May 4, 2015
Mr W. Axl Rose,
I am writing in response to your open letter to Indonesian President Joko Widodo regarding the then impending executions of Andrew Chan, Myuran Sukumaran, and Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso. The letter I am referring to is this one here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/guns-n-roses/axl-roses-letter-to-indonesian-president/10153791661983222
I am no one and because of that I don't have a personal Twitter account as I have nothing to say personally, but I do have a very, very modest publishing project under which I publish translations of Dutch fiction and non-fiction to Indonesian readers and for which I do have a Twitter account, which I am using now to send you this letter.
Evil and negativity seem to appear ever more prevalent, you say. I don't know, perhaps the world has always been like this. I mean, it has got to be.
The world we experience is a reflection of us mankind and a vast majority of people making up mankind -- to an extent that it is mankind -- is egoistic. So let's talk a little bit about the egoistic human being, the egoistic man.
The egoistic man concerns itself with desires, and these desires it fulfills by taking things -- i.e. as opposed to bestowing things.
At first the egoistic man is confronted with animalistic needs. Food, shelter, sex. It must have these. Once satisfied the egoistic man looks to amass wealth, i.e. to secure its animalistic needs and to therefore not having to worry about them anymore, but it then only finds itself wanting to exercise control over other people's wealth by way of... power.
The egoistic man doesn't stop there, however, as it has one final desire to fulfill: knowledge. Art, science, philosophy, religion... Existential questions suddenly abound and they demand answers, answers the power he has now in its hands cannot address: Why am I here? What's the purpose of life? Is there life after death?
In short, the egoistic man grows out from one desire into another:
1. Animalistic needs
2. Wealth
3. Power
4. Knowledge
Each desire assimilates the one going before it. This growth is the natural order of things and therefore perfectly normal. It’s not wrong nor is it evil. However, a vast majority of people making up mankind -- to an extent that it is mankind -- is unaware of this process, which happens to be the root cause of mankind's troubles. This... ignorance.