“The ones who love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest”

“The ones who love us least are the ones we’ll die to please” -The Replacements

I’d love to play guitar, build something, or share stories with the failures, the desperate, or people who are just deprived for no reason. The underdog gets no attention. If I was in a high position and had it my way, I would offer a hand to the worthy guy who gets left in the dust despite being a legitimate hard worker with an unlucky break. I’d want to carry the person without a leg to walk on. Although I am fairly privileged, I am not in the position nor do I have the resources to support/aid a multitude of helpless people. When I speak of helpless people, I am not talking about folks who are just mooching off others without any return effort. Those other kind of people are not helpless; they take advantage of help and offset valuable charity. I mean the people who are legitimately fighting to survive. Nobody should have to battle for a descent living. They should have to put extra effort to be better off, but not struggle to make a living.

We make it so difficult to buy a house and to do other tasks in life. Computers are a necessity nowadays, and not everyone can handle getting tasks done at a public library computer, especially within hours of operation and limited security. If you live in the heart of an urban city, you can get by without any reliance on transportation other than walking, bicycling, or by public transportation (the bus), but it’s a hassle if you are distant from civilization. Having a car is quite a benefit. I remember how adventurous it was riding my BMX bike for hours to do a task that could take minutes in a car. If time is money, then people without easy access to a vehicle get broke fairly quickly. When I was younger, my mom didn’t have a car to go shopping, so we’d walk or take the bus. Now imagine having to haul food and other groceries back home. Granted, I don’t recall exactly how things were because I was too little to remember, but it would be much easier even in a tiny car to store it. To be fair, you can find cheap cars but (unless you get a killer deal or have connections) they usually aren’t as reliable and tend to need more maintenance and money put into it. So a cheap beat-up ride would be fine for a lower class mechanic to tune up, but it doesn’t pay if you don’t know your way under the hood. These are only a few examples and although we have moved ahead in many areas, neither technology nor any person has found a solution. This, coupled with the political idea that we should spend money to pay for lazy people who aren’t even willing to try to survive gives us a major problem. Having the latest gadgets and trendy clothing and goods should not be an option if you can’t put food on the table for your kids. Couch potato lummoxes get rewarded and people who really do need help are second in line (or at least lose wasted charity). Something is wrong here.

I dread having to play an illusory game with the wealthy and/or powerful who control where I am headed in life. My career rests mainly on appealing to the big players. Even if I am to start my own business and be self-employed, I must still gain favor in the eyes of a supplier, landowner, or whoever in order to get the right price or be allowed to do so and so. Granted, there are some very considerate people that hold powerful positions that will not look at you as a commodity. Unfortunately, the system usually doesn’t benefit the good guy. The whole chain of economic and social success is fueled by money and serving the higher position. You either are lucky and start off in a wealthy family that supplies your needs or you advertise your servant-hood and cater to others where you wouldn’t otherwise. Take fraternities and sororities, which can shift the focus away from individuality towards the ultimate submission to an outside system or organization of authority. It seems like an open invitation of “Let’s make relationships based on self-interest.” The opposite (of the perceived unity and breakdown of the self) usually occurs simultaneously if the inner self is erased. Instead of teaching people to be a team to encourage a humble composure, it stirs a overwhelming sense of pride in the person who belong to a mass that exceeds you, when in reality it’s not a team but a ritualistic social gridlock.

There are instances of genuine efforts, free of materialistic lust, that do get rewarded. But since money is a driving force, you can have cases where the cash-abundant clown has a higher priority and is swarmed by others less fortunate. How often do you see someone trying to please a dirty man on a park bench? Nobody wants to deal with him because he won’t “bring you to the top.” But for all we know, he could have access to something better than what we’re after. At the other end, there are forces that try to go in the opposite extreme where your aptitude is less valuable than your social profile and classification.

I am not blaming the government or anybody for the condition we face. I’m sure there are many factors, and pointing fingers is not going to solve the problem. And scientific studies do little to alleviate social problem. They may be helpful, but they may also distract everyone from the actual issue. They may find a correlation or find strong evidence about factors such as race, or genes, or whatever. This does not mean that any of these factors actually cause such problems. They may be absolutely correct. Let’s say they are. What good will that do? It still leaves us with the PROBLEM. It takes social effort to fix a social problem. Society itself needs to fix itself, not a mathematical formula, not experiments or surveys or alienating political agendas. Too often we get caught up in why things are a certain way and try to pass it off ourselves. There is nothing wrong with just finding out the whats and whys, but it does harm if we get carried away with blame and excuses instead of trying to solve it. In fact, I think it can be very beneficial if we analyze the issues so we gain a better understanding without putting blame on whoever (or whatever) fits (or gets squeezed) into the puzzle. We may see injustice or prejudice in our own life or in our immediate surrounding, and chances are it gets quickly blamed on an arbitrary element of humanity. Mankind gets lost in excuses to be used as crutches or to enact justice. However, I don’t want to sound completely negative against accusations of wrongdoings. There are plenty of legitimate instances when injustice is evident and should be fixed, but justice is desecrated when it sleeps with vengeance.

As a figurative example, think of a man climbing a mountain. He sees a cactus in his path. Now he could use that as a reason why he can’t pass it and climb up to the top. He may even go further and say that the cactus was planted there so he would fail, or that he was being discriminated. In this case, we don’t know if he is right or wrong about any of this. But rationalizing and reducing his experience distracts himself from actually achieving his goal. It is healthy to examine his situation (to realize that there is a possible hazard), but it becomes an illness if he automatically uses his inconvenience for recompense. Sure, that cactus shouldn’t be there to ensure a safe success, but nobody should get punished just because it is there of itself. We can’t blame owners of cactus nurseries or the people who made the mountain path before the cactus sprouted (maybe the person being accused has encountered the same cactus themselves). It soon becomes an issue of self-interest to put everyone else in your predicament, or vengeance against an immaterial system or idea. Let’s just find a way to rid the world of hazardous cacti.