A Rorschach For Our Times

Inkblot #1

You wake up in a warm, comfortable bed. Have a cup of coffee. Peruse news from around the world. A hot shower. Dress as you like, choosing from a deep wardrobe selected from a vast market. Then out you go to meet your day - which very likely involves traveling somewhere at high speed in a car, bus, train, or plane.

You think:

A) Life is great. Millions live a lifestyle only a handful of aristocrats could a hundred years ago. The rule of law, technology, and free trade have produced unbelievable returns. It can and should be like this for everyone.

B) This oppulent delusion is disgusting. Mother Earth aches under my carbon footprint. Mankind is a cancer. We will consume all our resources, and die. Or war over those resources, and die. Or cook our atomosphere. And die.

C) How fortunate! A young mother and baby carriage. If I turn myself around like so the TATP in my backpack will be sure to kill them. Get ready virgins, here I come! *click*


Inkblot #2

You look up into an otherwise clear blue sky and note a long contrail. Your eyes track and settle on the jumbojet. It's likely carrying hundreds of people. Miles above the ground, hurtling toward its destination with amazing speed.

You think:

A) Look at that! The fruit of technology. From zero to thousands of flights a day in a hundred years. Isn't that something? We can wonder what travel will be like a hundred years from now, or we can roll up our sleeves and make it so!

B) Good Gore we're destroying the atmosphere. Ozone, CO2, deadly chemicals meant to poison the sheeple. Just look at all those fat greedy banksters and corporadoes flying off to some Disney fantasy. Killing the whales for their blood diamonds. If it weren't for their insatiable thirst for oil our baby killers wouldn't be fighting and dying in Iraq. Redeploy our baby killers now!

C) Hmmm. Too bad. Too high for a Strela.


Inkblot #3

You work at Wal-Mart. You man a checkout. A customer approaches with a package of bacon.

Your reaction:

A) Hiya! Did you find everything you were looking for? That'll be $3.55 please. Thank you, have a nice day.

B) I don't work for facists or their rapacious corporate bullyboy paymasters! I quit! I'm going across the steet to work for Starbucks. They care about the whales.

C) In deference to my all-powerful but easily-offended religion I refuse to handle this sinful meat, even if it is wrapped in plastic. I must also take extra breaks for prayer, and thus require special prayer rooms with foot-cleaning basins. And I can not work anywhere near the women's underwear section. Oh and I'll be out every Friday making plans for jihad.


Analysis

If you answered A to every question you are, sorry to say, one species or another of mindless, gutless, misinformed wingnut whose doom it is to forever see things through hopelessly rosy glasses while you are led to your doom by Machiavellian manipulators playing to your latent racist and xenophobic tendencies. You delight in destroying the environment by driving your SUV to church every day, where your evangelical leaders urge you to jail all leftists and Muslims with the ultimate goal of torturing and gassing them.

You're probably inured to such characterizations, but you know they must be true because they are repeated so often by your far more friendly and tolerant neighbors.

If instead you preferred B you are, quite obviously, a brave patriot-warrior. It is hard to believe you could find the time for this test in your busy schedule, your activism, the never-ending fight for what makes you personally feel good about yourself. You see the horrible crimes and violence around the world and can't help but recoil in disgust and sorrow at the realization that your country and countrymen are responsible. Fortunately, you are not. Though supremely intelligent, contemplative, peaceful, and wise you cannot help but lash out viciously, mercilessly at any ignoramus who questions your patriotism.

Oddly enough you are not very happy.

If your answers tended toward C you are advised to seek aid at a nearby US military base. You'll get 3 square halal meals a day, new flipflops, plenty of space for praying toward Mecca, and your own Koran.

Allahu Akbar, such a deal!