Whatever I did to deserve this life, please lord, forgive me.

In the future, when everything has been covered in asphalt and concrete, we will paint flowers on the sidewalks and buildings, and our children will never know the difference.

"Let's layoff the executives and keep the employees"

Transferred this here from a status post & comment I made on Facebook. Figured I'd give it a little more permanence. Also, three words were added for the purpose of flow.

Why is that in a struggling economy all I seem to hear about is corporations cutting more and more jobs?

Out of curiosity, how many of those positions could be saved if you skipped your executives bonuses for the year? Or heaven forbid some folks at the top take a slight pay cut. 

I understand that in times of hardship sacrifices must be made. But why does it seem like its always those of us at the bottom taking the brunt of them?

Furthermore, if government officials really wanted to help the economy they would put effort towards the reduction of crude oil prices. As near as I can tell, the cost of oil (specifically diesel) is one of the largest contributing factors to inflation.

The price of diesel goes up, the cost of shipping goes up. The cost of shipping goes up, the cost of goods goes up. Also, warehouse positions and wages are cut.

Prices go up, sales go down. People have to limit their spending to essentials (and gasoline). The service industry (both retail and food) takes a hit. Stores and restaurants close. More and more people are unemployed, further straining government programs and also diminishing the amount of money that can be spent on goods and services, causing even more cuts and closures.

Meanwhile oil companies continue to make record profits.

And that's just one (albeit large) contributing factor to the downturn of economy. That's not including banking, loan, and credit practices. That's not including tax cuts for the rich. That's not including the price of insurance and healthcare. That's not including expensive quagmires of wars we should never have started.

That's not including individuals and families who hoard money, requiring the continual generation of new funds, which contributes to the devaluation of currency and rise of inflation.

And that's also not including politicians who need to get their fucking act together, stop taking bribes and special interest kickbacks, AND DO THEIR GODDAMN FUCKING JOBS AND LOOK AFTER THE GODDAMN CONSTITUENTS WHO ELECTED THEM INTO THEIR CUSHY FUCKING POSITIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

End point.

Despite a dose of Nyquil fucking with my vision, I still can't sleep. So I'll write. My apologies for any  typos or grammatical errors that escape my drug-effected eyes.

I don't understand why we cling so desperately to life.  Why we dictate that life is precious, that life must be preserved at all costs and then sow death and misery in our wake.

I don't understand how someone can condemn a doctor for aborting a baby conceived by rape, and then say that our warmongering in the Middle East is "justified."

Then I remember what motivates the people that these people listen to: money.  And I remember that people compelled by greed don't care about others.  They don't care about who is hurt in the wake of their lust.

Most people are easily-swayed.  A smaller group of people recognize this and take advantage of it.  They rally the masses behind a cause, but in truth only care about their own self-interests.

And the masses believe the words that they are told, because the words are convincing, despite being insincere.  Perhaps the one who tells them actually believes the words, but that does not make them true.

But again, I don't understand why we cling so desperately to life.  We, as a whole, seem to place such a value on it, but for so many people in this world, life fucking sucks.

Famine, disease, war, poverty.  Death.  These are the things that make up the daily existence for so many on this planet.  If you're reading this, obviously not for you. Luck of the dice, we say.

But even at our level, life doesn't feel so great.  Most of have jobs we don't like, even hate.  Jobs that make us miserable. But hey, gotta pay the rent, right?

And no matter how much we make (and for most of us it isn't much) it's never enough.  Most of us are in debt.  Credit cards, mortgages, student loans, car loans, unpaid tickets, whatever.

Still we toil on, hoping that eventually we'll find success and live the life we've always wanted.  Or, more reasonably, that we'll at least be able to retire someday.

There are old people on social security eating dog food out there. There are cats eating better food than 3/4 of the population of Africa.  Are you starting to see my fucking point yet?

This world is all fucked up.  And every connotation of that sentence I can think of applies, which makes things even worse.

And looking back at what I know of history, life actually seems to be getting BETTER.  The average American has a better life than the vast majority of people in human history.

One of the problems is that we look back at history and get this skewed idea of what it was like.  We romanticize it, we turn it into some fantasy about noble-minded people pursuing noble things.

Wrong, fail, die.  History is really the same shit over and over again, but with ever-improving technology.  It sucked then, and it sucks now.

BUT IT DOESN'T FUCKING HAVE TO AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THE REST OF YOU CAN'T GET THIS INTO YOUR THICK FUCKING SKULLS.

Don't get me wrong.  Life has it's moments.  And these moments usually involve family, friends, nature, food and art.  Actually, food falls into the art category.  Nature might too.  Fuck it, everything is art.

I guess what my point is that imagine if those moments that make life wonderful WERE life.  I don't see any valid reason why it can't be that way.  Except for maybe excessive and ever-increasing overpopulation.

And yes, there is some redundancy in the phrase "excessive and ever-increasing overpopulation".  It's intentional.  It's to prove a point.  A point about excessive and ever-increasing overpopulation.

There are waaaaaaaay too many people inhabiting this globalsphere.  The world can't sustain us.  We can't sustain us.  And we keep popping out more babies.

I'm not saying that we need to kill off a whole bunch of people.  We just need to let a whole bunch of people die off, and then not replace them.

Nonononononono, get that look off your face.  I'm not saying "stop humanitarian aid and let the tossers rot".  I'm just saying LAY OFF THE FUCKING BABIES FOR AWHILE PEOPLE.

