I have recently come to the disheartening conclusion that the society we live in isn’t the land of opportunity that we like to think. Rather, I see it as a regime of authoritarians amid cutthroat capitalistic cannibalism.
We live in a country where the coarse art of capitalism has been refined since the days of the puritans. We all know exactly how we are expected to succeed in life and most of us follow a similar path in search of the elusive “American dream.” This dream can only be achieved through diligent conformity and the willingness to plow through anyone that stands in your way.
Most people will step on whomever it takes to reach the apex of the proverbial corporate ladder, only to spit on you from their fleeting position of power at the top.
They will stab you in the back, use the knife for support as they pull themselves another rung.
So, whom can you trust? You can’t trust the hippies or the anarchists because they’re usually too stoned to be there for you, and we all know the nihilists don’t care about anything. The anti-conformists are too worried about not conforming, and the socialists have been in hiding since the end of the cold war.
There really aren’t many people in this world that I can say I really trust, because honestly, I have almost completely lost faith in humanity.
I have witnessed the destruction of urban youth due through the concrete warfare that goes on every day in our inner-city neighborhoods. Not to mention the fact that many will never transcend the class that they were born into.
Still, we maintain the belief that America is a world of equality and that the caste system exists only in the third world.
The only true thing on this planet is the existence of skeptical, disillusioned people who exist only for procreation and communication, but have placed extreme value on success and personal achievement, rather than on the common good.
The only thing left to do is to give up faith and attempt to help ourselves, because there is no “faith” to be had in this world anymore. Organized religion is all about conformity and power, not faith or love. Non-practicing believers are just too afraid of death to give up their childish belief in an afterlife. Agnostics are either really confused, or they are just waiting until the last minute to confess their sins and dive through the catholic loophole, straight into an undeserved heaven. I think the atheists are the only ones who have the right idea because they see the world as the godless evolutionary fluke that it is. So, what’s left, karma?
Here’s what I have to say about karma: I have been sympathetically doling out cigarettes at the rate of about 3 per day to poor nicotine deprived addicts, but it never fails that when I run out of smokes, no one has an “extra” one for me.
Instead of change I hope for some sort of revelation. A life changing experience that opens my eyes to the wondrous beauty, and intrinsic good in the world, but I’m not even sure if anything like that really exists. I feel like I’m lost, and I don’t even know where I am supposed to be going.
I just drag my tired feet across the dirty pavement of Del Playa Dr., in search of something, or someone to restore my lost faith in humanity.