The year is 2018. It’s been over 5 years since I’ve delved into writing anything like this. Back in those days I was delivering pizza and could tune out personal responsibility.
Now I’m out of a nearly decade long relationship and with another woman, while also with another job. This one has led me into the private lives of some very well off people, the type I might build a straw man of and castigate for pleasure. A lot of these well off southerners are responsible for putting the president in office. Plenty of do-gooder, boot-licker white folks just crave control over their lives and others. I’ve patiently perceived the people around me during these last 5 years.
I’ve kept to myself.
I resigned to society’s intellectual defeat.
Attention spans and vocabulary have dwindled while college prices have doubled. I skipped out on that step of being a servant but advanced to dedicating my mind to my job – like most well-to-do wiz kids. This has left little inclination or energy to fight any mental crusades or preach from any ivory towers. The opposite, apathy, has really been my comfort zone. The news is reality TV about DC, people’s discussions on the news is a cliched cesspool, and the only reason anyone cares about anything is anger.
My only desire now is to escape. My ideal escape is nostalgia. I can sense that media from decades ago, old TV shows, interviews, music, movies — everyone just seemed more at ease. People were less apathetic while being less afraid. 2 wars and 2 economic collapses later and we have an apathetically anti-intellectual population because ignorance is the closest thing left to bliss.
That’s not to say it hasn’t come in style these past 5 years, with the ubiquity of the internet in our pockets, to proudly proclaim any number of identifying ideas. Usually pertaining to one’s self, however. Gay, transgender, woman, brown, fat, feminist, diseased, abused – pick your poison and get attention.
As I sit here invariably adding to the negativity I’m hypocritically chastising, I’ll leave you with a hypothetical. Where are the big ideas? Where are the men who wanted to go to the moon? Where are the men who had a dream? When did modern life become so meaningless? As I’ll paraphrase from Interstellar, we used to look up and dream about going to the stars and now all we do is look down and think about our place in the dirt.
I feel like the world is running out of reasons to smile while simultaneously being exponentially more entertained. Why do we kill ourselves just to kill time?
