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Cruelty

Whose voice do you hear when you chastise yourself? Do you really think it's your own voice calling you names, telling you how worthless you are? Or is it someone else's voice? If you sat down and wrote out what the voices were telling you, who would you imagine delivering such a monologue? A disappointed parent? A tyrannical boss? A bully establishing the pecking order?

For most people, the monologue never ends. Each Voice is formed of scar tissue from old wounds. These characters now live in their minds, monitoring their every action, their every thought, punishing the slightest perceived infraction with wicked glee. They are Big Brother's own Thought Police, only more vicious, more pervasive, and more insidious. At least you could escape the Thought Police inside your own head. But inside your head is where the Voices live, and them you cannot escape! Believe you me, there never was a judge more biased, a prison guard more sadistic, nor an executioner more cruel, than the Voices inside your Head. What a wickedly efficient system! No need for society to punish you when society can teach you to punish yourself. Who better to keep you in line than the one person who is watching you all the time?

Sigh. You mortals are so careless with the short lives you are given. You could be tasting, seeing, experiencing this world before it slips between your fingers like fine grains of sand. Instead you spend all your time flagellating yourselves like penitent monks. Is it any wonder we dead folk despise you with such rancor, when you fritter away the one thing we miss most?

Do you begin to see who the storm riders are?