The Problem
*If you begin reading this, do not stop. Do not walk away, do not skim, skip ahead, anything. Read it in its entirety. And, be open. A closed mind is a virgin mind and, as abstinence is great and everything, you’ve got to have a baby someday. Might as well be today:
So here we are. Sitting in today. Let me tell you a little something about today. It blows. Really, it does. If you can look around you and tell me everything looks o.k. right now, you need some work. If you can see what I see, then, bear with me here, the slow ones have to catch up. Society, that’s all of you out there, your friends, that’s me; we’re all a little sick. The human condition is well, deteriorating. We are a culture, mainly in the West, of cutthroat, back-stabbing, selfish, greedy, lying people. We just are.
You take a look at our businessmen and some of their tricks; you turn on the television and, have you seen the things we watch? The commercials we digest? We have T.V. shows like Jackass, where the goal is pain and suffering of an individual for entertainment or, reality shows about pretty rich boys and rich girls who have enough money to feed all the homeless in their city for months, but whine and complain about having only three nannies for their two kids. Take a look at our government! Wait, on second thought, don’t. That’s a societal train wreck if there ever was one. Look at the way corporations work with the government to censor artists and musicians. Look at the current 43.6 million impoverish people in the U.S. alone. Think about the food they don’t have. So next time you throw away that junk from the fridge that went bad, wonder to yourself who that could have fed the day you bought it.
We’re a society of want, not of need, and we want whatever we can get. Even things we can’t get. That’s why we have staggering credit card debts. Ding, ding, ding, there’s another one for you! And all of us have a price. Pay close attention now. The big guys, you know the ones in the tall towers who run everything, they will probe you and probe you and probe you until they find your “price”. Oh, and we will sell out. We will sell out, no doubt. So many do every day.
Here’s an example: Wal-Mart. Do you know how everything at Wal-Mart is so damned cheap? They can overwork the Orientals in their factories or the factories of their partners and pay them nothing. And not to mention the treatment of their employees. But we sure as hell want those low prices. And most of you will say, “Oh, that’s terrible! Hmm…I meant to go by Wal-Mart yesterday for something…” and then grab your keys and stop reading there. We are a society of hypocrites, men and women who either do nothing out of ignorance or do nothing out of indifference. We have such low self-respect and self-worth that I’m surprised anyone can get up and put on their own pants in the morning. We say, “Why should I recycle? It won’t change anything, because I’ll be the only one doing it!” You say, “Why should I vote, no one will care about what I have to say, plus, no one else is doing it!” Well yes, of course nothing will change if no one does anything! Because they all have the same mentality as you! Oh and by the way, I care about what you have to say. I do. I promise.
Look at the world that we’ve made for ourselves. People, would our parents be proud of us? Any generation, what would your parents think? And parents of this world, you really want your kids growing up in this world you’ve made? Did you just order the expensive meal and leave your kids with the check? There is so much more to discuss, but it has to be in greater detail, to do it justice. There will be more to come. I have pages and pages of these essays, don’t worry. But the problem, the problem is the human condition. We. The people. We’re the ones who do this to ourselves.
So as a sign off, instead of thinking of how you can get ahead or, what you don’t have, try, just once, to think about how you could be improving this world we live in. Hey, by God, the world may just look a little different after that. It did for me.
