The New God

The thing we die for.  The thing we live for.  The thing for which we spend cooped up in little cubicles or offices, wasting the best years of our life.  That's right, if you live in America, your God is money.

People can pretend all they want that they have other Gods.  The thing that rules their existence is cold cash.  It's the vehicle by which society has imposed upon itself a caste system, with the ultra-rich at the top of the heap.   They buy politicians, Hollywood, and everything else.  News networks, internet providers, buses, trains, buildings, and plaster them with ads to make you chase the same materialistic goals that they have decided for you.

Buy my book, you need new furniture, a bigger house and car than you'll ever need.  You NEED a car.  Thousands of years of civilization without them but by your new god, you will drive and drive and drive to pump gas into your car and money into their pockets.

George Carlin said that we are way too prosperous for our own good.  No shit.  It's too easy here if you have a brain to make a lot of money and do nothing with your life in this country.  I'll put aside all arguments of "nothing matters" for the moment.  Too easy to crawl into that box you call a home and insulate, get in your habits, and wake up 60 years old wondering what the hell happened.

A bunch of rich magnates got together over the weekend to discuss "inclusive capitalism," finally realizing that hoarding of wealth and resources tends to piss off 99.9999% of the population.  They discussed that when capitalism is seen as one of society's problems, it's a bad thing.  Capitalism is another word for slavery.  Capitalism is the worship of  otherwise worthless pieces of paper and the things others will give you for them, printed by governments to keep you in line.  It's an ingenious system.  Even more powerful than religion.  You can get people to throw away their lives for religion.  But I don't see many people spending 40-70 hours a week trying to get their religious fix.  They only do that for money.

Needless to say I've come to find the whole thing a bit trite and meaningless.  It's been 26 days since my last drink and I think the effects are just starting to wear off.  I feel the urge to trash my car keys, throw everything in my house away that I don't need, move into a smaller and cheaper place, eat the cheapest food, stop buying anything for anybody, start to put my money where my mouth is, and start retracting from this sick, diseased, and dying world. 

I mean, how much shit do you need?

Do I want my kid to end up like me, working a job I hate to buy shit we don't need?  And worse, having my wife work a job she hates to buy shit we don't need.  Do I want to pay $15k-$25k per year to have someone else raise my kids?  Just so they can drill the same, prescribed, designed, capitalistic propaganda into his brain, year after year, until he ends up just another peon in their regime?  Spending so much time with other forgotten kids of our era, with constant exposure to tablets, cell phones, spastic TV, etc., etc., that he ends up an undisciplined, spastic mess?

I don't think so.  Clarity is a hell of a thing.  You start to see the world as it is.  And South Park, "You're Getting Old, Man," had it right.  This world is all shit.  It's not in the capitalist overlord's interest to have an informed public.  Have you seen the news, lately?  They spend all of 30 seconds per story.  No depth.  No analysis.  No comprehension.  I can only assume other countries see our news programs and laugh at the utter lack of information being supplied to the American public.  If you haven't tried it, watch a few BBC stories and you'll know what I'm talking about.

And education, wow.  To give the rich tax breaks we have sacrificed the quality of our educational system.  Of course, this, along with their news propaganda, plays into making the working class dumber by the decade.  Set up two opposing sides and develop a divided idiocracy, where conservatives and liberals are pitted against each other and argue so vehemently that they can't take a step back and see that they are all slaves to the same god.

And the value of hard work?  Gone.  Every medicated parent thinks that their kid is special, so we have eviscerated the ability of the educational system to distinguish merit.  You see these kids come out of school, and they've never failed.  They expect the world to hand them everything.  Unfortunately, in many cases, it does.  Such is the American way.  Random awards bolster the false notion that hard work pays. 

So go home, have a drink, and forget, you benumbed masses.  Buy another round with the money they paid you to sell your life today.  Forget, and teach your kids in turn to forget and deny the obvious truths that you have chosen to ignore.