A crutch for the oh-so-modern
Good is out. No one who's anyone aspires to be a good person anymore. And why would you? As a person of considerable virtue you get absolutely nothing of any value in life.
I mean, what do you get?
Self-satisfaction? Off-hand I can think of dozens of extremely satisfying but not particularly moral ways of getting a thrill.
Freedom from Guilt? As a Catholic I have religious course to Confession, the sinner's greatest boon. Just confess and all that guilt washes away like milk off teflon. As a heretic there are still plenty of avenues - liquor, music, logic, hypocrisy (my personal favourite), and the best of all - self-righteousness. If you believe you sin for a purpose (whether it's the guiding hand of economic prosperity or the furtherance of the Dark Lord's vile plans) guilt is no more than a passing fancy, to be indulged in when in company and discarded when there's a hint of pleasure on the breeze.
The love of your neighbour? I can't speak for you, but I detest my neighbours. It's one of my favourite hobbies. There's nothing in life more cleansing than a deep and full loathing for someone who is utterly deserving. It makes art of petty cruelty.
Friends, we need to face the facts, and what better way than through a hackneyed cliche of a truism. the wages of sin may be death, but at least with sin you get a day off. Virtue's all day every day and holidays are out of the question due to the horrors of relatives and people who refuse to speak English (dirty foreign buggers).
But what do you get out of being a selfish bastard?
Why everything dear friend!
Do you know you're doing something despicable, but need some justification? Reach into the selfish bastard toolbox and justify, justify, justify. As any career diplomat will tell you (and trust me, I know a few) there is no sin so great it cannot be explained in a footnote. You bulldoze an orphanage and have the kids shipped off to the bottom of the Thames? Bury the details and hold a press conference announcing that you sent them to an exclusive London clinic for their health.
No one's going to believe you, but the press'll have little choice but to report your story.
Not quite that famous? Life becomes even easier.
Did you steal from your next-door neighbour? Totally understandable, but if you get caught claim Ayn Rand. I can guarantee you hardly anyone has read her, so if you make up some ostentatiously absurd theory involving instilling the value of price-demand econometrics in a post-Bretton Woods world in your children they may let you go.
Selfish is good, and increasingly these days it's seen as the noble choice. American children have been taught for generations that they have rights, and by now they've even begun to believe it (precious little beggars that they are). So naturally, being a thoroughly modern individual and a student of the American school, declare your 'rights' at every opportunity. You have a right to respect. You have a right to free stuff. You have a right to be called sir, maam or whatever else rocks your boat.
The world now has a responsibility to provide your needs - it would be intolerable for a right to be refused, right?
But are there any other advantages to sin, I hear you demand in an aggressive tone that truly touches your humble teacher's heart, are there any other advantages beyond simply being able to get away with it?
My only reply would be that you are a simple soul, and have missed the essential point. It's not just that you can do what you want. It's that people will think highly of you for doing so!
Never before has it been possible to drive a man out of house and home and come off looking noble, but if recent court cases are any judge the tides have changed. The slumlord and the weaponsmaker no longer merely command the respect of high society but all society. Their incurable lust for injustice is lauded as 'economically sound' and 'patriotic', their excesses as 'infotainment' and their artificially beautiful spouses as 'desirable' and 'as now as the adoption of black babies'.
The racist and 'culturalist' (one of my absolute favourite new words by the way - note how its bland nature avoids the infamy of the word racist whilst simultaneously suggesting there is something horribly inferior about other cultures. It's charmingly two-faced!) can speak freely, get admonished, and then ferociously defended with a tenacity and fervour that is most pleasing to other selfish bastards.
So, to end my rambling call to arms, I leave you this message:
God so loved the truth that he gave us lies, and virtue that he gave us vice; for what is yin without yang and up without down except a word empty of all meaning waiting for the opportunistic to fill it? So bring vice into your heart and use virtue as a human shield, a whore wheezing and oozing after years of your abuse but, with a wig, still proudly proclaiming your dubious virtues to the world.
Drag virtue down to the level of vice and smear it with the excrement of contempt and the blood of abuse. Be the selfish bastard, the downfall of western civilisation. Be the Future.
Because to be anything else is to show a thoroughly un-modern personality that is utterly unfashionable.