Late, but still…

Today was a bit of long day, at least it felt like it. A lot of running around. I thought about not bothering to try to post, but nope. Daily. I’m feeling stronger in voice and I’m about ready to really start determining what I want to do with my platform. In the mean time, random thoughts…

I learned today that “allegedly” wealthy people paid upwards of $90,000 to go to Serbia during war and snipe random people. People with money used that money “allegedly” to pay to go to a country and kill people. The worst part is that it is not at all unbelievable. I often think about all of the things the super wealthy do that we have no way of knowing about and it always gets dark. We used to understand the concept of idle hands. Of course if you allow people in the world to be born into so much unthinkable wealth that they never actually have to work they are going to find some terrible things to do. It is still truly disgusting and disturbing. 

It makes me think of the association with poverty and crime. The term is literally shrewd businessman. We know the harm that corporations do in order to profit. Death panels. Genocides. Colonialism. Imperialism. Poisoning water sources. Just all kinds of horrible ways to make money, aside from straight up war profiteering. But we are told to fear petty criminals. I can assure you that far more harm is done “legally” by major entities than any lone criminal with little to no resources. That does not mean people should rob and steal people’s cars, it just means that we need to recognize how much harm certain entities are allowed to do without any justice. Impoverished neighborhoods are often just microcosms of the violence innate in most capitalist enterprises. It’s just instead of paying other people far away to do the harm, your neighborhood criminals have to do the dirty work themselves. It’s not about everything being a conspiracy, it is about us being taught that assessing clear and persisting patterns are conspiracy theories while people use ridiculous hypotheticals to enact laws and criminalize entire populations of people. 

I guess my point in this is that we live in such a large world. I would have hoped that with social media we could have gotten a greater understanding of that and in some ways we have, but a lot of people have just become really stubborn about the ways that people do things. The general hypogheticals aside, people insist on projecting their worldview onto the entire world. Many people are incapable of perceiving the world in anyway outside of what they have decided to believe about it. A lot of it is because they have based their entire lives on these beliefs. To acknowledge that the beliefs are faulty is to pull the loose string on their entire being. If you are a racist person and you have to consider that you have been wrong about the people you have been hating is to have to be accountable for being a villain. Or if you have to take responsibility for your life and decisions instead of whatever conspiracies that you have taken up to rationalize your failures, then you’ll have to admit that your life is your fault. That is very hard. Trust me, I know.

Anyway, as I continue to navigate the world and try to figure out how to establish a place in it that is fulfilling and full of joy, I have to contemplate many things. Sometimes those things make me hopeful. Sometimes they make me want to give in entirely to nihilism. Either way, I will continue figuring my way through and finding more ways to redevelop my own view not even just of the world, but of myself so that I can make the necessary alterations for my betterment. In the mean time, I am being a writer and posting daily on my website and those are victories that I will continue to build on…