Tom: This is one evil, stupid, fucked-up world!
Tom: Now you're talkin'!
Ben: Or...we can go into internal exile, like the Czechs before '89.
Ben: True -- but I doubt if we're really there now. We can do better.
Tom: No doubt.
Ben: And internal exile is a practical strategy and available option right now. It does provide a ready refuge and oasis from flagitious world culture. From the scumbag, numb-nuts, sick-puppy Dark Age we're forced to live in.
Tom: Yeah, the g-men and god-squaders haven't figured out a way to invade out brains. At least, not yet.
Tom: Damn.
Ben: They took your mind. They took your heart. They took your soul.
Tom: So there's no hope?
Ben: You got that right.
Tom: No one is any too rational or logical. Nothing is really normal or natural. And neither of the two makes any god-damned sense.
Ben: Ain't that the truth.
Tom: This whole planet is hell of a god-blessed gigantic mess! And everyone on it is miserable.
Ben: No argument here, pal.
Tom: People reek! Big Brother is everywhere, and everyone believes in god. I guess, the nanny state will solve everybody's problems while they're alive; then they're all goin' to meet Jesus!
Ben: (curses with great vulgarity and disgust.)
Tom: You can say that again!
Ben: And don't forget how everyone believes in, and practices, self-sacrifice. Well, mission accomplished!
Tom: (curses with great vulgarity and disgust.)
Ben: You ain't jokin'!
Tom: So. Here we are. But what the hell are we gonna do about it?
Ben: Well, what the hell can we do about it?
Tom: Beats the shit out of me. You're the one with all the bright ideas.
Ben: How about: We can live nobly and happily despite it all. We can accomplish things and make our life meaningful anyway.
Tom: Easier said than done.
Ben: Okay, we can start our own country.
Tom: Hmm...
Pause.
Ben: 'Course, I'd rather beat the living daylights out of everyone I meet.
Tom: We're there now -- for all the good it does us. For all the relief it provides.
Ben: That's what you think.
Tom: What do you mean?
Ben: Verminous propagandists everywhere -- including the welfarist and religious variety -- like to say "Give me a child till five, and I'll have him for life." Well, that's us!
Pause.
Ben: You were brainwashed a long time ago. So was I. So was everybody.
Tom: ...
Ben: Not much.
Tom: Yeah, but I'm not giving up. No god-damned way.
Ben: Me neither.
Tom: You know, this ghastly cesspool hyper-illiberal Dark Age culture of ours may be total slime -- but people live mostly in their own heads.
Ben: True.
Tom: We make up most of our universe.
Ben: Thank god!
Tom: No, fuck god!
Ben: Right. Anyway...
Tom: Think of Aristotle.
Ben: I always do.
Tom: After him, with Theophrastus, Strato, and all the other Peripatetics, there really did come a mountain of sophistication and maturity into the world. Think of Epicurus, Zeno, and all of their friends.
Ben: They were great. I call them "applied Aristotle."
Tom: And yet, during their lifetime you just about couldn't ask for more political chaos. Nor for more philosophic horror: god was being invented. Yet the educated Greeks lived pretty darn well despite it all.
Ben: 'Cuz they lived inside their own minds and hearts and souls -- and created their own world?
Tom: And stuck to their own quasi-civilized city-state, and their own university, with their own friends, inside their own homes.
Ben: So I guess we weren't doomed from Day One after all. And we're still not.
Tom: Not completely, at least.
Ben: And why give up or give in anyway? Why give the death-worship bastards the satisfaction? Why let them win?
Tom: Indeed. And why pass up the chance for some revenge?
Ben: Revenge! Gruesome horrors in reply! Now you're talkin'!
Tom: Hmm...
Pause.
Ben: So. What do you wanna do now?
Tom: Payback or pleasure? Let's see...
Ben: Up to you.
Tom: Got any good ideas?
Ben: Always.
Tom: Does it involve having a ton of fun?
Ben: Always.
Tom: With sex and drugs?
Ben: No, immoral sex and illegal drugs.
Tom: You got it.
Ben: Fuck everybody.
Tom: You got it.
