Definitely NOT a suicide note or a cry for help...

Drain the abscess, ease the swelling

Bring the terror back where it belongs

Let no man see the folly

Of believing that he’s god

Let the pressure build within

Until the soul is doomed to crack

Temper goodness in a furnace

Fueled by anger, shame, and misery

The essence that remains is little more than ash

Serve his head upon a plate,

His presence is a cancer

It will devour from inside

Consume your better nature

The reflections turns grotesque

When you’ve locked eyes with the abyss

And stared too long into the black

Probing empty depths

Nothing left to do

But let the wound bleed out

The salt and searing lemon

Remove all hint of doubt

The pain you feel is real

No phantom shadow or an echo

Reminding you that Death still lingers close behind

With baited breath upon your neck

The kiss that falls from tarnished lips

Burns hot upon the touch

‘til nothing’s left but fear and sorrow

The burden of this life, the cost just far too much

Too much is never enough...

It would seem that greed has become the bane of my existence. I’m fundamentally disconnected from whatever impulse it is that perpetually drives the inability for people to be happy with what they have. The desire for more just doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t “want” anything. I’d like more money but only so I can get out of debt and not so I can move to a big house or make my car into some gaudy flashy abomination, or even to trick out my wardrobe into some obscene pastiche of color and designer labels. I don’t need it. My great aunt used to impress upon me the difference between wants and needs. She endlessly sought to instill in me that there were things worth saving for such as car repairs, emergency medical services, etc. and then there were wants that could and should be relegated to a back seat position and regarded only when the disposable income was available.

I find myself in the unique position currently where everyone around me is speaking of and placing importance around the idea of planning for some idealized career situation in which they have total autonomy and want for nothing. One friend in particular made a proclamation some years ago in which he stated his intention to be a millionaire by the time he was thirty. With only a couple of years left before his deadline arrives, he had indicated that he’s on track to fulfilling this goal. Now given that I generally get by on a shoe string budget and still manage to have enough spare cash to help out those in need, the question for me is why anyone would need this much money? It serves no real purpose, it doesn’t enrich life in any real way and it doesn’t contribute to the content of one’s character. It’s ones and zeroes that are given arbitrary value and allow for the exchange of goods or services that are ostensibly of a quality that will somehow elevate the purchaser to a station or position of betterment and recognition. I listen to the rhetoric as it’s espoused, and I can’t help but feel indifferent or disgusted at the importance placed on money.

Given that I’m not too far from turning thirty, myself, I listen to all of these lofty ideas, intentions of taking off and going to Paris or some other exotic location to relax and indulge, and I can’t help but see it all as useless excess. It seems that everyone these days wants to travel, they want to see the world and take in what they believe to be some grand experience. Now I can’t and won’t decry travel or exploration. I’ve never left the country, I’ve never wanted to. That’s not to suggest that I’m some die hard, overly patriotic idiot that clings to the stars and bars as though they are the only true herald of prosperity and truth in the world, rather I recognize that on the whole, my interest in visiting another part of the globe would be unfulfilled given that my interests aren’t for sightseeing or taking copious photos of some landmark or work of art, rather I seek to understand the place. I would only go to one place in the world and it’s because of the history. And I wouldn’t visit, I’d go and never return. But the common refrain these days from most everyone in my age demographic seems to center on saving for the future because of the myth that Social Security won’t be around when it finally comes time to collect and that the greatest accomplishment one person can achieve in their career aspirations is to become their own boss. Now regardless of the goal, ultimately it seems to all come back to greed. This incessant need to just need more, to never accept enough as being sufficient is sick.

