>For the most part I have always considered myself a total pacifist and very much a “live and let live” kinda guy, but the more I see the world around me – the more I want to simply go on an incredible hulk style rampage!
“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time…”
And the irony if you ask me is that most of the time its not even the major things that get to me, its the little idiocies and the news bits that show such a complete lack of growth as society and as a species…
First things first: no matter how we identify ourselves, by religion, race, country, fuckin dietary habits – whatever! How hard is it to understand that first and foremost we are human beings? I mean its bad enough we have hindu’s and christians and muslims fighting each other, but you also have them fighting and killing themselves.. where do we draw a line? Is there no one that we are not willing to destroy over ideological differences that in the long run dont matter and will inevitable change anyway with the passage of time.
No religion, culture or lifestyle choice is the same today as it was even 50 years ago – forget the state of thing further back…
The thing Ive come to realise is that today we have this uber-materialistic, image driven society that draws no lines and believes at its core (though no one will admit this in any hurry!) that the ends justify the means!
Ok, now instead of tirading on this, Im going to quote another.. Since its already been said better then anything I can think of, Im just gonna plagiarise:
“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
…who can tell me where this is from? lets see how good your gk is kiddies! Simply put, we are raised and taught to drive and achieve and accumulate but in the end only a precious few are truly HAPPY, why is this so prevelant now?
But this is why things are so messed up! Im not even going into the whole religious and such aspects of this, because man, I would just type out a damned novel if I did.
I want to talk about the social part of things here, the individual more so.. We have a society thats more global and more intimately connected then its ever been in all of human history, yet there seems to be a major breakdown in the level of communication somewhere along the line…
The world is rife with Rwanda’s, Darfur’s and Sierra Leone’s – Afghanistans, Sri Lanka’s and Nepals – Serbia’s and Palestine’s… There is this long standing backlog of misery and anger and hate and genocide all across the globe to name but a few of the more well known, but instead of solving them and improving, we rush headlong into creating more of them… its a thing to be truly sad for…
The idea of living in this insulated bubble is becoming a worldwide phenomenon… people just want their own world to be safe and secure and the rest of the planet will take care of itself.. there was a conversation from Hotel Rwanda that always stuck with me because of the sheer truth of it: “I think if people see this footage, they’ll say Oh, my God, that’s horrible. And then they’ll go on eating their dinners.”
We have become such an apathetic, glitz obsessed society that it doesnt scare me, but it saddens and sickens me.. I have always believed that no matter how bad things look, there is always hope and chance, but that doesnt make it any easier to watch the shitholes we are pulling ourselves into…
The worst (or best actually) example that I can give you is about 2 recent news articles: one was about certain letters written by Mahatma Gandhi himself just a short while before he died regarding treatment of muslims that were to be put up for auction at Christies. Now I read that and my thought was, “Wow! Now those should be worth more money then I could count, I mean not thats a worthy item to auction and own! A true piece of a great mans history, a man that is world reknowned.” Then I read that it was estimated to draw at least some 9000 pounds (or in that range). Ok, cool…
Then I read in the same paper (and several others later) that someone had sold a dog food can from Paris Hiltons garbage for over ten times that price. Seriously?!?!?
There is something very wrong with society today, everyones fighting everyone – be it physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, commercially, whatever…
Something needs to change a lot and very, very fast or we will be so far a downward spiral that we sont be able to pull out anymore.. ok… tirade done.. thank you for your patience my friends.
Cheers…
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
– Oscar Wilde
A parting shot:
“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra. Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let… lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may!” – Tyler Durden
One Happy Monk 
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