I’m Not One of You (I Hope)

Who are you people, and how did you get control of this planet?

I suppose I’m depressed.

If you suffer from it, you know that no amount of jokes or friendly ribbing is going to tease you out of it. Oh sure, you can put up the smile the way you put up Christmas lights – all the neighbors can see them even if they leave you cold – but lurking under that is that abiding sense of ennui. As I once heard, “Telling a depressed person to ‘cheer up’ is like telling a blind person to ‘look harder’.” If it was that easy, don’t you think we would have done it?

I’ve reached a point where I truly am beginning to feel like I must be a different species or from another planet. I just don’t get people. All the stuff you run around doing, driving all over the countryside to do this, that, or the other thing, cheering for sports teams, or taking a day cruise, going to movies, out to dinner. I just don’t get it. What’s the point? What does it do for you? How does it change your life? I don’t get the current obsession with BDSM but judging by the news and how many other people do, I really know I’m not one of you. To me it’s such a bizarre concept. But, this is what your lives revolve around, so be it. I don’t understand anything about you.

The tribal predisposition. You find the most trivial ways to separate into new tribes all the time. Hairstyles, clothing colors, personal conveyances, profession, beliefs in supernatural entities (or lack thereof), skin color, eye color, hair color. I’m so tired of trying to sort out who’s in which tribe. I was apparently dumped on this planet, alone. I have no tribe. And sports – Modern wargames where one tribe tries to kill the other tribe, and all the villagers turn out to watch the battles. Some of  the villagers get killed occasionally, but rarely do any of the warriors die. Peculiar way to fight battles.

And the way you love your guns and war… If you didn’t love them so much, they’d be gone. But people love war. They LOVE it. When 3D printers burst onto the scene just a few short months ago, what was the first thing someone made with one? A gun. That’s right. And they’re even easier to make now, completely plastic. Someone (or a lot of someones) find this important. I make jokes on Twitter about being a Viking and swinging my battleaxe, because, again like the Christmas lights, people find it amusing. And for the record, I don’t get Christmas lights either. So, favorite human pastimes include killing people, and cheering up the survivors with Christmas lights? You people are just weird.

The things people find important just baffle me. Like these big ugly houses they like to build

What the hell were they thinking? Well, they were thinking of themselves. For more on big ugly houses, there’s a whole series of posts about Big Ugly Houses in and around Walnut Creek, CA, an area I know from having lived there for almost ten years. Look for the one the writer dubbed “Xanadu.” It will make you shudder. It looks like a fortress from an alien world. I just hope it’s not from whatever alien world I’m from, because WOW would that would be embarrassing.

Celebrity worship. Why? Why do you fall all over yourselves to place on pedestals people who do and say horrible things? Or just useless stuff? If you’re going to worship other humans, why not scientists, philosophers, educators, crisis aid workers? Allow me to suggest one that I find particularly noteworthy. I’m posting it nearly full-sized to make it easier for you to read, so you don’t have to keep clicking:

A great man, a great thinker.

But, maybe I’m not entirely alone. I suspect the recent trend and popularity of dystopian, post-apocalyptic literature and movies are indicative of a general dissatisfaction with modern life. For me, it’s a possibility of a ‘reset’ button, to get away from the structure of society around banks and money, or power-mad egomaniacs with bombs, and maybe find a better way to organize society. I don’t know what that better way might be, as I am not the great thinker Dr. Sagan was, but with luck those who are might be able to lead us into a better future, one built on more compassionate foundations, and not about oppressing others to improve one’s own lot in life.

If you’re gonna dream, dream BIG, I always say. Back to writing.