Dopplewhat?

The other day, in a place and time probably better left undisclosed, I shared a brief conversation with a woman that touched on the subject of twins. As you have been following these missives for some little time now, you have probably guessed that the event prompted me to ponder the nature of twins and write a completely non-authoritative thesis that somehow will fall just short of enriching your life or adding anything to the collective scientific wisdom on the subject. Twins are an interesting biological phenomenon. It seems that in most mammalian species, multiple births are rather common.  In humans, there are two types of natural multiple births; fraternal, wherein multiple ova are present at fertilization and identical; where multiple births is the result of a less common genetic condition that prompts a single fertilized ovum to split early in the development process resulting in two offspring of identical DNA makeup.  None of this has anything to do with the off-ramp of convoluted thought my mind chose for this particular journey into the absurd.

My thoughts turned immediately to the question of good versus evil.  We are all aware of the concept of the evil twin.  Who among us has not made an attempt to assign responsibility for some nefarious deed to an evil twin in hopes of escaping culpability ourselves?  Of course, nobody admits to being the evil twin.  We all claim to be the good twin, hapless victim of the actions of another.

Let’s explore this phenomenon a bit more closely.  Evil acts are common, we witness them every day. But who actually engages in these misdeeds?  Not you and I, certainly. I postulate that no person will commit an act they know to be evil.  We have built-in defense mechanisms that prevent us from bad behavior.  Instead, when we engage in actions held by society to be criminal or immoral, we rationalize them away. It is our tendency to justify what we have done by offering some extenuating circumstance as dispensation from acting counter to natural or statutory law.

Therefore, as we are prevented from committing evil acts, and know that evil acts are indeed committed; the perpetrators must be our evil twins!  Recalling the previous discussion of biologic twins, we can establish that given the rare nature of their incidence, not enough such twins exist to account for all of the evil observed in the world.  So there must be some other explanation.  I offer the doppelganger.

It is a commonly held belief in many cultures that for every individual, there exists an exact duplicate somewhere in the world. No hereditary link exists, just a coincidence of physical attributes. While no scientific data supports these claims, have all of us not been approached by a stranger at one time or another who believes we are someone known to them when in fact we are not.  After some embarrassment and confusion does the stranger not claim to know someone who looks just like us?  Many of these legends prescribe a malevolent nature to the doppelganger.  Clearly this offers a non-verifiable hypothesis for the presence of evil in a population where no individual will admit to actually being evil.

So, now that we have identified the purveyors of evil, what is to be done?  I believe it should be the responsibility of every citizen of the world to seek out their doppelganger and kill them.  Remember, these are evil twins engaging in immoral or criminal behavior.  Their presence is a bane to regulated society.  Caution: I am not encouraging you hunt down and murder your biological twin (put the scissors back in the drawer, Heather); they are not your nemesis. Your target is that evil entity out there committing unspeakable acts for which you are then assigned responsibility.  Whether you have been issued a parking ticket or indicted by an international tribunal for genocide, you know it wasn’t you fault.  They did it, not you!

Think as well of the collateral benefit.  By halving the population we would free up demand for precious natural resources.  The price of goods and commodities would return to affordable levels.  Pressure on the environment caused by over population would be eased.  If you happened to be married to a worthless so-and-so, when the good twin eliminated the evil twin you could enjoy the romance of which you had always dreamed.  You would always be able to find a parking place at the mall during Christmas!

Note: The contents of this missive should not be construed as a legal directive to inflict injury on any other human being actually living.  However, if you have an imaginary friend averring no claims to biological existence…