"Coursing through life, knowing I have nothing to complain of.
But that doesn't free me from this hell, from the world that can't get enough. (my attempt at poetry)"
But I'm much better at typing out my thoughts. Speaking with a friend today, I couldn't even complain as he spoke of those that would love to have my problems. I realize I'm spoiled. Yes, I am from America. Yes, my country sucks up resources like that's its job. Yes, we are the root of any and every problem in the world...blah, blah, blah. I get it. But I think something a lot of people don't understand is that their country isn't any different. It's easy to complain of the injustices in life when you're weak. But when you're the strong, you can't and so must look at the truth and the truth is this. Everyone hates us and yet few of them realize we are the same as them. We are not bastards that enjoy hurting others. We love our friends and family like others but guess what, most of those people are in this country. Why should we do what is right when other countries only try to get ahead. Sure when you are weak it's easy to point out the faults of the strong but the fact is that the weak would do the same thing once strong. "Power corrupts" yeah? This isn't a justification. This is to open the eyes of the envious.
I should say to begin with, I hate my country. I do, honestly. I think we need to bleed, to remember we are human. Even our military is starting to forget that as we use drones to fight for us. We are desynthesized to ourselves. We know not what our body does as our eyes are glued to the TV. But that's the pathetic dream of countries, isn't it?
"One day, our people won't be forced to starve. No, no longer will we allow even our homeless to thirst. And for those who are willing to, well they will work. And no longer will we be limited in what goods will be made available to us. And our people will never be found wanting as we will make our country rich and our people educated."
It doesn't sound so bad when you write it out, just when you put it into practice. The fact is that when there are multiple countries striving for such a goal, there will be losers and for the most part, America has been a winner. But it is only when a man loses his dream that he sees the pointless of it. Well we haven't lost it yet. The worst thing happened to us, we are living the American Dream. And as we do, divorce rates rise, depression is running rampant, and the only way we know how to fix it is to work harder and buy more stuff. This is our hell. Africans thirst for water, we thirst for true life. Many would say "why won't you just help other countries or at least stop taking advantage of them" but that's how we were raised. Morality can't be in business, dirties the water too much. In business, you get the most you can while giving the least for the longest time line applicable to the situation. That is our code of honor and any other code can go fuck itself. This is America, and we are businessmen. Don't forget it, we will slit your throat before we will tell our children they can't buy the toy the neighbor got.
Pity us before you hate us. And I hope God can forgive me for living here but how can we escape? Is even moral to run from such a horrid country? What if I'm supposed to change it, save it? Not just me, but with others maybe I should try to save it. Damn, why do the other countries allow us to do this? If everyone constrained trade with us, if they just fought back the evils of our country instead of just bitching. O God we need something from the outside to save us, we need our tvs to show us the world we are shaping and the consequences of our actions...not Seinfeld.
But we aren't the only problem. our brothers from other countries profit from our addictions, that's why none of you will open our country's eyes isn't it? Yes you hate us, you critique us and yet if we changed and lived within our means the rest of the world would be screwed. We are the consumer and everyone is our producer. We are the only way everyone's economies can still grow. And so you sell us our sins and hate our guts. Like a moral slave trader: "I'm not the one enslaving them, I hate it. I'm just profiting from it. After all, someone's got to do it, right? I can't change it so I might as well fund my moral life with this blood money" That's what it is. "O those Americans are buying too much, they are raising the prices of food around the world causing starvation. Bastards!" And yet how hard would it be for the producers to just refuse us and sell food to the hungry at a lower price? O shit, yeah that's right. We aren't the only sinners here. And suddenly it seems all countries have had their hands bloodied by this "starvation" affair. Don't blame us only. We are all to blame, the world. We shouldn't buy and others shouldn't sell to us. But everyone's greed causes this disgusting world to continue the way it does. Everyone has blood on their hands. We just accept ours. God forgive us, sometimes we embrace it.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Righteous Anger
I want to feel it so bad. I need to run or something because for some reason I'm hoping someone will give me a good reason to be furious. Something to trigger me, to allow me to be completely venomous and have it justified. I'm so tired of giving others the other cheek. I want revenge for something that isn't mine to avenge. I need to be passionate for that which is allowable. I feel like I'm caged in this world.
