It is toxic to the soul to have to conceal who you really are.
We are born to express ourselves and our identity, and anything that interferes with that naturally creates a terrible tension between who we are on the inside and who it is safe to be on the outside.
This creates the exact kind of stress that shortens lifespans and worsens health outcomes. The feeling of constant danger as well as the cognitive dissonance of knowing who you really are but being forced by circumstance to pretend you are someone else gnaws away at one’s mental health and sense of identity and poisons one’s self-worth with guilt and self-loathing even if one is not consciously ashamed of who and what they are.
This situation is intolerable yet remains true of the daily lives of millions of people in all walks of life and in all corners of the globe.
We cannot truly call ourselves enlightened while this kind of thing is allowed to happen, and even backed by government force through the legal system. There are still many, many people in this day and age who think people deserve the harshest of penalties simply for being who they are rather than based on what they actually do.
But we know what all the hate is really about. It has nothing to do with the people supposedly being protected or anyone’s sense of real justice, oh no.
No, it’s about scapegoating. It’s about whatever group has been publicly identified as subhuman and monstrous and contemptable and that therefore can be the object of all your rage and frustration and hate to an unlimited amount and not only is this deemed acceptable by the dominant culture, it is celebrated as moral and good.
Remember, kids, there’s nothing wrong with hating a group of people to the point of frothing incoherence and an open willingness to commit acts of barbarous and sadistic acts of extreme torture and violence on said group as long as it’s the right group.
Get it right and you too can openly participate in absolute orgies of naked bloodthirsty slavering glee, knowing that not only will nobody think less of you for it, but many will happily join in out of eagerness to show they have the right hate too.
And because hate is just plain fun. Let’s not forget that.
The only caveat is that you have to do your research first. The designated hate target does change from time to time, and while the actual nature of the people in said group is absolutely irrelevant compared to the sheer joy of dumping excess rage on them, being caught displaying yesterday’s outrage is bound to be seen as a faux pas.
But don’t let that stop you. In fact, it should encourage you to hate them all the more, while it’s still in fashion.
In an atmosphere like that, is it any wonder that millions suffer in terrified silence, fearing for their very lives based on something about themselves that they didn’t choose and cannot ever change?
After all, not only is it not safe to be a member of today’s hate target, it is almost as dangerous to be seen showing anything sympathy to them whatsoever.
You don’t want people to think you’re one of them, do you? In fact, you will move heaven and Earth just to reassure people, in the most obsequious and toadying manner, that not only are you not one of them, you hate them even more than the socially required amount. By a lot!
So if one of them is being torn apart by an angry mob, absolutely nobody will ever come to their defense.
Not even the cops.
Thank God they’re not really human beings, right?
More after the break.
Power to the people
Had a power outage here earlier.
Dunno how long it lasted because it happened while I was taking a nap. In fact I didn’t even know something was up till I went to turn on my bedside light and got nothing.
Click click. No light. Uh oh.
So I looked over at my computer and sure enough, absolutely none of the lights on the back of it were on and blinking.
That’s when I knew the truth ; I was in a blackout.
And I went through the usual stages of realizing just how fucked we are without electricity and sitting there wondering what the heck I am going to do with myself before accepting that all I could really do is go back to sleep.
I wasn’t completely boned. I have food that I keep here in the room with me and I could have had that in lieu of the microwaved baked potato and chicken strips dinner I had planned for myself earlier.
Turns out I didn’t need to do that, though, which is good, because while I would have been fed, I would not have gotten my Vitamin B12 for the day.
And at first, I thought I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep because this whole thing had me wound up and agitated. So I just lay there in the dark.
Then, just as I was about to drift off to sleep, the lights came back on.
And I was, of course, happy to have the power back… once I got over being annoyed that my sleep got interrupted.
Got up, started up Mister Computer, checked the time. I estimate that the power came back on at around 7:50 PM or so.
So I wasn’t even late for my dinner at 8 pm!
All in all, it wasn’t much of an adventure. All I did was lie there in bed. It was like my own miniature A la reserche de temps perdu.
But what the heck, it was something different. Something besides my usual insular existence holed up and hiding from the big bad world I never had a chance to learn to handle before everything got taken away.
No wonder I “failed to launch”.
I had my power cut halfway to orbit!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.