Analysis of "A House on Fire"

For whatever reason it seems I put a bee in a few people's bonnet with my House on Fire posting. The media surge, the blistering controversy and the endless interview requests have made it necessary for me to formulate a response. No one ever said genius was easy.

To my belief system I believe one has a problem if one believes it is OK to cover one's self with gasoline, set it on fire and think no harm will come to you. Others ask what's the big deal if you lie to yourself. Heck if I know, meet you in the burn ward - or the morgue. Oh, I'm sorry, that's just me being "negative". I'm failing to support you! You're hurt by my sarcasm when I suggest a gun is quicker and less painful. Nightly, I ask the question: Dear God, do I really have to live with these people?
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"The world is fine!"
But of course it is, dear one. Why did we invade Iraq? Because of our love for the Iraqi people! Why do people say we have to stop using oil? Because they are misguided by personal profit and won't admit it will last forever. Does pollution really hurt the environment? Of course not. Everything we do is good! So please, sleep well tonight and ignore that burning smell of fire. It's much too upsetting to think about!

"Can you just forget the messenger for a minute and listen to the message?"
I guess you can make the logical argument that were no one to tell you your house is about to burn down you could die a peaceful death. But listen how often the facts are ignored but the messenger is debated. It is the act of the guilty.

"Every day I do what it takes to make life good for my family no matter how much it kills me."
It's always scary when people try to make the world a better place by killing themselves - for then their bitterness will drive them to make you as they are. Squelching the desire to live is like trying to keep the lid on a boiling pot - it's only a matter of time before it explodes. But the Lying Man allowed himself to be bribed into silence with a nice house, car, etc. and then went on to make the tragic mistake of betting the lives of his family on this course of action. For as we saw he had to have an outlet somewhere and that was in the pouring of the gasoline. He secretly hoped a random act would ignite the blaze, allowing him to deflect some of the responsibility. But given enough time he would have lit it himself in a moment seized with passion.

"Later, after the house and all inside it burned to the ground, I found out it was the Lying Man himself who had spread the gasoline around - manifesting his troubles on his inside to the outside."
There is a natural human desire to hate the constraints placed on us by the insane rules of money. Whoever heard of a system where a man wants to work but is not allowed to? No matter how many toys we acquire or even how many lives we put at stake, there is no denying our resentment of constraints and there comes a tipping point when it can no longer be denied. And if one cannot voluntarily make the decision one is on an unbearable path then one will lay out his own destruction in order to be free - much as we are doing now with a self-destructive war and the sabotaging of our financial system. America HATES capitalism.

"When questioned by his neighbors about the dubious nature of such an insane act, the guilty man told them it was OK because he was smart enough to lie about."
To the Lying Man's way of thinking, life and death were not determined by reality but by the ability to deflect blame. To him, death was his family finding out his true feelings and the fact he was undermining their very existence. Like all liars, he thought lying made him smart. And that as long as he was a successful liar, he would never reap what he had sown. But the laws of nature cannot be broken and the truth - no matter how horrible - is always the only way out.