I do not fit in the crowd; I am not alone.
I do not fit in the crowd; I am not alone.
Ladies and gentlemen, look at our lives. There's a common road, a road that you're expected to walk, the job-money-bills-stuff-and-worry road. That road before you is paved with the greed and fear of hundreds of generations of people. We all know that all other paths are difficult and dangerous, and we all know where this path leads. We all know that you either walk the consumer walk or languish in horrible poverty, pretty much. The only real way to get around that is to walk the walk so well that you get rich and can then do what you please. But the 1% that are rich have not made it easy for you to get there, and they have all but guaranteed that you will flat-out DIE if you don't at least try.
I mean, think about it. When in history, besides in modern times, has a lack of money had the power to kill you? Money used to be something useful, something extra; if you had money, you could have nicer clothes than you would have made on your own. If you had money, you could have glass windows in your home; maybe even someone to help you work. But, money or not, you always had food, because you went out and killed it. You always had water, because you went out and drank it. You might not have lived an easy life without money, but you could live well enough. Not now. Now, here, money is a fucking necessity. You aren't even permitted to just live in the woods and kill your own food; you couldn't live without money now even if you tried. And self-sustaining communes and things like that are usually blown up by the FBI.
I am not suggesting that you burn your money. I am only asking you to remember that it does burn.
Is our sociey really designed around us? Do you feel like you've found your place in it, the place you're happy with? I'm ecstatic if you have, but I have not. I am not a material person, yet I am bombarded by advertisements everywhere I go. Billboards. Radio. TV. Even the Internet, as much as that upsets me. I am not a routine person, yet I am forced into routine by the absolute survival necessity of having a job. I value learning, and wondering, and helping people. But my learning and thinking and trying to help others is not good enough for this society; in fact, often it is only by virtue of being an asshole that I can get the money I need to survive. Nice people often die poor. Self-serving hypocritical jerks often get rich.
My situation is not a hopeless one. Many folks, with serendipity on their sides, have succeeded without compromising the really important stuff. So I'm sure there's a way, but still I hate--and I mean red hot flaming fuck-you raged-out passionate HATE--the fact that our society is deliberately set-up to steer people towards petty, diminishing, soulless living as a means of survival.
That is my point of view, the cause of my neuroses and my nightmares. That is the war that I'm fighting, all the fucking time. Not that I don't get tired of it. But here's the important part. I've been finding out that I'm not the only one who wants to make good equal beautiful equal true in this society. I suppose that may seem like a minor revelation at best, but you gotta understand, until yesterday, every time I even brought this up I was hardcore written off. Fast. I was shut out of people's consideration by every excuse from insanity to PMS to rudeness. People who are struggling to succeed by the standards they were given do NOT like other people proposing that those standards are fucking evil in many ways. But yesterday, I got told for the first time in many years I've been fighting this that someone else feels the way I do. And perhaps even more people than that.
So fuck it; I'm using this opportunity to appeal to a generation--this one. The up and coming; those of us who are just beginning to run our own lives. DON'T SELL OUT LIKE THE HIPPIES DID. The hippies sold out, becoming their parents with lightning speed, because they were afraid of dying poor; afraid of being sixty and still living on scraps. They saw that society would try to crush them for their refusal to worship the dollar, and they buckled. But as long as we allow this fear to dissolve the power of a new generation of leaders, we are perpetuating the madness. YOU and I will be the next congressmen. We have to be, because the ones sitting up there now are going to die. You and I will be the next President. The next CEO. All the authority figures that pissed us off all through our youth are GOING TO DIE. Please, PLEASE, don't let their atrocities survive in you.
Don't sell out. Don't let your possessions own you. Be a fucking bastard, a passionate raging lunatic, when it comes to your ideals. Never let them tell you that you have to conform; never let them hand you their empire and demand that you change nothing. Our children are coming, or already here, and they are the most valuable thing this fucked-up planet has going for it. The ideals you perpetuate will be the ideals that your children live by. Don't do to them what was done to us. Money is paper. Your soul is all you have, and after that, the rest is silence.
