Caring about anything is exhausting. I wrote a semi-screed the other morning after watching the last half of the debate but was unable to see it through to the "publish" button. What use are my opinions on such a disappointing circus of personality? The only way to shut it down is not to go. Stop paying to see animals in iron cages.
I hear a lot about how important it is to vote and I want to believe it, but I don't. We live in an age of totalitarian democracy. It's both a technical term and a slur. As ol' H.S.T. said, There's no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment. Whatever you think there is that can possibly go wrong, it's already happening. Just name it and it is out there waiting to pounce, if it hasn't already.
I give up, for now. I look around me and am in disbelief at so much of what I hear and see. The internet has done little to improve either opinion or knowledge. I would go into detail, but that is useless and might only prove the thing that I am most against. There are always other facts to consider. The pushback from the emergence, and some would say triumph, of the scientific process has created a new structuralism around the sanctity of personal opinion. Everybody has become their own religion. Nobody is wrong any longer, because feeling wrong feels bad and we know that feeling bad puts you on the path of demons.
So, I don't feel bad about what's happening, I laugh like a man possessed.
We live in a world that is daily increasing in bullshit, particularly for those just entering. Every age has had its share of people who must feel this way, but the West is not enjoying any upswing in cultural importance. It is using its own devices to dismantle itself. I would never speak out against decadence, but it extracts its toll. Who survives the luxury of self-examination.
Ah well.
Example: Is it just me, or is Obama only the most divisive president in history, for closet racists?
Because the open and public challenging of that opinion on the most popular social media platform ever created just happened to coincide with strong feelings concerning the divisiveness of the first African-American president. That was all coincidental, I guess. It startles the senses to watch public opinion make its way through the public. We are increasingly being corralled into a world without nuance. I'm certain that the Facebook algorithms push divisiveness as a commercial interest. There are only two ways to feel - agreeable or angry.
I should probably not even post this, a grumbling about past and future grumblings.
Dissatisfaction is useless, a salve made of salt.
When will I become the modest Buddhist that my sensibilities push me towards, or sometimes taunt me with. There is too much mumbling in everything around me, and within me. I await the return of calmness and wonder that I had as a youth, senses long flown. Looking up at stars, instead seeing the lights of Jesus' eyes, a rainbow exploded over again, long ago leaving its shrapnel spread through the heavens, the champagne tickle of remnant savior blood.
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