Lately I’ve been heavy on the escapism, looking at how it is elsewhere. I guess the hope is that it makes me grateful, and I am, or at least I’m trying.
but I can’t get over how screwed up it all is, how I don’t deserve to have it as good as I do…. everywhere I look the story is the same; rich jerks sucking up all the resources to live the high life, middle class people barely scraping by, and the working poor…… starving, having buildings collapse on them, being the victims of natural and man made disasters.
I’ve spent so long getting therapy for depression and anxiety, I want to believe that people are fundamentally good, and that mankind is on an upward climb towards a kinder world….. but I’ve lost my faith these days. Now I feel like an island in the storm, the last person stupid enough to be kind waiting for the natural consequences of that to eliminate me.
I think it says something about mankind, that when we first found that we had mutated from creatures before us, and before that, all the way back to single cell organisms. It doesn’t matter if you believe that for this example, but when we found that out the rich used it as an excuse to call their exploitation “natural”…. “Darwin proved it.”
Instead of appreciating how unlikely life is, especially intelligent life (though that intelligence is very much in question)… point is walking around tool using computer building life is pretty amazing. We SHOULD be grateful, and kind….
instead this mess, throat biting hunger, gut wrenching existential agony
so yeah, in the face of that, having food to eat, air conditioning, a roof over my head, video games to play… I want to be grateful….. but that’s part of me that’s broken; if I could be purely self motivated, self centered, I could be delighted…..
but I don’t know how, I don’t know how to stop caring about our miserable species
3 comments
I’d say being grateful to be among the privileged few is like being grateful at having a comfy deck chair on the titanic. I know how it is, as much as I ***** about my shit life, I know in very real terms how privileged I am to have a roof over my head and 4 working limbs attached to my otherwise rotting corpse. I haven’t always been this “lucky” and I’ve certainly witnessed firsthand those who aren’t.
Gratitude is an artificial construct. It’s an emotional invention, like faith or hope or dreaming, which humans need to get them through an otherwise bleak and doomed existence. We all die, we all rot, we all lose everything in the end, and the human race at large is an extension of this ill-fated path. For all the great works of art, advances in knowledge and charitable dreams, where the fuck are we? Same tribal, selfish & exploitative shitheap that the cavemen lived by–our species was programmed to be a consuming, conquering machine and it has done its job well. Why would it suddenly change its core programming? That’s like expecting all lions to go vegetarian, aint gonna happen because they were programmed to be predators. So we have 2 options: either we accept our shitty nature and revel in it like Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street, or we delude ourselves into thinking we’re somehow exempt from the bloody carnage. That’s where these artificial constructs figure in, flood yourself with speculative hope, faith, gratitude, “all you need is love”, and celebrate a fleeting moment of delusional security before this boat sinks straight to the bottom.
So the question is, how comfy is your deck chair? I don’t know about yours but mine reeks of blood. And the screams of those drowning in lower decks make it awful hard for me to enjoy my phonograph record of “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. I’ll never be grateful for this shit. At the moment I’m doped on pills and high on SH which is how I can function enough to type. But that’s as far as I can take the charade. I’ll never logically accept life on these terms because it is logically unacceptable. Maybe things like gratitude & faith are other people’s form of drugs/SH. I can understand that. Wish it would work for me but it doesn’t. I need the hard shit. Maybe with enough luxury, comfort & security it would strengthen the delusion… but I’m not at that level. Affluence is a strong drug but I can’t get my hands on any, so it’s hillbilly heroin for me, same thing just less glamorous as tuxedos & evening dresses. Whatever floats your deck chair…
That’s at least part of it though; who soaked the deck chair? Yes, there’s a partial accountability by enjoying the fruits of others suffering, but it’s a complicated morally gray area.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about pollution, which is as near an intentional self harm that humanity has ever done at scale. We’re all complicit in it, at least in America. Today when I drive my fuel burning car to the swimming pool, complicit. The power running my air conditioner keeping my office a nice 68 degrees… at least somewhat provided by coal. Heck, the land on which my house sits was stolen from indigenous people…. and built with wealth stolen from colonial nations.
but what are we to do? If we insist on only profiting from the fruits of our own labor…. at best we get a mild sense of moral superiority, but at worst? we starve. But even if we denied it, if we aren’t constantly working to undo these systemic injustices, we’re still complicit.
Not that I think complacency is an acceptable approach either. I was raised among the almost criminally affluent, and their complacency still makes me sick. I couldn’t join their world, part of why I’m still adrift.
heh, and even that which numbs me is a product of my affluence; prescription drugs created by cultivating poisons, part of a system that floods the market with opiates and other hard drugs. My relative safety came at a cost, I’m just not directly paying it.
IDK, I still hope we’re reaching for that Star Trek post scarcity system, though on that note, did you ever notice how many episodes have to do with the conflicts having that affluence causes the crew of whatever ship to be very frustrated that they have to watch relatively primitive cultures suffer? The prime directive is essentially 24th century complacency…. no wonder most captains break it at least once.
I do think that’s my model though, fighting for better treatment even though we’ve screwed up in the past. The point is that we have modern construction techniques, water purification, agricultural systems. No one should die from starvation, lack of or poor quality water, or lack of shelter. I can maybe buy into that medical care is still too scarce, but it would get a lot less so if people weren’t fighting for those basic human needs.
so, from my blood soaked position, I still seek to cleanse myself and the culture I live in. What else can I do? Knowing itself is a burden, and it’s one I struggle to live with.
bingo you’ve hit on the moral conflict that hits all introspective humans, especially the latest generation who can’t hide behind ignorance like boomers did. You have to be pretty willfully dense to ignore the pain, suffering & environmental damage we cause on a daily basis, and if you’re unlucky enough to have a bone of compassion (by whatever freak genetic mutation) it could prove to be your undoing.
There has been only 1 marginal advancement I’ve seen in my lifetime, though it’s still a drop in an infinite sea. Recycling and the reduction of nonbiodegradable materials has become more of the norm, not just an individual choice. Sure we can pout and refuse to buy plastic containers, but it doesn’t make a difference until the companies themselves stop using plastics. And that’s happening (albeit at an infuriatingly slow pace).
In other words I think the change has to come from the top down. Proctor & Gamble has to start using biodegradable containers, rather than us consumers leading the movement at the checkout counter. If it’s just us then it’s like you said, at best it’s just a weird little moral superiority.
HOWEVER there’s a lot to be said for that weird little moral superiority. I went vegan years ago and it saved me from suicide because it gave me a small reason to feel proud of myself rather than hating every aspect of my worthless existence. Does it save any cows or give the planet any more years of clean air? Nope. But it helped me. And maybe that’s the point of doing our infinitessimal part? We’re not changing the world, we’re changing how we feel about ourselves. It’s a start.
But of course that opens up the rabbit hole on a plague of other hypocrisies. It’s like the old “paper or plastic” debate… Stop using plastic to decrease waste, but then you’re killing more trees. It’s an infinite tangle for the consumer. Again that’s why change has to come from the top down because our hands are really tied.
idk man. But it’s good that we think about these things. I think? Who knows, we might be beating ourselves deeper into a suicidal pit. But what’s the alternative? Willful ignorance can only take us so far……