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It was on their third date that an argument broke out. It was odd to Kya how much you could feel like you were on the same page as another person who would turn out to be utterly alien. Later, she would think to herself that maybe that was something to be happy about, that even if there were disagreements, they could find commonalities. In the moment, she was mostly just trying and failing to keep her cool.
“You can’t just point to Amon and discredit every single thing that the equalists stood for,” said Kya.
“Can’t I?” Mezuk asked, folding his arms, leaving his noodles where they were. “They followed him. They went along with his orders. The death and destruction, the rioting, that was the equalists, that was equalism.”
“No,” replied Kya, shaking her head before he was even done. “You have to understand where the equalists were coming from. Non-benders don’t have the same opportunities, they don’t have the same money, and no one is helping them. A lot of them live in slums. The police are entirely benders, and until recently, the leadership consisted entirely of benders.”
“But they’re not anymore,” said Mezuk. “We have elections now, for whatever those are worth. In point of fact, the equalists were violent. Surely you can acknowledge that.”
“I can,” said Kya. “I do. But we need to be careful when we talk about the equalists, because the militant equalists were a minority group, led by a madman, who was himself a bender. There was very understandable anger, and it was exploited. That anger though, that unrest, that was there before Amon ever came around, and just because there was this radical element doesn’t mean that the core issues didn’t have merit.”
“So you think that all benders should have been blocked?” asked Mezuk. “If you look at all the progress that’s been made in the last seventy years, it’s come because of bending, I don’t understand how anyone would want to turn back the clock.”
“I don’t,” said Kya. “That’s not actually what the mainstream equalists believe. It’s first a critique, and only second a call to action, and while pretty much all of the equalists believe in the basic premise of that critique, there are deep divisions in what to actually do about it.”
“It’s actually really patronizing to be lectured on this so-called critique,” said Mezuk. “I’m entirely familiar.”
“Are you?” asked Kya. “Why would you go straight to talking about Amon then? In my experience, most of the time people do that, it’s because they want to side-step the critique.”
“I feel like there’s not going to be a fourth date,” said Mezuk. “But if you want to get into it, then let’s get into it. So long as we both acknowledge that we’re not going to solve anything.”
“Sure,” said Kya. “Fine.” He watched her for a moment, likely trying to see whether it was actually fine, which it wasn’t, but he pushed on ahead anyway.
“I shouldn’t have said it was patronizing,” said Mezuk. “You have no idea what I know, and I don’t know what you know, so … can I potentially patronize you?”
“Yeah,” said Kya. “Just don’t start in on ancient history, unless it’s part of your point.” She finally picked her fork back up and began eating, giving him a chance to talk.
“People need to eat,” said Mezuk. “People need houses, they need water, they need other stuff like that. Like, actually need, this is beyond what they want. So in any group, like a city, there’s some amount of hours and effort that need to be devoted to all that, the process of keeping everyone alive. And once that’s done, people can start producing more than that, the surplus. Now the question is, who gets to decide where that surplus goes?”
“You’re really starting on the ground floor,” said Kya.
“I think it’s where people should start,” said Mezuk. “It’s where we disagree. For me, I think that where the surplus goes should be decided by the people who created it. For you … ?”
“I don’t think it’s about who decides at all,” replied Kya, frowning at him. This was not at all where she’d thought that this conversation was going to go. “What matters isn’t who decides, it’s where it actually ends up going. Those aren’t the same questions.”
“You’re right,” he nodded. “But from my perspective, it’s about who made the surplus, either way. They get to decide what to do with it. Benders can do more than non-benders, so they make more surplus, so it just ends up looking unjust, like it’s part of some grand pattern instead of a consequence of who has what abilities.” He sat back, like he’d just made an excellent point.
“There are lots of people who can’t be productive members of society,” said Kya. “I’m not even talking about the bending divide, I’m talking about old people, children, people with impairments, people who aren’t just choosing not to help out, or to make a surplus, if that’s how you want to say it. And if we have people who are living in shanty towns, eating rotten food, when we have the material resources to prevent that, then we’re living in an unjust society. An evil society.”
“So we agree that it’s not actually about bending,” said Mezuk, which might have come off as smug, if he hadn’t seemed so uncertain about it.
