A
Amaris
Guest
I want to get this weight off of my chest. Please read it, ignore it, whatever you like, but I just need to express these thoughts. For those in the mod and admin business, this is a political/social post, but one where I honestly do not want flaming, so Misc is the best place for it to go. I appreciate your consideration.
As for the topic, it will refer mostly to U.S. citizens, though any person of any nation is more than free to weigh in, because ultimately it involves everyone whether directly or indirectly.
And now, on to the meat and potatoes ("fruit and veg" if you're so inclined) of this post.
----
I've been having a down day, today. When I get a few rare moments to myself, sometimes I think about my life, about the world around me, and where I fit into it. Some people like to say one shouldn’t try to fit in, and I agree when it comes to being someone or something you’re not, when you’re trying to gain approval just so you can justify your existence, especially if what you’re trying to be is someone that brings harm to others. You don’t want to be that kind of person. There are more than enough people in the world who take delight in harming others.
There’s the other kind of belonging, though. Human beings are social creatures. Even when we wish to be alone, a part of us likes to know that there are people we can talk to, people who will sympathize or empathize with us, people who will be there for us when we need them.
I’ll get right to the point: I think humanity is losing its touch. I know people who live in the U.S. are definitely losing their touch. We are more divided than ever, adopting a colder, more callous approach to other human beings. We’re erasing the foibles and flaws inherent in every human being. We hide our true faces because we’re terrified people may see us as we truly are, all because we want to conform to what is seen as “normal.”
Does this concept of “normal” come from observations in every day life as we watch other people go about their business? No. It comes from what we see on TV, and on the internet. We accept what corporations tell us is normal, their advertising departments shaping the concept of how people are supposed to behave. We’ve gone from being fully realized human beings, to being consumers who can be easily guided based on what opinions and preferences we’ve been fed by those who spend billions of dollars finding the right triggers in the brain to be manipulated in their favor.
This kind of popular consumer culture has bled into every aspect of our lives, and I know for certain, with great dread, that we’re exporting it around the globe at breakneck speed.
[ Take a break here. Breathe. Read on when you are ready.]
I will say it, and I will say it because it needs to be said: I am not the currently accepted definition of normal. My brain is flawed, it is imperfect. I make terrible mistakes, I do things that I don’t understand while I’m doing them, and then later when I look back I can’t figure out why I did them, either. Whether or not I regret it depends upon how I see it, but often enough I kick my own ass and say “why did I do that? I don’t believe or think that way any other time.”
In my brain there are weird ideas, dreadful ideas, wonderful ideas, ghastly ideas, silly ideas, and general chaos floating about at any given time. I cannot control many of my thoughts, just as most people can’t control many of their thoughts. That is to say, I am a normal human being, but not a normal citizen of the society in which I live.
In all honesty (as I always do my damnedest to be honest), I am quite terrified of the state of our nation, and what we’re exporting. We’ve never been a perfect nation, nor an ideal one in all frankness. Our history is replete with vile transgressions against other human beings: dissolution of rights, abolition of entire cultures, even sanctioning outright mass murder when we feel like it.
We’re focusing our energies on so many things, because there are so many fires to put out. Worse, it seems as if the resources we need have been locked away in people’s hearts. We’ve become a stingy people. We’re stingy with our love, with our compassion, and our empathy. We demand fair treatment but treat others harshly for wanting the same thing. We demand equality but condemn those whom we feel are less deserving. We tout our freedom, and liberty, but the people who need it the most are sitting behind cell walls with the knowledge that they are either forgotten or reviled, regardless of what they’ve done, knowing, too, that they are to be used as a cudgel by self-serving politicians who seek more power in order to pretend they’re on the side of law and order.
A nation without mercy, yet screaming for leniency. A justice system without compassion, yet pounding their chests in a demand for respect. A people without empathy for their fellow human beings, but confiscating the title of “city on a hill,” and “leader of the free world” as their own.
This nation cannot maintain, not for long this way. We’re heading for a cliff, and people will be too engrossed in their greeds, their bigotry, and their cell phones, to notice.
All of these traits are human, but we used to look upon them as undesirable, something we wish to ferret out of our collective consciousness. While I believe we will always possess some form of these negative traits, I would hope we would seek to deal with them fairly, but never did I think we would take them and capitalize on them, use them to line our pockets, to justify our causes, and to enslave entire populations as a so-called necessity.
We’re like sunshine patriots. We pay the standard lip service to God, country, flag, apple pie, grandma, whatever jingoistic phrase gets the under-educated to whoop and holler in glee, and then we just do whatever the hell we want, hiding behind all of these things to justify our actions. Our police are corrupt, our judicial system in the pocket of those who can build power, our President is a selfish, greedy man who sees only his immediate wants, and encompasses exactly what the United States has become in all of its holier-than-thou sanctimony.
