8 Billion

Something needs to be wrong with the world. That need is the foundation of capitalism. Progress is, existentially speaking, an antidote to boredom. The latest in our list of faux purposefulness is thinking about the world we are leaving behind for the kids, the mollycoddling climax. This pogrom is a perfect distraction from the original problem that is 8 billion pairs of hands choking the planet.

We are all walking around like the chosen ones to give reality a reality check. What bothers me about our solutions to everything is its viral dead end. I rant not because I feel strongly about something, or even care to solve a problem, but because ranting about it makes me believe I feel strongly about it. Rather than feeling something directly, I’d rather let popularity decide what I should feel. We used to call that shallow. Now, we call it woke.

The popularity contest that is self-awareness-induced anxiety has created a community so deeply noxious that a company whose business model was built on that community’s alikeness is now rebranding itself as a self-actualized version of its original self, one which can appreciate differences.

If I told you about the things to be grateful for, you’ll throw a vomit bag at me. Like you’d at Facebook if they started charging you for using it, when it may actually turn out to make the biggest difference overall. What we call solutions is mostly just rebranding our problems.

It’s why the conversation on climate change is boomers talking about saving the planet for their grandkids when the solution is to point out that their shithead kids (yeah: me) have done twice the damage to the planet in half the time, and the only way to take responsibility for it is to stop producing more kids. But try telling them (the boomers) that and they will talk about a doctor who’s an expert at helping people fecundate.

Had I let popularity get the better of me, I would have thought about this the same way: played the blame game, shit on the meat-eaters, and put up a picture of a starving polar bear instead of the cute ones whose dad starved to death because you wanted diapers delivered overnight. Talk about being full of shit.

No one wants to change the world. What we really want to change is how we experience the world. The human is a basic bitch. It’s why our rationalizations for destroying the present have been the promise of a better future. What we are really leaving behind are the same shitty beliefs and bubble wrap. If it’s really a better future that we want to leave behind, we need be able to imagine a future without us.