I have no gripe with the basic design of the animal known Homo sapiens. It has an impressive free range of motion, adaptability, fingers which allow it to perform delicate tasks as well as arms which provide strength, and it has a brain that is capable of some logic as well as emotional thoughts. And while not quite as impressive in this regard as, say, Canis lupus familiaris (the dog), it has some capacity for selflessness and dedication to things other than itself.
On an individual basis, Homo sapiens is a decent design. But when people start acting like people, that’s when this decent design falls to shit. That’s when people start doing things that are contrary to their nature, cruel, hurtful things, just for the sake of fitting in with other people. This is how we elect and empower corrupt politicians; this is how we support the torture of other humans, other animals and other life forms with every Big Mac we buy with our almighty dollars: cash equivalent of our ability to “fit in”. After all, how can you make a dollar without “fitting into” someone else’s plan, a client’s, a boss’s, a bank’s. Life as a person requires that you act like a person, or at least the way people tell you to act.
And where does this leave those of us who can’t or won’t fit in? The answer is at your fingertips. We end up at a suicide site in some forgotten corner of the internet. We say a few words about how wrong the world is. And then, one by one, we just sort of disappear.
2 comments
It doesn’t seem to me that society has developed in a particularly reasoned and coordinated fashion, but in a knee-jerk way as it lurches from crisis to crisis. It probably turned out better than it could have–for a while, a wholesale nuclear war appeared nearly certain. The fitting-in thing probably results from fear. Bucking the system is risky and may require independent means, as corrupt situations are also where the food and the rent come from. Hopefully you won’t disappear. Statistics are reasonably optimistic, however–90% of the suicidal will actually go on to die from natural causes rather than their own hand.
This is precisely why it is so important for people who see the way things really are to take the time to open their mouths, to band together and try to change things. Is the thought that something could be different not enough to give it a try?