If you can't read this all the way through that is perfectly fine, it is your choice to make. If I offend anybody, which I probably will, I am sincerely sorry. But I feel very strongly that right now our culture has a serious problem with a priority on being nice reinforcing serious issues that are not being addressed. I am not trying to say I am better than anyone, I sincerely feel like the only option at my disposal is to use my voice, and I sincerely believe that operating within the "normal" function of society at this time cannot make any legitimate difference and can only serve to reinforce the brokenness of our system. This is a combination of thoughts about the state of society interspersed with relevant commentary from my life.
Someone I care about sincerely, is trying to take some important steps towards responsibility, which I am very proud of them for. Because of the way society is structured, and because we all go along with it to save our own hide, it is apparent to me that this person is compelled to believe that the first steps towards responsibility requires engaging in a series of lies (although they do not see it this way and would certainly object to my characterizing it as such... But therein, I believe, lies the problem). This reflects poorly on parents, on educators, on our leadership in general, and on every single person who partakes in these lies every day and pretends that there is simply no alternative, as I did for far too long. Do we even stop for two seconds to think about how insane, short-sighted, and morally bankrupt it is to lie about the freshness of a cabbage that the business employing you sells for $0.99/lb (if you think it's no big deal, I would counter that all of the food waste in our system can be viewed as an accumulation of supposedly "insignificant" lies. Restaurants lie about freshness or sourcing of their food, businesses use psychology to manipulate people into wasting money, and all this and more is viewed simply as standard practice.)? Do we think about how insane it is to pay taxes to a government that creates its own credit and prints its own money to fuel a cycle of human slaughter for the exclusive economic benefit of a bunch of fat cats and pretend that is what responsibility entails? Do we think about how ridiculous it is that we are apparently fine with the fact that that very same government is forcing future generations into perpetual subservience to it by accruing unfathomable amounts of debt unchecked? Do we think about how preposterous it is that enslaving yourself to a credit card company is not only what is required of everyone to operate on a basic level in society, but is deemed reasonable and responsible by the masses (in China, they use billboards to embarrass noncompliant individuals that you should not associate with. In the US, we have credit scores)? Do we stop for two seconds to think about the consequences for humanity if we continue to consume the Earth into oblivion? I hear people saying, if we can establish a colony on Mars our chances of extinction drop to virtually zero¹ (Really, we are going to go extinct in our natural habitat but the colony on Mars is somehow going to be indestructible?) I have stayed silent my whole life, because I learned from the outset that if there is one thing that upsets people the most it is someone who believes what they are saying. My whole life I have been ridiculed as a know-it-all every single time I speak my mind almost without fail (for example, I just had a conversation about something that happened recently, where the person I conversed with described the event completely differently. To make it clear I felt we were both being sincere, I said "okay, so one of us is having a false memory." "That's what I mean," they said. "You always have to be right." What am I supposed to do with that? I am attempting to tell the truth sincerely, and making the assumption that they are attempting to tell the truth sincerely, and that means I always have to be right? There are no words I can use to adequately convey how upsetting this is for me, and this is just one example of something that happens all the time). If none of you know how to assert your opinion, construct a logical argument, or speak truth, that does not make me a know-it-all. I chose to be subservient because for me, the alternative was being alone. I guess now I am alone. I will die before I take one penny of unemployment from the government. Nobody wants to hire me? I can't get an apartment if I need to because I have bad credit² and I'm only 24? So what, I can either submit myself to debt slavery or be homeless? I can't survive long this way, and you all should consider yourselves fortunate that I do not regard my self-interest in the way most humans do... Because humans who value their self interest that get isolated and alienated, inevitably lash out in anger, all the more so if they believe there is a rational justification for violence (and our society of lies is ready, willing, and able to supply such rationalizations en masse, with examples like those set by Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis seemingly in the distant past). I am trying to help you all, and I truly do not think you even care. If you can't look past your ego-centric perspective for two seconds (if you stop reading here, that means you can't) you will have an emotional reaction and put up a wall against my words, instead of even trying to think about what is true, what could be partially true, and what you might disagree with or disregard. That is called tribalism, and tribalism is the ultimate enemy of a democratic society. We cannot handle confrontation, cannot handle being challenged, and have forgotten almost completely how to have a productive conversation, choosing instead to hide in "safe spaces" and rationalize the refusal to confront reality as an advancement of society. You all