Paradigm

PART 1
Section 1
(chaos)

"Believe nothing. Consider everything."

Everyone tries to adopt a paradigm in order to make sense of or bring order to their life. Some people will take a single thought, such as "people are generally good", as their philosophy or some people will center their life around a religion. Both are bad.

Most things in life have no rules. When one takes their philosophy and applies it to everyday life, everything that comes into conflict with their paradigm is either adjusted to fit it or completely ignored. These people are generally seen as ignorant by people with looser paradigms or by those who view life through a very different paradigm.

There is no truth. The accepted definition of the truth is what is believed or what is generally agreed to. If a woman claims to have been sexually harassed and there are no witnesses to the event, her version of the events will be the more widely accepted version of what happened.

George Little had long been a supporter of paradigms, more specifically, his own. He believed those with darker skin and a different continental origin than his own were inferior. (He did not understand that life originated in Africa over a hundred thousand years ago, but believed that an omnipotent being had created the universe six thousand years prior.) He felt that they were all poor and stupid. He also thought that homosexuals were loathsome, perverted, and destined for an eternity of suffering after their death.

George was a third-generation oligarch. He was in an elite class that made up less than one tenth of one percent of the United States population but controlled most of the currency and nearly all of the power. He had led a life of considerable leisure, away from people of color and open homosexuals.

Though he was in this elite class, he was still quite young and did not have the power that the older oligarchs had. He did not care to have such responsibilities. He lived off of a large allowance his parents gave him. He spent most of his time with his friends, all of them sons and grandsons of oligarchs, in places designated for members of the upper class.

In fact, he was at one of those places the day his life took quite a different turn. He was patronizing a restaurant at an upscale country club with a small group of friends (their names and descriptions are inconsequential to the story) when what his society generally referred to as a black man entered. He was dressed in a manner very much accustomed to the ruling class and had the appearance of a man that possessed a great wealth. This, of course, was of no importance to George Little.

"What the fuck is that nigger doing in here?" George had put the question to his peers. They were all seated at their usual dining spot in the restaurant. They sat at a corner table where they could see everyone and gossip. They would sometimes stay there for hours, not eating, but ordering drinks. George had just come of drinking age which in his society was 21 revolutions after his birth.

One of his peers snickered. "Looking for white women, maybe?"

The group laughed obnoxiously and eyed the man again.

"How did he get in here, is what I'd like to know. The only blacks we usually see in here are carrying trays or shining shoes," another of his friends said.

They laughed again.