We admonish the rest of the world, while we engage in greed, gluttony, vanity, and pride. We engage in violence around the world and call ourselves a peaceful nation. We call ourselves the shining beacon of freedom, but we hire an indentured caste to supply us with an endless stream of worthless merchandise so we can pay an exorbitant markup in order to set them on our shelves, and forget about their existence after the newness has worn off.
We do all of these things, and then we arrest people for theft. We put them in prison for violence. We watch them if they see or think things differently than what we feel they should see and think. Sometimes we arrest them pre-emptively, trumping up charges to paint them in the worst light possible.
[ Take a break here. Breathe. Read on when you are ready.]
We have lost our ability to see nuance. As a people, we’ve stopped caring about people who don’t agree with us 100% in our goals, whatever they may be. People have stopped *being* people. They’ve become trends, target audiences, core demographics, and systems. People have been commodified, and de-personalized. We’re filtering out the humanity from human beings, and turning them into resources to be managed.
We are all guilty, because we’ve all partaken in this system.
Ideas are black and white, outrage is the “in” thing, greed is good, and life is cheap. As a people, we had potential, we had promise, and we have squandered it. I believe that the United States is heading into the darkest time it has experienced since the days of the Civil War. What I find most depressing is that I’m not sure most people will notice it. The drive to think critically has been so expunged from them thanks to our inept education programs (thanks in part due to lower and lower standards in order to allow for more money to flow upward to government administrators and their special interests), that I feel most people believe their lifestyles can be maintained in famine, in destitution, and in confinement, when their freedoms are curtailed more and more in the name of liberty and security.
I am waiting for Eos.
Eos, in Greek mythology, was a Titan, and the sister of Selene, Goddess of the Moon. Eos represented the coming of the Dawn. In that sense, she also represented the renewal of the day, the advent of Helios (God of the Sun), and the return of light to a waking world.
Do I mean this passage literally or figuratively? I’ll let you decide on your own. Not everything requires a pat answer that allows for nothing to question.
I am just one person, and I don’t have the answers everyone wants or needs. I am an imperfect, flawed human being who is doing my best to help as many people as I can, and I don’t just mean the kind of help where I say nice things and move on. I mean help like feeding hungry men, women, children, and working to lighten their burdens. Take action. Don’t just raise awareness. I raise awareness wherever I can, but just raising awareness isn’t enough. Helping others requires actively doing something about their situation.
I know that it can be overwhelming. I am overwhelmed daily. Taking small steps, though, can help mitigate that feeling, even if just a little bit. Be kind to people. If someone insults you, don’t insult them back. There are people who lash out at others because of how they’re hurting inside, and you happen to be the nearest target.
I’m not talking feel-good tolerance bullshit, either. I mean look at that person like they’re a human being, because they are, and get inside of their skin for a moment. Employ empathy for goddess’ sake. No one is asking you to be perfect or above having flaws. Hell, I want us to admit to our flaws. I want the people in this country to become the human beings they are again. Drop all of the euphemistic bullshit we use to sugarcoat and obscure the truth in our society. Get down on your hands and knees, and scoop up some dirt. Look at it. Connect with it.
We use dirt, soil if you want to be fancy, to grow and build things. It is used as a necessary ingredient in the production of food and housing. We spread it, till it, fertilize it, and reap the harvests from the manipulation of that soil. In that way, people and the soil are the same. The Powers That Be plant their seeds of preferred societal structure into the minds and hearts of people. They fertilize it with propaganda and advertising. Then reap the profits from manipulating those people.
Realize that you and that pile of dirt are the same thing on every single level except for one thing: Sentience. You have the capacity for reason, the ability to engage in kindness and compassion. I don’t care if you’ve done awful things in your past. You don’t have to be that person, you don’t have to feel that you’ll only be that person. You are on the same level as every other human being on this planet. The President is not better than you. The judge, the police officer, the CEO, they are not better than you. They have placed themselves above you, but when they die, they will return to the soil from which they came, just as you will.
[ Take a break here. Breathe. Read on when you are ready.]
While you’re alive, though, you can be so much more than something to be exploited. You have compassion, and empathy. You have a brain that can imagine and think critically. You are a whole person, capable of moving and shaping your part of the world in your own way. You are separate from the soil for only a brief time. What you do matters. What you say matters. Do good, speak out for good. Don’t let arbitrary social orders tell you what you can and cannot do if you believe it will benefit others, others who absolutely need you to help them because they are being exploited by those same social arbiters who demand you do as they say. Fuck them and their desire to step above their humanity and levy decrees upon you in the name of the systematic hypocrisy that pays their salaries.
Be a human being because you ARE a human being. A REAL human being, who has flaws, makes mistakes, and just fucks up sometimes, even often! You can be forgiven, loved, and you deserve to be here. Make the most of it.
