Pondering with Intent
Random musings from the jaded mind of a world-weary thinker.
If the gross inequality that divides the lives of those who possess wealth from the lives of those who are trapped in poverty is ever to be properly addressed and thoroughly rectified, all billionaires and all millionaires must have all their unseemly abundance taken away from them. As long as even a small number of people are permitted to be wealthy, needless destitution will flourish, as those who are already rich make themselves richer and those who are already poor fall deeper into want.
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Casting a vote for one leader in a capitalist election is always the same as casting a vote for any other leader. Either way, every vote that is cast, for any person or any party, serves only to endorse the continuation of the capitalist dictatorship. Either way, voters are conning themselves. Either way, the election is a sham. Either way, capitalism is the only winner.
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Using foresight and caution, peering ahead and taking careful steps to steer away from potential trouble, is always much wiser, and always much easier, than being careless and waiting until one is forced, by the onset of danger and desperation, to hurriedly find one's way out of serious trouble that could have been avoided. This immutable law applies to citizens and leaders alike, but is rarely followed, which is why the world is an unholy mess.
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Until I met the woman who later became my wife, I took it for granted that marriage was not for me. Meeting her, when I was in my forties and firmly settled into a life of bachelorhood, caused me to change my mind. Love can do funny things to a person.
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The savage prerogatives of capitalism constitute an unceasing war between people who have too much and people who have too little. Being at the lower end of the capitalist scale myself (but also not being disposed to undue envy of people who are more well-to-do than me), I have no compunction in regarding any person who is affluent as an enemy.
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Those who willingly compromise themselves, selling pieces of their integrity for money, do not understand that once their integrity has been diminished, it can never be replenished. Or perhaps they do understand, but do not care. Whichever is the case, that they do not understand or that they do not care, any loss of integrity does injury to a person, reducing their primary worth forever.
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I was brought up as a Catholic, a degrading experience that did a great deal of lasting harm to me, but I no longer believe in any kind of religion. I am fairly broad-minded in regard to the eternal puzzle of God, as any mature person should be, but I am doubtful and, frankly, wary of anyone, whether clergy or laity, who claims to have the inside track on spiritual matters, one way or the other. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the particulars and whereabouts of God are currently unknown, and are likely to remain so until further notice.
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Most of the fraudulent rubbish that is marketed as "news" and "information" in the 21st century is no more than a stinking pile of overt propaganda, designed (whether crudely or cleverly) to enhance and extend the sinister priorities of the corporate deceivers who control the world. The stealthy business of confusing the public, keeping millions of malleable citizens perpetually distracted on all fronts, is an essential element of maintaining the upper hand.
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People who cravenly take shelter in feeble illusions of comfort and security, who choose to turn away from moral conflict and refuse to speak out against the many acts of wrongdoing that surround them, can only be regarded as gutless, spineless cowards. Their lack of courage brings shame upon them, and enables all the needless ills that continually beset our world.
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Capitalism is the problem, but elections are not the solution. Only some form of socialist anarchism, preferably a socialist anarchism that is at once rational, nonviolent, and sustainable, can propel us into the needful process of fundamental change. Anything less than socialist anarchism will be no change at all.
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A person who tells a lie about one thing will probably tell a lie about anything. For those people, telling lies becomes a comfortable habit, a chosen mode of making their way through life. In time they are even able to induce themselves into believing their own lies, and make a show of being offended if someone to whom they have told a lie has the audacity to catch them out.
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An honest desire to make the world better for all people must necessarily begin with, and be rooted in, an unyielding animosity toward capitalism. Any desire to make the world better that is not driven by an unyielding animosity toward capitalism will always be weak, lame, and useless, and will, inevitably, be defeated.
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The Founding Fathers who established what is fancifully known as "American democracy" were, in actuality, an alliance of greedy, grasping businessmen who did not want to pay taxes. Is it any surprise that, two and a half centuries later, America has become a fountainhead of malign finance, a nation of thieves in which the general welfare of the community is scorned and cupidity without restraint is wantonly celebrated?
