and, therefore, catastrophic for the human race as we know it. Take all the disaster movies and novels and combine them into one giant disaster and you still won’t come close. Only a one in one hundred coin toss saves the entire human race; that’s it!!!

Some of the more optimistic of you that are reading this are bound to ask if it’s possible to increase the odds. At this point in time I am unsure but I have seen enough to suggest it is. With any luck I may be able to answer that question with more clarity by the end of this autobiography. This afterlife that I have found myself in doesn’t play by the standard rules of time and space. As you have already been told, I can see into the past as well as the future. Where there was only one past, there are 100 possible futures. What’s interesting is that each of these futures don’t run at the same speed for me as they do for you. They all don’t stay highlighted in front of me either. As significant decisions are made in your world some of the 100 fade to grey and some shine brighter. None of them disappear completely and invariably they will change around slightly, each of the 99 bad options getting their time in the sun. When they shine bright I get to see everything that happens in that alternate future. I see how you will destroy yourselves and planet Earth in every single gory detail. I hear the fighting and the screams; I see the violence and the blood; I smell the death and decay; I feel the anger, hatred, and despair. All my senses get the full load! Those 99 evil sprites that Pandora released into the world are at play here.

I have been in this afterlife – sometimes I call it purgatory, sometimes Tartarus, sometimes just home – for twenty Earth years. But my time is very different to yours. Every time I am compelled to look into the past, or to the future for that matter, that becomes time added on. So let’s say for arguments sake that I spent one year looking into the past and observing all of humanities mistakes, then that is one year added on to the 20 Earth years. So when I combine all of those trips into the past and future I have actually been in this (space?) for almost 960 Earth years.

And in that almost 960 years I have only ever seen the one in one hundred HOPE coin toss option shine bright once. And that was just the other Earth day… and that is the reason that I am writing this book. But more on that later. After all, I’ve got to keep dangling the carrot to ensure you read my entire autobiography.

As I stated earlier some of the more optimistic of you are now grabbing onto that one good option and are hoping that the odds can be improved. Or some of you positive humans have decided that this book is a work of fiction rather than an autobiographical non-fiction piece. Regardless, my brief glimpse into the one good coin toss has shown me this. If you work hard for each other, rather than against, then that one percent of you with any hope and sense will multiply. What I am determined to do with this book is inspire that incredibly small percentage of you to grow and expand. My hope is to increase the odds; I want that 1% to grow to 2%, then 5%, and so on. I want you to drive those 99 wicked little fuck-turd sprites back into Pandora’s Box where they belong. Then I want Hermes to come back from whence he came and pick that damn box up and fuck off back to Mount Olympus with it. Lock the damn thing in a dungeon and forget the box ever existed. I have determined in my 960 years of purgatory that life is too precious to waste. I am dead proof (Ha!!) of that!

III – Heaven, Hell and Indeterminatism

I think it’s probably time to head back to my suicide. After all it is gorily fascinating! Plus I’m sure a lot of you are wondering what happens at that last moment of life. Well for starters I was conscious for the entire trip down. My young, and definitely reluctant, passenger was flung off the car fairly quickly and so it was just me, the X-Trail and the Blue Mountains. As I plummeted I didn’t get any childhood flashbacks or anything like that. I just clung to my steering wheel watching the ground rapidly approach. I wasn’t scared or regretting my actions. Sure I felt bad for the young boy and I hoped that he flipped off my car back onto the lookout, but I knew in my heart that I had committed manslaughter. Oh well, justice would be swift!!

At the point of impact everything went instantly black. No white light; no fade to black; no white tunnel. I didn’t feel the airbags deploy; I didn’t feel myself pancake, and I didn’t feel myself burn. Just instant black… black pudding haha!!

I imagine there was some sort of delay before I opened my eyes, but I’m not entirely sure. As I was rousing I figured I was still in my Nissan at the bottom of Hassan’s Wall. I was just starting to chastise myself for fucking something else up in my life. Surely plummeting 1130 metres in order to die was unfuckable??

