Philosophy Now Forum

“This injustice has gone on for far too long,” said God, the Creator, on New Year’s Eve, 1999. “Something should have been done about all of this mess millennia ago—but better late than never”; and, He continued, “It must be and shall be rectified.”

On January 1st, 2000 (though at various times of the day, depending on one’s global location), everyone on Earth awoke to a great change—a change that found much favor with the miserable and disadvantaged of the world.
Very fortunate people inexplicably empathically experienced the undeserved, unfair suffering and misery of fellow human beings and animals and thus did their utmost to make life as pleasant as possible for all of those unfortunate. Hunger pains, which were hence universally experienced, very much compelled the well-fed to do their best to alleviate all hunger on the planet. In God’s New World, those who starved, especially in the seriously impoverished Third World nations, awoke to a strong sense of relief from the constant stomach pains caused mostly by their unquenched hunger. They felt this relief even before the imminent arrival of food-aid shipments anxiously donated by the developed countries—food aid gratefully given because the world’s privileged class was experiencing what the very hungry all experience, i.e. intense stomach cramps; however, the privileged class’s (involuntary) empathic experience of such intense stomach cramps could be alleviated only by feeding all of Earth’s starving. But just by the privileged class’s (albeit Divinely enforced) empathy for the great burden suffered by the very hungry pains, the unfortunate very hungry were miraculously allowed relief.
As well, and perhaps most profound, everyone shared in the anguish of the greatest ordeal possibly endured on Earth—that of parents who’ve lost children to rape, torture and/or murder; and, therefore, those who had suffered such an undeserved, unfair tragic loss felt so much so relieved of their anguish, with their flowing tears subsiding. Suddenly, when members of a community would “share in the grief” endured by such stricken parents, it would indeed be a literal sharing of grief.
Furthermore, and also most profound, those who had intentionally caused suffering experienced a bitter state of empathic justice: e.g. if you shot a person, you then felt the excruciating pain and terror of getting shot; if you harmed an animal (e.g. someone’s pet cat), especially all animals being incapable of malice just as their nature dictates, you then felt that animal’s physical suffering and the pet owner’s emotional anguish; and if you stole, you then felt your victim’s burning victimization, sadness and anger. Indeed, even without their knowledge of others’ suffering, the comfortable were afflicted while the afflicted were comforted; the rich and healthy felt the suffering of the poor, diseased and hungry through inexplicable pain, nausea, weakness and stomach cramps.
All as a direct result of the Divinely-enforced genuine empathy.
The New World was analogous to a fiscally-imprudent government squandering a very large amount of tax-supported treasury, and the impact of the monetary damage is endured equally, in some form or another, by all citizens of the nation; thus, each citizen suffers a relatively-minute amount of the nation’s total monetary damage.
There was great beauty in the New World: the privileged minority, suddenly experiencing their share of Earthly suffering, could alleviate their empathic grief by personally feeding and nursing the starving and severely-ill back to health. Thus, the former made the greatest effort possible to feed and heal their fellow though unfortunate human beings and animals, both wild and stray domestic.
Of course multi-billionaires, who also experienced the suffering they had caused or allowed because of their gratuitous-wealth accumulation and hoarding, could no longer enjoy their superfluous materialism while the have-nots suffered, but the former instead shared in the anguish of impoverished human beings. The rich suddenly desired to nurse and redirect their wealth towards the so-very-many who endured hardship, for by doing so, the extremely privileged were thus relieved of their (albeit involuntary) empathy-induced suffering.
Those who dreaded the New World the very most, however, were indeed the Big Tobacco Industry CEOs, their henchmen and public relations representatives—those who knowingly fooled hundreds of millions (if not billions over past centuries) of people into smoking, suffering from and prematurely dying because of Big Tobacco’s health-ravaging product. Those CEOs, henchmen and PR people all awoke to the horrific sensation of their lungs collapsing and tearing apart as they violently coughed uncontrollably before they, while quite bewildered, eventually spat out blood into the bathroom sink. Yet, although they were experiencing the physical sensation and visuals of the horrific ailment, the Creator compassionately spared them from the actual physical damage itself. They also felt what it was like to incessantly worry over almost-certain future financial difficulties, great anxiety endured by the so-very-many diseased smokers not covered by medical insurance. “My God,” the tobacco victims soon asked themselves, “how will I support my wife and children?!”
