You may be one of the other lucky few early 20 somethings that wakes up facing at least 16 waking hours of open space. Its freedom, really, having that much time, and you can spend the entire time conceivably doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and thinking about doing nothing. This is also ample time allowable to contemplate the complete triviality of our lives and feelings. I don’t mean this in that pussified “my life is so sad and despicable and filled with despair and longing for better times,” kind of way. I mean I think its kind of cool, that whole acknowledgment that in 70 years, you can either have an impact on the people of the world, or not, and it won’t matter anyway.
There are a ton of really smart fucking people that have already lived, some were even nice enough to write down their thoughts and document things and pass it along the generations as screeds of wisdom, for the next set of intelligent animals to use to better themselves as they scrape along in their own lives, hopefully made easier and more manageable thanks to the ancients. But where are we now?
I’m not lamenting our situation – far from it. I try, but its pretty ridiculous to conceive of how much suffering and hours and thought came and went in the world to bring us to this point, where I can wake up, play with my computer, practice doing something artsy that might not make me money, ever, and still be okay. Thank god I have some sort of vague direction or goal. I can’t imagine what the fuck it must feel not like to have ANY idea what you like to do. Even if its completely pointless and stupid. We have lots of time.
So now what the fuck do we do? Its great having the casual luxuries unimaginable even a century ago. Civilizations have worked really really hard to bring us to this point, not without folly, not without collosal fuckups, but always aiming towards something vaguely better than what they had. In purely practical terms, two of those things were capitalism and the establishment of rule of law that permitted it to exist without deterioration into a clusterfuck of anarchists. Those two things have brought us more materials goods, and with them, the means for building better lives with more options, than anything else in history. What really bums me out is how quickly these ideas are being frittered away, power is being GIVEN to a governing body.
I don’t really care who is president, I don’t really care what defines a republican or democrat. What bothers me most is the quick deferrence and TRUST people seem to put into these governing bodies. I’m not talking about “who will do a better job? A conservative or liberal?,” I’m saying the concept of government as it handles large swathes of the economy – its a broken and outdated concept.
Its intuitive, I guess.
“We’ve got X problem and Y class of people with Z skin color are getting fucked. Bring in a group of smart, persuasive people to fix it.”
Done. Solved.
If it operated that simply, don’t you think the whole collectivist thing would have worked?
Take the inverse:
“We’ve got X problem and Y class of people with Z skin color are getting fucked. …So um, let’s leave it alone, let the incentives that have produced what we have so far remain intact, keep relying on selfish individuals to provide goods and services in exchange for money, let the thing build and our overall standard of living will rise and this will solve the initial X problem with Y class with Z color while making it unnecessary to infringe on the lives, rights, and personal ambitions of those who are NOT those people.”
In a fit of emotional rage, which do you think would be taken seriously?
I guess the problem is psychological. One type of mind prefers to deal with things one way, and the other another way.
A mind that tends to prefer decisions to follow emotional reactions is often quick to side with the most persuasive, intelligent and moral sounding voice in the discourse. Somebody charismatic that can properly channel the basic and primitive emotions of gobs of people into something that may sound at once grand, beautiful, complex, and visionary. Somebody brilliant and sympathetic that can take the veneer of substance and wrap it around horseshit, essentially. At some level, they may literally believe that their personal degree of emotional investment actually validates their views.
“How can I be wrong if I feel so strongly about X and care so deeply?”
The other type of mind is reflexively distrustful of strangers that claim to operate for their, and others’ benefit without some sort of other motive. These types of minds may secretly want to believe and follow and be part of the crowd and fit in, but instinctively shy away from that. They spend most of their lives feeling like it is they, themselves, that are completely insane.
“Okay, okay…just shut up for a second. Let me think about this…”
They want to understand. Understanding the inner workings of something for them brings the same value as “belonging” and “being part of a larger purpose” does for others. It takes a lot of effort and mental stubbornness to not buy into the emotional, and it takes even more real physical effort to do the work necessary to understand what is really happening, why it might not be a good thing, and how to counteract it.