Now I know that human beings are hard wired to strive for more, to work toward achieving higher aims; it’s how we cultivated culture, language, and produced civilization, but the things we work toward in this society seems to just be material. A bigger bank account, a nice suit, flashier clothes, a nicer car, a bigger house, a pet with a pedigree, a job with a multi word and multi syllable title that comes with a corner office and company expense account, and all of this is nice in theory but we define ourselves by it. We actively believe that attaining these material or arbitrary items and titles respectively will somehow enrich us as people. No one takes the time to realize that even with a bank account that sports a seven figure balance, a house that has taxes equating to more than I pay in rent for the year, or a job title that can’t be translated into the native language of the country where you multinational corporation is pillaging and raping the land, you’re not made a better person. You’re still you. Nothing changed. Greed has become the only reason to do anything anymore. The same tiresome refrain is repeated today to kids just like it was told to me. Go to school and get good grades so you can go to a good school and in turn get a good job. Why do you need this “good job”? So that you can make obscene amounts of money and in turn live a life of luxury. The equation seems a bit lopsided to me. I work myself to the extreme of fatigue and exhaustion; I relegate myself to the bottom of the list in terms of priorities and put everyone and everything else higher up. I don’t intend to ever retire or shuffle quietly into a state of idleness and uselessness. Leisure is great, insofar as you’re doing something to enrich yourself, to better your character, cultivate your mind, or produce something useful that will benefit the whole of mankind. Instead everything has a price tag. Video games, spas, cars, movies, music, television, posters, trendy books, comics, even the simple act of having a meal has some connotation of privilege and prestige to go along with it. No one creates art for the sake of making something beautiful, they want money for it. It’s all about compensation.

I find myself at odds on the mindset of achieving a station in life where it’s acceptable to do nothing. We are the only species on the planet that seems to actually buy into the belief that there’s an imaginary quota to be filled before it’s socially acceptable to sit around and let time pass us by. Every moment of every day should be spent doing something that betters us as people. I’m a writer, or I like to dilute myself into believing I am, and while I will indulge in movies, I listen to music constantly, and on occasion I’ll read for pure enjoyment. What you don’t know if all of this is speaking to me, it’s enlightening me, it’s informing me on some small aspect of something. I’m cultivating an idea, a message, a missive, a meaning, an understanding, or reaching for an epiphany from all of this. It’s not just filling time, and that seems to be the aim for most everyone. Fill time now by working and making money so you can fill time later doing nothing of any importance to contribute or benefit the masses or yourself in any lasting way. Why does anyone need so much money that they can buy land or personal aircraft? They don’t need it, they want it. But their wants have become something to be impressed upon the masses as things that everyone should aspire to obtain. I don’t like flying to begin with, so the last thing I want is a private plane. I really only work so I can pay my bills cover my expenses. I’m not saving up for a big house, a new car, some expensive elective surgery, or even to go travel to some far flung corner of the globe. Money changes people, and the pursuit of money changes people even more. I will keep working until the day I die. And if there comes a day where I’m told that I am no longer able to work or perform the things that I find fulfillment in, that will be the day that I make my grand exit from this plane. Idleness is uselessness. I dislike the feeling of sitting around with nothing to do. If I’m ever sitting and staring blankly into the expanse of the world, I assure you, I’m not just counting passing seconds, I’m most likely working or fabricating some facet of a story I’m working on, analyzing an interaction I’ve had with someone else and the conversation that took place (questioning their word choice,  tone, inflection, timing, pacing, behavior, the focus of their eyes), or examining the nuances of some situation that I’m seeking to get more control of. There are no idle moments for me. Every second is spent doing something and it’s not for the pursuit of money or more “things”.

My car is falling from together, my apartment is in a house that is rotting away on the foundation, my job has little to no room for advancement and betterment in my career and I devote far too much of myself to it for what pittance I actually get from it, but none of this matters. I’m fulfilled. I earn enough to survive, the car keeps moving under its own power, and the house remains standing. I don’t need any of the frills and accessories that we’re told to want. I’m utilitarian to a fault, if it has no purpose, I don’t want it. It has to do something, to better my existence in some way. If it can’t, I don’t want it and I’m not interested. Now while I know the point might seem murky in all of this, let me succinctly phrase it here: why is it so hard for people to just appreciate what they have?