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All oppressors must rely on the consent and support of those whom they oppress. Without that consent and support, they could not continue their tyranny. Those who do not actively object to being oppressed, those who meekly submit to the unjust demands of their oppressors, are accomplices. They are giving aid to their own oppressors.
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Having dipped into several branches of mysticism, both Western and Eastern, when I was younger, from John of the Cross to Swami Vivekananda, it turns out that, in my later years, I have become something of a born-again sensualist. I have found that holding my lovely wife in my arms, and receiving the sweet benediction of her kisses, has done more to enlighten me than anything ever proffered by any saint or guru.
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Beware of trusting in appealing delusions. An unhappy truth is far more trustworthy than a pleasant falsehood.
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How many of those capitalists and warmongers who presume to call themselves "Christians" can be seen to hold a true belief in the radical teachings of Jesus Christ? Not many, I would say. It is probable that, being capitalists and warmongers, they would utterly reject Jesus, and would disdain his teachings (which, in the essence of their morality are equivalent to socialism and pacifism) in the strongest terms, if they ever came across him in the flesh. They are much closer to being Pharisees than they are to being Christians.
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The older one gets, the more one's past and one's future shift in proportion to each other. My own past grows longer every year, taking up more and more of my being, while my future has grown shorter, becoming more and more unfeasible.
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Our leaders want us to accept every war that they wage as a "patriotic" enterprise in which unavoidable acts of restrained bloodshed are carried out only to achieve upright purposes. The coldblooded truth of all wars, however, is quite different and quite sickening: all wars are murderous undertakings, carried out by murderous people for the murderous purpose of achieving murderous aims.
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The filth of heavy-handed hypocrisy has polluted every region of public life in the 21st century. Most public institutions, and most people in the public eye, are actually cheap fabrications, clearly being the antithesis of what they smoothly present themselves to be, which is why they should never be taken at face value.
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Many people are fond of boasting that they have no regrets, saying, "If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't change a thing." I am not one of those people. They either have been extremely lucky in whatever they have done in their lives, having everything come out well for themselves, or else they are exceedingly doltish and have learned absolutely nothing from their own folly. In my case, I have many regrets and would change almost everything.
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Appealing to the worst depths of human selfishness is the reliable means by which capitalism is able to tighten and increase its unwholesome hold on our lives. Capitalism "succeeds" by encouraging people to be foolish, to be brainless consumers, to think only of themselves. Unfortunately, the mentality of capitalism, which thrives at the expense of mankind as a whole, carries a perverted contagion within itself. A contagion that, as it spreads constantly from one person to another person, will someday cause our downfall.
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Anyone who puts their faith in the wisdom of the masses is making a bad choice, because the wisdom of the masses is usually faulty. The masses are heedless at best, malicious at worst, and, most of the time, do not know right from wrong or up from down. If the masses were correct even half the time, or even a quarter of the time, our world would be altogether different and altogether happier.
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Nothing should ever be fully accepted without question. Everything needs to be closely examined for hidden defects. After all, even God has been known to make an error now and then.
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Within the crowded field of workaday conformity, it is rare to encounter a person who is of more than meager intellect. Even most of those who count themselves as highly educated, having received impressive degrees from well-known universities, are generally lacking in mental quickness. Years of expensive schooling may lend an air of distinction and enhance worldly prospects, but does little to sharpen a person's native wits.
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I have always hated capitalism, and I have spent most of my life railing against it. I know that capitalism does not care what I think or feel, and I also know that my lifelong venom toward capitalism has accomplished nothing in itself, but I figure that my spite has not been entirely fruitless, because it has served to keep me on a straight path.
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Why is it that the people who are most inclined to elevate themselves in their own minds, to think of themselves as being above those around them, have the least reason to hold such an opinion? It seems that with many people, egotism and self-deception go hand in hand.
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I have no wish to be eaten by an animal, so I therefore refuse to consume any animal flesh during my own meals, in the earnest hope that animals will return the courtesy. Fair's fair, I always say.
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Most people are prone to believing only what they want to believe, which leads to the overall pattern of their lives being governed by a denial of anything that might threaten the structure of their willful mind-set. They become stuck within the petty confines of their own narrowness.
