Being a Someone
The key to being a someone in our world is doing what they consider to be a something. These things are often arbitrary in value to us as people, what does it matter if I passed a series of tests which I may or may not have given a shit about and then received a piece of paper stating I did it. What does it matter that I jump through given hoops to achieve test scores, as our value in this backwards culture is not tied to the quality of life we give back to others around us, but rather the money we earn, awards won, and positions of power held.
I remembered distinctly while growing up that I liked the kids around me less and less as the system swallowed them one by one and turned them into someones.
All these things one must do through this system to become a someone. When one is growing up they better not fall prey to the thousands of mishaps or hardships that can occur to an individual. Any disruption can affect your climbing of the social ladder, unless of course you already come from a rich family in which case you are granted infinite fuck ups as long as the money holds out.
Be a someone they say, be someone of note. Be someone people find interesting, be a celebrity, get famous. Kill some people in a war, you’re a someone. Become a political leader and you’re a someone. Get famous and you’re a someone. All this fighting to be a someone, and god forbid you’re a no one that chooses to live an undocumented life of a good forgotten person, that’s simply unacceptable to a western mind with stars in their eyes.
The culmination of all this work is to be a someone and for what price and what reward? Who will remember you 30 years after you pass? A couple family members or friends that may still be alive perhaps, but almost no one is thinking about you in a blink after you’re gone. Our lives are ours to live for us here in this place and time, to learn here, to experience here. Planting a flag that will stand over time as “legacy” is to spend a life chasing after nothing, as such things like legacy are impossible to either enjoy or sustain, time eats all.
All someones come to pass. This is the way of our world and wasting your days trying to be a someone or a something as defined by some set of rules described by another is a waste of your days. Better to do, better to be, better to experience things of value and importance to you with people you care about rather than fritter away our days in attempts to be a thing.
Trumpism observation of the day…
I’ve heard some people say Trump was upfront with who he was and was openly stating his policy while campaigning, as venal and heinous as that might of been. But their claim is that he wasn’t lying, that’s not true though, because for one he has outright lied on more occasions than one can reasonably mention, and you can find youtube clips all over the place where he chants one thing in the campaign and then says another shortly after coming to power.
And even the shitty policy he openly stated and seemed to mean, he was lying about the reasoning of that policy and what the outcomes would be. The only stain of truth to anything he said was that he would make deals, no matter how much they supplant democracy, he has been busy making those deals. Like the recent one he made with Saudi Arabia in a weapons contract for 110 billion dollars, billion with a b, and this after shaming HRC for making a similar deal during the election cycle, and the scorn was rightly placed, but he is the same con artist playing the same game.
The only truthful words someone like Trump could utter would be to say “Don’t believe anything I say.” …His words are sometimes tinged with a truth which people don’t hear often in politics because politicians aren’t always willing to be critical of system they are vying to inherit and that’s because most know they are going to look stupid when faced with the same systemic issues as their predecessor. So instead they attack each other. But Trump didn’t play strictly by that formula and now he’s of course looking like quite the snake who is doing all the same horrible shit he blamed everyone else for.
What a piece of shit this guy is.
Thoughts on Facebook and social media…
I know similar critiques have been blowing around the internet for a while, but I thought I’d throw down some of my own commentary on social media if for no other reason than it probably needs stated again…
We now look down all the time at our phones because we are living our social lives within them. We have externalized our social circles to people not actually in our day to day lives, and in this way this has limited our interactions with each other out of a convenience of sorts. A convenience of not wanting to put ourselves out there socially, that’s scary, and Americans are fear averse. Things are awkward so often because we have constructed a social arrangement of isolation where we are unconditioned to connection, unconditioned to knowing people, and the result is .
Likes and dislikes, facebook comments, twitter feeds, pinterest likes, these methods of communication are not connecting, they are shallow substitutions for genuine human interaction. We are generally extraordinarily more willing to openly engage in conversation in a digital forum that offers detachment, as we can just look away to break out of the conversation by not giving it more attention, much easier than a face to face conversation, and then move on to something more gratifying to our egos.
When we do go out we get liquored up and go to places where we have to scream over the music. Human connection is scant for most in this world. Limited, sad, and shitty. We can do better.
