As we enter the future discussing subjects like which age will be appropriate for a child to choose its own gender, I can’t help but wonder how many people think of the consequences we face everyday for the thousands of shitty decisions we’ve made to get us to this point.
We used to live by a code of ethics which was paradigm. Whether biblical or simply moral, there was a fundamental difference between Right and Wrong, or shall we say Good and Evil. In most families this code was strictly enforced in various, often physical manners carried out by our parents (or the nuns) depending on which school system you were enrolled in.
This was a time when there was ONE rebel in the classroom the other kids were terrified to act against the code. They all feared their parents’ wrath… until...
Television became the babysitter:
Both parents forced to work, more single parent households, alcoholic parents, whateverthefuckever. Most parents didn’t have time to review their kids’ daily activities. Reflecting back I’d simplify it by saying, ‘The more time kids spend watching TV, the more their minds are exposed to. The less you can shelter them or protect them from…’
When kids acted out, parents found out and usually set them straight with a swift kick in the pants… Suddenly a day came when a thing called a, “Time-out” took the place of a well deserved smack on the ass. The unexpected shift in control would lead to our rapid decent down this fucking rabbit hole.
The subsequent rebellion would later lay the groundwork for a new phenomenon known as the “cool parent”. This is where parents make efforts to become “best friends” with their kids, which would inevitably evolve and give birth (breach birth) to the “everybody wins” movement which formed a thick layer of bullshit around the whole cause and effect thing, which completely inverted our... well, REALITY.
Since we were escaping reality and no longer had a need to work toward our achievements, and with nobody to control us, the internet appeared, catapulting us into the future of limitless irresponsibility...
This was television to the millionth power. The world wide web mutated radically like an infectious disease from “Information Superhighway” to, “Everything you can think of and a ton of shit you wished you hadn’t read about”, while becoming our most necessary evil. Today, our social existence, world infrastructure, and black market rely heavily if not solely on the internet.
This was television to the millionth power. The world wide web mutated radically like an infectious disease from “Information Superhighway” to, “Everything you can think of and a ton of shit you wished you hadn’t read about”, while becoming our most necessary evil. Today, our social existence, world infrastructure, and black market rely heavily if not solely on the internet.
So we whine, we blog, we rant, we complain. We write negative reviews of businesses with free products or services the ultimate goal. We criticize the world but we continue to do little or nothing to improve ourselves. After all, there’s got to be a restart button or a pill we can take to make us bonafide grown-up when the time is right, right?
A pill because you’re too sad or too anxious or too hyper or too tired. A pill to make your unruly 5 year old sit still and stay focused, a pill to make you lose weight between your celebrity recommended ice cream and cupcake diet. A pill to make you feel, or a pill to make you not feel, but nothing to make you cope. How the hell do we cope… with loss, failure, rejection, success, expectations? Do they teach that in school?
I was raised to suck it up, understand there were no “do overs”, which brings me to my personal anguish:
After years of misery, infidelity, shame and humiliation, my father left. He married a woman with 3 kids. He got his “do over”, a whole family. He was such a success, bringing order to a disorderly single mother’s life. Family vacations and a whole new life. I was a teen at the time, today I’m 44, so I would have or at least, should have, made peace with it by now, and I have, or so it would seem… until... This past week Dear ole Dad was in town for the holidays with his “family”, although we had plans for dinner, he blew me off... I spiraled into a nightmaric depression, it felt as if all of those old scars were wide open and fresh, I couldn’t eat or sleep or speak and this blog was born.
… and since I mentioned my father…
My mother has always had her own method of dealing with things. Lie about everything and wash it all away by devoting your time to the church. Uncomfortable subject? We don’t talk about such things... An answering machine plugged directly into the phone jack for screening calls, if my mother feels like returning your call she will plug in a phone and call you back, but don’t hold your breath. I once spent 2 weeks in a hospital, the staff had been leaving messages, but she never returned a single call. She got her “do over” by manipulating my daughter into her deceitful story. The woman hasn’t taken my calls for years and even though she has my phone number, she tells people in town that she has no idea where I am.
Not all of the evil lurking in the wings of the Catholic church is in the form of pedophile priests.
I honestly grew up thinking there was something terrible about me, that I wasn’t worthy of being loved, not even by my own parents. I was on a reckless path, often suicidal. Many of my friends’ parents took a liking to me. Some of them even took me in over the years, I am eternally grateful to those people and their families for treating me with unconditional love and respect, even when I didn’t respect myself. I may have been an adult, but emotionally I was still a helpless, rejected child. I not so secretly filled the void like so many before me, with sex, drugs, and heavy metal music.
Speaking of Sex...
Like it or not, Sexual misconduct is a cornerstone of American behavior. Best selling books, movies, TV shows and the jokes we laugh the hardest at, even our favorite songs; shamelessly objectify women and suggest an open platform to talk about it. We sex up our child stars and wonder why they grow up so fast. Celebrities, sports heroes, public officials have been the center of scandal since the beginning of time. We elected for president, a man who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, for fuck sake. We can’t turn around and play the prude, becoming outraged and offended when a comedian asks for a hand job!
Speaking of pussy grabbers:
Donald Trump as president is the answer to our corrupt government as releasing wild predators into a middle school cafeteria is the answer to our opioid epidemic.
Repeating half ass bullshit that we hear from half ass sources or drawing our own outrageous conclusions from creative headlines does not count as research. We’ve become lazy. We aren’t accountable for our own actions or mindful of the role we can play in things to come. We just sit on our asses and watch shit happen then we feed into it like mindless drones, because we just want to be entertained.
Chew on my thoughts:
- We won’t put an end to racism by tearing down monuments or building walls.
- We can’t be lazy while complaining about lack of job or money.
- While arguing your constitutional rights, respect my constitutional rights.
- Don’t be a sucker for catchy headlines and propaganda.
- Nowadays it's counter-intuitive to single out a group of people and expect them to follow separate rules or laws.
- So if you’re offended by a word, stop using it, then encourage the people you hang out with to stop using it as well.
What was once paradigm has violently shifted to become our paradox. Selfishness is the root of our society today, it’s become necessary to use evil to achieve good or at least what’s good for me in the moment...
OK So the moral of this ridiculous collection of fragmented, manic-depressive rage induced rants, is that we can’t have it both ways…
Sacrifice is when you give up something today in the interest of something better for tomorrow. What we’ve done isn’t a sacrifice, we’ve abandoned our morals to be socially accepted. We still want people to think we are “cool”. Which is not cool, we’ve made it known that we are blissfully ignorant, easily distracted, and pathetically predictable.
A classroom full of wannabe rebels who grew older but never grew up…
My wish for 2018 is that we will band together and learn to respect and embrace each other’s feelings, ideas, cultures and differences, so we may strengthen the moral fiber of our future and actually work together toward bettering the world we live in.
