Chapter 433. Soul Exchange. (5/7)

Well, if it was a less expressive girl who didn’t show her emotions and I could see their soul, then maybe there would be some use to it. But for now, it was completely pointless.

Can I turn souldar off or get a refund? If god exists, I’ve clearly been scammed by him, he’s clearly playing some sort of prank on me. Seriously, if you’re going to let me see souls, at least let it be useful rather than being a mild inconvenience to my ability to fall asleep.

Hmm, actually, would I still see it when Rosa’s asleep? What happens to someone’s soul when they go to sleep? Honestly, I was quite curious now.

“Rosa, let’s head back to the tent. I want to try and sleep this off. I’ve got a splitting headache right now.”

I’d been ignoring it up until now, but the headache I had right now seemed to be another side effect from selling my soul to Rosa just now.

“Are you really going to be okay? Should we just tear up this contract after all?”

“No, keep it safe. I don’t want to have to sell my soul again. It really sucked.”

“It tasted that bad?”

“No.”

“What’d it taste like exactly?”

“Sweet and sour.”

“Hmm… I really don’t know how to feel when I’m being told I taste like sweet and sour pork. Should I be happy?”

“I never said pork, don’t put words into my mouth.”

“Hey, I command you to kiss the back of my hand.”

I blinked and stared at her dumbfounded by her sudden command.

“Why aren’t you doing it?”

“Why would I?”

“I have your soul now, don’t I? I was testing to see if you can be commanded to do something by the owner of your soul?”

“I haven’t ever tried to command someone whose soul I’ve obtained before so I don’t know if it’s possible.”

“Hmm, I see. I was a little curious whether you’d be able to command me to stop doing something against my will if you didn’t like what I was doing.”

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a slippery slope, a path toward becoming a tyrant. Once you’ve tasted the convenience of forcibly controlling someone even once, you’ll inevitably succumb to it again for something else. It might start off as something small and innocent, but over time, you’ll become more and more desensitized to it. Eventually, it will reach a point where you’ve crossed a certain line that should not be crossed.”

“You could do a lot of good with it too though.”

“But it does not outweigh the cons. It’s like becoming an absolute authority over another person’s life. I have no interest in becoming a dictator. Let people live as they please.”

“Freedom, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What if that freedom is used to kill and impose on the freedom of others?”

“Naturally some level of authority is in place to deter that. But there should still be a balance between the two.”

“How do you balance the two sides?”

“By arming both sides with the ability to resist one another.”

“Arming them how though?”

“In terms of souls?”

“Yeah.”

“I have no idea. I know too little about souls to begin with. But if we’re talking about it in terms of civilization, it’d be giving both sides the equivalent to a gun I guess.”

“Then you’re saying guns act as a balancing piece on a scale?”

“I suppose so.”

“What happens if one side has too many guns?”

“If the freedom side has too many guns then you end up living in a jungle where nature dictates all. If the authoritative side has more guns then you end up with dictators who no longer fear the people they govern. At that point, they’re free to do whatever they want while they hold onto power.”

“Shouldn’t voting them out of power be enough of a deterrent?”

“No, because they can only stay in office for so long anyway.”

“But an election can be forced through a vote of no confidence, can’t it?”

“So what? If they’re in power they have a hold on the flow of information in a country. They can more or less influence and control the narrative of everything as they see fit.”

“How would they do that though?”

“It’s quite easy, the media.”

“But there’s freedom of the press.”

“Sure, that exists, but the press isn’t very profitable unless there’s something exciting going on. If there’s nothing exciting going on or negative to talk about, they’re essentially just going to lose money and go out of business. At the end of the day, what gets people watching and paying attention aren’t the positive things, but rather the negative things. It’s simple human psychology.”

“To prevent a scenario where they go under, the government provides subsidies to the press. This provides incentive for the media to suck up to whoever’s in power. This rule is only broken if the person in power is considered controversial and they can make more money off of that. If they aren’t controversial and they don’t suck up, their funding could be cut off completely resulting in the scavenging hyenas starving to death.”

“In the end, money is what dictates what information is made available to the public. What information is made available is what is most convenient to those with power. Anything inconvenient just requires a bit of hush money or leverage to counteract.”

“How’d we even get to this subject again? Weren’t we just talking about souls just now?” Rosa butted in.

“Ah. True, how did we get here?”

“I guess it was freedom vs authority that triggered it.”

“If what you said is correct though, do you think the balance has already been lost?”

“What do you mean?”

“Guns. It’s been made pretty difficult to get your hands on guns in a lot of places. Some places you can’t get them at all.”

“Well, the balance has definitely tipped too far in one direction.”

“Which one?”

“Authority.”

“Why do you think that’s happened?”

“Why? I’ve never really thought about it. But… if I had to pin it on something, maybe it’d be the tendency of humans to group together and amalgamate into large hubs, the big cities. The idea and notion that everything is better in big cities is a problematic one. There being more opportunities for success is often the first thing people look at. Stability, people desire that.”

“You mean because people don’t want to suffer, they go to where they think they will suffer less.”

“Yeah. Freedom isn’t something easy to come by. It’s not some sort of right, but rather, something you have to constantly fight to keep. Letting someone else do the thinking for you is much easier though. I suppose those with higher levels of testosterone tend to lean more in favor of their personal freedoms and taking risks.”

“You mean macho dudes?”

“Yeah, I guess they fit the bill. They’re often just demonized, thought of as uneducated or stupid which is sad. It’s a narcissistic view that a lot of people who’ve lived in cities their whole lives eventually fall into believing. Without those people who they consider uneducated and below them, big cities wouldn’t be able to survive. You can’t survive with only brain power, you still need brawn to get things done at the end of the day.”

I felt disheartened when I recalled all the people I’d encountered in my university days who held nothing but disdain toward those men. They’d often call them muscle-brained idiots, laugh at them, and treat those men like they only existed to entertain them. They scorned those who embraced freedom over authority.

“What about the opposite side of things?” When I fell into silence, Rosa suddenly posed another question to me.

“The opposite side? What do you mean?”

“You associated testosterone with freedom and risk-taking, then what of its counterpart?”

“You mean estrogen?”

“Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t it just be the opposite? Authority and stability, right?”

“Hehe, you’d probably get in a lot of trouble if you said that publicly. You’re indirectly suggesting that women are controlling manipulative bitches.”

“Men can have high levels of estrogen too depending on what they eat, not just women.”

“If guys with high levels of testosterone are muscle-brained idiots, does that make women who are high in estrogen the true intellectuals and geniuses of society?”

“Who knows?” I shrugged as I genuinely couldn’t care less about such nonsense.

“Wait, does that mean really smart guys are oozing with estrogen?”

“It could just mean they have lower levels of testosterone. I don’t think it really indicates anything pertaining to estrogen. It’s not like brain-dead girls don’t exist after all.”

“But those girls could just have higher levels of testosterone.”

“Maybe. But I think high levels of estrogen can also make you do some pretty stupid things too.”

“But you just said stability would be favored. Isn’t that contradictory?”