Today's Society: Comfortably Numb

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the last part." - William Somerset

It's safe to say we live a sheltered life. But it is not that we are hidden from the abject reality in which we live, but instead, we are over exposed to it. Any kind of overexposure will certainly build up a tolerance to whatever excess we are experiencing. The world is not a fine place, and it never has been-at least since we started keeping record of our history here. Maybe, before language and other direct forms of communication, there existed a world that was as utopian as the common person's vision of heaven. But in a world that is well aware of how miserable things are, people have-for the most part-come to accept and live with such a horrid truism.

"The world is rotten, evil people control everything, and depression is commonplace. Then again we all live in our own world, and it is our duty to make sure that it is an enjoyable place to live." An elderly man once said that to me. I never got his name, but I met him in a park. At the time I was on my way back home, after escaping an odious after school program called Day+. It was run by rotten hags; I hated them and they despised me. On my way home, during my fifth or so successful escape, I stopped at Modick Park, which was right down the street from house. There sat a scrawny man, wrinkled and seemingly disintegrating at an hourly pace. Surely he is dead now, but something compelled me to sit down on the bench he was resting on, staring out across the basketball courts onto the street.

I was twelve then, but my instincts told me he wasn't just watching the cars go by. No. I knew that look, even then, and it was the look of a thinking man. Teachers, parents, and anyone in a position of power always told me to avoid strangers at all costs. They will lure you into a van with candy or lies of hospitalized parents, then proceed to make you their own personal sex slave. Truly a horrible thing to tell children; make them believe the world is full of con-men pederasts. But we enter this world in a room full of strangers, and we will most likely leave it the same way. We make friends out of strangers. And we certainly find love in strangers. At the tender age of twelve I was oblivious to those facts, but something about this old man told me he was harmless.

I sat down next to him, staring out at the very thing he was looking at, trying to understand what it was he was trying to find. There was silence for about five minutes until he said, "So son, what's your name?"

"Joe," I said.

The man turned to me, which I noticed peripherally, and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"Resting. I just walked from school."

"Didn't school get out an hour ago?"

"Yeah, but I go to this thing after school, called Day+."

"Ah, I know that. My grandson used to go to it."

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Enjoying the day." He paused for a second, "Do you normally walk home from Day+? I always used to pick my grandson David up from there."

"Na, my parents normally pick me up. I just don't like it there."

"Ah, so you're running away?"

"Yeah," I said quietly, suddenly feeling a jot of guilt.

As if he could sense how I was feeling he said, "Don't worry, David never liked it all that much either. There were times when I would arrive to pick him up, only to find out that he had also run away. Thankfully, he would just go home, but it gave me a scare nevertheless."

I didn't have a response so I simply sat silently, looking out across the basketball court. The old man kept talking.

"You know, you can't always run away from the things you don't like."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Sometimes in life you have to face what you don't like, find out why you don't like it, and learn to deal with it."

I was perplexed by the statement. Why should I learn to deal with something I don't like? Shouldn't I try to change it, and if I can't do that then shouldn't I just avoid it all together? These were questions that I eventually asked the man, leading to his profound response, which appears many sentences above this one. Most of my conscious life I have been a curious soul, and while I never truly understood everything, I have always lived an optimistically pessimistic kind of life, getting by just fine. That is probably why the old man's words seemed to make so much sense to me at the time.

We live in a crooked world, and no individual will ever change that. Strangely enough, it has been the life's work of many individuals to try and do just that. Many were killed by ignorant and hate-filled cads. Others affected only a small segment of society and lived out their lives, only to be remembered by an even smaller sect of society. Good men get killed by bad men, and their impact is turned into heart touching movies and books that inspire others, who doing nothing as they realize what end they will meet.

The current state of things is no different than any other except for the playing characters-war, poverty, random acts of violence, religious turmoil, etc. are still going strong. Most people are upset and disturbed by the present situation of the world and society, but are too busy trying to keep their own world together. And ain't that the rub? That old man was right: we live in our own world. The real world is unreal; it doesn't really exist-at least on a personal level. We only know what we experience on a daily basis. I don't know what it's like to watch a friend or relative die. I don't know what it's like to starve. I don't know a lot of things. But I do know how to be happy. Ignore all that does not directly relate to my situation, and even then problems arise.

And I am not the only one who has discovered the secret to happiness. It appears that most of this country-probably yourself-has figured it out. Live each day knowing that vile scum roam the streets, but until they cross your path don't let it get to you. In an era of instant gratification, such an approach appears to be the best way of going about living, but sooner than we expect, it will come back to rape our children, murder our parents, and piss on the pile of bodies. Yes sir (or madam), our neglect for reality will surely bite us on the ass like a rabid dog who sat unchained in a yard that we drunkenly stumbled upon.

However, we are not entirely to blame for our selfish mindset. Government and Media, particularly corrupt and deplorable agencies such as the CIA and television networks (among others) are responsible for instilling a don't-give-a-shit attitude into the core of society. With covert operations such as MK Ultra* and television shows that claim to be reality television but are actually scripted and edited nonsense, it is easy to take a large chunk of life with a grain of salt. For you see, those who give a shit have a tendency to step in a heaping pile of it. It is increasingly difficult to change even the smallest policy, let alone any matter of significance. Why stick your neck out if it's bound to get chopped off, right? This D.G.A.S mentality is the result of the overexposure to horrid truths about the world, which I spoke about earlier. We are numb, similar to heroin junkies. The world around us is irrelevant and we like it that way. Certainly, you are expecting some kind of solution to be explained, but that isn't my job. I am simply doing what others have done before. Reminding people of the ills of society, hoping it will inspire people to look at life with selfless eyes. And if that fails then nothing has changed. We are still doomed to an existence that is cheap and hollow. No rich person ever fantasizes about being poor, but the poor always fantasize about being rich. It is those kind of fantasies, which keep us in our place, and oh what a stagnant place it really it is.

*MK Ultra was a CIA experiment, carried out in order to discover an efficient form of mind control. At first they tested psychoactive drugs, primarily LSD, as a means to determine if they could be used for mind control or as a truth serum. They knew LSD could be used, but they had no clue as to how. Eventually, they realized psychoactives, mainly serotonin-like psychoactives, did not work as expected in regards to mind control. The overall conclusion of MK Ultra was that television and video were the best forms of mind control. Taking a look at the current state of media, television programming, and movies, it can act as some explanation as to why we are numb to many of the realities in the world. Paris Hilton has fans and many people have tried fighting ten people at once then jumping from one building to another because they saw Jackie Chan do it. Both types of people won't survive long, but they are by-products of a culture that prefers life in virtual reality rather than the real deal. In no way am I saying we should rid the world of human marvels such as Jackie Chan or Tony Jaa (we can do without Paris though), but we need to lay off the, "you can do anything if you really want to," nonsense. Instead, the empowering saying should be updated to, "you can do anything if you devote a large portion of your time towards learning everything about what you want to do...AND then once you know as much as there is to know about the thing you want to do, you begin to put your knowledge to work. Success is not guaranteed, but you will learn far more from failure than you ever will from success. Good luck son!"
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