Don’t settle for being a bag of dirt.
As for the topic, it will refer mostly to U.S. citizens, though any person of any nation is more than free to weigh in, because ultimately it involves everyone whether directly or indirectly.
And now, on to the meat and potatoes ("fruit and veg" if you're so inclined) of this post.
----
I've been having a down day, today. When I get a few rare moments to myself, sometimes I think about my life, about the world around me, and where I fit into it. Some people like to say one shouldn’t try to fit in, and I agree when it comes to being someone or something you’re not, when you’re trying to gain approval just so you can justify your existence, especially if what you’re trying to be is someone that brings harm to others. You don’t want to be that kind of person. There are more than enough people in the world who take delight in harming others.
There’s the other kind of belonging, though. Human beings are social creatures. Even when we wish to be alone, a part of us likes to know that there are people we can talk to, people who will sympathize or empathize with us, people who will be there for us when we need them.
I’ll get right to the point: I think humanity is losing its touch. I know people who live in the U.S. are definitely losing their touch. We are more divided than ever, adopting a colder, more callous approach to other human beings. We’re erasing the foibles and flaws inherent in every human being. We hide our true faces because we’re terrified people may see us as we truly are, all because we want to conform to what is seen as “normal.”
Does this concept of “normal” come from observations in every day life as we watch other people go about their business? No. It comes from what we see on TV, and on the internet. We accept what corporations tell us is normal, their advertising departments shaping the concept of how people are supposed to behave. We’ve gone from being fully realized human beings, to being consumers who can be easily guided based on what opinions and preferences we’ve been fed by those who spend billions of dollars finding the right triggers in the brain to be manipulated in their favor.
This kind of popular consumer culture has bled into every aspect of our lives, and I know for certain, with great dread, that we’re exporting it around the globe at breakneck speed.
[ Take a break here. Breathe. Read on when you are ready.]
I will say it, and I will say it because it needs to be said: I am not the currently accepted definition of normal. My brain is flawed, it is imperfect. I make terrible mistakes, I do things that I don’t understand while I’m doing them, and then later when I look back I can’t figure out why I did them, either. Whether or not I regret it depends upon how I see it, but often enough I kick my own ass and say “why did I do that? I don’t believe or think that way any other time.”
In my brain there are weird ideas, dreadful ideas, wonderful ideas, ghastly ideas, silly ideas, and general chaos floating about at any given time. I cannot control many of my thoughts, just as most people can’t control many of their thoughts. That is to say, I am a normal human being, but not a normal citizen of the society in which I live.
In all honesty (as I always do my damnedest to be honest), I am quite terrified of the state of our nation, and what we’re exporting. We’ve never been a perfect nation, nor an ideal one in all frankness. Our history is replete with vile transgressions against other human beings: dissolution of rights, abolition of entire cultures, even sanctioning outright mass murder when we feel like it.
We’re focusing our energies on so many things, because there are so many fires to put out. Worse, it seems as if the resources we need have been locked away in people’s hearts. We’ve become a stingy people. We’re stingy with our love, with our compassion, and our empathy. We demand fair treatment but treat others harshly for wanting the same thing. We demand equality but condemn those whom we feel are less deserving. We tout our freedom, and liberty, but the people who need it the most are sitting behind cell walls with the knowledge that they are either forgotten or reviled, regardless of what they’ve done, knowing, too, that they are to be used as a cudgel by self-serving politicians who seek more power in order to pretend they’re on the side of law and order.
A nation without mercy, yet screaming for leniency. A justice system without compassion, yet pounding their chests in a demand for respect. A people without empathy for their fellow human beings, but confiscating the title of “city on a hill,” and “leader of the free world” as their own.
This nation cannot maintain, not for long this way. We’re heading for a cliff, and people will be too engrossed in their greeds, their bigotry, and their cell phones, to notice.
All of these traits are human, but we used to look upon them as undesirable, something we wish to ferret out of our collective consciousness. While I believe we will always possess some form of these negative traits, I would hope we would seek to deal with them fairly, but never did I think we would take them and capitalize on them, use them to line our pockets, to justify our causes, and to enslave entire populations as a so-called necessity.
We’re like sunshine patriots. We pay the standard lip service to God, country, flag, apple pie, grandma, whatever jingoistic phrase gets the under-educated to whoop and holler in glee, and then we just do whatever the hell we want, hiding behind all of these things to justify our actions. Our police are corrupt, our judicial system in the pocket of those who can build power, our President is a selfish, greedy man who sees only his immediate wants, and encompasses exactly what the United States has become in all of its holier-than-thou sanctimony.
We admonish the rest of the world, while we engage in greed, gluttony, vanity, and pride. We engage in violence around the world and call ourselves a peaceful nation. We call ourselves the shining beacon of freedom, but we hire an indentured caste to supply us with an endless stream of worthless merchandise so we can pay an exorbitant markup in order to set them on our shelves, and forget about their existence after the newness has worn off.
