Bathroom Monologues: The Virtue of Society

"Society is what the smarter animals use to get things done. If you're useful to other animals, you get to be part of the society. It doesn’t matter how you are useful. You can be physically useful, emotionally useful, economically, inspirationally, politically, and on and on. Family is one module. Businesses are another. Being a caring brother, having a job, owing a mortgage – these are all ways in which you are useful. But sometimes people are not useful enough. These people do not get to be as big a part of society. Society takes parts of them: their possessions, their values, their self-esteem. For instance, the mentally damaged are not useful enough. They are not emotionally useful to their families or physically useful to the workforce. They get put in little rooms where they get to live out their lives, in a filing cabinet in the back of society until they can be made useful enough to warrant letting them out. These animals still have values. Things are still important to them. They still want possessions and relationships to other animals. But they don’t get to, because they aren’t helping society get things done. This is the compassion of animals.”