But then I started hearing noises – human noises. I concentrated on these noises and when I opened my eyes fully I saw that I wasn’t in my car, rather in a moderate sized shopping centre. It appeared to be all on one level and as I looked around I could see people walking along the corridors intently checking out the different shops. The more I took in my surroundings the more I noticed individuals looking at the signs above these shops. Following their eyes I was struck dumb when I saw the closest sign. You see, the words didn’t say ‘K Mart’, ‘JB Hi Fi’, or ‘Target’. This sign read ‘Christianity’. If any of my fellow shoppers had looked my way I’m sure they would have seen a man with his jaw dropping onto the nice arcade carpet. WTF??

Now I appreciate that I’m not that worldly (well I am now but I certainly wasn’t then) but I’m 100% certain I’d never seen a Christian store before; well one that was outside of churches anyway. I recalled a few religious outlets inside churches in Santa Fe, New Mexico when I had holidayed there a few years earlier. But this appeared to be a standard looking shopping mall.

I decided to investigate further so I stood up and wandered over to the Christianity shop. At first glance it appeared to look like any other store apart from the fact that it didn’t seem to be selling anything. There were no shelves, no stock – nothing! It did have a long desk across the middle with three ladies serving three lines of people. Each of the shoppers at the check-out were having, what appeared to be, a discussion. One of these people caught my eye because he elicited an audible sigh, his shoulders hunched and started walking behind the counter. As he progressed to the rear of the shop I (and everyone else for that matter) noticed two doors for the first time. One was red and one was blue and by this stage the suspiring man had reached the red door. My entire body jerked in horror when I saw that the red door had a label and the label read ‘Hell’. The man sighed no more because when he stepped through the door he plunged quickly out of sight. His last noise was like a little surprised yelp a small dog might make when you tread on their tail. The door closed on its own and the shoppers, who had been watching the whole event, went back to looking at their feet.

You don’t have to be a genius to work out that the blue door was labelled ‘Heaven’ and over the next ten minutes or so I saw over a dozen people go through that door, during which only about five went back through the Hell door. The Heaven shoppers floated of course. What was also interesting was that a further ten people were given tickets and walked around the corner avoiding both doors. Following their progress I saw them enter a waiting area with seats and a number board that kept ticking over. When a person had their number called they stood up and walked through a third door with ‘By Appointment Only’ on it. The number on the board read 625 and I let out a surprised laugh when I pictured what would happen to the poor soul who had number 666.

As I was looking away I was attracted to some movement from the waiting area. A man that looked in his 30’s was sneaking towards the Heaven door. I looked around and it didn’t appear as if anyone had noticed other than myself. He managed to reach the blue door and as he opened it he launched himself through. Having already seen quite a few people float through that door I was expecting the same but instead, two things happened. The first was a siren sounded, and the second was the blue door changing to red, with the red door changing to blue. As you can probably work out for yourselves, the man didn’t float and instead plummeted. If I wasn’t already convinced that I was in the wrong store, this final act of visual and morbid fascination sealed it for me. I looked away and wandered down the mall.

Next to the Christianity outlet was the ‘Atheist’ shop. This made me smile even more when I pictured just how unhappy the Christians would feel knowing they were sharing a wall with Atheists. I walked further and saw ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’, ‘Daoism’, ‘Indigenous’, ‘Greek/Roman Gods’, and ‘Norse’. I saw ‘Jewish’, ‘Egyptian Gods’, ‘Shinto’, ‘Sikh’, and even saw one called ‘Justice’. I liked the sound of that one! When I observed the structure of the single story mall a little more holistically I deduced that there were about fifty stores down either side with some seating in the middle of the corridor dividing the two sides. The arcade was busy but not in an overwhelming way. You could walk around easily enough without bumping into anyone. Most of my fellow shoppers appeared to have a purpose, actively looking at the signs and then striding confidently towards their religion/philosophy of choice.

