Life experience has taught me that most people are raised to be unethical, selfish as3holes. That the more they are on such a path the more vaunted, celebrated they will be, the more friends they will tend to have. On the surface it seems to have a great payoff! Deeper they hide grave wounds that they know how to dress up real well, especially to causal onlookers, but they cannot keep up false appearances for close intimates. This is the best summation in the shortest words of the structural reasons why this is so:Gary Yourofsky wrote: ADAPTT: Here’s What’s Wrong With PETA and HSUS
... Gurdjieff, the Great Russian Seeker of Truth, explained that life is the payment of promissory notes one makes while in a waking sleep. He said that humans spend the majority of life going through the motions, making promises (marriage, employment) they never intended nor wanted, and then suffering from the burden of fulfilling those unintended commitments. Commitments to our jobs, our homes, to our spouses and family members are ignoble. The only commitment should be to justice by any means necessary.
I have been thinking of what to do personally about this. I came across a podcast about a guy who has lived without money since 2000, named Daniel Suelo. He said that if you think about a tree, it does not make you stop and say: "What will you give me before I release this apple." The world is naturally a place full of gifts and abundance, but our social and monetary system ruin it. So to him it seemed ridiculous to use money and he stopped. However, I don't think that is a realistic path for me, since I am not a social person.John Perkins wrote:
... a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.
... When men and woman are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting motivator. When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble. And we get it.
... They have brought us to a point where our global culture is a monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have consumed everything in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself.
Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. (Plume, 2006) p. xv.
I did get accepted into some short academy that teaches to build a revolutionary type of housing with a self-contained water recycling systems(no sewer), that gathers rain-water(thus needs no hookup to municipal water), is solar powered(needs no power grid), has an indoor garden, needs no heating or cooling because it has thermal mass, etc. They are called earthships, you can learn about them from this Weather Channel clip (Youtube: 7 min) or their homepage. But I don't think is this is realistic for me: I have no aptitude for anything involving repair or building, I don't like being in new settings, etc. But it does offer a remote possibility of relocating to Greece which I would love, especially since there is a huge economic collapse ongoing that is closing off the option for most the population becoming the type of middle class scum I am currently surrounded by. Also I can't see myself ever looking forward toward abusing my body to build for privileged businessmen and the rich.
Another option I have is getting a job at the local transit. It is basically a pulse job, meaning if you have a pulse you can do it, it pays very well, you actually spend most of the shift not working, etc. I could do something constructive by stealing labor time from my employer to use for better purposes. I was thinking of creating scripts about why modernization and Americanization are so bad, creating video and narrating it to put on Youtube with subtitles that hopefully other people can translate. One of the big problems is that the American cultural-entertainment industry is the biggest export of the biggest economic power -- this creates a stilted, false image of the toil, misery, imperialism, social isolation and slavery that fuels our lifestyle. Or I could start writing fiction or something. Of course I could do those things now, but my mom has programmed me constantly about jobs, career, money so that when I have free time, I don't ever feel I can do anything.
However, I feel it doesn't matter what I do. I never will find my place in the world and I don't think I want to. To belong to an unjust world you have to be selfish and unjust. I had alot of negative programming growing up. All my mom(like almost all American moms) ever taught me was to watch tv, do good in school, be a consumer. That is to be a horrible, incomplete person who can only make money and spend money, and to "entertain" oneself in the intern of free moments, and when one cannot distract oneself, one must be scared of being alone with their thoughts. It is hard for me to exit the paradigm, especially since I don't like venturing out and hate meeting or dealing with new people. It seems I am cursed to do what I don't want to do just because there is money in it. But I wonder anew everyday, is that really different than living death? That is how most live, as zombies, but they have the great benefit of being unconscious of it, it is much more difficult to know this is your threshold of your existence. Would I rather die and live a few real moments of pain, anticipation, anxiety and calm instead from the moment that decision was made till the end comes?