An Alternate Universe

*Update (June 9): A lot of this draft is being reworked. The entire intro is scrapped. I changed the eye color idea. You'll see.*

Usually by this point of the month, I’ve shared what I’m doing. What I’ve been doing is a lot of writing, which has been very difficult. Different styles both serious and comedic have their unique challenges. As the author, sometimes it’s very difficult to know how something will be received, or if it will resonate at all. I’ve done things I thought were great, but turned out to be flops, and things I thought weren’t very good sometimes turned out to be greatly liked. Because of this, I constantly second guess myself. I’ve thrown away enough material to fill books. I’ve thrown away a lot this very week. The script below (originally began months ago), has been given enough time and effort for me to be curious about its reception, which is why I’m willing to share it with you now. Your input is appreciated, including whether or not you think I should further disseminate it in video form. So, without further ado...

“The Alternate Islam” (should I even invoke Islam's name in the title and instead just let people figure it out? Call it "An Alternate Universe" or something?) Edit as of 7:11pm, June 8th: Cord Platt's comment below makes a good point, I think. Mentioning Islam could undermine the whole point of the analogy by tainting it with the viewer's preconceived notions. So, I'll title it something else and refrain from referring to Islam or Muslims.

*title screen - Sometimes it’s necessary to remove a situation from its cultural context to recognize not only its pitfalls, but also its absurdity.*

Remember how shocked the world was when I revealed myself to you? Some of you suspected that there were different universes out there, but you didn’t know for sure until I came along and introduced myself. My people have figured out how to travel between universes. I am a wanderer, visiting these different realms and learning what I can. We usually don’t interact with them, but sometimes, just sometimes, we find it necessary to reveal ourselves and tell you about some of the places we’ve visited. This is one of those rare moments, so sit back, relax, and listen to what I have to say about a particular universe I once discovered.

It actually had an odd alternate version of earth. The people there cared passionately about how everyone sat in their chairs. They even killed each other over it. I know that sounds ridiculous, but many of their cultures were based on proper posture. Some people thought having good posture and sitting as straight as possible was the correct way. Others thought slouching was preferable. There were leg crossers who believed it was barbaric to not have a leg crossed at all times, quite contrary to the leg spreaders. There was also the most universally hated contrarians, those who preferred to eschew sitting altogether and arrogantly stand. All those diverse people who thought their way was best had to figure out how to share, or not share, the one world upon which they all had to live. Typical tribalism ensued.

Entire nations eventually defined themselves based upon their dominant chair sitting ideology. Their history, of course, was replete with bickering between these nations, vying for power and influence. As education and prosperity grew, so too did peace and acceptance; people began to take a live and let live attitude regarding chairs. You have your way and I have mine. They stopped fighting. They used the law to protect, rather than oppress. If someone wanted to slouch, the law protected their right to do so. Same for those who wanted to cross their legs, or even stand. They found the best balance of all worlds. They found freedom.

It took a long time to finally arrive at what seemed like an obvious solution. Simply allow people to freely sit however they wanted. Whether or not a particular way spread as the correct way depended no longer upon who could impose their will most forcefully, or though use of governmental power to compel them (which often backfired), but rather upon who could be the most convincing in their rhetoric. Before long, more people were standing than ever before, yet not all areas of their world progressed simultaneously. They didn’t yet live in a global society, so borders were still used to separate those who valued being able to freely sit, from those cultures of the world that did not value such freedoms, where people were still brutally punished for not sitting in their chairs in the approved way, where people were outright killed for standing when they should’ve been sitting. Their solution was only local.

How then do you think an authoritarian chair sitter perceived a culture that valued freedom of posture? When you’re physically isolated in a place (or even mentally isolated in an echo chamber) that only approves of sitting a certain way, you’re likely to be appalled by sudden exposure to a free society: people sitting in chairs in all these incorrect ways, and people even standing without fear. Segregation, it seemed, was both the solution and the problem.

A paradox of sorts arose with the consideration of a particular group of authoritarian chair sitters. You see, they believed without question that the proper way to sit is with your feet propped up on someone else’s chair. This was a huge problem, because their propped feet often prevented others from sitting their preferred way. The authoritarians also demanded that women kneel on the floor, no matter what women believed about sitting. What’s the equitable solution? If they accommodated the authoritarian ideology, then they would’ve been denying the freedom of everyone else. If they didn’t allow the authoritarians to prop up their feet, however, then they would’ve been denying their freedom of posture, and undermining the very values of freedom upon which their society was built. Either way, somebody’s freedom had to be violated. Right?

It was decided that in a society that values freedom, the chair sitting method that does not value the freedom of others is the one that must be sacrificed for the greater good. In that case, to maintain the greatest amount of freedom, the proper practice of the authoritarian posture had to be denied. The irony didn’t escape them, but if it was hypocrisy, it was a necessary hypocrisy. They stated with finality “No, you cannot put your feet on my chair. No, you cannot force me to put my feet on someone else’s chair. No, you cannot force women to kneel on the floor. We value freedom - not authoritarianism.”

That wasn’t the end of it. They still had to figure out how to share the world. The true solution had to come from within the authoritarians’ chair sitting ideology itself. If people wished to sit with their feet propped in a free society, they had to find a way to do it without being an imposition. What if some people thought it was acceptable to use an ottoman, rather than someone else’s chair? What if some women actually preferred to kneel upon the floor, and did so fully of their own desire? People who sat that way were not a hindrance to the freedoms of others. It was agreed by most that those moderates shouldn’t face discrimination, though they certainly did face it at times from both sides: by people who failed to recognize them as moderates, and by peers who failed to recognize them as true feet proppers.

So, being inclusive and tolerant did not mean mindlessly accepting everyone with different beliefs. Some beliefs were deeply oppressive and antithetical to tolerance and inclusion. It is not intolerant to reject those beliefs, nor the people who hold them. It is not bigotry to reject and exclude bigoted practices.

Unfortunately, the matter wasn’t that simple to solve. You see, the feet propping ideology came from a region where people typically had brown eyes. In their universe, there were colorists, who hated people of different eye colors. So, there was another layer of this issue to consider. If someone were a colorist, against people with brown eyes, they could use the justifiable exclusion of authoritarian feet propping as an excuse to exclude people who happened to have brown eyes, regardless of whether they were actually posture extremists. This further complicated the issue by causing well-intentioned people to conflate honest critics of authoritarian feet propping with bigoted eye colorists. Some were certainly eye colorists, but the critics who weren’t were often lumped in with them, thereby silencing the vital dissent of those who did not want to be seen as colorists, while amplifying the harmful rhetoric of those who were proud colorists. The conflation of colorism with valid criticisms actually harmed brown-eyed people the most, because they were the most negatively affected by the authoritarian ideology - the ideology most in dire need of criticism. If people valued diversity, then they were obligated to resist the hegemony of ideologies that opposed diversity, like the authoritarianism of radical feet propping. Highlighting the extremes polarized the debate, and rather than winning people over to a healthy balance of liberty, they stoked the fires they were trying to put out all along.

The colorists needed a justifiable reason to engage in the fight they wanted so badly, and the apologists of the authoritarians handed it to them on a silver platter. So in the cruelest irony of all, those who cared about fighting bigotry, ended up unwittingly enabling those on both sides who wished to impose bigotry. Since bigotry begets bigotry, they spiraled into a perpetual cycle of strife, becoming more extreme with every turn, products of their enemies, hating each other for their differences, yet becoming indistinguishable from each other.