I Hate the World We Live In
You stupid, stupid people. None of you see it, do you? None of you see how infested the world is with sociopaths, covert narcissists and other covert bullies, do you? You go to work, chat with people in your spiritual centers, meet with the pta - and you shake hands with them, with the monsters, and you have no idea. You just assume that evil only exists somewhere else, outside of your life. You have no idea how often you stand face to face with it.
You're so stupid - you fight so hard for this or that political candidate, put bumper stickers for this or that mayor or city councilman, and you have no clue that every evil person weaves the same facade - a facade of being an awesome, good person who's way better than anyone actually is. They all wear the same mask - a mask that looks amazing from a distance, which is the only way you ever see politicians - and you fall for it hook line and sinker. You don't elect the real people who might actually be decent human beings - you elect the ultra shiny looking ones that are almost always the opposite of what they seem to be. The people with any degree of authenticity don't even make it to the ballots, because the people who decide who gets on the ballots know that no one will vote for them. Why vote for reality, when you can vote for a pretty facade. Because you're a stupid, blind person who never takes the time to look behind the facades. You don't even want to look past the facades - because you're afraid. You're afraid to look behind the curtain and see the monsters there.
And you know what - you're right to be stupid. You're right to be instinctively afraid of looking behind the facades, and to run from the knowledge of that fear. Because when you look at how the world really is, you lose hope for the future. You realize how pointless it all is. How pointless it is to do anything but carve out a tiny corner for yourself, and maybe find a few people to love and care about.
Except that I can't do that, because my mom was evil, and she and my dad broke me, and now I can't love or care about anyone. There's a wall inside of me, between myself and the world, that keeps me from touching anyone or anything. For a long time, I thought that there were cracks that I could reach through. I cared about people. But then I figured out that the only kinds of people who I'm able to care about or feel a connection to, are people who will always become toxic to me.
The two great forces in this world are evil and love. Goodness is such a rare commodity that I honestly don't consider it to be a major player. It's more like a third party that comes in and helps out a little from time to time. The echoes of the actions of evil people permeate our society and our lives in ways that most of us are completely unaware of, damaging every facet of our existence and tearing us all down. The only other thing that permeates us like that is love. platonic, familial, or romantic - love is the thing that brings light into our lives in a way that permeates every moment.
In our lives, love is evil's counter - it's what lets us live in evil's midst without being crushed by it. But the truly sick thing is that while love balances evil in our lives, and defeats evil from time to time, it also acts as evil's greatest tool in the larger picture - Because love makes us content. It lets us look at the darkness around us and say "things aren't really as bad as they look. Things are actually okay." Love makes things look brighter, even if those things are really as dark as midnight, and as rotted as an old carcass. And in the midst of that rose-colored complacency, evil thrives. And even most of those who don't have love in their lives at least have the hope for love - a hope that focuses their attention and turns their eyes away from evil just as surely as if they had love in their lives.
I don't have any deep human connections in my life. I don't have any hope that I'll find them in the future. That hope died almost a year ago when I realized that all of the people who I felt a connection to had the kind of pride that turns Jeckel into Hyde, and that they'd never be good for me. So now I see the world for what it is. I see our society for what it is. I see our species for what we really are - unethical, blind, apathetic, stupid - we've come a long way from the empathy-less, savage world we lived in when we first developed intelligence. The crumbs of genuine decency and goodness that we've managed to achieve are a far cry from where we come from. But nukes and overpopulation and global warming aren't going to wait around for the millennia it will take for us to slowly slither the rest of the way up the ethical ladder. We don't have centuries for Islam to grow up as a religion, the way that Christianity finally outgrew the crusades not so long ago.
Our species doesn't have a future, aside from maybe a handful of survivors of the next catastrophe. When WWIII's version of Hitler is hiding in his bunker, with his version of the Allied forces closing in, he won't just have a gun in his hand to commit suicide with. He'll have a button to kill the world with. We're a dying species on a dying world, living blindly in the shadow of the apocalypse.
You're so stupid - you fight so hard for this or that political candidate, put bumper stickers for this or that mayor or city councilman, and you have no clue that every evil person weaves the same facade - a facade of being an awesome, good person who's way better than anyone actually is. They all wear the same mask - a mask that looks amazing from a distance, which is the only way you ever see politicians - and you fall for it hook line and sinker. You don't elect the real people who might actually be decent human beings - you elect the ultra shiny looking ones that are almost always the opposite of what they seem to be. The people with any degree of authenticity don't even make it to the ballots, because the people who decide who gets on the ballots know that no one will vote for them. Why vote for reality, when you can vote for a pretty facade. Because you're a stupid, blind person who never takes the time to look behind the facades. You don't even want to look past the facades - because you're afraid. You're afraid to look behind the curtain and see the monsters there.
And you know what - you're right to be stupid. You're right to be instinctively afraid of looking behind the facades, and to run from the knowledge of that fear. Because when you look at how the world really is, you lose hope for the future. You realize how pointless it all is. How pointless it is to do anything but carve out a tiny corner for yourself, and maybe find a few people to love and care about.
Except that I can't do that, because my mom was evil, and she and my dad broke me, and now I can't love or care about anyone. There's a wall inside of me, between myself and the world, that keeps me from touching anyone or anything. For a long time, I thought that there were cracks that I could reach through. I cared about people. But then I figured out that the only kinds of people who I'm able to care about or feel a connection to, are people who will always become toxic to me.
The two great forces in this world are evil and love. Goodness is such a rare commodity that I honestly don't consider it to be a major player. It's more like a third party that comes in and helps out a little from time to time. The echoes of the actions of evil people permeate our society and our lives in ways that most of us are completely unaware of, damaging every facet of our existence and tearing us all down. The only other thing that permeates us like that is love. platonic, familial, or romantic - love is the thing that brings light into our lives in a way that permeates every moment.
In our lives, love is evil's counter - it's what lets us live in evil's midst without being crushed by it. But the truly sick thing is that while love balances evil in our lives, and defeats evil from time to time, it also acts as evil's greatest tool in the larger picture - Because love makes us content. It lets us look at the darkness around us and say "things aren't really as bad as they look. Things are actually okay." Love makes things look brighter, even if those things are really as dark as midnight, and as rotted as an old carcass. And in the midst of that rose-colored complacency, evil thrives. And even most of those who don't have love in their lives at least have the hope for love - a hope that focuses their attention and turns their eyes away from evil just as surely as if they had love in their lives.
I don't have any deep human connections in my life. I don't have any hope that I'll find them in the future. That hope died almost a year ago when I realized that all of the people who I felt a connection to had the kind of pride that turns Jeckel into Hyde, and that they'd never be good for me. So now I see the world for what it is. I see our society for what it is. I see our species for what we really are - unethical, blind, apathetic, stupid - we've come a long way from the empathy-less, savage world we lived in when we first developed intelligence. The crumbs of genuine decency and goodness that we've managed to achieve are a far cry from where we come from. But nukes and overpopulation and global warming aren't going to wait around for the millennia it will take for us to slowly slither the rest of the way up the ethical ladder. We don't have centuries for Islam to grow up as a religion, the way that Christianity finally outgrew the crusades not so long ago.
Our species doesn't have a future, aside from maybe a handful of survivors of the next catastrophe. When WWIII's version of Hitler is hiding in his bunker, with his version of the Allied forces closing in, he won't just have a gun in his hand to commit suicide with. He'll have a button to kill the world with. We're a dying species on a dying world, living blindly in the shadow of the apocalypse.
