I think having neighbors provides an excellent insight into how groups of people eventually hate each other enough to go to war. Proximity breeds hostility, and separation causes quietude in pretty much equal measure. At least as far as neighbors go.
If, for example my across the street neighbor were instead across town, then I wouldn’t be forced to contemplate how much shit I’d be in if I shot him with my bow. It’s a nice bow, and he’s an old guy and not very mobile, so I think he’d be an easy target. I’m not going to shoot him though because the consequences would suck for both of us. But the thought did cross my mind this morning.
Because like most old people he rises early. Once out of his bed he thinks that morning activities include running his pressure washer for a couple of hours starting at seven A fucking M. The pressure washer is a new device that’s enthralled him this summer. At least once a week he pressure washes his deck and his vehicle. At least twice a week he feels the need to blast his driveway and it’s god damned annoying. Not stringing the recurve annoying, but like I said, a stringing sensation briefly flitted across my mind this morning. I justify this murderous thought by assuring myself I’m not the only neighbor who’s entertained an archery action or something similar, as the washer motor thrums incessantly before the birds are even airborne.
I recognise that I’m not a perfect neighbor either, and there might even be an outside chance that old guy has contemplated if his pressure washer could be used as an offensive weapon on me. Perhaps he’s thought, if I can just get the nozzle near his eyes.
But I doubt it. He’d have to plug the compressor into an outlet at our house to reach me, and he’s old and slow and the pressure washer is loud. Arrows on the other hand are quiet. They just make the Nike whoosh sound and then your chest hurts.
Anyway, I was contemplating how many times a day people ponder the idea of terminating someone’s existence. I can only speculate, but I’m guessing that if murderous wishes translated into reality then there would be a fuck of a lot less traffic on the roads, and very few line ups at the Dairy Queen.
I’m going to invent a word. It’s probably not unique because there are so many people on Terra that the odds of someone thinking of something truly unique are remote. But I’m going for it regardless. I shall call the ability to kill with thought, murderwish.
If murderwish was a thing then it would only be a matter of time until there were only two people left on the entire planet. And then one of those two people would chew with their mouth opened and then there would be one person.
Probably about half of murderwish fatalities would be an accident. You didn’t really want that person dead, but they didn’t wait their turn at the four way stop. Next thing you know their car has rolled onto the sidewalk and the driver is slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding profusely from the nose and ears. In fact, if there were three cars that he scooped at the four way, then you might not even be responsible for his demise. Someone else might have beaten you to the murderwish.
I’m not even sure that the human race would make it a day in murderwish mode before we were extinct. It depends if murderwish could be applied singularly to the object of your ire, or if you could murderwish a large group. Say for example a Warriors fan in Oakland was pissed off at Drake and accidentally murderwished everyone in Jurassic park. If mass murderwish were possible we probably wouldn’t make it an hour before all the animals on the planet would be wondering why the fuck everything was so quiet.
Because our thoughts are darker than our actions.
Lets assume murderwish massacres are off the table. Lets assume that murderwish is a one on one phenomena where you have to make eye contact to dispatch a douche.
Lets say that after the initial mass extinction, that somehow we figured out thoughts alone were responsible for the carnage. Would we have the discipline to stop having murderous thoughts?
I doubt it. I think we’d be fucked.
I had thought at first that there may be a certain percentage of people on the planet who don’t idly contemplate killing assholes. I thought my wife was a good candidate for belonging to that group. But, I talked to her about murderwish and she provided a reality check. Even with her goddess like lack of animosity she assured me that she has on occasion been murderwishish. She did provide a bit of a distinction though. She said that on a rare occassion the thought has entered her mind that she wished her antagonist would just fuck off and die. Fuck off being the distinction. She wouldn’t want to watch them die or look at the body afterward. That’s yucky.
But, distinction aside, she still qualifies as a murderwisher, and so I reiterate.
We’d be fucked. Extinct as a race in a day or less.