We do all of these things, and then we arrest people for theft. We put them in prison for violence. We watch them if they see or think things differently than what we feel they should see and think. Sometimes we arrest them pre-emptively, trumping up charges to paint them in the worst light possible.
[ Take a break here. Breathe. Read on when you are ready.]
We have lost our ability to see nuance. As a people, we’ve stopped caring about people who don’t agree with us 100% in our goals, whatever they may be. People have stopped *being* people. They’ve become trends, target audiences, core demographics, and systems. People have been commodified, and de-personalized. We’re filtering out the humanity from human beings, and turning them into resources to be managed.
We are all guilty, because we’ve all partaken in this system.
Ideas are black and white, outrage is the “in” thing, greed is good, and life is cheap. As a people, we had potential, we had promise, and we have squandered it. I believe that the United States is heading into the darkest time it has experienced since the days of the Civil War. What I find most depressing is that I’m not sure most people will notice it. The drive to think critically has been so expunged from them thanks to our inept education programs (thanks in part due to lower and lower standards in order to allow for more money to flow upward to government administrators and their special interests), that I feel most people believe their lifestyles can be maintained in famine, in destitution, and in confinement, when their freedoms are curtailed more and more in the name of liberty and security.
I am waiting for Eos.
Eos, in Greek mythology, was a Titan, and the sister of Selene, Goddess of the Moon. Eos represented the coming of the Dawn. In that sense, she also represented the renewal of the day, the advent of Helios (God of the Sun), and the return of light to a waking world.
Do I mean this passage literally or figuratively? I’ll let you decide on your own. Not everything requires a pat answer that allows for nothing to question.
I am just one person, and I don’t have the answers everyone wants or needs. I am an imperfect, flawed human being who is doing my best to help as many people as I can, and I don’t just mean the kind of help where I say nice things and move on. I mean help like feeding hungry men, women, children, and working to lighten their burdens. Take action. Don’t just raise awareness. I raise awareness wherever I can, but just raising awareness isn’t enough. Helping others requires actively doing something about their situation.
I know that it can be overwhelming. I am overwhelmed daily. Taking small steps, though, can help mitigate that feeling, even if just a little bit. Be kind to people. If someone insults you, don’t insult them back. There are people who lash out at others because of how they’re hurting inside, and you happen to be the nearest target.
I’m not talking feel-good tolerance bullshit, either. I mean look at that person like they’re a human being, because they are, and get inside of their skin for a moment. Employ empathy for goddess’ sake. No one is asking you to be perfect or above having flaws. Hell, I want us to admit to our flaws. I want the people in this country to become the human beings they are again. Drop all of the euphemistic bullshit we use to sugarcoat and obscure the truth in our society. Get down on your hands and knees, and scoop up some dirt. Look at it. Connect with it.
We use dirt, soil if you want to be fancy, to grow and build things. It is used as a necessary ingredient in the production of food and housing. We spread it, till it, fertilize it, and reap the harvests from the manipulation of that soil. In that way, people and the soil are the same. The Powers That Be plant their seeds of preferred societal structure into the minds and hearts of people. They fertilize it with propaganda and advertising. Then reap the profits from manipulating those people.
Realize that you and that pile of dirt are the same thing on every single level except for one thing: Sentience. You have the capacity for reason, the ability to engage in kindness and compassion. I don’t care if you’ve done awful things in your past. You don’t have to be that person, you don’t have to feel that you’ll only be that person. You are on the same level as every other human being on this planet. The President is not better than you. The judge, the police officer, the CEO, they are not better than you. They have placed themselves above you, but when they die, they will return to the soil from which they came, just as you will.
[ Take a break here. Breathe. Read on when you are ready.]
While you’re alive, though, you can be so much more than something to be exploited. You have compassion, and empathy. You have a brain that can imagine and think critically. You are a whole person, capable of moving and shaping your part of the world in your own way. You are separate from the soil for only a brief time. What you do matters. What you say matters. Do good, speak out for good. Don’t let arbitrary social orders tell you what you can and cannot do if you believe it will benefit others, others who absolutely need you to help them because they are being exploited by those same social arbiters who demand you do as they say. Fuck them and their desire to step above their humanity and levy decrees upon you in the name of the systematic hypocrisy that pays their salaries.
Be a human being because you ARE a human being. A REAL human being, who has flaws, makes mistakes, and just fucks up sometimes, even often! You can be forgiven, loved, and you deserve to be here. Make the most of it.
Don’t settle for being a bag of dirt.
). In man's history we are probably quite lucky! We have food, education, we communicate. We have social media. We have each other and if you scratch beneath the surface there is kindness and compassion.
