…not only are you an asshole, you’re a multipurpose asshole.

Melissa is talking about all of us. I dunno. I was going to leave a comment on her site. I probably still should. It’s not nice to talk about people behind their backs. She’s talking about the asshole nature of being human, which sounds like a title that would make Milan Kundera go, “Hey… that’s pretty g… nah.”

I pretty much agree with her, if I am understanding her right. If what she says about asshole nature is what I think about when I think about our inescapable culpability in everything.

I was at a big conference this week, of a large, very large international organization dedicated to development aid. Where a very eloquent American gentleman spoke in a very critical tone of changing priorities, of how a billion people live on less than $2 a day, of how the the United States, for example, but other developed countries are not necessarily doing better in this regard, spends so and so much on “defense” and so and so much on development aid and the “war on poverty” and how the two figures are shamefully out of proportion.

I spend $15 a month for hosting for my blog empire. What some people spend to live for a week, or two weeks. So I’m culpable too, as are you.

And asshole nature, yes, I’m ashamed of things I have done, of other things I continue to do. Less so, the older I get, partly because I grow more shameless, partly because I grow less shameful, I hope.

All you can do is move towards the light.