can keep lying to yourselves and each other, I am 100% done. You know why I gave up on humanity and on myself for years, embracing hopelessness and self-pity in a cycle of self-destruction? Because, even now, that is what you all continue to do. The difference is, I never rationalized it to myself. I saw it clearly the whole time. What I didn't see, was a way forward... Because you all taught me, that life is a game, best approached as a big f****** joke. There has hardly ever been even a single person in my life who I could genuinely regard as trustworthy, and that does not mean the people around me have been bad people, or that nobody ever tried to help me. It means that my attempts to trust others have always blown up in my face without fail. I am a serious and straightforward person, and many of you used that against me literally to destroy my very soul, all the while acting like it was a hilarious joke. How does it reflect on society as a whole, that someone whose natural tendency is to love life and behave in an enthusiastic, honest, yet serious and straightforward manner, is automatically relegated to the trash heap, ostracized in all circumstances where they can't do or offer something of immediate value to YOU? When I was scouting an opposing baseball team in 5th grade, a couple kids from another team walked up to me and initiated a conversation about how water has zero calories. In my typical fashion I proceeded somehow to talk almost endlessly about this incredibly pointless fact. Years later, when we wound up on a team together, they informed me they had been messing with me and we all had a good laugh. That was what was required of me to fit in. At the time, however, I had sincerely believed I had made two new friends. The topic at hand sincerely didn't seem any more or less pointless than any of the other pointless things that people pretend are significant. What mattered to me, was the people. At that age, if I met you, I automatically assumed that you were a good person, because I thought everyone was a good person, and I wanted to be their friend. That was what mattered to me. It didn't take long for you all to take that away from me, and to teach me through the power of imitation to be cruel and unreasonable for the sake of a few laughs. One way or another, humanity is going to learn that life is not a game. The only question is, will we have any conception of the importance of enlightened self-interest by then? I honestly doubt it... Nothing I have ever experienced gives me much cause for hope. In fact, there are only two things: I believe that most people in the core of their being want to be good, even if their actions seem to belie that notion. And I believe above all else, that Love gives us the power to maintain hope and endure against all odds. Our society conditions us to think, that true Love means feeling good all the time. While Love certainly evokes the most powerful emotions of the human experience, above all else Love is a Belief. I Love you all, even though many of you continue to make fun of me, belittle me, mess with me, and despise me. I always have, and anger for me has always been a silent manifestation of rejection, isolation, confusion, and loneliness. So my question to you is simple: am I alone or not? Because this isn't worth doing if humanity has abandoned it's future. Please do not attempt to offer baseless reassurances and empty platitudes, which only serve to reinforce stupidity and ignorance. What I would like to know is whether or not anybody out there actually believes there are realistic and comprehensive solutions to these problems that do not involve "burning society (or the system, or whatever you want to call it) to the ground and starting over." People who believe economics cannot continue to be a long-term barrier to human progress and people who believe that the reality of economics is a constraint on possible solutions are both correct, so please do not try selling me a green new deal or universal health care that will run a $60 trillion tab in 10 years. We need investments in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure that will pay for themselves over the long run (a great example of this being President Obama's transitioning particular aspects of future space exploration from NASA into the hands of Space X, which generated short-term costs but will create long-term benefits. Just because I am willing to criticize President Obama or other leadership does not mean I think they are evil. Constraints to prevent the formation of a corporate oligarchy will also be necessary). Any other creative solutions are welcome, by all means you are not obligated to agree with me, but I think we should all be able to agree we cannot keep doing what we are doing as a society and expect this is going to end well. We cannot have 2 or 4 or 12 more years of a gridlocked congress, and if that is too much to ask of Democrat and Republican politicians our system gives us all the power we need to give them the boot without so much as a trickle of blood. That is the beauty of America, the power lies with the people, but not if we continue to simply give it away without a fight to people who have their own best interest and/or the interests of a deeply flawed political institution at heart.
¹I could tell you where I am hearing this from, but I do not have to. Intrinsic knowledge, which I may or may not be drawing on, is the accumulation of information into the subconscious and is a natural part of everyday conversation, which is where the real damage from misinformation comes into play and why it's so annoying for so many people when media actors are constantly going "can you believe Donald Trump said something that isn't 100% accurate?!?!" None of us are ever 100% accurate, and all you so-called journalists with a teleprompter in front of you at all times do not impress me with your so-called knowledge.)
