Working in the so-called "real-world" is an interesting affair. I think i'd rather be a starving artist. Then again, I'm hardly starving, so maybe just an artist. But how? I can't even draw letters.
Ah, but could I just become an eccentric? Or wait. Maybe I already am an eccentric, and trying to pretend to be some normal guy is really tiring me out, and probably making me even weirder than I really am.
But what is weird anyway? Does it just mean you don't conform? If you dress funny, or if you talk funny, or if you just don't quite conform to the boring, bland, totally whipped, strip-mall, celebrity obsessed persona, which seems to represent the present American identity. Does that make you weird? I wish more people would decide that to conform to that socially constructed identity is totally insane. With 6 billion little people like us out there, all the same in our differences, we can't expect to agree with everybody. But maybe if we were more accepting of diversity, not just in color or culture, but in indiviual personality, we could find ourselves getting along with just about everybody. Besides, if we all just practiced being utterly ourself, maybe the people we truly want in our life would materialize around us.
I think people today are just generally having a hard time. I mean our idols and heroes, in Hollywood, on stages and super-domes, in St. Moritz, in penthouses, mansions, and leer jets, are living lives so detached from the normal existence of most Americans, that we can't possibly feel content in our "normal" lives and jobs. I'm one of the lucky one's, I live in Aspen, an isolated paradise in the middle of a vast American jungle of Wal-marts, Star-bucks, Mcdonalds, massive developements, and human beings living on top of each other like they never have before in history. Our monkey ancestors would be sorely disappointed in us.
We have a few things going against us as a human species. We shouldn't have very high expectations of each other. Especially Americans; only considering the amount of medications we are on to "make us happier," it would seem that we are the most miserable bunch of people in the world. We are the richest country in the world, we are the most powerful country in the world, and yet our education is dismal, we have a larger number of our population incarcerated than in any other country, civilized or uncivilized, and we have masses of poor (when compared with our role-models in the media), a punished consumer class, who are subjugated, manipulated, and worked to a breaking point, for the benefit of a disgustingly extravagant, wealthy few. Almost sounds like the circumstances that would cause a revolution.
In a world where you practically have to have a billion dollars (and do we really ever stop to think about how much money that is?) to be one of the top 500 richest people on earth, you are most definitely comparatively poor if you make under $100,000 dollars a year. How can you compete, or feel good about yourself when our whole society seems to celebrate ridiculous wealth, fame, and instant fortune. How do you feel in your cubicle? Worthy? On your way to being ultra-rich? Or just reading people magazine?
But what is the point of having 1 billion dollars anyway? I don't care what The Donald says, I think having that much money is ridiculous. If you are worth even 100 million dollars, and you have your portfolio conservatively invested, and are making a 10% return on your money, (you should get a new investment adviser if you aren't making 10%), that means your salary is 10 million dollars a year. You are making 10 million dollars a year. How can people possibly legitimate needing more than 10 million dollars a year in spending money? And if there really is no point in being a billionaire (at a one billion net-worth, again conservatively invested, you are making 100 million dollars a year), then why are we all so obsessed with getting there?
Think about that workers of the world. And from childhood, we are taught not to care, we are taught that we can have that wealth if we work hard, and pay our dues. Well that is a big lie. Why are we even taught to want that much wealth? The American Dream is an exception not the rule. We should keep in mind that generally, if you are born poor you will die poor, and if you are born rich, you will die rich. If the present model wasn't destroying the environment, exterminating hundreds of species per year, and making the world a less safe place for my future children, I might just shut up, and be the rich guy I was born to be, but things are too funky for that. Change needs to happen.
When I worked for one of the many corporate machines I felt that in some ways it was like working in an office of zombies, it was like everyone had forgotten how, or maybe never been taught, to think outside the box. Maybe it is because they have been so conditioned not to experience their personal power as independently thinking human beings. All that power has been taken away,because there is someone above them, and someone above them, and our whole institution, even the General Manager, who is smart and has an open mind, and knows a good idea when he sees one, has somebody above him, who has somebody above him, and you keep going and going; and finally you get to a corporate machine. And that machine doesn't have a brain or a heart. And that machine, owned by the shareholders, is eating our souls, helping destroy our society, and disabling us as human beings.
We have either forgotten, or never been taught, that to do is to do, and the people at the bottom have the power, because we are the one's who choose to do, or not to do. Does it ever feel like "they" need a monkey to do the job they want done? The problem is, i'm not some trained monkey; and they need a trained monkey for the job they want me to do. In fact, I don't think a monkey would do the job either. The monkey would probably run back to the forest to forage for bananas.
They have told me to "pay my dues," "take the licks." They have tried to mold me down. It's just that old line, telling us to do the things we don't want to do, so that we can get where we want to go. What a crock.
The secret is this: If you aren't doing what you want to do, you are probably not moving in the direction that will make you a happy content human being. We have to create the reality we desire, and I for one, want a different reality than the one I see when I turn on the tv, or go out into the jungle of urban sprawl and soul-less, corporate powered suburbia. I think we can do better.
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