I know there are those that will say I’m guilty of this sin, and I won’t deny it, but I don’t seek to obtain more useless crap in an effort to find contentment. I need fulfillment on a philosophical level more than anything else. Perhaps I’m disconnected because I recognize that none of this matters. In a few billions years all of our money will mean nothing, all of our companies, our civilizations, our petty squabbles over land and beliefs, all of it will mean nothing because the little rock we inhabit will be nothing. In the grand scheme none of it means anything. So why can’t we just try our best to revel in and appreciate the things we do have while we have them? Greed drives us further from fulfillment because we always believe we need more, nothing is ever enough and never will be. I’ll keep showing up to my job until I die on the clock or they fire me because I can’t do it anymore. And if the latter happens, it’ll be on that day that I’ll know I’m no longer of use on this little rock and take my leave. I have to remain busy, to be useful, to better the subjective experience of reality we all share instead of just trying to accumulate useless and intrinsically worthless crap for the sake of saying that I managed to get more than someone else. We’re all born into the world the same way, naked, covered in slime, and screaming our heads off. We all go out of it, none of us is above death or able to cheat it (except perhaps my father, that man is harder than a coffin nail), so why should any one person have claim or need of more pieces of paper assigned an arbitrary value than anyone else? Kate Beckinsale, Keira Knightley, Channing Tatum, George Clooney, even the stuffed shirts in congress all have the same thing in common. They’re human beings, brought into existence on the same little blue orb and breathing the same air. Sure they look different and have more money, bigger houses, nicer cars, and whatever what have you, but they’re no better than me or you. They still bleed the same, they will all die in due course, and once humanity has ceased to endure, they will be forgotten. Enjoy life and what you make of it, you don’t need more, you just need enough. 

A Taste of Something Sweeter...

Why is love so complicated? We aspire to it, we covet it, we’re told it’s the ultimate and the pinnacle of human achievement in terms of finding happiness and fulfillment, yet we complicate and taint it in so many ways. If not for the fact that sex feels so damn good and the act itself is not tied directly to the emotional feelings of people having it, the human race would no doubt have died out long ago, or would rapidly be going extinct. We search for weeks, months, sometimes years to find someone that we can devote ourselves to and too often we wind up settling for the first person we can stand to be in the same room with for more than five minutes without being compelled into projectile vomiting or wanting to strangle them to within an inch of their lives. So much pressure, even just telling someone you love them, the connotation has been built up into something to heavy and almost burdensome and the words seem to hold the weight and gravity of collapsing stars. The first time you find the courage to say them to your significant other, it’s as much an expression of your emotional state as it is a more heavily veiled hope for validation that what you think you’re feeling is something real. We’ve diluted ourselves to the point that we no longer know what love really feels like, we never commit or connect in any meaningful way and the best we can muster in most cases is a willingness to forego personal ego in favor of showing a sliver of vulnerability.

I know firsthand how terrifying it is to be genuinely naked in front of someone that you hope will not betray your trust or take for granted the risk you’ve taken in opening up that much. It’s almost crippling in the amount of fear and trepidation that it engenders. For most, finding someone that will penetrate the walls, sneak past the guards, and infiltrate our defenses into the deepest recesses of our true being, a place even most of us are too scared to tread, is little more than a pipedream and all the same as much a debilitating prospect as it is something we hope for with fervent intensity. We want to find that person, to be able to shed the armor we wear even when clothes do not adorn our shoulders, and yet for all that want, we can’t give blind trust. The compromise usually ends up with us doing our best to devote ourselves in a way that eventually will build love. The old idea of two people seeing each other across a crowded room and experiencing instant attraction to something more than the physical attributes of each other, our society regards it as cynical romanticism and nothing more than a fairy tale. We’ve complicated it far more than it needs to be. But fear can be as powerful as love, in some cases even more so because of the things it takes from us. It can knock our knees right out from under us and leave us wondering what the hell happened. We wind up spending more time trying to figure out how it all fits together and actively seeking blind ignorance to the disparity, willing and wishing away the gap. Love is scary, I won’t argue it. I chose fear more than once; hell I chose addiction and called it love. I’m far from being the poster child for a healthy relationship or even the high water mark for what a romantic should be. Too often I throw all of myself into a dynamic and hope that when my head comes back up for air, she’s still there smiling. Sadly I’ve wound up floundering and almost drowning a few times too many, but at least I got my feet wet.

