As implied above, I happen to be very affected by violence and hatred among people. I have noticed a severe increase in both of these things over the past week especially, and have been very disturbed by it. People I thought were relatively rational have recently appeared as disciples to the forces of hatred that seek to destroy us from within, and it has left a morbidly bleak petina over the world. I have found myself without a communal spirit of love around me, which is essential to living a real human life. Even out here in the country, where the people are slow to excitement and harshness, I feel there has been a severe corruption within the local spirit.drillkicker wrote:I think before anything good can happen in our post-modern societies, we first have to ascend past this ridiculous ethos of ever increasing atomization and immolation of communities. We can't keep living as if we don't need the people around us in order to have a human life. The first step would be to stop allowing municipalities to grow and chop down the skyscrapers, as well as the system that led to them. The very existence of these dreadful Towers of Spite is an accusation against our collective philosophy, that of individual growth at the expense of others. The capitalist notion of competition only fans the flames of human passion and allows it to grow out of control. It's an infectious evil machination that has replicated itself across the world and it's inevitably going to drive itself to unbridled combustion, and we will see these ziggurats brought down. I'd rather see it happen in a controlled and careful way than as an unwelcome force of chaos.
Furthermore, our age, probably more than any in the past, has been afflicted with a ubiquitous lack of love. Somehow people in our current age have been allowed to grow up thinking that one can and must turn off the switch of empathy when associating with certain people. Wherever I go, I see almost everyone do this. Whether it's in traffic, at a bureaucratic facility, in a store, at the workplace, or even at home, people are always turning away from their hearts and looking their fellow people in the face as if they were a cold, lifeless demon. This is most vicious when it's from a distance, especially through the internet, where one can very easily and casually wish death on another person without a stain on the conscience. Video games and action movies help immensely to engrave this idol into the modern human ego, and they provide a plenitude of convincing polemic to tell us that it's completely OK to have this attitude toward others, and that it's perfectly normal to wish for the blood of another human being just as long as that person has disqualified himself from the privilege of compassion. This, in my view, is the problem of our generation, and I don't believe I've ever seen it addressed in a serious way by anyone, because it's so pervasive that it's extremely difficult even to question it.
For the past months, I have been trying my best to live a simple life, without any ideologies or divisive opinions, and at peace with all of the wonderful people of the world, so capable of manifesting beauty and love, icons of the peace that will one day prevail over the world; only now, I am finding that peace harder to see, and harder still as the day grows dim. The simplicity that I have been seeking appears far and elusive, with various ideologies and systems in the way, and I have noticed that the people I know are too busy looking for faults in others to see the beauty of love. I was not prepared for anything like this, and I don't know how to respond. It seems that people are only interested in rage and accusation now, and I feel unable to avoid the surging hostility. These artificial systems that we believe in only end in death and defeat if we allow them to rule us. There are things worth sacrificing oneself for, and things that feed the ever-hungering maw of chaos. The things that cause us to view human beings as demons of evil always, not sometimes, constitute the latter of these.
My greatest and sincerest hope for the world at the present hour is that we can collectively move beyond these passions and see one another in the pure and nourishing light of forgiveness. May new life arise from the ashes of wrath and grow toward a community of mutual sacrifice and constant thanksgiving.
