Amerika

For a time of great enlightenment, and equal validation, our era seems to also be one of vicious self-hatred.

People disfigure themselves with tattoos, sure, but that is only the outward manifestation. Their self-hatred first works within through their low expectations and rationalization of failure.

Most people have such negativity toward their world that they not only have low expectations but relish the satisfaction of those expectations, feeling a sense of power from having predicted mediocrity and been correct.

When at their jobs, they complain about the individual tasks they are asked to do, and the equipment they are given, but they rarely if ever complain about the situation of having to attend jobs and the situation of being office-bound during the few sunny days of their lives.

Each morning they get up and drive on the roads, muttering at how stupid everyone is, never criticizing how dumb it is to have everyone attend work at roughly the same time. It guarantees congestion, but that is rarely a topic of discussion.

In society, they rail against certain people they dislike and the asinine behavior of those people, but are rarely found complaining about low social standards that encourage permissiveness toward such behaviors.

When they get home, they lash out at family members in anger, but are not critical of the varying psychological balances that ensure almost any family situation will be fraught with emotional disaster.

Complaining about litter on the street, check, but not about a disposable society that generates litter and people who think it’s a great idea to litter. They whine about what’s on TV but never think to simply shut it off and use it as a planter.

They seem to live to hate each other, and to hate the achievements of others. They are prone to vandalism, drunkenness, public befouling and even defacement of their own property.

On the surface, they drink too much and have empty sex, eat too much and are ill, waste their time and then rage at their purposeless existences, and complain about authority figures only to knuckle under whenever one appears.

They are hollow shells of purposeless rage because they cannot attack the real problems they face. These problems are perpetual because they are nobody’s fault, but are the result of the aggregate of what other people want.

To attack these is to attack not just society, but its wave of popular support for certain notions. That target is off-limits as attacking it is like attacking their own freedom. And so they smolder, whimper and self-destruct in impotence and frustration.