Just as profound, those who knowingly allowed disease to deathly infect nations’ blood supply—indeed, an allowance for the sake of increased government revenue and/or large personal profit—were suddenly forced to empathically suffer the same negative consequences they had caused countless innocents to suffer, i.e. via Hepatitis C that they had allowed to spread throughout the entire blood supply. Henceforth, in the just New World, those ‘public servants’ experienced “a bleed”—a horrific event in which normally-processed blood accumulates in the stomach, with the blood pressure building until it imminently bursts the wall of the esophagus (the victims feel their life flowing out from them as they regurgitate their own blood); meanwhile the liver stops functioning just prior to its complete failure. Thus, those ‘public servants’ felt compelled to devote the remainder of their lives alleviating their own symptoms (though they were but experiencing sensations and visions of the effects of the illness without actually physically acquiring the disease itself) by alleviating the symptoms suffered by those who had actually acquired the disease.
Soon, other very serious diseases became greatly recognized, and therefore the medical research into them, and the treatment of their victims, was fully funded (mostly by multi-billionaires) and on a massive, global scale—all due to the formidable inducement of Divinely-enforced empathy. Plus the globally-collective pharmaceutical industry, until then inaccessible to the majority of the world’s very-poor and severely-ill people, suddenly felt their fair share of that suffered by the planet’s sick and impoverished people; and from then on the worldwide pharmaceutical industry made sure that no ill person, regardless of his/her wealth or Earthly location of residence, ever again went without adequate medical treatment.
The masters of powerful billion-dollar-profit corporations also began to feel the debilitating anxiety of the long-time employees they ‘laid off,’ employees who were heavily relied upon to provide food and shelter for their young offspring (“My God, how will we provide for our children?!”). And the CEOs felt the inexplicable urge to avoid firing their employees, even at a though-typically-very-small loss to their huge profit margins, because the CEOs began to realize that they were experiencing empathy which could be alleviated by sacrificing a little bit of their continuously-enlarging and very-gratuitous corporate profits so that the employees, and especially their children, could be spared the suffering caused by the so-dreaded “layoff.”
More so, the corporate masters, living in their multi-million-dollar mansions while feasting on gourmet truffles and sturgeon caviar, also felt the hunger pains and illnesses too-often endured by the Third World poor, to whom the exceedingly-rich foreign bosses paid pennies per hour to slave in unsanitary conditions for 18 hours every day of the week, fifty weeks every year. Henceforth, however, the very-wealthy masters allowed generous wage increases to their impoverished labourers, even enough to make the laborers’ living conditions (unprecedented amazingly) equal to those of the developed world. Also, the labourers were given fully-employer-funded health plans and sick days similar to those enjoyed by labourers residing in the First World. And along with the elimination of horrendous working conditions, the Third World labourers were financially enabled to afford relishing their weekends free from their jobs to spend with their families.
Again incredible profound, in the New World, perpetrators of mass murder, torture, rape and/or rampant starvation did not go unaffected:
Utilizing readily-available military hardware sold to them by wealthy, developed nations’ military industrial complexes—the operators of which were suddenly suffering with their own well-earned, Divinely-enforced empathy—war-torn countries’ and territories’ tyrants who’d caused incalculable suffering found their empathically-induced suffering unbearable and soon realized that for any relief, they must relinquish all of their stolen, blood-stained wealth to their surviving victims. Besides such, all of those despots and mass-murderers responsible for all of the evil deeds felt quite compelled—and they gave in to that compulsion—to devote all of their lives’ remaining conscious hours toward helping those whom they had, amongst other horrendous acts, robbed of life-sustaining nourishment, very-limitedly rectifying enormous suffering they’d caused. Obviously, though, they could never even come close to rectifying all of the undeserved, unfair suffering they’d caused over the years, even in very many lifetimes, though they nonetheless tried (and to a small degree succeeded) to alleviate suffering for which they were responsible. Thus they experienced some relief only because of the suffering that they managed to alleviate, even though they were its original cause.
From that 1st of January, 2000, and onwards, in God’s New World, people obviously no longer received any satisfaction from others’ misfortune. Indeed, it was quite the contrary; people, in fact, suffered from all of other people’s usually-notable bad luck. And by empathically experiencing others’ suffering—being made to acknowledge others’ plights to the fullest possible extent—those who were usually privileged were Divinely-compelled to comfort those who were afflicted. No longer did one person experience much joy and euphoria while another agonized with much misfortune and misery: all pleasure and pain were shared or, one could say, balanced out.

“Such should have been done millennia ago,” said God, the Creator, on January 2nd, 2000. “But better late than never.”


Frank G. Sterle, Jr.
White Rock, B.C., Canada