I grew up in a time of optimism, but the foundation was already completely rotten.
Even as a child I understood the societal contradictions. Love thy neighbor and let he who is without sin cast the first stone, but gay people are demons spreading AIDS and disease, they should be killed. Immigrants are taking our jobs, but our bosses who are hiring them to replace us bare no blame. We should feed the less fortunate, but the black ones are welfare queens who are having babies just to get free money.
On TV, though, everything was PERFECT. Black people and white people got along. Black people could even be doctors. Churches helped out the poor. People working minimum wage jobs could afford nice homes in high cost of living places and have big families on that single income. In real life, none of that was to be taken at face value.
A rewind button, I suspect, will never get you back to a place where the future is truly better. The zombie apocalypse is pure fiction. What we have is much worse. And even in the zombie fiction, it’s often what’s worse that ends up being the focus, with the zombies and the apocalypse just serving as a place setting.
The rapture actually happened in 2016 but only Harambe, David Bowie, and Alan Rickman were taken.
The ancient Mayans were right and the world ended in 2012. This is actually Hell we’re in now.
Around the selfish gene. The thing that guaranteed we survive and “emerge” became the guarantee our own combined greed and lack of empathy will be our undoing. You or I might be fine making sacrifices for the betterment of humanity; the ones who are the end result of aeons of racism, aggression, selfishness and hubris will make sure that their selfish genes get passed on, they gain wealth and power, and they ignore everyone else around, except maybe the closest friends and family. Even when they are actually burning up the planet in the process.
This is how it has worked since the dawn of humanity, even before that as animals. Most mammals ostracize their peers with albinism, leave behind or eat the weak, and the greediest fledgling will become the largest one.
We are past that. We don’t need this behaviour anymore. Survival isn’t an everyday challenge for the most of us. But similarly to leg hair, the tailbone or your ability to move your ears, they can’t just disappear as quickly as the environment, circumstances and society have changed around us. Little children are still mostly suspicious with strangers, or people who look different from what they are used to. Our built-in vestigial BIOS settings are also the reason those greedy, aggressive human fledglings are eating up everything from others, shitting the nest, and ruining the planet for everyone.
I think there isn’t a definite point where we’ve gone wrong. It’s been a looong process.
Harambe
I can’t point out where it went wrong without breaking rule 2
Reminds me of a joke.
Berlin, 1944.
A middleclass bar in a quiet neighborhood.
First guy sitting at the bar is crying; next fellow is pulling his hair out; next is giggling madly; next is just downing shot after shot after shot; next is just staring off into the void.
After a little while the bartender shouts, “Gentlemen! For the last time, no talking about politics!”
There’s no one thing to change that would fix things. The timeline of misfortune that leads us to this point is so erratic and constant that there is nothing that can be done to prevent it if even there was an opportunity. This is our timeline. If you have ideas on how to fix the past, start applying them now to save what future we have left.