We don’t pine anymore, we don’t long for someone with genuine intensity; feeling that they complete us. Falling in love is something that happens against our will, and for me it’s usually most intense when I’ve tried to fight or ignore the impulse. But I’ve thought about it extensively of late, having reached a point where I’m no longer protected from my own safeguards, and recently having had a massive break through following a bombshell realization and a night that bordered on pure insanity, I’ve reached a massive epiphany. For all the bluster and blunder we ascribe to it, love is a very simple thing. Perhaps the most beautiful and simplistic description I’ve found reads: Love is composed of a single soul inhaviting two bodies. Aristotle is the quoted speaker of that little nugget and despite its being almost twenty-five hundred years old, I feel it’s as true now as it would have been the day he said it. It’s equality and recognition, respect and trust, vulnerability and openness. Love is letting it all hang out because the person you’re with is you. They’re your reflection, your ideal self, the better part of you that you never knew was missing. It’s no more complicated than that. You don’t need a reason to love someone, you just let yourself do it. For those that have someone to hold close, to call their own, someone waiting at home for them with a smile and warm gesture, treasure them above all else, and don’t just go through the motions, commit yourself every day to a better tomorrow. Finding someone that tolerates you is easy, finding someone that will make you a better person in spite of yourself, now that’s the real trick. There may not be someone out there for everyone, I’m still convinced I’m dying alone but I’m okay with that. But those that have managed to find someone that touches them in a way that defies words and goes beyond physical or emotional and to a level that boggles the mind and still leaves the stomach leaping when they walk into the room, know the value of what you have, and never take it for granted. 

Always something...

Compelled toward something beautiful

Eyeing perfection in simplicity

She knows nothing of her beauty

A flawless reflection of what she admires, yet fears

So wrapped up that vision blurs

A vision of completion is all that's seen

Silent longing echoes into the ether

Yearning for a touch, a chance, a kiss, a word

Hold the idea with fevered fingers

Hope blooms within every heartbeat

Reality sinks in time and again, unrelenting

Always something...

Close your eyes and go there, we'll meet you on the other side

                It’s ten forty at night as I write this and perhaps this piece, more than any other, will serve as a true and unfiltered glimpse into my badly decayed psyche. Fate, has once again conspired against me in a terrible fashion. I am a slave to the circumstances and whims of whatever ungodly power runs this world. She moved on, I still haven’t.

                I make no promises that any part of this will be coherent in the slightest, or even that if asked an explanation could be provided. My mind is clouded in a haze of raw and competing emotions. A simple accidental click and my entire world comes crashing down around me, the whole of my reality obliterated by a simple mistake.

                Today is her birthday. I’ve spent the majority of today debating with myself if any part of me has right, reason, or cause to acknowledge it. I’ve wrestled with the impulse to wish her well, to offer good tidings. Now I wrestle with something for deeper, far more wounding. And the worst part is, I don’t know why it’s affecting me like it is.

                This universe is sick, whatever entity, consciousness, deity, or energy controls, coordinates, orchestrates, influences, or engenders the goings on is reprehensible on a level that makes Hitler seem like a saint. I have nothing but loathing and disgust for this existence. There is nothing redeeming in it; no facet of salvation that makes it all worthwhile, no set of circumstances that make everything fit together in a neat little package. This universe is chaos, it’s insanity packaged like a frozen dinner but served at a five star restaurant. None of it makes sense.

                I’m a victim to my own machinations, consumed by my dealings, a slave to the slow implementation of my own agenda. I am weak and humbled, pitiful and abashed, embarrassed and at this exact moment nauseous. There is no humor in this, no punch line that makes it all come together in a clever way. There’s only the wound, still seeping, the scab barely holding together and serving as the slender thread connecting the great gaping chasmal abyss of my rapidly evermore deteriorating insanity with what scraps and shreds of my fragile psyche remain intact enough to be held together. Even now I’m fighting the urge to vomit, cry, scream, rip every hair from my head, and just shut down. Some part of me wants to curl up into the fetal position, but another part me knows that the action itself will do nothing to bring me solace or peace of mind.

                Anger, it’s the only clear emotion, the only thing that pierces the blinding curtain of uncertainty and trepidation that has descended. Anger at myself for not having found my peace, not having let the wound heal, at allowing myself to be so deeply affected, at feeling anything at all, at not being strong enough to achieve my goal of being numb, at having every breath feel forced and labored. It’s all just excess, so much clutter. The furniture of my mind is broken and worn, long past due to be thrown out and yet I sit huddled in the corner clutching armor that is too worn thin to provide protection and terrified of moving for fear of losing footing.

