L is for Loss of Hope

by Citizen L

I lay in bed at night, and I ask myself, "self… is it all worth it?" The only sane answer I come up with is, "worth what?" Which of course isn't an answer at all, just another dumb question (don't stop reading now, unless you want to. I promise this has some sorta chance of making sense in the end… or not) Why are we what we are? Humans… a species no doubt laughed at by any other sentient beings. Trapped between instinct and reason, not utilizing either of them to a worthwhile extent. Beings we deem "lesser" may in fact laugh at us when we confuse ourselves over which mate to choose or when we hesitate to kill for food. It is because of this that we set ourselves up on the higher ground and claim ourselves civilized. We're the most reasonable species we know… which is horribly sad when you consider how un-reasonable we are as a species. We kill, maim, and debase other people, cultures, and species. Ah yes, Civility.

What drives our vicious minds? Maybe a lust for control, maybe chemicals in our brains tell us it's what we need, or maybe trickle down ass-beatings (or to a less severe extent, trickle down abuse of power). You've seen the political cartoons and heard the comedians; Dad gets yelled at when at work, so he yells at mom, who yells at the kids. What do the kids do? Well we can either take the anger out directly on our peers (bullies), which of course leads to teachers and parents scolding us. Or we can take this unplaced anger and bottle it deep down inside our beings where it rots and perverts itself until one day you find yourself in a court room answering questions about what you did prior to burying the body. Power… personal power over another- it quells our rage long enough to keep us happy. We all do it, weather we like to admit it or not. Be it in obvious ways such as brute force, or in an emotional manner. Threatening, beating, pinning, twisting, manipulating, preying on the weakness of others. All for a quick fix… power over other beings- it's my drug of choice.

So sure the localized view of trickle-down abuse isn't anything new but what about the universal aspect of it? Not just how one boss ends up affecting one family. But how a billion bosses affect a billion families. Not just bosses; lives little upsets, coworkers, annoying people, bad weather, accidents - anything that causes uneasiness or anger. Compound that over generation and generation where we all tend to repress some anger and things don't seem so happy.

How else might this happen? Is it our nature as humans to be ill willed, quick to judge, and defensive? Did we gain anything by into a world of distrust? You bet your ass it did! I don't see any monkeys inventing airplanes, do you? As a species we've traded simplicity and instinct (natural order) for society and advanced culture. Maybe (hopefully?) we're just up one step on a long ladder of evolution- though personally I don't see us evolving mentally much anytime soon.

So where does that put us? Laughed at by crawdads for our blind follow of reason. Equally laughed at by aliens who follow reason so precisely that war and poverty are non-issues.
But how happy are crawdads? How happy are aliens who treat everyone equally? With all that equality your diversity goes out the window, which unleashes two distinct problems.
Everything is judged in the relative; as it stands now we have some really fucked up people in the world. Now what if we have no murderers, no robbers, no thieves, and no rapists, where does that leave Bob? Bob runs stop signs, and is now the worst human on the planet. If all we do is raise the sin curve, the bottom is still as low as you go, even if it's higher than the old low.
The other problem is just as stupid. When a species loses its diversity, it also loses its ability to survive. If we can't evolve due to a static gene pool, we die.

Can we get past our petty want for control over others? Probably… a few humans might be able to, but not enough to make a difference… not enough to teach any others. How do you convince someone to be honest to themselves and others in a world where honesty just creates anger? Here's an idea, instead of trying to change people, we just work with the new ones (kids). Teach the kids to ignore all the jerks and sew the seeds for segregation! Jerks get to drink at this drinking fountain, and the Arian race gets to drink from this one! Yay!

Anger stems from all things, it has to. Without anger how would we judge non-anger? Without hate how would we know love? Emotional extremes are a necessary evil that sickens me. Like a flu that kills me a little bit each day. I am powerless to stop it… the only thing I can do to stave it off is remove myself from people. The only asshole I'd have to deal with then would be myself.

I could end this with some cool line about death being the only way out of the vicious cycle of hell that humans put me through- but then people would think I was suicidal or something dumb like that-

Yeah, I hate humans… but I love donuts so I'll stick around.