Some points of interest to depress you

This world is majorly fucked. Ozone depletion, ecological devastation, war, economic crisis, and a heady mix of ignorance, indifference and mean-spirited nationalism and selfishness. The world has been taken over by a virus called neo-liberal fundamentalism, with subsidiary viruses like the "War on Terror" exterminating still more lives and hopes in a ruthless program drawing forth all the ingenuity and inventiveness that human beings can muster in the service of subjugation. We are on a war path to annihilation, trapped in a mindset of complacency and helplessness, bribed by the system's creature comforts and compelled to look out for ourselves at the expense of basic human decency. We have become monsters, or participants in monstrosities. The countless atrocities committed in our name hardly make the news. We live in denial, desperate for the approval of our so-called "superiors" and managers; a mania for personal security and instant gratification encourages and pushes us to walk over one another like rabid beasts.

Deep inside of us, we know all this - so we stupefy ourselves with sitcoms, drugs, and mindless music to make our stay on this planet less taxing on our conscience. We know that something fundamental needs to change, and we know that if we don't effect this, tens of millions of lives will be at stake. But there's nothing easier than to believe in things that are in our perceived interests to believe. So we consign the task of change to the political class. Politics becomes something for others to worry about, because why worry about something one "can't do anything about"?

Obviously, I didn't need to tell you that the world is shafted, because you'd have to be a complete twat not to know it. What intrigues me is the way that people invent quite sophisticated edifices of self-justification to continue partaking in this mass destruction. What's even more of a wonder to behold - to behold in all its gruesome and perverse glory - is the way that elites can turn common people against one another, to make them believe that their interests are aligned and best served by backing the policies of the rich and powerful.

There are many ways in which the rich and powerful (ie. the architects of doom, responsible for the overwhelming majority of the misery and destitution in the world) fool us and even (perhaps especially) themselves into accepting current societal arrangements. First there's the education system. We learn all sorts of stupid habits of subordination at school: getting to class on time under penalty of a guilt trip over absolutely nothing, tucking your shirt in under penalty of detention, cheering for your school team even when you don't know anyone on the team, the mania for exams instead of cultivating a love for knowledge.

They are also wonderfully adept at focusing on the crimes of others and directing passionate indignation in that direction, while they perpetuate policies and conditions that guarantee that their own crimes will continue (which, needless to say, are purely defensive or at worst "misguided" and done with only the noblest of intentions. Those who deny this self-serving mantra are "lefties" who needn't be bothered with).

Whenever a corrupt and degenerate program needs to be pushed forward, we find the advocates trying to co-opt the moral high ground by picking on an easy target. War mongering politicians preach "values"; dictators and their wannabe counterparts in the West launch campaigns against homosexuals and other "perverts", stoking up the most primitive instincts in the populace in order to deflect their aspirations for taking control of the things that actually affect their lives. The "War on Terror" is trumpeted as a fight against an existential threat, so we become desensitised to the far greater terror we inflict on brown-skinned non-people a world away (getting to know about their hopes and dreams might taint us - we're too civilised to waste our time and attention on things like that, after all). We feel the need to practically crawl over one another to show how "on board" we are with the whole bloody and illegal campaign whenever someone questions our "integrity" and commitment to the nation's security. We even learn to blame the unseen people whose bombing and displacement we applaud. We attack and destroy, and then deny everything whenever it causes us too much discomfort. And then we have the gall to wonder why "they hate us", and once again add insult to injury by indulging in fantasies that restore us to full moral righteousness. They "hate us for our freedoms", claims the outgoing Leader of the Free World, conveniently ignoring that we have denied them freedom and instead backed tyranny and oppression so that WE could have "security". The military-industrial complex, the most hideous nexus of corruption and bestiality ever devised by human beings, boasts of its pride in serving the national interest - which is of course synonymous with their interests, with anything else being secondary or even inconsequential - while turning over a buck, another patriotic imperative.

We take it for granted that the economy must be run to maximise manufactured wants and "needs", so we push hard to present ourselves as premier "economic conservatives", thereby assuring that wealth continues to accumulate into fewer and fewer hands, with everyone else lured by the promise that, yes, you too can partake in the largess if you "earn a living" and "make something of yourself" and "work your way up" - which, as always, requires that you buy into the system and all its claims about human nature. The system constantly drills it into your head that your worth as a person is measured in terms of how many wants and needs you can satisfy; no one says this directly and openly, of course, because no one except the most pathological and ruthlessly indoctrinated among actually believes it. But we end up accepting a version of it.

We've become monsters, and denial only makes it more grotesque.