                Thoughts come and go, like fluid. They’re more ethereal, less real than ever before. Thoughts have never had substance but I could dwell in them. My memory has gone soft, it’s at the periphery, over a wall I can’t climb. The ladder’s not tall enough. Bring me the head of the disco king. It was over, I was healing. The pain had ended, the hurting stopped. I had found peace. I spiraled out…didn’t I? Why does it go on? I cried until there was nothing wet in me, I screamed until my rebelled and threatened to rupture. I prayed in silent agony, every second an anguish to any god I thought might listen. Still it goes on, no end in sight. It doesn’t relent, I knew then and know that any relent would not be out of caring. We’re insects, observed but not interacted with. The ants keep marching into the infinite, oiled bioorganic machinery, a giant organism of delegated labor. Lift the legs higher, dragging your feet slows progress. Why the torment? Why no release or escape? What sin condemns to this hell? What hypocrisy curses me with such tortures? God loves all creatures, but forsakes those he chooses to condemn. Faith is the result of forsaking logic in favor of blind obedience. No longer a martyr, not even capable or fighting. I have no belief left. The echoes assail in silent attack, ninjas on the wind with boots that make no sound. Bring the war to them. Where has my sanity gone? I chose this hell. I did it. I had the choice, to forsake the emotion or indulge it. I chose. Turn off the bleeding, not enough left to fill the cup. Magnesium. Endless reckoning and reflection, find the soft spots, history is static but memory is biased, smooth the edges and see the picture. No more wrinkles. Precious. Happiness, they say it’s the ultimate. The pinnacle of human interaction, the paramount endeavor of any intelligent being is to attain happiness. Love is a chemical imbalance in the brain. Dopamine and serotonin are secreted in response to pheromone recognition in the olfactory senses resulting in the brain flooding with chemicals. Opiates do the same. Opiate, Tool’s first EP. Drug of the people. Opiate brings happiness. Systemically removed like any kind of termite or roach, this part of the building only though. The memory’s come and feel solid one second then go soft and flicker away into the black. Nothing solid, nothing tangible. There’s not such thing as death life is only a dream and we’re the imagination of ourselves. If you attain enlightenment in life is there anything left to offer you when you stand in judgment? Unconditional love. How diluted was I? How utterly self-indulgent was I to remain blind and willfully ignorant, to now see the course of the future? Elevate me enough to bring me down, the air is stale up there. Never had a nose bleed. Disjointed thoughts find footing in the ether, drift away on the wind. Chaos controls the minds of everyone, order is the illusion. Well-ordered fear is not the soup du jour. The failed stalker, she was terrible at it. Ask a question, get an answer. I got you something. My pig. My Sol. No more tears left, the well has gone dry. Dust burns the eyes. Laughing and crying are the same physiological process, lachrymal stimulation is the only difference. Why is nothing solid? Why does it come one second then leave the next? No excuse. Everything has a reason. Explain the cause. Nothing just happens, chaos still has traceable patterns. The disorder is just beyond human comprehension. It bleeds the same either way. The purge, long overdue. The library charges a fee for late books. Purge the humanity, drain the abscess and close the wound. Sutures, scalpel, staples, stitches, thread. Tighter. Apply pressure. Stop the bleeding. Red, the color of war, passion. Passion, where did mine go? Eaten up. Consumed like a star. Burn twice as bright but half as long. Candles is snuffed out. Stoke the coals but not hot enough to cook. Empty cold black space. No stars in the sky, gathered them up, gave them to her. Greatest gift of all. Smile. Her smile. Vulgar thing. Common. She has terrific teeth. Profane the priest. Nobility is lacking is self-righteous action making a good deed into something tainted. I’m tainted. A pure heart filled with poison. Barred from happiness. No longer chosen, or even wanted. Terrible thing, happiness never lasts. Bitter taste and bad memories of it. Warm fingers gripping cold flesh. Thinner then. Less hair. Cold eyes though. She said she saw love, warmth. The couch left marks in my back, scabs arrived by morning. Blood from her nails digging into back during lovemaking. The cat knows something’s wrong. Big yellow eyes pierce my own. He sees through me. I’m scared and helpless. Feel like I’m drowning. Gulping air but can’t fill my lungs. Air burns the nasal passages as it passes. Don’t know what she smells like anymore. She used to smell me. Random times. Odd texts telling me she could. Nothing but an illusion, the whole of it. Years of investment wasted, no return and in the end lost more than I put out. I’m not right. Something is severely broken and this rabbit hole goes deeper than I thought. I don’t want to feel anymore, I’ve felt too much and swallowed too much pain. Make the hurting stop so I can sleep. I just want to be numb. I never asked to feel love. I don’t like it. Messy thing. Makes the brain soft and emotions take over. Rationality doesn’t fit. Puzzle becomes different. Broken thoughts. Dammit why can’t I put words down. The last talent I had and it’s gone. Swallowed whole. I’m so tired, so empty. Drained. Hollow. There’s no love in fear. Staring down the hole again, hands are on my back again, survival is my only friend. Terrified of what may come. It will end no other way. Tool will save my sanity. 