I'm a savage, no reason to deny it. I have these desires that won't leave me. I want to fight, I want to hurt, I want to feel pain, I want to take, to die, to fuck, to cut through everyone's shit. I'm so fucking tired of this life and it's bullshit rules. Of being nice and being patted on the shoulder only to be pissed on the next moment. I know wielding my words as weapons can hurt others, but what if it frees me from this? I'm tired of the rules that come with civility. Fuck civilization. I want to fight and be killed in battle. I want to feel the animal God put in me run free and passionately. I need to so bad but when I look around, I see a bunch of caged animals whose eyes have lost the lust for life I barely possess. I need something. Like a lion needs a juicy prey to kill, a hunk of meat to just sink the teeth into. God I need that. Whatever that looks like. But instead all I see in my life is tv dinners, dreams replaced with kids, and the reverence for mediocrity. These animals forget they came from a line of beasts who used wits to survive and thrive among the most vicious in the land. We can be so much more but now here we are discussing how to best support the poor children in Africa, how to shelter the homeless, how to support the widows. Since when did we treat others as our pets to be taken care of? Is it love to treat others as our investments or pets? No. I think it's love to let others deal with their own problems instead of treating them like stupid children.
Is this behind my anger? I don't know. All I know is that I need these fists to meet something but at the same time I don't particularly want to hurt anyone, I just need to fight for something. This life is unacceptable. I am unacceptable.
I'm a savage, no reason to deny it. I have these desires that won't leave me. I want to fight, I want to hurt, I want to feel pain, I want to take, to die, to fuck, to cut through everyone's shit. I'm so fucking tired of this life and it's bullshit rules. Of being nice and being patted on the shoulder only to be pissed on the next moment. I know wielding my words as weapons can hurt others, but what if it frees me from this? I'm tired of the rules that come with civility. Fuck civilization. I want to fight and be killed in battle. I want to feel the animal God put in me run free and passionately. I need to so bad but when I look around, I see a bunch of caged animals whose eyes have lost the lust for life I barely possess. I need something. Like a lion needs a juicy prey to kill, a hunk of meat to just sink the teeth into. God I need that. Whatever that looks like. But instead all I see in my life is tv dinners, dreams replaced with kids, and the reverence for mediocrity. These animals forget they came from a line of beasts who used wits to survive and thrive among the most vicious in the land. We can be so much more but now here we are discussing how to best support the poor children in Africa, how to shelter the homeless, how to support the widows. Since when did we treat others as our pets to be taken care of? Is it love to treat others as our investments or pets? No. I think it's love to let others deal with their own problems instead of treating them like stupid children.
Is this behind my anger? I don't know. All I know is that I need these fists to meet something but at the same time I don't particularly want to hurt anyone, I just need to fight for something. This life is unacceptable. I am unacceptable.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Happiness? No thanks, I'm a realist.
So I've been thinking about happiness recently. What makes us happy, why it does, who are we if we aren't people chasing happiness...it was interesting. I don't think I'll be original in any way, even if I came to certain conclusions on my own but I feel I can express my thoughts. So unfortunately, I think there are many ways to become happy (just as many to become sad).
One of the biggest ways I think someone can be happy is to have really low standards for themselves...in everything. This may lead to them not reaching their "full potential" but that's not the goal I was looking to achieve in this thought experiment. Most of my misery and happiness both stem from how I perceive I am doing in accordance to my goals. If I'm right on course, I'll be content. If I'm behind, I'll be sad. If I'm ahead, I'll be happy. So the lower my standards, the higher chance I'll be happy I suppose. The only problem is that as we become happier, I'd imagine the standards we hold ourselves to will naturally become harder to achieve since we can obviously handle the current goal set with ease.
So in this sense, happiness can't happen in the long run. It is only a short term thing, a moment's glory before you go back to rowing in the galley that is life. I don't think sadness is a long term thing either for the same reason. Unless there is a chemical imbalance in the person I suppose, then either can probably be long term. But overall, I think the only thing we can be in the long run is content.
This can be applied to religious happiness too. O, well I shouldn't say it that way. Most religious people are almost offended by the term "happiness" in reference to religion. I'll use words like "grace", "fulfillment", and "filled with the Hold Spirit" but really I think it's all happiness just through different venues. It too goes away. Whenever I see myself growing closer to God and am hap... feeling "full of grace" I notice that my expectations for myself religiously also get higher to where I eventually fail or barely meet them and thus become religiously content.