²Thanks mostly to the scam that I naïvely fell for thinking I could trust the people at Haddad Dealerships. Finance guy comes out to me after chatting with Greylock Federal Credit Union and points to a chart, "can you afford that?" It is over $100 more per month than I told him I could pay, but because I was too weak to assert myself and I was caught off-guard, I said "yeah I think so." They were so "nice" to me, chatting me up about the Eagle's Super Bowl win I was so excited about as a distraction. Later on, I found out he had tacked on a $3000 insurance policy (that he got a direct commission on) without telling me. A poor man like myself does not have options after getting screwed like that, but hey, that's American capitalism right? "Find suckers" so you can live your life pointlessly in luxury while people we apparently don't care about at all suffer and starve around the globe. "There's nothing we can do about that." Really, there is nothing we can do to stop our democratically elected government from dropping bombs around the globe? There's nothing we can do to stop allegedly recyclable plastic and garbage from being dumped in a neighborhood in Malaysia? There's nothing we can do to stop wasting 40% of the global annual food supply and improve the efficiency of supply chains? (We as a society are having a conversation about global internet before a conversation on ending starvation for God's sake!) Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Someone I care about sincerely, is trying to take some important steps towards responsibility, which I am very proud of them for. Because of the way society is structured, and because we all go along with it to save our own hide, it is apparent to me that this person is compelled to believe that the first steps towards responsibility requires engaging in a series of lies (although they do not see it this way and would certainly object to my characterizing it as such... But therein, I believe, lies the problem). This reflects poorly on parents, on educators, on our leadership in general, and on every single person who partakes in these lies every day and pretends that there is simply no alternative, as I did for far too long. Do we even stop for two seconds to think about how insane, short-sighted, and morally bankrupt it is to lie about the freshness of a cabbage that the business employing you sells for $0.99/lb (if you think it's no big deal, I would counter that all of the food waste in our system can be viewed as an accumulation of supposedly "insignificant" lies. Restaurants lie about freshness or sourcing of their food, businesses use psychology to manipulate people into wasting money, and all this and more is viewed simply as standard practice.)? Do we think about how insane it is to pay taxes to a government that creates its own credit and prints its own money to fuel a cycle of human slaughter for the exclusive economic benefit of a bunch of fat cats and pretend that is what responsibility entails? Do we think about how ridiculous it is that we are apparently fine with the fact that that very same government is forcing future generations into perpetual subservience to it by accruing unfathomable amounts of debt unchecked? Do we think about how preposterous it is that enslaving yourself to a credit card company is not only what is required of everyone to operate on a basic level in society, but is deemed reasonable and responsible by the masses (in China, they use billboards to embarrass noncompliant individuals that you should not associate with. In the US, we have credit scores)? Do we stop for two seconds to think about the consequences for humanity if we continue to consume the Earth into oblivion? I hear people saying, if we can establish a colony on Mars our chances of extinction drop to virtually zero¹ (Really, we are going to go extinct in our natural habitat but the colony on Mars is somehow going to be indestructible?) I have stayed silent my whole life, because I learned from the outset that if there is one thing that upsets people the most it is someone who believes what they are saying. My whole life I have been ridiculed as a know-it-all every single time I speak my mind almost without fail (for example, I just had a conversation about something that happened recently, where the person I conversed with described the event completely differently. To make it clear I felt we were both being sincere, I said "okay, so one of us is having a false memory." "That's what I mean," they said. "You always have to be right." What am I supposed to do with that? I am attempting to tell the truth sincerely, and making the assumption that they are attempting to tell the truth sincerely, and that means I always have to be right? There are no words I can use to adequately convey how upsetting this is for me, and this is just one example of something that happens all the time). If none of you know how to assert your opinion, construct a logical argument, or speak truth, that does not make me a know-it-all. I chose to be subservient because for me, the alternative was being alone. I guess now I am alone. I will die before I take one penny of unemployment from the government. Nobody wants to hire me? I can't get an apartment if I need to because I have bad credit² and I'm only 24? So what, I can either submit myself to debt slavery or be homeless? I can't survive long this way, and you all should consider yourselves fortunate that I do not regard my self-interest in the way most humans do... Because humans who value their self interest that get isolated and alienated, inevitably lash out in anger, all the more so if they believe there is a rational justification for violence (and our society of lies is ready, willing, and able to supply such rationalizations en masse, with examples like those set by Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis seemingly in the distant past). I am trying to help you all, and I truly do not think you even care. If you can't look past your ego-centric perspective for two seconds (if you stop reading here, that means you can't) you will have an emotional reaction and put up a wall against my words, instead of even trying to think about what is true, what could be partially true, and what you might disagree with or disregard. That is called tribalism, and tribalism is the ultimate enemy of a democratic society. We cannot handle confrontation, cannot handle being challenged, and have forgotten almost completely how to have a productive conversation, choosing instead to hide in "safe spaces" and rationalize the refusal to confront reality as an advancement of society. You all can keep lying to yourselves and each other, I am 100% done. You know why I gave up on humanity and on myself for years, embracing hopelessness and self-pity in a cycle of self-destruction? Because, even now, that is what you all continue to do. The difference is, I never rationalized it to myself. I saw it clearly the whole time. What I didn't see, was a way