A month ago, I revived my Upwork account. Within a day, I received an assistant editor job offer. I was ecstatic. I spent Tuesday imagining the joys of working full time, paying all my back rent, paying my credit card bills, publishing a new Dybbuk Press book without crowd funding, traveling, etc. The next day, the “employer” asked for my bank account information.
Turns out I had ignored enough red flags to supply a May Day parade.
The “employer” broke the Upwork rule by asking for contact via Instant Messaging. They never described the job beyond “editor.” The name on the emails belonged to an interior decorator in Boston who didn't have enough written material to justify hiring a full-time assistant editor. They told me that I needed to use their office equipment, but instead of sending me a new laptop, etc, they generated a sales invoice.
No wonder the Nigerian Prince scam starts with a grammatically troubled email full of spelling errors. They are weeding out the critical thinkers up front.
Why was I so stupid? I'm normally quite cynical. Timing. It had been weeks since I had had a writing gig. I am draining my savings. My landlord is getting very impatient. Technically, they didn't fool me. I fooled myself. I WANTED this job to be real. It was such a beautiful fantasy.
In this chapter, Job tells his friends that their beautiful fantasy of a fair world where the wicked lose everything and suffer is garbage. This is the second of three sections where Job's friends try to make themselves feel better. They think that they are comforting him, but they are really trying to bully him into accepting their worldview.
Job will not be bullied.
For most of Chapter 21, Job outright tells them that they are wrong. They know that they are wrong. The worst people live their best lives and die happy. Even if their children suffer, what does that matter? Winthrop Rockefeller died of a particularly painful form of cancer in 1973. Does that make up for John Rockefeller jr murdering coal miners in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre?
We've gone over this topic already.
The last line is the most important. Job asks his friends if they are really trying to comfort him with their meshuggas. “Why do you comfort me with havel?” says Job, “Your words are treachery.” Havel can be translated as vanity or futility or ephemeral. In the story of Cain and Abel, Abel's Hebrew name is Havel. Yes, the first murder victim is named “Futility.” And you thought Jonathan Larson was being obvious when he killed off a Rent character and named him Angel.
Why do they repeat this lie three times? Why does anyone believe in this “what comes around goes around” fantasy?
Like Eliphaz et al, we WANT to believe in a fair world. No matter how much critical thinking we develop, we still want to believe in fairness, democracy, true love and punishment for the wicked. We want to believe that our middle school bully is dying or at least feels very bad about their behavior. They don't fool us. We fool ourselves.
Why challenge your beliefs? If you want to believe things, believe them. Be happy. Most of these beliefs are harmless.
Not all of them.
People want to believe that hard work and moxie will make them rich, so they sign up for Amway. People want to believe that they are smarter than their high school peers, so they believe conspiracy theories. Young men want to believe that they aren't creepy, so they listen to Andrew Tate.
Then there's antisemitism.
People want to believe in decolonization so they blame the Jews. People want to believe in racial purity, so they hate the Jews. People want to believe that white people are smart and black people are dumb, so they assume that smart black people are being coached by Jews. Reverse white and black in that last sentence for the Farrakhan viewpoint. People want to believe that the world is fair and only good things happen to good people, so they embrace Holocaust denial. Columbia University Nazis want to believe that they are good people when they praise Hamas, so they believe everything coming out of the Hamas propaganda arm. They want to be good feminists and not rape apologists, so they believe that all those October 7 rape stories are fictional.
Job doesn't have the luxury of keeping his beliefs. He's too broken to believe in a fair world. When I was a teenager, my friends constantly called me cynical. Almost everything I said was met with a “why are you so cynical, Tim?” Years later, the truth dawned on me. I wasn't cynical. I was poor. My friends were all upper middle class (don't call them rich or they will cry). They expected to get cars for their birthdays and lived in houses where their parents' hoarding didn't take over the living room. They could even believe in Communism. They had that privilege.
It's not that Job doesn't want to believe in universal fairness. He just can't. He's seen too much.
For many, there's a point where comforting lies fall apart. If we grow up poor or black or anything outside the privilege bubble, we see the disparities early on. Others lose their beautiful fantasies later in life. Job has lost his innocence. His friends can't comfort him. His eyes are open.
Plato's Fucking Cave.
Elul is coming up, so here’s a place to send Tzeddaka.
Speaking of Tzeddaka, I am still hurting for money. So if you could subscribe, hire me as a writer or contribute to my Gofundme, I would be most grateful.