“I’m completely fine with a system where people who make the surplus get to decide what to do with it,” said Kya. “The problem is that what they’re doing with it is not, by and large, helping the people who need help. For at least the past fifty years, we’ve had the ability to make sure everyone was fed, to make sure that everyone was educated, to make sure that we had housing and sanitation. We haven’t gone about actually doing any of that. We have shanty towns. People still starve to death.”
“But you … do think that it’s about the benders?” asked Mezuk.
“Benders create the surplus, which means, under the current system, that they get to decide where it goes, and for the most part, they’ve decided that it should go to them,” said Kya. “They live in better houses, they segregate from non-benders, they have better schools, better shops, all kinds of things. They use their surplus to gain political power, which helps them make laws that favor them. They use their surplus on luxuries while other people literally starve to death. And it’s really not as simple as people producing surplus, and getting to decide what’s done with it, because it’s not even about how much effort or natural talent there is. There are bending families that don’t actually do anything, they just invest the money and get good returns.”
“Investment is a kind of work,” replied Mezuk, frowning a bit. “There’s risk. It’s not the same as working in a factory, but it does mean putting something on the line.”
“It does,” replied Kya. “Sure. But there are also people who aren’t investing at all, people who just own things, and don’t do any actual work. They own buildings, and pay for someone to manage and maintain them, contributing nothing but that ownership. And because they have people in with the police, and people writing laws —”
“Corruption is a different matter,” said Mezuk.
“Corruption comes in a lot of flavors,” replied Kya. “Sometimes it’s people paying for things that they shouldn’t be able to pay for, but other times it’s just influence. If you’re a bender, and all the people who make laws are benders, then you have something in common, you have bending practice together, you have an insight into their lives, an inherent empathy. Mezuk, people are bad at understanding each other. They’re bad at seeing the perspective of others, of putting themselves in the shoes of someone who’s had a different life, different circumstances. I’d say that works of fiction would be the solution to that, but publishing and radio are both about money more than most things, and the hard truths probably don’t sell well.”
“And you think that you understand the benders so well?” asked Mezuk. “Despite everything you just said about how difficult it is to truly understand another person and what they’ve been through, or where they’re coming from?”
They hadn’t had the bending conversation. It was considered impolite, in these times, in part thanks to a newspaper column that had been published the year before. Outward displays of bending had become much more rare, and you weren’t supposed to ask. Still, it was a helpful thing to know, and if they’d gotten further into their third date, perhaps she’d have learned some other way.
“Is this the point where you tell me you’re a bender, and I have it all wrong?” she asked.
“No,” said Mezuk, shaking his head. “I’m not a bender.” He paused. “Are you?”
“I am,” replied Kya. “A fire bender.”
“Ah,” he said.
They sat in silence for a bit.
“I suppose you think it’s paternalistic?” ventured Kya.
“No,” he replied. “I mean, it is, but I mostly think that I’ve seen enough freeloaders to last me a lifetime, and if you do anything to encourage them more, you deserve what you get, which is more freeloaders. If you’re suggesting that we have laws put in place, then I have to fight you on that. These are arguments about the future of the city, and the future of the world, and we need to have them, because one of us is wrong.”
“And you have no compassion?” asked Kya. “No empathy for the people in need?”
“I do,” replied Mezuk. “Of course I do. But I don’t think that their life is going to be improved by taking from others. They need work. Without work, they’ll be back the next month, asking for handouts yet again.”
“Then we give them handouts,” said Kya. “We have enough to go around. What kind of argument is that, to say that we shouldn’t help people because they might need more help in the future? And I reject that whole line of thinking, that all those people need are jobs. Some of them can’t afford medicine, they’re perpetually sick, they would have jobs if the city took care of them. There are parents who have to choose between their children and their wages, and they would have better, more steady jobs if the city stepped up to provide schooling for everyone, not just those who could afford it.”
“And is that the difference between us?” asked Mezuk. He sat back in his chair. “We just disagree on what the outcomes would be? Or about the nature of people?”
“It feels like it goes deeper,” said Kya. “It feels like there’s something else. Maybe it’s not even about benders or non-benders.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I should go.”
“You haven’t finished your dish,” said Mezuk, pointing at it.
“I’ve lost my appetite,” she replied. She stood up from her seat. “Sorry.”
“For?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “For not being able to solve a deep political disagreement in the course of twenty minutes while I was angry.”
“That’s fine,” he smiled. “It happens to the best of us. No fourth date then?”
“No,” she said, smiling a bit. She wanted to be polite, to say that it was nice to have met him, but it wasn’t, not particularly.