Socrates and Freddy Krueger: A Dialogue (Part Two)
Socrates grabbed three of Freddy’s blades and shook.
Socrates: It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Freddy. I am called Socrates.
Freddy: Listen, I’m sorry I tried to slaughter you earlier, Socrates. It’s just that I spent so much time in planning this out—learning Plato’s voice, his history with you, this whole cave thing. It was a lot of work, you know? It really is a shame I wasn’t able to gut you.
Socrates: I can’t imagine what a discouragement the experience must have been. When you speak of your diabolical history, I can’t help but notice a certain spark in your eyes—it reminds me of a mother greeting her newborn for the first time. I take it you gather much pleasure from your slaughter of innocents.
Freddy: Oh God, so much pleasure. And these days when I can’t find a single kill, I can only think back to the time I tore out that one guy’s ligaments and used them as puppet strings to walk him off a seven-story building, or the time I turned that one girl into a cockroach and then squeezed out her guts. Memories like these, why, they fill me up inside.
Socrates: I bet they do. I do not mean to pry, but have you considered why these exploits give you such joy?
Freddy: It doesn’t take much consideration—it’s the revenge. It is the revenge that is so pleasurable; it is the revenge that fuels me.
Freddy: And nothing else! You see, Socrates, when I was alive I was the greatest of all the child abductors. They called me the Springwood Slasher—and oh, how I lived up to that name. I was ruthless, I tell you! Fucking ruthless! But then the parents of Springwood decided to take justice into their own hands—the bitches! They burned me alive, and they thought that was the end of it. I was gone, but I was not forgotten. I lived on in the nightmares of their children, and it was in the world of dreams that I I could take my sweet revenge, and there was nothing the parents could do about it! But now, I am completely forgotten. How I long for more revenge! For justice!
Socrates: And perhaps you shall get it. And perhaps I shall too. For, you see, Freddy, I too was sentenced to death by the adults of my own community. They too accused me of abusing their youth. Though there remains a slight different in our respective methods, I should add: I “abused” the youth by exposing them to philosophy and curiosity, and you did so through abduction, torture, and murder. We mustn’t overlook this difference.
Freddy: There is a slight difference, I suppose.
Socrates: Nevertheless, I too have at times felt the desire for revenge. This desire is a seductive adversary, but it is an adversary nonetheless, and I shall explain why.
Socrates: Then we will indulge ourselves in a hypothetical, to aid in our examination. Let us suppose the elders of our respective communities were to gather before us once more, and they were to hear our appeals. How shall we proceed?
Freddy: We’ll ring out their necks and we’ll dance in their blood!
Socrates: Come now, Freddy. Let us hold back on murder in this hypothetical scenario. At least, for the time being.
Socrates: I propose we proceed by explaining our intentions, those intentions that you and I have hitherto discussed. I shall tell the elders of Athens that I meant no malice towards their community, that I merely acted with accord to my own morality and what I consider righteous. I shall tell them that I did not intend to harm their children; nay, my only intention was to ask questions, a mode of conversation in which I saw no harm, and indeed I still see no harm in. And you, how shall you justify your murders?
Freddy: I will tell them the same! That I acted upon my own morality.
Socrates: Or lack thereof.
Freddy: Aha yes! I acted upon my lack of morality. What they consider righteous, I do not. I am filled with evil; I just want blood!
Socrates: So we have determined that we have each acted upon our principles, and conversely have failed to act according to principles we do not hold.
Socrates: And our elders, how will they say they have acted?
Freddy: They’d say the same. They’d tell us that they sentenced us to death because according to their principles, it was the right thing to do. They wanted to save their children from us.
Socrates: Now you see, my nightmarish killer, that you and I and our adversaries are two sides of the same coin. We each act upon our own self-governing principles, and by some cosmic constitution those principles seem to be in direct contradiction to one another. And thus resulted our demise.
Freddy: The cosmos! It is the cosmos’ fault, you say. So what shall we do then, shall we murder the gods? Oh, let’s do that!
Socrates: And suppose we decide to, as you put it, murder the gods. Using your quite peculiar power, you enter into their dreams, if indeed they do sleep, and now they are yours for the taking. You tell them you are striking back against them, you are taking your revenge, because of their decision to make you a serial killer, a monster with the inevitable destiny of condemnation from all those around you. What shall they say to you?
Freddy: They will say nothing; they will only scream as I release my vengeance upon them!
Socrates: Freddy, you mustn’t be too hasty. You must give these gods a chance to explain their actions, just as we have given to our mortal enemies.
Freddy: I don’t know what they would say.
Socrates: Alas, I do not know as well, but it seems to me, at least according to the abilities of my own imagination, that there are only two justifications they could give you for having created your evil. For one, they may tell you that, contrary to what we have come to understand of the gods, they hold little or no power over good and evil. Rather, the forces of good and evil are dictated by circumstances of the universe unbeknownst even to them. Thus, their reverence as being all-powerful has been exposed as a façade. In this case, surely you are not justified in taking your revenge upon them, as they played no part in creating the evil that is within you.
Freddy: If they were to say this to me, I would slice them up extra good! Where is your rationality, Socrates, and where is your resolve? In this scenario, not only are the gods guilty of having created my evil, but they are liars too! Everyone knows the gods are all-powerful; if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be gods!
Socrates: Which brings me to the second thing they may say.
Socrates: They will admit, Freddy, that they are all-powerful, and that they did hold the final say in dictating whether or not you were to be created evil, and they chose to make you so. Do you not see, then, that they are indeed evil themselves? And thus, in manufacturing your evil, they were only acting upon their own principles, or lack thereof, just as you and I and our enemies and all of humanity before us has done. I do not need to remind you that we have already exonerated our enemies for doing the same; we mustn’t create an exception for the gods. Or perhaps even, the gods will assure you that they are not evil, but they have created your evil nonetheless because there is some blessed justification for the role of evil in the world—of which I personally could not imagine, but needless to say I am not a god—and in this situation as well, the gods are still acting upon their own principles. Nay!, there is not a single scenario I can envision in which we can put any fault upon the gods for creating us the way they did, and thus there is no justification for our revenge upon them.
Freddy: Ah, now it is I who has trapped you! But there is justification for murdering a god—it will make the world a better place! We will have destroyed a murderer.
Socrates: You raise an excellent point, but you fail to see, Freddy, that if you were to kill a murderer, a murderer still remains. The murderer is you! And in any case, it is not revenge to which you are now referring, but rather to justice, which demands its own discussion entirely. So let us not go off topic. Now you see, dear Freddy Krueger, that revenge merely for the sake of revenge possesses no rational justification, but only primitive passion. True revenge is not found in the destruction all those who have done us ill, for as we have seen they were merely acting upon their own principles. Rather, I tell you now, true revenge is found when one chooses not to react with equal or greater malice; it is when one rises beyond the circumstances one was dealt, when one learns not to take an eye for an eye, and when one finally learns to move on. That is true revenge.
Freddy: Socrates, I can almost not believe it, but you have convinced me that my ways are wrong. I now know what true revenge is. It saddens me that it has taken so long for me to discover this, and all of the people I have hurt in the meantime. I fear I have much to think about, and many reparations I must make. Oh, I am sad and happy at the same time. You have showed me the light, dear Socrates, and I thank you for it.
As Freddy silently contemplated the nature of his new revelation, another man materialized at the threshold of the cave…
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