People want children: adopt.  People want large families: get back in touch with your existing family, get over past differences, mend old grudges, or if that fails, make a family of friends.

You don't need to share blood to be a family.  Most of the best families share as little blood as possible.  We need to get over this species-imperative natural-instinct brainwashing.

I keep hearing the phrase "...of my own".  Raise children...of my own.  Have a big family...of my own.  Translation: pop out six babies, replace myself and my other three times over.

I hate to break it to you, but most children live to adulthood now.  We can close down the baby factories.  Save some wear and tear on the...ok, I won't finish that.

Time we learn to make do with what we got.  And if we all stopped to look around a bit more, and learned to get past our trivial and petty differences we'd realize that's actually a lot.

All differences are in fact petty and trivial.  And even as overpopulated as the planet is, there's plenty to go around if everyone could LEARN TO FUCKING SHARE, WE'RE NOT IN KINDERGARTEN.

I'm not saying life would be a fantasy.  That our every whim and desire would be catered to.  That's not life.  Life requires effort, that will never change.

I'm just saying that life could be better for everyone.  That we could accomplish more, and with less toil.  And it's possible we could still have all the shiny baubles that make us happy.

But with life the way it is, why do we prolong suffering?  When people are in constant pain and ready to die, why not let them?  Why make them endure it just because you're not ready to let go?

Life isn't as precious as we think.  Life is fleeting, life ends.  It is the way of things.  One life ends so another can continue, or whatever.  Or maybe that makes life even more precious than we think.  Semantics.

Throughout the span of human civilization lives have been needlessly spent for worthless causes.  Because no matter how noble it may seem, whatever really started it was just some bullshit between bastards.

And nothing has changed.  It's still happening today.  People fighting for causes they believe in because some fucker with an agenda told them to believe in it.

Okay, so sometimes it's people with causes they believe in fighting against some fucker with an agenda.  But most of the same words are still there.  And there's always some fucker with an agenda.


So I guess what I'm really saying is that I don't understand why we cling so desperately to THIS life.  'Cause this life isn't worth the cotton-fiber paper it's printed on.

I'm not very good at emotional processing.  I tend to get caught up in waves of emotion that are bigger than my understanding, and I don't really know how to deal with them.  And after they ebb I'm never sure if my response was the correct one.  Frequently I know it wasn't.

I just keep finding myself in these moments of complete distress.  Teetering on what feels like the brink of ruin, in above my head and unsure how I'll make it thru. Unsure how I am making it thru.

Because despite the panic, in the end I make it through.

Right now it's mostly happening at work.  I've built up unhealthy levels of anxiety around my job.  And I'm having difficulty judging how much of it is valid, and how much of it is just in my head.  How much of it is just some kind of persecution complex.  Either way, I'm doing a piss-poor job of coping with it.

I keep getting this feeling that I'm just being entirely too melodramatic.  I get worked up, and then later, sometime after the fact, I detach myself from it.  And in the end, quite generally unsure of whether I was right.  Whether or not there was a "right" at all.

I've realized the I have no ability to gauge it.  No standard for comparison.  So when looking back, no longer feeling the emotion or the panic of the moment, I'm left to assume that my reaction is excessive.  That it was unnecessary.

And I'm rambling.  I started writing this because I'm coming to terms with the fact that my grandmother is dying.  I've know it for awhile, but today I was reminded of it in terms that leave no room for leeway.  And then I went to work.  It was not a pleasant shift.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, or what I'm trying to say.  So I guess that's a good enough reason to stop.

People are always trying to find the meaning of life.

It's actually quite simple: Learn to coexist.

After that everything else'll make sense.

I'm tired.

And I don't like this world.

I used to think it was just a matter of changing the world. Finding a new way, a better way, for people to live. These days, I'm not so sure. I'm losing faith.

Too much carelessness. Too much recklessness. Too much dumb.

Too little compassion, concern for the well-being of others.

Our behavior on the micro-scale isn't necessarily so bad, but on the macro-scale, it's terrible.

We seem to be on the brink of something. Political revolutions right and left in Africa and the Middle East. Oppressive regimes being toppled by the will of the people.

But not here. Or at least not yet.

So many people seem ready for change. Social and political change on a global level.

The U.S. is headed towards collapse. I'm not saying it's imminent, and nor that it's irreversible. I'm just saying it's the direction we're pointing. The foundations are crumbling, and the people up top keep digging away at them in the pursuit of their own interests, all the while arguing over whose fault it is, as opposed to making any real, sincere, effort to fix things (probably because they honestly have no idea).

They got us into this mess, and now they're not sure how to get us back out.

But they're not completely to blame. A lot of it falls on us too. It's not like we live under a military dictatorship that has been in power before we were born and will not hesitate to kill us if we ever even so slightly step out of line.

Nope, we gave them the keys to drive (or at least picked which ones got to drive after they already had the keys) and we've been along for the whole ride.

But I digress.

I just feel like no matter what we do it won't be enough. So much of everything that defines modern human civilization needs to change. How we interact with the ecosphere, how we interact with the environment (yes, these are different concepts; no, I don't want to take time to explain), and how we interact with each other, both as individuals and as groups.

And most people don't seem to see it. Or they just see a little bit of it.

Or maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I've blown everything way out of proportion.

Doesn't really matter. Whether I'm right or wrong doesn't really change things for me.

I'm tired either way.

And as the years go by, I have a harder time finding a reason to stick around.