Now I had never been a religious fellow when I was alive. Most religions and philosophies had some very interesting things to say but invariably I found them flawed in some manner or other. So as I wandered the arcade I didn’t feel drawn to any particular sign. The strongest tug I had felt was for the Justice and the Atheist shops but the way the other people were striding purposefully to their shop of choice I figured I hadn’t found what I was looking for. The next store had ‘Agnostic’ on the sign above it, and I got a stronger tug which drew me to that side of the mall. But when I looked next door and saw the ‘Indeterminate’ shop I knew I had reached my destination. It described me perfectly; I had always been a bits and pieces kind of guy when it came to religious/philosophical beliefs. Several of my Aunts/Uncles and acquaintances had informed me that it meant I worshipped the Devil. I smiled again when I realised just how wrong they had turned out to be. All this smiling started to hurt my face and it occurred to me that this was possibly the most I had smiled in years. This thought pulled me up quick smart and I went from being quite a happy chappie to a brooding depressed man in seconds. I sunk to my knees on the plush arcade carpet and physically sobbed. I cried for the poor boy I killed; I wept for my fucked up life and I bawled over why everything had to have been so hard. If life had been even slightly better I probably would have trudged on; persevered with my pathetic existence until something good finally happened. Because that was the crux of it. I had always believed that life would turn around for me. The worm would turn; it had to didn’t it? Otherwise what was the point to/of life? As far as I was concerned my life had been Hell. If Hell actually did exist in the Afterlife (which apparently it did after what I just observed – well for some people anyway!) then how could it be any worse that what life had given me? Up until the day I topped myself there had always been a small part of me that believed it would get better. I had always believed this because I had decided early on in my life that if you were a good person then good things would happen in return. I felt this not because of some karmic intervention; not because of some Christian doctrine that suggested if I treated others well then I would be rewarded by being treated well in return (one would argue that Confucius/Kong Fu Zi had coined that Golden Rule centuries before Christianity decided to steal it because they felt it suited their purpose – fucking mainstream religions)! The only reason I did it was because the statement ‘felt right’. Something about it resonated with me, and no matter how far removed the world was from that statement I still held onto it as my statement of fact. I still do, which is one of the reasons for writing this book.

Anyway, as I crouched there on the plush matting (nobody paying me any mind) it suddenly occurred to me that most of the people that knew me would be surprised that I drove off a perfectly good hill. I might have been an angry man but I never came across as a mad suicidal man. Only the few psychiatrists and some old friends that I had entrusted would know the truth; that I was one seriously fucked up individual! And life had made me that way; moulded me over 45 years into the perfect antipathy of self. And whilst I knew that my few acquaintances (I didn’t have any friends – I was too much of a prick) and family would be surprised they would also struggle to find anything nice to say at my funeral. Maybe they wouldn’t even bother with a service. Just cremate me and be done with it!

You might find it hard to fathom that I didn’t have at least a few friends, but as I said earlier, anyone that spent significant time with me knew I was busted; a festering sore on planet Earth. A cancer that needed to be eradicated before it multiplied. That was why I had no friends. Anyone that saw the real me ran screaming into the distance hoping that I hadn’t terminally infected them with my cancerous poison. So yeah, I would definitely be cremated and disposed of with the least amount of effort possible.

Gradually the sadness subsided and I composed myself. I stood and walked to the Indeterminate store. Unlike the Christianity shop which had about 100-150 people in the lines and waiting area, this shop only had about 20 people. This was still more than the ‘Scientology’ outlet which only had one person in it – I couldn’t quite believe that Tom Cruise had died. Of the twenty or so individuals, some were lined up and some were lurking at the fringes of the shop entrance. They appeared to be unsure if they were in the right shop or not – they were definitely at the right shop I thought and smiled again. I lined up behind five others – there was only one check-out chick.