Self-improvement is masturbation. Try having sex instead.
Ladies and gentlemen, look at our lives. There's a common road, a road that you're expected to walk, the job-money-bills-stuff-and-worry road. That road before you is paved with the greed and fear of hundreds of generations of people. We all know that all other paths are difficult and dangerous, and we all know where this path leads. We all know that you either walk the consumer walk or languish in horrible poverty, pretty much. The only real way to get around that is to walk the walk so well that you get rich and can then do what you please. But the 1% that are rich have not made it easy for you to get there, and they have all but guaranteed that you will flat-out DIE if you don't at least try.
I mean, think about it. When in history, besides in modern times, has a lack of money had the power to kill you? Money used to be something useful, something extra; if you had money, you could have nicer clothes than you would have made on your own. If you had money, you could have glass windows in your home; maybe even someone to help you work. But, money or not, you always had food, because you went out and killed it. You always had water, because you went out and drank it. You might not have lived an easy life without money, but you could live well enough. Not now. Now, here, money is a fucking necessity. You aren't even permitted to just live in the woods and kill your own food; you couldn't live without money now even if you tried. And self-sustaining communes and things like that are usually blown up by the FBI.
I am not suggesting that you burn your money. I am only asking you to remember that it does burn.
Is our sociey really designed around us? Do you feel like you've found your place in it, the place you're happy with? I'm ecstatic if you have, but I have not. I am not a material person, yet I am bombarded by advertisements everywhere I go. Billboards. Radio. TV. Even the Internet, as much as that upsets me. I am not a routine person, yet I am forced into routine by the absolute survival necessity of having a job. I value learning, and wondering, and helping people. But my learning and thinking and trying to help others is not good enough for this society; in fact, often it is only by virtue of being an asshole that I can get the money I need to survive. Nice people often die poor. Self-serving hypocritical jerks often get rich.
My situation is not a hopeless one. Many folks, with serendipity on their sides, have succeeded without compromising the really important stuff. So I'm sure there's a way, but still I hate--and I mean red hot flaming fuck-you raged-out passionate HATE--the fact that our society is deliberately set-up to steer people towards petty, diminishing, soulless living as a means of survival.
That is my point of view, the cause of my neuroses and my nightmares. That is the war that I'm fighting, all the fucking time. Not that I don't get tired of it. But here's the important part. I've been finding out that I'm not the only one who wants to make good equal beautiful equal true in this society. I suppose that may seem like a minor revelation at best, but you gotta understand, until yesterday, every time I even brought this up I was hardcore written off. Fast. I was shut out of people's consideration by every excuse from insanity to PMS to rudeness. People who are struggling to succeed by the standards they were given do NOT like other people proposing that those standards are fucking evil in many ways. But yesterday, I got told for the first time in many years I've been fighting this that someone else feels the way I do. And perhaps even more people than that.
So fuck it; I'm using this opportunity to appeal to a generation--this one. The up and coming; those of us who are just beginning to run our own lives. DON'T SELL OUT LIKE THE HIPPIES DID. The hippies sold out, becoming their parents with lightning speed, because they were afraid of dying poor; afraid of being sixty and still living on scraps. They saw that society would try to crush them for their refusal to worship the dollar, and they buckled. But as long as we allow this fear to dissolve the power of a new generation of leaders, we are perpetuating the madness. YOU and I will be the next congressmen. We have to be, because the ones sitting up there now are going to die. You and I will be the next President. The next CEO. All the authority figures that pissed us off all through our youth are GOING TO DIE. Please, PLEASE, don't let their atrocities survive in you.
Don't sell out. Don't let your possessions own you. Be a fucking bastard, a passionate raging lunatic, when it comes to your ideals. Never let them tell you that you have to conform; never let them hand you their empire and demand that you change nothing. Our children are coming, or already here, and they are the most valuable thing this fucked-up planet has going for it. The ideals you perpetuate will be the ideals that your children live by. Don't do to them what was done to us. Money is paper. Your soul is all you have, and after that, the rest is silence.
Self-improvement is masturbation. Try having sex instead.