11/29/2015
Today, the reality most believe in is still far less real than the fiction everyone knows about. We're still rolling backwards down Mt. Progress at full speed, and fewer care to remember which way is up or forward than did yesterday. Hope is a dark and heavy joke among the learned, employed in earnest only by necessity - as a litmus test of astuteness and intellectual discipline in strangers, and to inevitably discouraging effect. Most of us mistake truth for momentary smatterings of coherent confirmation bias in the otherwise din of attention deficits, and we couldn't learn the difference if our lives depended on it; we know this because our lives *have* depended on it for a long, long time - yet we're learning even less with every passing moment, each generation more content to die more ignorant and wasteful—more wasted—than the last. Typical conversation and interaction is so obscenely vain that it amounts to little more than oblivious pedantry.
— Diamonds are made of the densest bullshit ever, everyone wants the most carats, and nothing else matters. Life.
Our most acclaimed modern tradition is that of "investing" our best years in life into the best schools we can afford to teach us the best brand of consumer programming our withering faculties can accommodate, after which we peddle such pathetic trade for little more than the meaningless right to the laughable claim that we've earned it - and that "it" isn't the vacuum we know it to be. Nearly no one recognizes the con before becoming a part of it - but rather than choose to grow the backbone necessary to overcome the psychological inertia born of such shameful participation—rather than teach the lessons of our tremendous mistakes to those who will inherit the consequences—we lie to the next generation; we tell them it was worth it, that it was an achievement, that it was useful - that it contributed to our lives in some tangible way instead of pigeonholing our potential and dulling the point of our once-honesty about it to the point of our becoming completely useless human beings. Worse than merely allowing it to continue, we go so far as to build our identities upon our false endorsement of this lie as "education" - and so we limit what REAL education might become, dragging it even further away from what it should be with each celebrated diploma.
We are all cowards.
We're all so committed to resolving the cognitive dissonance of our long- and hard-fought self-loathing that we just can't help but preach it and ourselves as the best god-damned things since sliced bread - singing our praises all the louder as we bury ourselves deeper and deeper in our own proud bullshit. Black is white, truth is fiction, down is up... and thank god for that, too - because how on Earth else could we justify digging ourselves into the deepest and darkest hole possible while still calling it climbing a ladder?
THIS, here, today, is actual HELL; a grinning emoji; eventually, we'll even forget the denial behind it - and then it really will be all we are.
Happy fucking Thanksgiving.
Today, the reality most believe in is still far less real than the fiction everyone knows about. We're still rolling backwards down Mt. Progress at full speed, and fewer care to remember which way is up or forward than did yesterday. Hope is a dark and heavy joke among the learned, employed in earnest only by necessity - as a litmus test of astuteness and intellectual discipline in strangers, and to inevitably discouraging effect. Most of us mistake truth for momentary smatterings of coherent confirmation bias in the otherwise din of attention deficits, and we couldn't learn the difference if our lives depended on it; we know this because our lives *have* depended on it for a long, long time - yet we're learning even less with every passing moment, each generation more content to die more ignorant and wasteful—more wasted—than the last. Typical conversation and interaction is so obscenely vain that it amounts to little more than oblivious pedantry.
— Diamonds are made of the densest bullshit ever, everyone wants the most carats, and nothing else matters. Life.
Our most acclaimed modern tradition is that of "investing" our best years in life into the best schools we can afford to teach us the best brand of consumer programming our withering faculties can accommodate, after which we peddle such pathetic trade for little more than the meaningless right to the laughable claim that we've earned it - and that "it" isn't the vacuum we know it to be. Nearly no one recognizes the con before becoming a part of it - but rather than choose to grow the backbone necessary to overcome the psychological inertia born of such shameful participation—rather than teach the lessons of our tremendous mistakes to those who will inherit the consequences—we lie to the next generation; we tell them it was worth it, that it was an achievement, that it was useful - that it contributed to our lives in some tangible way instead of pigeonholing our potential and dulling the point of our once-honesty about it to the point of our becoming completely useless human beings. Worse than merely allowing it to continue, we go so far as to build our identities upon our false endorsement of this lie as "education" - and so we limit what REAL education might become, dragging it even further away from what it should be with each celebrated diploma.
We are all cowards.
We're all so committed to resolving the cognitive dissonance of our long- and hard-fought self-loathing that we just can't help but preach it and ourselves as the best god-damned things since sliced bread - singing our praises all the louder as we bury ourselves deeper and deeper in our own proud bullshit. Black is white, truth is fiction, down is up... and thank god for that, too - because how on Earth else could we justify digging ourselves into the deepest and darkest hole possible while still calling it climbing a ladder?
THIS, here, today, is actual HELL; a grinning emoji; eventually, we'll even forget the denial behind it - and then it really will be all we are.
Happy fucking Thanksgiving.
