Seriously, This Is The Best That We Can Do?

I look around, you look around, we are all wondering the same thing. Is this the best that we can do? Ten or fifteen thousand years of observable history, with plenty of valuable clues that are even older than that, all providing insight into our natures, all readily discoverable. At least six thousand years of WRITTEN history, which should have allowed us to learn from our mistakes. After all of that doing, and recording, and learning, after all of that innovation and progress, this, our modern world, is the best that we can show for our Herculean efforts? Well, I guess it is. There are no other entries in this contest. Upon this hot mess we will be judged. And we will be judged harshly. We have failed miserably.

Human kind has made some small successes in the realms of art and literature, that is true. There are those among us who can take one of our clumsy languages and turn out something that is truly wonderful. A Bernini comes along once in a great while, a human being, just like the rest of us in most ways, who can take a piece of solid matter and extract from it a figure of miraculous beauty. We, humanity, have left in our wake some truly magnificent buildings. Impressive not only in size and scope, but in form, shape, and line. Beyond these limited successes, our legacy is a runny mess of corruption, filth, and blood. Our children are more likely fearful, crying wretches; far fewer are the happy, smiling faces. This last charge remains true as I type these despairing lines, much against our credit. It remains true in spite of the fact that there is now a sufficiency of knowledge, talent, and money to render the world a clean, safe place in which children would be allowed to thrive in peace. But, no. It's pathetic.

If all of miserable humanity were one miserable person in our midst, that person would be declared incompetent to manage their own affairs. A conservator of the person would be appointed by a court. The law would declare that allowing that person to control their own assets would result in waste, indeed, was resulting in waste. Waste benefits no one.

That, however, is exactly what we are doing. We are laying waste to every valuable thing that nature and history have handed to us. In the areas of management and administration, we are doing every single thing wrong.

Notice, if you will, that the stakes are much higher at this moment in history than they have ever been before. There are more of us; the rate at which our assets are being wasted is accelerating; our stupid management errors are destroying the very house in which we all live. My friends, we are shitting where we eat, and that is supposed to be the textbook definition of a bad idea.

As I write, yet another terrifying presidential election year is about to begin. Do any of you, dear readers, see anyone that is asking the right questions? Do you believe anyone is closing in on a workable plan for achieving a way out of our predicament? Or do you, like me, see mostly a minefield full of candidates, news-readers, pundits real and phony, oligarchs and wannabes, all stumbling around setting off bombs that injure us all. At the pinnacle of this pyramid of idiocy is a president whose sole job is to distract us while a fascist coup is taking place barely below the surface of American life.

And that's only our once great country! Looking around the world, you could count on your own fingers the number of countries that are not under immediate existential threat, or at least on the horns of some colossal dilemma or other. Me, I find it all very discouraging.

Which brings us to my point: I haven't been writing much on the blog lately. I don't need to add to the chorus of Debbie Downers that fill the media daily. I find that I am very busy just trying to quiet myself down, you know, try not to be driven over the edge by all of this amazing bullshit. So I read a novel, try to be a good partner, listen to some music, do my job, watch Netflix (in foreign languages! Those are double-distractions!). In the past, this blog has gone into high-gear for presidential election years. I don't think I'll have the energy to do that again. It's all too depressing this time.