A Thought Problem of Preference....

If you take a shot and everything about it from the aim, the trajectory, the wind conditions, I mean everything about it is perfect and planned for, and you hit the target with absolution precision, flawless execution but still don’t get the outcome you wanted would you have rather missed? I’m debating that question because a recent series of events is very much like this. I took my shot, I hit the mark, and I still got nothing for the effort. I’m debating if it would have been better if I missed altogether. On the one hand I’d prefer it because then at least I could just say reload and try again, but in this instance I hit the bull’s eye without blinking. I nailed it dead bang. Shooting again would do me no good and only serve to undermine what little I managed to accomplish with the first shot.

So that having been said, the question has to be asked, would it have been better if I was off or if I missed on my first try? I feel like it would have been. Somehow it just feels like I failed miserably to have everything lined up so perfectly and yet still not have things come to fruition. It makes me question if I’ve slipped in my skills, if my eye for analysis and evaluation is somehow less than it was before, if I’ve lost a fundamental and unique skill. That kind of self-doubt is dangerous to say the least. I know that somewhere in me the impetus for all my skill, all my ability was the fact that I cared. I had passion and that lent itself to something powerful and wonderful. I had the full use of my abilities because I was passionate about them and the use to which I applied them. The impetus for my passion is no more and thus my passion no longer burns as the conflagration it once did. I’m sure it could but it’s finding the spark to reignite the fire that is proving more troubling.

Going through the motions is easy, it’s controllable and simple to maintain. Reeling and struggling as I’m battered from one end of the fire storm to the other is difficult. In many ways I miss feeling so helpless and ineffectual. To know that the maelstrom was outside of my control and that the best I could hope to do was come up for air every once in a while as a kind of reprieve to attain clarity, is something seems like a welcome condition these days. Few people know what it is to be passionate, to genuinely be inspired and feel the energy of something beautiful flow within you; to wake up every day and find new zeal toward a goal or endeavor. I felt it and I reveled in every day I had it. I was wrapped in it like a gossamer blanket of joy. The inferno dimmed. The spring ran dry. The intensity of that light only lasted so long and eventually there was no more fuel to feed the fire, no more rain to replenish the well. I did my best to cling to my blanket but wound up holding onto shadows and ghosts.

This is the world that I have inhabited for far too long. A run down and derelict structure that once served as the seat of unrivaled grandeur. I’ve dwelt within a palace that has served more as a tomb than a shrine or an edifice of lavishness; a hollow kingdom with a king that cares nothing for the suffering of his lands and peoples. I sought the disconnection, reasoned away attachment as something to be reviled and abhorred. Human affection is a weakness, emotional investment is foolish, trust is the ultimate invitation for betrayal; the rhetoric goes on and on, but in the end it’s all the same idea, “misplaced faith and trust can only end badly”. But even as brilliant as some might claim me to be, I missed the first word in that: misplaced. I pressed on, willing away anything that would possibly connect me to humanity and thus leave me weak, heedless of the possibility that the choice might turn out to be one of ultimate self damnation.