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It is the mightiest nations that are most apt to undermine their own stability and ordain their own decline. A mighty nation may seek to whitewash its sins, and may even attempt to disavow them, but it can never separate itself completely from the telltale results of its sinful actions. Time will always record a nation's misdeeds, and fate will always arrange an accounting.
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I am regarded as a so-called radical, which is to say that my views are perceived as being more "extreme" than the views held by most people, but I believe that my radical views can be useful to others. Although they may disagree with, and may even despise, what they feel to be the extremism of my views, it could be that giving reasonable consideration to those views might stretch the timorous outlines of their own thinking, expanding their usual range of thought, which is always a good thing.
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Americans are used to living in a blithe, carefree state of boundless affluence and unbridled luxury and so are happily unaware of the poverty and suffering that prevails in many parts of the world. Even worse, they gladly accept their repugnant advantages as a sign that they are "good people" whose lives have been "blessed by God," and, accordingly, see no need to repent of their abominable excess. Of course, God might see it differently.
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Early in life I learned that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the people who rule over us, the people to whom we must defer throughout our lives, are vermin. We are taught to bow and scrape to them, to obey them and to esteem them, but underneath their thin guise of counterfeit repute, they are hideous demons, filled to capacity with unspeakable rottenness.
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One should always be agreeable to the ongoing need for self-discipline. Those who do not discipline themselves will, instead, be summarily disciplined by others.
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I believe in the "consistent ethic of life," which means that I am opposed to the destruction of human life for any reason, constraining me to oppose war, abortion, capital punishment, etc. It can be a difficult belief to follow, never being convenient in a violent world that casually accepts, and thoughtlessly justifies, a widespread culture of ceaseless killing, but it serves, nevertheless, as the core of my ethical outlook. To me, forcibly espousing a determined opposition to any form of killing is a moral obligation.
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Capitalism is not meant to be fair. It is meant to be what it is: extremely unfair. It is meant to put unfathomable sums of money into a small number of bank accounts, and that is what it does.
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Life is merely the blink of an inscrutable eye, a precious fluke for which there is no ready explanation. Most people go through life without ever apprehending the import of their own lives: wasting all their days one after another, reaching for prizes that are shallow and transitory, until the brief game is over and they are revealed to be losers.
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By the middle of the 21st century, when the United States of America will probably have fallen into abject ruin, citizens of other countries will survey whatever is left of America, and they will say to one another, "Things may not be as we would like in our own country, but we should be grateful that we are not in America." When America meets the awful reckoning that it has long deserved, few of those watching its ungainly descent into desolation from afar will be moved to shed any tears.
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Although I am not keen on religion, I would not dispute that the Buddha, a determined seeker who supposedly found his own truth while sitting quietly under a Bodhi tree, had some pertinent things to say about life. The purity of his wisdom was derived from his clearheaded observation of the world, and was devoid of gimmicks or tricks.
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In any situation, an adamant refusal to acknowledge the prospect of an untoward outcome usually has the effect of ensuring the likelihood of that outcome. Such is the dreadful vigor of wishful thinking.
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When I was a child, I was frequently told by grownups that I would "understand" the ways of the world in my later years. I am now a grownup myself, and nearly seventy, but I find that I am no closer to "understanding" the ways of the world. What I surmised, when I was younger, to be acts of unmitigated greed (referred to as "making money" by grownups), still appear to be acts of unmitigated greed. What I took to be occasions of mass murder (referred to as "necessary wars" by grownups), still appear to be occasions of mass murder.
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All governments are incorrigible purveyors of wholesale dishonesty. Dispensing endless deceit to the citizenry is standard policy for the grafters who dare to pose as the leaders of mankind. All governments abhor the truth, because they know that the truth is sternly unforgiving, and does not contain any shadows in which the traces of their vile doings can be concealed.
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When gauged in solely human terms, which are the only terms that matter, kindness has a much greater value than any amount of money. One touch of kindness counts for more than all the fortunes in the world put together.