As I waited patiently for my turn I looked around. The first thing I noticed was that there was only one door as opposed to the two doors present in the Christianity shop. Instead of Heaven and Hell labels, this door had a picture as well as a sign. The image was of a blindfolded woman. She was holding a set of scales in one hand and the other hand was dragging what appeared to be a ships rudder. The sign on the door asked the reader ‘What is your Fortune?’ – Very interesting!

Similar to the Christianity shop there was a waiting area but only about ten people were seated; there was also a second door off to the right hand side. Before I could contemplate this further I reached the front of the line.

“Are you deserving?” asked the lady, perhaps unsurprisingly.

I pondered the question and replied. “Yes and No!”

The check-out chick looked me over. Her eyes were piercing. She gave me a number and pointed to the waiting area telling me to take a seat and wait for my number to be called.

I found a seat that allowed me to view the ‘fortune door’ as I had coined it. The lady that had been immediately behind me in the queue was directed to that door. Upon reaching it she went to turn the handle but appeared to receive a small electrical shock from the doorknob. She retracted her hand quickly and stared at her hand and then back at the door. Her mouth opened wide in shock and my eyes bulged as I saw the statue on the door begin to move. The blindfolded figurine appeared to be weighing up something, and as the penny dropped (in my mind), it became crystal clear that the effigy was weighing up the ladies fate. The right side of the scales dropped and the door opened. The lady stepped through, neither plummeted nor floated, and the door closed behind her without me being able to discern what her fate ended up being.

As I pondered this outcome it became clear to me that in this store, it was not for others to see what our fate was. It was Indeterminate upon our arrival and remained Indeterminate to everyone in the shop, apart from the person whose fate was ultimately determined.

“As it should be” I mumbled to nobody in particular. At this point my number was called and I rose from me seat and walked over to the door without the effigy. I opened the door and stepped inside.

IV – The ‘Best of Men’

The room had a simple layout. It was painted white and had a white desk with two white chairs. It also had a door at the far end of the room. I was directed to the seat on the left and I sat and waited for whatever was to come.

I didn’t have to wait long before the door at the back of the room opened and out stepped the ‘Best of Men’. I had known him as Grandpa when he had been alive and here he was standing as lifelike as any person that had ever stood before me, even though he had died twenty years ago.

“Grandpa” I yelled as I jumped up out of my seat and ran to him giving him a huge hug. After about ten seconds he gently pulled back and gave me a hand shake and rested his other hand on my shoulder. Typical Grandpa! He never was much of a hugger. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face and Grandpa was also smiling but not with his eyes. His eyes were sad – very sad. This pulled me up short and I asked if everything was okay? “Look Bill, there’s no denying that it’s great to see you but in reality this conversation should not be taking place.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Grandpa stares at me with those sad eyes and waits for it to tick over for me. “What? Because I am dead?”

Grandpa waits. He was always so good at this when he was alive. He liked to see if you could figure out complicated (or even simple) puzzles without him just giving you the answer. It clicked for me. “It’s not just that I am dead but that it was self-inflicted isn’t that right Grandpa” although I knew I had worked it out so it was essentially a rhetorical question.

“Well done Bill” he said. “But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. At least we have you on the right track though. Please take a seat” and Grandpa sat at the spare seat to the right of the table. “Before we get to the main reason for my sadness I need to explain a few things. No doubt you are keen to find out what this place is, why you are here, and even why I am here for that matter. This will all be discussed in due course. What I need from you first Bill is something everyone that travels through here needs to do. I need you to give me a rundown of your 45 years on Earth please. In so doing you can be reminded of your time on Earth and this often helps to clarify a few things for you; in particular why you’re here and why you did what you did to yourself.”

“I can do that Grandpa”. And so I did!

If you like it so far please let me know and i can send you more. My email address is dahartmann8@gmail.com

Love and light to you all

David Hartmann