Letter #265: The Ultimate Accountant

We're All Autistic Now

Dear Spence,

Speaking of God and his burritos, I can’t help but feel that this is where the source of our insanity lies. Mexican food. Drives you crazy. No, I’m joking: I’m talking about our civilization’s loss of faith.

Since our civilization is Western civilization, it’s specifically Christian faith we’ve lost, which matters because it’s the true faith. Still, I think the problem is more basic than any specific religion.

When I was in Afghanistan…. And I always love starting a sentence with “When I was in Afghanistan,” because it makes me sound like Dr. Watson from the Sherlock Holmes stories. But anyway, when I was in Afghanistan, I attended several shuras — council meetings — between local chieftains and the U.S. military. At one of these shuras, a local guy stood up and said, “We are glad to meet with you Americans. We used to try to talk to the Russians but they were animals: They did not believe in God. You at least believe in God so you are human beings.”

Now, personally, I suspect this was unfair to animals. But at the time, I couldn’t help thinking: “Here’s a guy who’s never even visited the 21st century. There he is with his missing teeth and his prayer beads and his funny clothes, probably still nursing some inter-tribal grudge over a raid that happened 300 years ago and was a legend even then — and yet he’s clearly in the right.” An atheist may not be an animal. The lower creatures aren’t smart enough to be that stupid. But he is blind to what is not only the central fact of life, but the fact that is the basis for all of life’s most important truths.

To disbelieve in God is, ultimately, to disbelieve in the human experience. To think there is no spiritual realm is to think all our experiences have their source in the material. From what else could they arise and to what else tend? Love, joy, grief, purpose — all illusions. Life is a long acid trip, in which only the chemicals that cause the hallucinations are real.

The other night I watched Accountant 2, the best Accountant movie since Accountant 1. But while not as excellent as the original — which really was original — it did have some sharp scenes. There’s a speed dating sequence in which a husband-seeking woman asks the severely autistic Accountant: “Do you believe in love at first sight?” He says, “No, that’s an absurd, childish notion... There’s a question whether there’s such a thing as love or it’s simply an electrical-neuro-chemical process…” She bolts.

She bolts because she’s a person who wants to be loved by another person, not an object who wants to cause an electrical-neuro-chemical reaction in another object. To think that she’s wrong is not just to be wrong yourself. It’s to be mad, and mad in a specific way: delusive, despairing, self-despising and ultimately self-destructive.

Which sounds to me like the West in general.

Love, Dad