Chapter 433.


    <strong>Chapter 433. Soul Exchange. (5/7)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">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 waspletely pointless.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Can I turn souldar off or get a refund? If god exists, I’ve clearly been scammed by him, he’s clearly ying 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.


    <span style="font-weight:400">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.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Rosa, let’s head back to the tent. I want to try and sleep this off. I’ve got a splitting headache right now.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">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.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Are you really going to be okay? Should we just tear up this contract after all?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, keep it safe. I don’t want to have to sell my soul again. It really sucked.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It tasted that bad?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What’d it taste like exactly?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Sweet and sour.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I never said pork, don’t put words into my mouth.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, Imand you to kiss the back of my hand.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I blinked and stared at her dumbfounded by her suddenmand.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why aren’t you doing it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why would I?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I have your soul now, don’t I? I was testing to see if you can bemanded to do something by the owner of your soul?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I haven’t ever tried tomand someone whose soul I’ve obtained before so I don’t know if it’s possible.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hmm, I see. I was a little curious whether you’d be able tomand me to stop doing something against my will if you didn’t like what I was doing.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Even if I could, I wouldn’t.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why not?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s a slippery slope, a path toward bing a tyrant. Once you’ve tasted the convenience of forcibly controlling someone even once, you’ll inevitably sumb to it again for something else. It might start off as something small and innocent, but over time, you’ll be more and more desensitized to it. Eventually, it will reach a point where you’ve crossed a certain line that should not be crossed.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You could do a lot of good with it too though.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But it does not outweigh the cons. It’s like bing an absolute authority over another person’s life. I have no interest in bing a dictator. Let people live as they please.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Freedom, huh?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What if that freedom is used to kill and impose on the freedom of others?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Naturally some level of authority is in ce to deter that. But there should still be a bnce between the two.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How do you bnce the two sides?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“By arming both sides with the ability to resist one another.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Arming them how though?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“In terms of souls?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then you’re saying guns act as a bncing piece on a scale?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I suppose so.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What happens if one side has too many guns?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Shouldn’t voting them out of power be enough of a deterrent?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, because they can only stay in office for so long anyway.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But an election can be forced through a vote of no confidence, can’t it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How would they do that though?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s quite easy, the media.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But there’s freedom of the press.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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 offpletely resulting in the scavenging hyenas starving to death.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“In the end, money is what dictates what information is made avable to the public. What information is made avable is what is most convenient to those with power. Anything inconvenient just requires a bit of hush money or leverage to counteract.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How’d we even get to this subject again? Weren’t we just talking about souls just now?” Rosa butted in.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Ah. True, how did we get here?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I guess it was freedom vs authority that triggered it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If what you said is correct though, do you think the bnce has already been lost?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What do you mean?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Guns. It’s been made pretty difficult to get your hands on guns in a lot of ces. Some ces you can’t get them at all.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, the bnce has definitely tipped too far in one direction.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Which one?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Authority.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why do you think that’s happened?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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 intorge hubs, the big cities. The idea and notion that everything is better in big cities is a problematic one. There being more opportunities for sess is often the first thing people look at. Stability, people desire that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You mean because people don’t want to suffer, they go to where they think they will suffer less.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. Freedom isn’t something easy toe 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.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You mean macho dudes?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">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,ugh at them, and treat those men like they only existed to entertain them. They scorned those who embraced freedom over authority.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What about the opposite side of things?” When I fell into silence, Rosa suddenly posed another question to me.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“The opposite side? What do you mean?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You associated testosterone with freedom and risk-taking, then what of its counterpart?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You mean estrogen?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Wouldn’t it just be the opposite? Authority and stability, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hehe, you’d probably get in a lot of trouble if you said that publicly. You’re indirectly suggesting that women are controlling maniptive bitches.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Men can have high levels of estrogen too depending on what they eat, not just women.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Who knows?” I shrugged as I genuinely couldn’t care less about such nonsense.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Wait, does that mean really smart guys are oozing with estrogen?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“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.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But those girls could just have higher levels of testosterone.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Maybe. But I think high levels of estrogen can also make you do some pretty stupid things too.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But you just said stability would be favored. Isn’t that contradictory?”