Another thing that helps support that it is a purely internal thing based on our expectations of ourselves is the way we feel about the external world. I remember reading the results of a survey where most people preferred to have $100,ooo a year while their friends got $75,000 as opposed to the person and their friends both getting $150,000 (neglecting inflation and blah, blah, blah). When I read this I thought "Man, we all are a bunch of jerks, look at this. An honest survey of people saying they want more power and wealth than their friends, even if it costs them money in absolute terms.
I think this report is key. The absolutes of our lives don't matter. What matters is our perception of how we are doing. And if you are getting more money than the people you know, you're doing better than most people, and that's a reason to be happy right? Pathetic. This breaks down in a large picture though. Example, America versus ALL of Africa. We rape them in terms of money, power, technology, and even bare necessities. The average person in America is doing so much better than the average person in Africa. But this doesn't make us happier. All it does is cause us to dissociate with "those people" ugh, watch out, that orphan probably has AIDS. That's us. The U.S. It doesn't make us happier, why? Because in our own country we see those who are richer and more famous than us so we push ourselves and grimace at the sad predicament we are in only getting a new car every five years while some punk African kid we don't care about dies of thirst. Well he probably deserved it, don't worry about it. Their closer to animals than people, right? How else could they live in such conditions? So we stop worrying about them.
An interesting side note is that those who are wealthy in our nation aren't any happier, after all, their expectations of life have raised so it is much easier to be depressed than happy. That's us, that is life. I think we all need to abandon happiness.
One of the biggest ways I think someone can be happy is to have really low standards for themselves...in everything. This may lead to them not reaching their "full potential" but that's not the goal I was looking to achieve in this thought experiment. Most of my misery and happiness both stem from how I perceive I am doing in accordance to my goals. If I'm right on course, I'll be content. If I'm behind, I'll be sad. If I'm ahead, I'll be happy. So the lower my standards, the higher chance I'll be happy I suppose. The only problem is that as we become happier, I'd imagine the standards we hold ourselves to will naturally become harder to achieve since we can obviously handle the current goal set with ease.
So in this sense, happiness can't happen in the long run. It is only a short term thing, a moment's glory before you go back to rowing in the galley that is life. I don't think sadness is a long term thing either for the same reason. Unless there is a chemical imbalance in the person I suppose, then either can probably be long term. But overall, I think the only thing we can be in the long run is content.
This can be applied to religious happiness too. O, well I shouldn't say it that way. Most religious people are almost offended by the term "happiness" in reference to religion. I'll use words like "grace", "fulfillment", and "filled with the Hold Spirit" but really I think it's all happiness just through different venues. It too goes away. Whenever I see myself growing closer to God and am hap... feeling "full of grace" I notice that my expectations for myself religiously also get higher to where I eventually fail or barely meet them and thus become religiously content.
Another thing that helps support that it is a purely internal thing based on our expectations of ourselves is the way we feel about the external world. I remember reading the results of a survey where most people preferred to have $100,ooo a year while their friends got $75,000 as opposed to the person and their friends both getting $150,000 (neglecting inflation and blah, blah, blah). When I read this I thought "Man, we all are a bunch of jerks, look at this. An honest survey of people saying they want more power and wealth than their friends, even if it costs them money in absolute terms.
I think this report is key. The absolutes of our lives don't matter. What matters is our perception of how we are doing. And if you are getting more money than the people you know, you're doing better than most people, and that's a reason to be happy right? Pathetic. This breaks down in a large picture though. Example, America versus ALL of Africa. We rape them in terms of money, power, technology, and even bare necessities. The average person in America is doing so much better than the average person in Africa. But this doesn't make us happier. All it does is cause us to dissociate with "those people" ugh, watch out, that orphan probably has AIDS. That's us. The U.S. It doesn't make us happier, why? Because in our own country we see those who are richer and more famous than us so we push ourselves and grimace at the sad predicament we are in only getting a new car every five years while some punk African kid we don't care about dies of thirst. Well he probably deserved it, don't worry about it. Their closer to animals than people, right? How else could they live in such conditions? So we stop worrying about them.
An interesting side note is that those who are wealthy in our nation aren't any happier, after all, their expectations of life have raised so it is much easier to be depressed than happy. That's us, that is life. I think we all need to abandon happiness.
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