But now we arrive at our present hypothetical discourse. If you make the perfect shot but still lose in spite of it, would it be better to have missed completely? Put another way: For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Perhaps the last dawn...

An old friend of mine once told me that the entire purpose of life came down to a simple maxim, “The pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of pain”. At the time, and even now, I find that very trite and basic; almost too simple to even be worthy of debate or consideration. Sadly though, for most that is what life is all about. It’s the rhetoric we use, the platitudes we share, and ideology we espouse. “Live in the now”, “Forget the past”, “Always move forward”, “Never lament lost friends”, and the idioms go on and on ad infinitum. All of these things are great as bumper sticker slogans and eye catching or comment inducing Facebook posts, but for genuine wisdom or even powerful imagery it’s just empty words. We’re introspective beings by nature, we’re designed to reflect, to learn and adapt, to cull worthwhile information every action and reaction and tailor future behavior and interactions to produce or influence beneficial results.

Now while one might argue that this would seem to support or lend credence to the idea of pursuing happiness above all else, it’s worth noting a desired result does not always mean aiming for happiness. Self-sacrifice is something of a myth in today’s world, with selfishness and single mindedness being promoted by pretty much every major informer of personal opinion. We’re conditioned to consume, to seek out newer, better, more luxurious comforts and accoutrement; brainwashed into believing that the only true measure of success is a big house, a flashy expensive car, and a sizable number of offspring to offer up in order to perpetuate ensure the survival of the hereditary genome. But this is how society would have us measure success today. In ages long gone, when intelligence was something to be aspired to, when the betterment of all mankind was the highest calling and most fulfilling reward one could hope to achieve, when public discourse allowed for worthwhile dissent and a meaningful and worthwhile exchange of ideas, success was measured by how big of a footprint one managed to leave on the world during their brief time here.

Humanity is on an uncertain course, a unspecified route into the future, and in my lifetime, brief as it’s been up to now, I have seen a dangerous a fundamentally flawed change in focus from the useful to the banal and mediocre. Television serves to keep people docile and easily influenced, with few people bothering to question the information disseminated to them and most identifying more with Reality TV stars instead of visionaries, of which we have hardly any left. There are no heroes left, at least in the United States.

When I was a kid, we were told that we could be anything we wanted to be when we grew up; anything at all. An astronaut, a news anchor, a doctor, a lawyer, even president, it was all within reach if we wanted it. The truth though, is that for most of us we grow up expecting a reality that doesn’t exist. There are no more astronauts; our space program has been reduced to little more than a few billion dollar projects to do further research on things that vast majority of people find to be esoterically interesting. We’re not going to the moon, the first manned mission to Mars won’t be with NASA but from some private corporation that offers the lowest bid to get a willing crash test dummy meat sack to the rust colored orb. This is the legacy of those pioneers of yesteryear. News anchors serve as puppets for the major networks, delivering only the approved missives of their corporate masters and serving more as a mouthpiece of distraction to instill fear and compliance into a naïve populace. There’s no journalistic integrity anymore with sensationalism having been the most profitable standard for delivery of any information, everyone seeks to deliver gossip as fact and plays up the myriad of scenarios that might have resulted in a more catastrophic result. Doctors and lawyers are worthwhile professions but with a healthcare system that seeks to impose more bureaucracy and further complicate things like who pays for a bandage, the insurance company or the patient, there’s no nobility left in the profession. It’s a person in neon scrubs, giving lip service to a scared person on a gurney, offering token reassurances and the whole while everyone from the X-ray technician to the OR surgeon is really just hoping to avoid a malpractice suit and to allow the patient to live long enough to actually pay the bill. Lawyers have been vilified in popular culture by how many of them go on to serve as politicians and further debilitate an already bankrupted country. In popular media they’re more often seen as champions of justice and morality or portrayed as faceless cogs in a system that ignores them as individuals and just churns along like a torrential river. And no one reading this will ever be president. In order to serve in what was once the most hallowed office in the Western World, one has to be willing to be unscrupulous, allow their purchase by multiple corporations and special interest groups, have a thin allegiance to anything and everyone except the biggest check, and if the first four years of Obama’s term is any indication, a set of personal beliefs that can be easily influenced or changed to suit whatever the other side demands of you in order to get anything done.

