As I write this, I can’t help but laugh at how the title could be uplifting if written a different way. However, this post isn’t like that. I’ve come to the realization I don’t want to compete in this giant rat race called life. I don’t want to live long enough waiting for this body to decay. I just want out. I have grown to hate the mortal experience and if cursed to re-incarnate, let me come back as something unable to comprehend itself.
Life is just one big game of Monopoly where the most selfish person is the winner because no amount of sugarcoating will hide the fact… life is a one-player game! You are born a lone existence and you will die a lone existence. No matter how many family and friends surround you when you enter/exit, you are still alone.
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I don’t think life itself is automatically a rat race. Yes, in capitalist and competitive countries, it sure can look that way, but framing matters.
In the same statement, you denounce their greatest enemy, decay. So you can see how it might look at cross purposes, but the Tao teaches that paradox is an unavoidable and welcome part of all complex thought.
Most humans are a mess of contradictions. The attempt to apply a cohesive narrative is something we have been taught to do.
Also, where is too much decay? My blood pressure has been acting up lately, the latest gift from age and decay. Am I beyond repair? Doubtful, I have the issue well in hand.
The only contest is between the unseen torturer and whether you will let it break you. That’s one way of looking at it anyway. I aspire to become indomitable, I’ve been working on it.
but I have people to corrupt, that’s why I figure the world is hanging on to me so hard. It’s what I’m best at, quiet suggestions leading to questionable outcomes.
So go for the exit, if that’s your will. There are other ways to protest the competitiveness, and to try and change the world.
Everyone is a free agent, ultimately. They might have obligations, responsibilities, and people who they are attached to. Those are facts, but the grim calculus is weighing that against your pain. You’ll find there is a very specific amount of pain that will initiate a suicidal episode. It isn’t a choice at that point, having the episode.
However, if you have quiet time in between episodes, you can lock up the weapons, because that person is very upset and could hurt you. All these parts of ourselves, sometimes at cross purposes, but such is life.
“I don’t think life itself is automatically a rat race.”
-Isn’t that exactly what Darwin’s “survival of the species” is? I mean sure, some countries in the EU are much better when it comes to income equality and quality of life for the masses, (and I absolutely wish I was born there), but ultimately it is still the rich rule the world and the poor are subjugated by them. We are paid peanuts, just enough for us to not to revolt.
Ah but you see that’s a perverse interpretation of the origin of species, which goes back to some dark and eugenic places. What happened was right after the turn of the 20th century some rich jerks managed to convince people that those who were poor were inferior genetically, and they started sterilizing them.
However evolution is survival of the fittest, fittest doesn’t always mean strongest or smartest. It means best adapted. The very rich produce nothing, they provide nothing, they have managed to be the worst adapted humans yet make out like the best.
Oh this is a long rant I can’t get into on a Thursday, but there is no way in HELL or any other plane of existence that some of the rich assholes I meet are better adapted. Most of them would be gone in a week if they didn’t have Cava and Chipotle. Lazy moochers, and yet they want us to believe that it is the unemployed that are the drag on the economy.
Which I always have to be; excuse me, who hoards wealth? Rich idiots. The economy runs better the more wealth is put to work. It works better when there are oppertunities to change your economic station. The more money in use out of the already printed supply, the better everyone does, EVERYONE.
Which is why I think rich people are sadists. They could still be quite well off, and not absorb 90% of the productive output of the country. They force people to starve out of spite. They want everybody panicing all the time because it makes their profits go up.
Which evolutionary speaking is the worst adapted behavior in the history of the species. Prioritizing a few lazy people while robbing the working class. Genetics does well with large numbers also, the more variety of children humanity has the better off it is.
However epigenetics has shown that the stress of poverty imprints on most of these children. This makes them sick more often, and more likely to be disabled better in life. This is not well adapted behavior on the part of the people who think they need five mansions and three boats.