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Those who are young tend to be full of themselves, and showing little regard for anyone who happens to be older. What those who are young fail to comprehend, but will someday discover (assuming they are lucky enough to survive the awkward conceit of their own clumsy youth and become elderly), is that within every young person there is an old person waiting to come forth.
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Until I am furnished with credible evidence that betokens otherwise, I will go on suspecting what I have suspected for most of my life, which is that I am residing in hell. The one thing I do know is that I am not residing in heaven.
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No one has ever become wealthy through the regular practice of complete honesty, and no one ever will. All wealth is harvested from shady activities that, when viewed directly in a strong light, do not measure up to any straightforward definition of what it means to be honest. Thus, every wealthy person is a crook.
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Given the uncertain way in which things have turned out for me, it is hardly surprising that I would ask myself, "What does it all mean?" In my darkest moods, when I am at my lowest ebb, I fear that the answer to that difficult inquiry might be, "Nothing."
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Every weapon is an implement of murder. Guns of all kinds are distinctly intended to kill, to destroy life, and that is how they are used. Bombs and missiles, aimed mainly at unarmed civilians, are brutal tools of warfare, meant to deliberately kill huge numbers of men, women, and children at one time. Any person who wants to abstain from evil must be forthright in denouncing and shunning any use of weapons.
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I know that someday I will give out, but I have promised myself that I will never give up or give in, no matter the cost. I intend to resist, with all the fight that I can muster, every baleful act of the capitalist evildoers who hide their violations under the handy cover of governments and corporations, until all my strength is spent.
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If the way of life that capitalism offers to those it enslaves is truly wonderful, then why is it that most people are unable to endure their lives under capitalist dominion without taking daily recourse to the use of alcohol, narcotics, hallucinogens, and medication? If capitalism is, indeed, a blessing to all, a benign source of plentiful goodness for everyone, why does it not inspire a life of sobriety? Why are there so many drunkards and so many junkies?
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Kingdoms topple, empires dissolve, power wanes, stature lessens, renown fades. All worldly things run their course, and all come to naught in the end.
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In my life I have made many mistakes, many more than I would like to remember. I humbly admit to each of those mistakes as a painful instance in which I clearly failed to uphold my own best intentions, but I also see them as stark reminders of my fraught humanity, undeniable proof that I am a fallible person, sharing the same frail morality by which all human beings are shaped, guided, and judged.
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Do rich people imagine that they can take all their riches with them when they depart from this world? What is the use of spending so many years of one's life gathering things that one must leave behind?
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It is advisable to keep in mind that the world contains more corruption than honesty, more madness than sanity, more violence than peace, and more hate than love. One can surrender to despair and weep profusely, or one can avail oneself of every chance to laugh heartily, especially when one's laughter is directed at someone in authority.
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Now that I have grown old, I worry that I am losing my ability to think, and my ability to write, to the usual standard (such as it is) to which I have become accustomed during my life. Within those nervous thoughts, there is a queasy foreboding as to what the future might hold for me. Will I live out the rest of my life in a private dungeon, condemned to a perpetual haze of forgetfulness? Part of my goal in composing these words is to prove to myself that I am still able to assemble my thoughts and convey them effectively.
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Capitalists believe only in money: money first, money always, money above all else. Raw avarice is their only motive for doing anything. Their every thought and their every deed signifies their relentless pursuit of wealth. They have no heart and no soul. They are the bestial adversaries of everything that is estimable in the human character, dragging all of us downward, into the sour murkiness of their fetid pit.
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If one is fortunate in life, one will occasionally experience a swift, singular moment, easily missed but perfect in its own small way, that allows one to briefly see the world in a happy light. Although those moments are fast and fleeting, ending almost as soon as they have begun, they can bestow a beneficial spur of sudden, overwhelming warmth that alleviates the troublesome burden of a sullen mood. A warmth which, sometimes, leaves behind a bright residue of unexplainable delight that abides thereafter.
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Those who are seduced by prosperity will never be able to escape from its venomous lure. Prosperity will break them and drain them, consuming their spirit and leaving behind only an empty shell.