The Lone Ranger is long dead, Superman was killed in the early ‘90’s and even though DC brought him back, that hallowed mythology has been forever shattered, and even the heroes we’re allowed to see on screen, television or theatre, serve only to make money instead of to inspire. Greed is humanity’s sin of choice and they make no apologies for it. Politicians that decry any form of socialism or equality as being against the basic principles of this country, either from a religious standpoint or from the “true intentions” of the Founding Fathers (if you actually buy into the Teabagger rhetoric), and an overly wealthy percentage of owners of this country and are unapologetic for their unabashed buying of public policy and still insist that they don’t have enough because someone else out there still has something they don’t. In kindergarten one of the most important things they impress upon us, outside of being able to color in the lines and count to ten, is to share. But the adult world tells us that if you’re decent and honorable, even just once putting someone else before yourself no matter the reason, you have committed career suicide and are doomed to remain in the same station in life with no hope or possibility of ever advancing. Greed is good it seems. The Christian right demands a return to more wholesome biblical values, well if that’s the case and that’s really what they mean, why don’t they start with demanding that the politicians they beseech to limit the public’s access to pornography and violence focus instead of having everyone do their best to avoid the seven deadly sins. I think that would be a better place to start.

For those that don’t have them memorized or are not so inclined to look them up, the Seven Deadly Sins are Pride, Greed, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, and Envy. From where I sit, the United States, in its current incarnation, it guilty of all of seven sins and not the least bit concerned with rectifying or changing that in anyway. We espouse our superiority and force others to adopt our way of life, convinced beyond the shadow any doubt that there is no better lifestyle to be had. We constantly consume, never satisfied or content with what we have and never pausing to really appreciate any of it. We kill for resources and to preserve our way of life but it’s all just smoke and mirrors to mask how truly petty and vindictive we are in our foreign policy. We have selfish ignorant leaders that want nothing more than to maintain their power and so they seek to depose, destroy, limit, censor, obfuscate, or otherwise cloud anything they perceive to be a threat to their station. We are a civilization that peaked in 1969. We put a man on the moon, put a calculator in a wristwatch, and managed to manufacture a device that allows college students to make ramen noodles in just less than three minutes; this device is called a microwave. The iPod, the Internet, the PC, even the cell phone, all of them are great devices built on technology that was intended to move humanity forward, to usher in a new industrial age and allow for mankind to break new frontiers and leap ahead and take the realm of science fiction and make it science fact. Instead we have record companies’ squabbling over who gets the thirteen cents Apple pays them every time someone downloads a song. We have cell phone carriers battling each other over who can get the flashiest startup sequence and produce a camera that allows someone to count the number of lips hairs the girl at the end of the bar has. We’ve got an internet that subsidizes television with video clips of stupidity and insanity consistently at the top, while famous people are tracked ad nauseam in 140 character snippets of their lives. We live in an age where communication between two people is the easiest it has ever been in the history of mankind, and yet we use more words to say nothing of value than ever before.

Substance is lacking from the world. Integrity, dignity, compassion, kindness, selflessness…these words meant something once upon a time and they were qualities to aspire to. We live in a three dimensional world with two dimensional people living two dimensional lives. Each of us indoctrinated by years of fear mongering and conditioned to believe that we are all special and therefore uniquely suited to have a positive impact on the world. I don’t dispute the last part, but I’m wondering when the seven billion on this planet who are not in the spotlight are going to get working on leaving their mark. If each of us is destined to do something extraordinary, why do so few of us enter the mass consciousness? Mankind was made for something great, either by design or by chance, we were made to do something remarkable and inspiring and in the last century we went further and did more than at any point in history before. We made ungodly technological advances, we reached for the stars and we conquered our fears. We refused to believe that something couldn’t be done just because it was hard, we refused to settle for anything less than excellence and gave nothing less than that from ourselves. We were inspired, informed, and willing to push the limits of what we thought possible to achieve something that would last. Our civilization is in decline, but the human race doesn’t have to follow it into the ether. We can save our way of life and we can save ourselves, we just have to be willing to not be afraid and to strive for something more than just the hedonistic “pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of pain”.