Absolution
Lately, i've been feeling a bit guilty lately. I mean, people have let themselves become extremely ignorant of how unstable this whole situation is. Let me put it this way: roughly 5% of the world's population (the U.S.) cannot be responsible for roughly 25% of all consumption...that shit does not work long-term.
When America's savings rate (wiki it) is beyond negative 1%, meaning basically if you give an American a dollar they will spend a dollar and borrow some more and spend it you know shit is unstable. When America's take all that money and borrows money on top of that and gamble it on a bunch of real estate bets and gets scorched like napalm on dry grass, you know shit is unstable. When huge chunks of the financial industry gamble that betting that these American will win these bets and also get scorched you know shit is unstable. When the U.S. government has trillions of dollars of debt that it needs to constantly find new lenders for every year that basically only works if the world's lenders believe America will continue to be prosperous and not an economic cataclysm you know shit is unstable. And those are just symptoms of the more core problems that are even uglier and cause for even more instability.
But, Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan are way more fucking interesting so don't pay attention to that shit. Economics...*ssnnnooreee*, celebrity news = "She did WHAT?! Oh MY GOD!" Pay attention to your weight, and your love life, and your career, and what's on t.v. and having apathetic debates about where to go tonight for dinner, and maybe "finding yourself." That's the important stuff after all. Leave the big problems to the professionals! I'm sure there's a room full of smart people right now in a room right now thinking stuff up that'll just make all this stuff go away. America is the BEST and it will always be the BEST! No great disaster can happen to us. We'll be the greatest, strongest, richest, most amazing country in existence forever, even if everyone is busy spending money they don't have on shit they don't need and only looking out for themselves. We'll always be free and a country where people can find jobs and opportunity, right? Because we just repeat it over and over and if you say it enough times and you can't remember a time it wasn't true, well, it must be true then. Right?
I feel guilty looking at the faces of children. Literally, I feel it in my stomach when i'm around small children. I can feel it like a weight on my spine. I can't imagine the suffering they may have to go through to pay for what my generation will hand over to them. I imagine being sixty or seventy one day and a twenty or twenty one year old kid walking up to me with a look of anger and confusion in his or her eyes and asking,"Why did you do this to us? You could obviously see what you were doing to us, couldn't you? Were the trinkets you bought worth it? Was the joy of self-absorption worth it?" I pity children. Their generation is almost destined to be a generation of people that has to solve or suffer the most difficult challenges in human history, many of which created, epicly neglected, or magnified by my generation. No decades old picture of some clever political bumper sticker on the back of your car is going to absolve that arch-sin of sins, no receipt of a contribution to some charity or candidate, no link to your blog from the past where you complained about politics a couple of times, and definately no story about how you were just one person just trying to get by living your life and how the events of the world were out of your hands. They absolve you of nothing.
I have another sort of guilt I feel, though. To some degree, the worse things get the better it is for me personally. Happy, content people have no real stomach for revolution, where, desperate and frustrated people are hungry for it. And i'm selling revolution. Maybe it's the only way my way of running things will ever get implemented. Right or wrong, it makes me feel guilty and I don't think any wishful thinking will help absolve it...only results will.
A few hours ago I found a name for my movement:'The Ascending'. It probably won't exist for at least a decade, except in my own mind, but it's become detailed enough it deserved a name and a symbol. I also figured out the symbol, but that's not something meant for sharing. Maybe i'll find some absolution within that.
When America's savings rate (wiki it) is beyond negative 1%, meaning basically if you give an American a dollar they will spend a dollar and borrow some more and spend it you know shit is unstable. When America's take all that money and borrows money on top of that and gamble it on a bunch of real estate bets and gets scorched like napalm on dry grass, you know shit is unstable. When huge chunks of the financial industry gamble that betting that these American will win these bets and also get scorched you know shit is unstable. When the U.S. government has trillions of dollars of debt that it needs to constantly find new lenders for every year that basically only works if the world's lenders believe America will continue to be prosperous and not an economic cataclysm you know shit is unstable. And those are just symptoms of the more core problems that are even uglier and cause for even more instability.
But, Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan are way more fucking interesting so don't pay attention to that shit. Economics...*ssnnnooreee*, celebrity news = "She did WHAT?! Oh MY GOD!" Pay attention to your weight, and your love life, and your career, and what's on t.v. and having apathetic debates about where to go tonight for dinner, and maybe "finding yourself." That's the important stuff after all. Leave the big problems to the professionals! I'm sure there's a room full of smart people right now in a room right now thinking stuff up that'll just make all this stuff go away. America is the BEST and it will always be the BEST! No great disaster can happen to us. We'll be the greatest, strongest, richest, most amazing country in existence forever, even if everyone is busy spending money they don't have on shit they don't need and only looking out for themselves. We'll always be free and a country where people can find jobs and opportunity, right? Because we just repeat it over and over and if you say it enough times and you can't remember a time it wasn't true, well, it must be true then. Right?
I feel guilty looking at the faces of children. Literally, I feel it in my stomach when i'm around small children. I can feel it like a weight on my spine. I can't imagine the suffering they may have to go through to pay for what my generation will hand over to them. I imagine being sixty or seventy one day and a twenty or twenty one year old kid walking up to me with a look of anger and confusion in his or her eyes and asking,"Why did you do this to us? You could obviously see what you were doing to us, couldn't you? Were the trinkets you bought worth it? Was the joy of self-absorption worth it?" I pity children. Their generation is almost destined to be a generation of people that has to solve or suffer the most difficult challenges in human history, many of which created, epicly neglected, or magnified by my generation. No decades old picture of some clever political bumper sticker on the back of your car is going to absolve that arch-sin of sins, no receipt of a contribution to some charity or candidate, no link to your blog from the past where you complained about politics a couple of times, and definately no story about how you were just one person just trying to get by living your life and how the events of the world were out of your hands. They absolve you of nothing.
I have another sort of guilt I feel, though. To some degree, the worse things get the better it is for me personally. Happy, content people have no real stomach for revolution, where, desperate and frustrated people are hungry for it. And i'm selling revolution. Maybe it's the only way my way of running things will ever get implemented. Right or wrong, it makes me feel guilty and I don't think any wishful thinking will help absolve it...only results will.
A few hours ago I found a name for my movement:'The Ascending'. It probably won't exist for at least a decade, except in my own mind, but it's become detailed enough it deserved a name and a symbol. I also figured out the symbol, but that's not something meant for sharing. Maybe i'll find some absolution within that.