Freeloaders, parasites, that’s what the rich are. I suppose nature has parasites as well, but never one that has so convinced the host that they are superior. Fleas and rats at least are considered disgusting, and all they do is eat anything they can,
it’s not like they take a whole bunch of American jobs and automate them away…… now that’s scummy behavior. It’s not like they’re price gouging food for the poorest and most hungry.
It isn’t as though an entire ethnic heritage is under attack by rats or fleas. That’s the kind of parasite job for the really rich.
Oh you definitely misunderstood what I said- I most certainly do NOT believe the rich are better. The uber wealthy got their wealthy by being ruthless and evil tactics. I know the uber wealthy are shitty ppl. And I know most of those rich kids are spoiled douches. No need to tell me that as I already hate the rich.
When I say survival of the species, I don’t mean that the rich are better- I mean that the rich are more ruthless. Hence “survival of the fittest.” I guess you think I mean “fittest” means best or smartest. Nooooo. Fittest to me mean the most ruthless, most selfish, most manipulative, etc.
and those assholish traits are what makes ppl the most successful in life apparently. That’s why all the CEOs, top politicians, etc are all the worst shittiest ppl. There’s only a FEW at the top (of govt or private companies) who aren’t assholes.
My rant has always been that the most assholish ppl tend to do the best in life. By best I mean, economically, politically, financially. NOT talking about character, work ethic, intelligence, niceness, kindness, etc. Hence the RUB that I feel in life- that those who are the worst do the best in life.
Like you, I also hate/rant against the rich.
And even back in the caveman days, before modern governments and systems, it was the biggest, baddest, strongest, most selfish, most manipulative, and most evil survived. Sure, they had to work together to kill bigger prey and such, but guess what, there was still a hierarchy. Hell, even dogs have hierarchy. And many other animals like lions or apes where there’s a pack leader who gets the eat first, have the best parts to eat, and the “right” to breed, ie they are the ONLY ones allowed to have sex. Good luck with being a male in those species. 0 chance to get with a female.
So yes, “life is automatically a rat race.” That’s how this universe was designed. Those who don’t win the rat race die out/starve/etc. It was a dog eat dog world even before the vulture capitalists.
Not what the fossil record seems to back up. Yes, there was a chief and there were more influential members of the tribe. There were also tribes that were so successful they killed a lot of people, it was a different period in humanity’s development.
However the wealthy and influential lived in fear of the masses, they could never behave as cruelly and with as much malice as modern humans do. Being chief was a dangerous job, because if you get enough people killed, the people kill you. There weren’t courts, they didn’t have lawyers.
The entirety of the administrative state is designed to isolate the wealthy from the people producing wealth. Wealthy people today aren’t frightened. The state of wealth today is a modern awful invention.
Geez, even 50 years ago it wasn’t this bad. No, I don’t buy into “it’s always been this bad”…… It definitely got a lot worse a few decades ago.
Oh no, you misunderstand what I said. I never said “it’s always been this bad.” I DO know things are much worse than they used to be- which is why I AM so damn depressed bc life doesn’t HAVE to be this way- hence being depressed and hopeless, bc I know I was born into the “wrong” generation.
Previous generations enjoyed wealth and better life. Mainly the selfish Boomers. The older Gen X (who I have no beef with) have also been doing ok. But as we get to the younger Gen X or Older Millennials, that’s when there was a noticeable change in the economic policies that fucked the masses.
What I was trying to say above is that it’s always been a survival of the fittest world since the cavemen times. There were “winners” and “losers” and the losers died out. Typically the most selfish and ruthless survived. Our species is probably getting worse and worse over the thousand generations.
Darkness, she understands how life is a rat race. Like in the past, the winners won’t dirty their hands with lesser work while on the other hand, without the losers, no one will be willing to work the dirty jobs.
As for decay, I have always hated having a body weak to sickness. If it was possible, I wouldn’t think twice about becoming a cyborg since smell, taste and touch have always been muted to me. So many horror stories show people going crazy but I guess I must already be crazy since I don’t care if they were lost to me.