At the outset, the idea of "society," was a good one. It was humanity's attempt to organize and implement all these wonderful notions we gleaned from morality. It became abundantly apparent how different we were from other species of animals. At least, that was the initial thought when all this shit was getting dreamed up. But somewhere along the line, the plays we set forth in our collective mind played out perversely when things got put into action.
Society is our attempt at achieving a higher plane of existence. We create, we improve, we make living comfortable. But what I see is apparent is that in our creation of comfort, we have just created a more advanced arena for our animalistic nature to play in. What started out as a means to where we could organize and help the less fortunate has been twisted into a game of gimme gimme gimme for adults. I've been buried in Thoreau's "Walden" and his insight into "civilized vs. savage," is astounding. The indigenous people of Connecticut didn't have the luxury of columns, libraries, etc., but they also didn't have individuals without places to sleep. The savages didn't have churches to worship in, butchers to portion out the T-bones, but they did maintain the natural order of their surroundings, and no one in their collective community went hungry. Between the two comparisons, where is savagery most apparent.
You look at the condition in our present day and while we may have had 200 yrs to surpass the quaintness of Thoreau's time, the savagery in our modern day to day life is, in my opinion, very apparent. We still have the hungry. We still have the homeless. We still have sick who are not cared for. Every disaster has at it's origin, the intent to create good. So where do we fuck it all up? Why do we fuck it all up? It's that notion, of which we are all guilty of, that we neglect to see the present for what it is. We reflect on the past hoping that with enough reflection, we will discover what we did "wrong." We aspire and expect for the future and then we fly in to fits of rage when the outcome we were expecting fails to come to fruition. I am struggling with these same sins daily. By my calculations, based on my determinations of the laws of cause and effect, should not be where I am right now. I get angry at what my life has become because by my understanding, my life shouldn't be as fucked up as it is. But therein lies the problem. My understanding of cause and effect are wrong. They are missing components that I don't understand; life is telling me that these elements are things I don't necessarily need to understand. Why? Because regardless of whether I will or have understood things before, they have no bearing on what has come about. The effect is here and now. The only thing hindering my ultimate ascent into glory and happiness is that I can't accept it. Even as my functioning mind accepts and reasons this fact out, my ego cannot let it go. It is why I am suffering now.
Fudo
comments
IMO
In society nowadays we expect to have everything taken care of for us. We live in these big steel and concrete buildings in dense cities, in whiche we pay taxes and other fees to have every basic necessity of life taken care of by someone else. In order to pay these costs, we work jobs that have no personal substance to them, other than to bring home a paycheck to pay out to those living costs. I know people that don't even know how to change the oil in their car. It is sad.
It was not like that in the old days, when people farmed and built and worked on taking care of themselves. That culture is still alive in the rural areas, but statistics show that every day more and more people are moving to the cities and joining that collective. I don't see this trend ever reversing, and eventually we will all live in an 'Orwellian' society, where every basic task is taken care of for us, but we don't have any freedom either.
Sorry to get apocalyptic on you, but your post had an effect on me.