Friday, August 12, 2011

The Putridity of a Diseased World and the Guillotine that Will Finish it Off

I look around the world, and I am disappointed by what I see.  I'm not on my high horse: I'm a brutal cynic, a spiteful excuse for a human being who cannot, or will not, enact the change needed to better himself and is almost incapable of connecting with another human being without browbeating or subversion.  I can come to terms with that.  I believe that I do not fully belong in this time, or in any previous time.  I'm aware that I don't fit in, even around the dejected and outcast people that I keep as companions, and I know that when I finally give up and slip out of this mortal coil, it will be by my own hand.  Since I was a young boy, as early as I can remember, I was pretty sure I wouldn't last past the age of 25 for some macabre reason.  So, I'm two months in on my 25th birthday, and I wonder if that was true.  But this isn't about me.  I wish it was.  But it isn't.  This is about humanity.  In the most general, whole aspect of it.  It's not inclusive, either.  It is exclusive almost, because there are points that I wonder how many people in this world are truly deserving of the title.

I am not a superstitious or spiritual person.  Those traits were ground out of me long ago by what I saw as an unjust and cruel world.  Yet, humans are the children of gods.  From the time that shamans first uttered creation tales, we have been considered the offspring of the divine.  Even today, as technology and science has wrested understanding from the previously unintelligible, the majority of people on this planet believe they were created in the image of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deity.  That is some heavy shit whether you believe it or not.  And yet, with the majority of the world doesn't act like it.

We fight each other.  Over money, over property, over religion.  We kill each other, over less.  We try to profit over each other, because of random values we assign to metal that is only precious because of it's relative scarcity to obtain by the general population.  We can't get along with our neighbors, let alone people who look, act, or believe differently than we do.  So, are we the children of gods?  The recipients of the sacred fire that Prometheus gave to us at risk of his own life?  Are we taking advantage of that gift?

We are at the precipice of humanity's greatest accomplishments and marvels.  People say it isn't the future doesn't occur until we have jet packs or flying cars.  But we can transfer large quantities of information on electricity, across the globe.  We can create devices the size of a small book that can hold an entire library's worth of information.  We can fly through sky and space utilizing knowledge and technology that our ancestor's couldn't even speculate a hundred years ago.  We cured polio and smallpox, treat HIV, which just over a decade ago was a death sentence.  We cannot cure cancer yet, but every day that passes, we get closer and closer.  Right now in time, the only limit to what we can achieve is the physical limitations of nature, and we bend them every day.  We carry that divine fire within us.  We need to act accordingly.

So what to do with the situation?  Anything.  Build something with with your hands.  Read a book about a topic you know nothing about.  Help someone solve a problem.  Go out into the world, and utilize that which makes us great.  Reach out and remind yourself why you are important.  Be majestic and powerful.  Remind yourself and others that we are greatest as a collective.  Together, we designed and built the architectural marvels of the world.  Together, we can bring our erstwhile brothers and sisters together, and guide them into a unified future.  And I will catalog it.  Because when i sit and think deeply about it, that was what I was meant to do.  I was meant to watch others, and recognize their achievements.

9 comments:

  1. i think this song is a great ending to your post

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  2. This is really just too deep to comment on. I'm not being lazy, I really just can't find too many words. I've often sat back and looked at the world myself, and thought like you do. I don't think I belong in this time much either, but here I am, I try to deal with it, albeit badly. There are some good humans left, it's just that they never get the attention, but the ones who are truly good also don't go looking for it. When most people do something nice they're all "Look at me! look at what I did! I did something nice!", then you have people like me, who people say are nice, but I always downplay my niceness, I say I was just being me, and I'm nothing special, even if people would consider me something special, I don't. I don't want a reward for what I do, I just try to leave people a little better off than when I found them. There are people like me out there, but I don't think you can make it as just an observer, eventually you will observe something and you won't be able to just observe it. I generally stick to observing, I generally detach myself, but there are things I can't bear to see. Though it does usually involve animals. Oh, finally, when people met me at 17 they said they were amazed I hadn't killed myself yet, and people still think that now I think. I too am surprised I made it to 20, I think I was surprised I made it out of school.

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  3. It's hard not to agree with this post. Take a walk down a dark alley and if you don't get mugged you'll see people who have a "life" in its most basic meaning... disappointing.

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  4. This is one of the better blog posts I have read in a while. We have evolved so far technologically speaking, yet we fail at some of the most basic things, such as loving and helping eachother. If we had more compassion in this world, I think the future of humanity wouldnt be so grim.

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  5. I completely agree with every word ElliotGreen said, this is a very good post. I've written many like it myself, though not as well put and not recently.

    I've personally given up on humanity, I think we, as a species, deserve everything we have coming.

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  6. Hm. Those were some interesting observations.

    Check out my math blog.

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  7. I love this song and album. A lot of people think The Queen Is Dead is their best. I say Strangeways.

    Don't an hero, bro. Your life will probably get a lot better than it is now. I'm unemployed right now and just got some disappointing news related to a possible job today. So I'm in a pretty shit mood. But my life is still tons better than it was at 25. I'm 31 btw.

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