forward... Because you all taught me, that life is a game, best approached as a big f****** joke. There has hardly ever been even a single person in my life who I could genuinely regard as trustworthy, and that does not mean the people around me have been bad people, or that nobody ever tried to help me. It means that my attempts to trust others have always blown up in my face without fail. I am a serious and straightforward person, and many of you used that against me literally to destroy my very soul, all the while acting like it was a hilarious joke. How does it reflect on society as a whole, that someone whose natural tendency is to love life and behave in an enthusiastic, honest, yet serious and straightforward manner, is automatically relegated to the trash heap, ostracized in all circumstances where they can't do or offer something of immediate value to YOU? When I was scouting an opposing baseball team in 5th grade, a couple kids from another team walked up to me and initiated a conversation about how water has zero calories. In my typical fashion I proceeded somehow to talk almost endlessly about this incredibly pointless fact. Years later, when we wound up on a team together, they informed me they had been messing with me and we all had a good laugh. That was what was required of me to fit in. At the time, however, I had sincerely believed I had made two new friends. The topic at hand sincerely didn't seem any more or less pointless than any of the other pointless things that people pretend are significant. What mattered to me, was the people. At that age, if I met you, I automatically assumed that you were a good person, because I thought everyone was a good person, and I wanted to be their friend. That was what mattered to me. It didn't take long for you all to take that away from me, and to teach me through the power of imitation to be cruel and unreasonable for the sake of a few laughs. One way or another, humanity is going to learn that life is not a game. The only question is, will we have any conception of the importance of enlightened self-interest by then? I honestly doubt it... Nothing I have ever experienced gives me much cause for hope. In fact, there are only two things: I believe that most people in the core of their being want to be good, even if their actions seem to belie that notion. And I believe above all else, that Love gives us the power to maintain hope and endure against all odds. Our society conditions us to think, that true Love means feeling good all the time. While Love certainly evokes the most powerful emotions of the human experience, above all else Love is a Belief. I Love you all, even though many of you continue to make fun of me, belittle me, mess with me, and despise me. I always have, and anger for me has always been a silent manifestation of rejection, isolation, confusion, and loneliness. So my question to you is simple: am I alone or not? Because this isn't worth doing if humanity has abandoned it's future. Please do not attempt to offer baseless reassurances and empty platitudes, which only serve to reinforce stupidity and ignorance. What I would like to know is whether or not anybody out there actually believes there are realistic and comprehensive solutions to these problems that do not involve "burning society (or the system, or whatever you want to call it) to the ground and starting over." People who believe economics cannot continue to be a long-term barrier to human progress and people who believe that the reality of economics is a constraint on possible solutions are both correct, so please do not try selling me a green new deal or universal health care that will run a $60 trillion tab in 10 years. We need investments in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure that will pay for themselves over the long run (a great example of this being President Obama's transitioning particular aspects of future space exploration from NASA into the hands of Space X, which generated short-term costs but will create long-term benefits. Just because I am willing to criticize President Obama or other leadership does not mean I think they are evil. Constraints to prevent the formation of a corporate oligarchy will also be necessary). Any other creative solutions are welcome, by all means you are not obligated to agree with me, but I think we should all be able to agree we cannot keep doing what we are doing as a society and expect this is going to end well. We cannot have 2 or 4 or 12 more years of a gridlocked congress, and if that is too much to ask of Democrat and Republican politicians our system gives us all the power we need to give them the boot without so much as a trickle of blood. That is the beauty of America, the power lies with the people, but not if we continue to simply give it away without a fight to people who have their own best interest and/or the interests of a deeply flawed political institution at heart.
¹I could tell you where I am hearing this from, but I do not have to. Intrinsic knowledge, which I may or may not be drawing on, is the accumulation of information into the subconscious and is a natural part of everyday conversation, which is where the real damage from misinformation comes into play and why it's so annoying for so many people when media actors are constantly going "can you believe Donald Trump said something that isn't 100% accurate?!?!" None of us are ever 100% accurate, and all you so-called journalists with a teleprompter in front of you at all times do not impress me with your so-called knowledge.)
²Thanks mostly to the scam that I naïvely fell for thinking I could trust the people at Haddad Dealerships. Finance guy comes out to me after chatting with Greylock Federal Credit Union and points to a chart, "can you afford that?" It is over $100 more per month than I told him I could pay, but because I was too weak to assert myself and I was caught off-guard, I said "yeah I think so." They were so "nice" to me, chatting me up about the Eagle's Super Bowl win I was so excited about as a distraction. Later on, I found out he had tacked on a $3000 insurance policy (that he got a direct commission on) without telling me. A poor man like myself does not have options after getting screwed like that, but hey, that's American capitalism right? "Find suckers" so you can live your life pointlessly in luxury while people we apparently don't care about at all suffer and starve around the globe. "There's nothing we can do about that." Really, there is nothing we can do to stop our democratically elected government from dropping bombs around the globe? There's nothing we can do to stop allegedly recyclable plastic and garbage from being dumped in a neighborhood in Malaysia? There's nothing we can do to stop wasting 40% of the global annual food supply and improve the efficiency of supply chains? (We as a society are having a conversation about global internet before a conversation on ending starvation for God's sake!) Whatever helps you sleep at night.