WARNING: The following blog post is LONG. It also contains SWEARING. And OPINIONS.
I’m not religious, but I do think of myself as ethical. I try to do what I believe to be the ‘right’ thing, not because I want the approval of any deity, or of any other humans, but because it intuitively makes sense to behave in a reasonable manner. This extends to treating other people the way I’d like to be treated myself. Not killing my neighbour to take his ox isn’t something some bearded dude in the sky has to tell me not to do: I don’t do it because I don’t need his ox enough to justify murder, and also because I don’t want his brother coming round and killing me in return.
For many years, I didn’t have a succinct way of stating this actually pretty simple philosophy (or, if you prefer, moral code). I first came across the four words that encapsulate it on a sticker on a mirror at a music festival about 15 years ago; a while later I saw it on a t-shirt and then, a couple of years back, heard it delivered dramatically and hilariously at a gig (go look up ‘OMG It’s the Church’ to see what I mean).
And those four words?
Don’t
Be
A
Dick
Arguably this short credo shouldn’t need further explanation, as not being a dick is something I had already been actively trying to do for most of my life. However, while not being a dick seems intuitive, logical and right to me, the world appears increasingly full of people for whom it isn’t.
To be fair everyone, including me, can be a dick sometimes. My problem is with those who actively embrace being a dick, and who, for the sake of convenience, I shall refer to as entitled fuckwits.
Entitled fuckwits are people who think the world was made just for them. Some of their dick moves include:
- Taking what they want, even if they don’t need it
- Refusing to take responsibility for their actions
- Going off on one if asked to consider any else’s feelings or wellbeing
- Insulting and abusing anyone who doesn’t agree with them
- Assuming that anyone who doesn’t have the same ethnicity/nationality/sexuality/gender/belief system is automatically inferior and can be treated like shit
- Getting off on being cruel or spiteful
- Treating kindness and empathy as weaknesses
- Punching down
So what, says any dick still reading this (unlikely though that is): I can do what I fucking want, and you don‘t matter.
That’s true, I don’t. But not being a dick does matter, to everyone. As mentioned above, not being a dick isn’t something I do because I want to be seen as ‘good’ by some god or my mates or the internet or society more generally. I do it because I can look beyond my own (metaphorical) dick to consider the world at large. And in the world of 2026 there are a hell of a lot of humans sharing the same finite space, with finite resources, and oh-so-many ways available to fuck each other over.
The entitled fuckwits often want – and in many cases already have – a disproportional amount of power, at the cost of disempowering others. And they tend to get away with this. They probably think they’re winning in the game of life. But they’ve failed to factor in two ultimate truths.
Firstly, if you just take, take, take from the world around you, then we – everyone – will run out of stuff (where stuff may be rare earths, fossil fuels, clean water… or whatever else we treat like an infinite resource that actually isn’t).
Secondly, If you treat everyone else like shit, they will treat you like shit too. So, if you go round stomping on other people’s heads, whether as a nation or as an individual, then you can expect them to resist, and sometimes to fight back. What goes around, comes around. You might be a winner now, but one day a bigger dick, or in some happy cases one or more not-dicks who actually give a shit, is going to topple you off your perch. And so on, rinse and repeat, with all the damage and suffering excess dickery causes. This is how it’s going to be until humanity realises that, despite appearances, life is not a zero-sum game. Or, more likely, until we fail to learn this basic survival lesson and spiral into oblivion.
So, here’s the bottom line:
If the majority of humans insist on being entitled fuckwits then we are ALL FUCKED. And, dear dicks (not that any of you are reading this), that includes YOU.
Thank you for reading this far, if you are an organic human. And if you’re a bot… well, that’s a whole other subject…
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