everyone knows we all die eventually. wether it's two seconds after you're born or 100 years after....everything and everyone passes into something else.
so we are born, and assuming we get to live a little while, we begin to learn. I learned from teachers in the suburbs of boston, a handfull of random people telling me how the world worked. Some kids go to fancier schools, some kids don't get any schools... The teachers never told me that. They presented a world that ,while complex, still always seemed *finished*.... History was history and there was no other story. No other side.
I hereby call bullshit on the american eduation system.
War is war and greed is greed and these are the things which have steered our culture. Not once did they teach us that in school. They taught us the basic rules of democracy and never pointed out that true democracy (an equal representation of views and a common middle ground where everyone is at least ok if not perfect) often fails because the people who run things are greedy, small minded, and uninterested in true compromise.
Most of us are programmed to go after what we want more then what would be best for the world. So my desire for financial security and a "future" for my children...might translate into a corporate job and a house in the suburbs and that is all good and well but in fact does nothing to strengthen humanity in the long run. Luxury has no conscience .
A good example is how people tend to fill an auditorium. Say there are 500 seats in a theater. The first person might sit in the middle of the middle row. The next might sit one seat removed from them and so on and so on. After 250 people every other seat will be filled, and each person who comes after that will have to walk over others to get to their seat. For half of the audience life will be harder. But it goes even further because really the best thing for the 251st person to do would be to go sit by that first person, but seeing it as a more difficult task then say, walking over one person to sit in the second chair of a row, they would never go all the way in. So once we are all comfortably spread out, we start filling in from the outside, so the last people have to walk over absolutely everyone to find the few remaining spots.
The point is you can see the show from every seat, and if that first person had sat at the end of the last row, and everyone had filled in form there. The show can be equally enjoyed by all , and no one would have to wonder if a spot was going to waste, simply because someone couldn't physically get there.
You can't live the way you want and just cross your fingers and hope half the world doesn't show up. Because when they do it's wicked awkward.
WE REFUSE TO DO WHAT'S BEST FOR THE WHOLE and that in itself is enough to ruin us.
When I graduated high school I was told that if I ever wanted to succeed i had to go to college. It bothers me how true that is.
It bothers me that the systems and leaders who have brought us to this place, are still being clung to by the people who still "have", while all around me the rest if the world is seething in chaos.
When will we rethink our ways of thinking. Will it ever happen?
Should I just shut up and be grateful and go to college and make a lot of money and just remove myself farther and farther from what i feel is the core of life. Does anyone deserve that while so many are suffering.
What is more psychotic than our cutthroat complacency towards the world's severe inequalities.
The only way most people get through their days is not thinking about it at all. The thousands of children dead from Nato airstrikes, the U.N. soldiers raping girls in Africa. The world banks foreclosing on thousands of families homes so what?...their houses can sit vacant and they can go live in homeless shelters or streets....
So what to we do? I'm at a loss. It seems anyway you try to get involved you're hurting someone or something.
Even if things suck and there is violence and death all around, it could still feel like we were working towards peace, but it does not.
I want to throw myself into something good.
I wish i felt stronger and clearer and more hopeful about the direction of the world.
And maybe all anyone can ever do is just a frustratingly small amount over a lifetime. and life is pain and frustration and I'm over thinking things.
Maybe we are just animals and we'll never get any better and there is just something wrong with the way my brain works to make it go to these places.
Now that I think of it, I really hope we are just animals, because if we're anything more, then we're all monsters.
so we are born, and assuming we get to live a little while, we begin to learn. I learned from teachers in the suburbs of boston, a handfull of random people telling me how the world worked. Some kids go to fancier schools, some kids don't get any schools... The teachers never told me that. They presented a world that ,while complex, still always seemed *finished*.... History was history and there was no other story. No other side.
I hereby call bullshit on the american eduation system.
War is war and greed is greed and these are the things which have steered our culture. Not once did they teach us that in school. They taught us the basic rules of democracy and never pointed out that true democracy (an equal representation of views and a common middle ground where everyone is at least ok if not perfect) often fails because the people who run things are greedy, small minded, and uninterested in true compromise.
Most of us are programmed to go after what we want more then what would be best for the world. So my desire for financial security and a "future" for my children...might translate into a corporate job and a house in the suburbs and that is all good and well but in fact does nothing to strengthen humanity in the long run. Luxury has no conscience .
A good example is how people tend to fill an auditorium. Say there are 500 seats in a theater. The first person might sit in the middle of the middle row. The next might sit one seat removed from them and so on and so on. After 250 people every other seat will be filled, and each person who comes after that will have to walk over others to get to their seat. For half of the audience life will be harder. But it goes even further because really the best thing for the 251st person to do would be to go sit by that first person, but seeing it as a more difficult task then say, walking over one person to sit in the second chair of a row, they would never go all the way in. So once we are all comfortably spread out, we start filling in from the outside, so the last people have to walk over absolutely everyone to find the few remaining spots.
The point is you can see the show from every seat, and if that first person had sat at the end of the last row, and everyone had filled in form there. The show can be equally enjoyed by all , and no one would have to wonder if a spot was going to waste, simply because someone couldn't physically get there.
You can't live the way you want and just cross your fingers and hope half the world doesn't show up. Because when they do it's wicked awkward.
WE REFUSE TO DO WHAT'S BEST FOR THE WHOLE and that in itself is enough to ruin us.
When I graduated high school I was told that if I ever wanted to succeed i had to go to college. It bothers me how true that is.
It bothers me that the systems and leaders who have brought us to this place, are still being clung to by the people who still "have", while all around me the rest if the world is seething in chaos.
When will we rethink our ways of thinking. Will it ever happen?
Should I just shut up and be grateful and go to college and make a lot of money and just remove myself farther and farther from what i feel is the core of life. Does anyone deserve that while so many are suffering.
What is more psychotic than our cutthroat complacency towards the world's severe inequalities.
The only way most people get through their days is not thinking about it at all. The thousands of children dead from Nato airstrikes, the U.N. soldiers raping girls in Africa. The world banks foreclosing on thousands of families homes so what?...their houses can sit vacant and they can go live in homeless shelters or streets....
So what to we do? I'm at a loss. It seems anyway you try to get involved you're hurting someone or something.
Even if things suck and there is violence and death all around, it could still feel like we were working towards peace, but it does not.
I want to throw myself into something good.
I wish i felt stronger and clearer and more hopeful about the direction of the world.
And maybe all anyone can ever do is just a frustratingly small amount over a lifetime. and life is pain and frustration and I'm over thinking things.
Maybe we are just animals and we'll never get any better and there is just something wrong with the way my brain works to make it go to these places.
Now that I think of it, I really hope we are just animals, because if we're anything more, then we're all monsters.