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In addition to seeing the United States of America as a "nation," I also see it as something else: a loathsome disease that has, over the long decades of my life, infected most of the world with its greed, its ruthlessness, and its bellicosity. How much longer will it be until the disease of America has spread further and is out of all control? How much longer will it be until the infection of American depravity has crippled or killed everyone, everywhere?
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It is a bittersweet verity that by the time one has lived long enough (and has become smart enough) to know what is most valuable in life, more than half of one's own life has already passed into memory. After that, all one can do is remember what has happened, and long for what one wanted to happen, but never did happen.
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The only appropriate response to the world today, an ugly world of unremitting misery and countless sorrows in which brazen villainy of every kind enjoys an unchallenged reign in all realms of life, is an urgent, heated response of righteous anger. Yet most people are apparently undisturbed, being blankly steadfast in their mindless acceptance of rampant wickedness, shrugging it all away and displaying an utter lack of concern or distress. What is wrong with them? Why are they not angry?
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Grief is the bleakest, and loneliest, of human experiences. The feeling of infinite distance that impresses itself on one's heart after a permanent loss leaves one at a profound remove from any semblance of communion or joy. One continues to inhabit the same space in the world, but does so in the lifeless manner of a ghost, unable to connect to anything outside of oneself.
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Capitalism spares no one. All who are caught within its nasty claws are harshly exploited, including children. Before children have even been taught to read and write, their moral growth has already been stunted by capitalist contamination, setting them up for a servile life of debt and dependence.
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Devout believers in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all contend that their religions provide a sacred experience, manifesting a divine connection that lifts them into grace, taking them closer to what they stubbornly, and groundlessly, affirm to be a kindly God. I contend that their religions are childish fantasies, erroneously founded on an unpalatable set of ill-conceived presumptions and dedicated to the blind worship of a threadbare deity.
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To what sort of gruesome end are we being herded by the gaggle of psychopathic fiends who lead us? We all should be asking loudly, shouting out together as a pressing matter of our collective survival, but most people do not want to know, and would rather stay mute.
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Much knowledge can be gleaned from books, but even more knowledge can be gleaned from the act of being aware and being alert: looking forward, looking backward, and looking around, with eyes that are wide open. The truth of things is always there to be seen, but one must look fearlessly, and strive to see it.
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War is a conspiracy, the lucrative product of collusion between governments and dealers in arms. Those who push the hardest for war are in league with those who stand to gain the most from warmongering.
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As a younger man, I always took care with my appearance, trying to dress with as much style as I could summon, but I gave up trying to be a figure of fashion years ago. I have now taken on the forlorn, ragtag appearance of a woebegone scarecrow who has picked out his clothes with undue haste.
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If one takes a vehement stand against the irredeemable foulness of capitalism, as one is compelled to do if one aspires to any degree of higher good, then one must also grant that the only other available choice is socialism. If we are ever to forge ahead, away from the onerous curse of our long-term failings, advancing together in a new direction of greater wholeness and common fairness, then capitalism and its attendant violations of equity must be overturned forever, and the promise of socialism must be embraced.
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In the United States of America, "government of the people, by the people, for the people" has failed because most American citizens are too lazy, too passive, too uninterested, and too brainless to stand up for their own dignity when their government is pissing all over them. They prefer to swallow their pride and let themselves be abused.
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I have never been shy about voicing my own opinions, strongly and directly, partly because I feel the need to do so, and partly because it is my conviction that everyone is entitled to say what they think. My opinions may not carry more weight than the opinions of any other person, but they are an essential part of me. The principle of free discourse requires that every person should have the right to express themselves without being punished or stifled.
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After mankind has finally rendered itself extinct, as it will do, sooner or later, it will not be all that much of a loss, and the cosmos in which we dwell will not care, not even slightly. The stars, planets, and other objects that we see in the sky every night will get along fine without us, and will probably benefit from our absence.
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When all that can be measured has been measured, one shining, unmistakable truth stands out: love is the bottom line. Everything else is mere dross that soon falls away. A worthwhile life is built on a foundation of love, not a foundation of dross.