Read a very good Cracked article and it got me thinking.

It got me thinking about public rage as a commodity, and how well it serves the interests of the elites when we blame all our problems on some remote thing that actually has very little to do with our daily lives.

For decades, I have been posing the question : who is more lpower to hurt you : the President (or Prime Minister), or your boss?

Why are you tired and stressed out all the time? Because of the other side of the political spectrum? Or because your job takes so much out of your soul that when you go home, you’re so worn out that eight hours of sleep is not nearly enough time to recover? If you’re lucky enough to get that?

What is the biggest threat to your relationship with your friends and family? Some guy who posted a racist sign in Albequeque, or a workplace that makes it clear that only people willing to sacrifice their entire personal life are “team players”?

But people don’t want to face their real problems because real problems have real consequences and involve real risk and sacrifice.

It’s much easier to complain about the Outrage Du Jour and get angry about some dumb shit on the Internet than to deal with the real sources of our pain.

I also like that the article stresses sacrifice at the end because that is something I have thought about for a long time too. What would people actually be willing to give up in order to make the world a better place?

What if aliens came down and offered to solve all our problems for us, but only if we sacrificed something of equal value?

Would we solve world hunger if it meant we had to give up ice cream forever?

Would we cure cancer if it meant we had to give up sports?

Would we usher in an era of global prosperity and happiness if it meant we all had to do hard, unpleasant, menial labour eight hours every weekend?

Oh no! Not the WEEKEND!

See, that’s the problem. The modern world incluclates this mentality that there are only two states of being : work, which sucks and humiliates you with its hierarchy and makes you do boring and unpleasant things, and home. where every single moment is precious and priceless precisely because it is not work and therefore in those hours we do not want to do a single thing that is not fun.

And we guard those hours with great zeal and treat everything that would take even an hour away from them with enormous suspicion and such things have very low odds of actually getting us to let go.

We become time misers.

In a situation like that, any degree of sacrifice seems huge.

Sure, I will sign your meaningless and powerless online petition. Oh wait, I’d have to sign up for the website? Forget it.

I mean sure, I would love to go to that protest against that horrible thing. But it’s a 20 minute drive away, and there might be traffic, and I would have to pick out an outfit, and someone I don’t like might be there, so…. eh.

Someone should do something for those poor homeless children. Wait, it would mean a three percent increase in taxes? OVER MY DEAD BODY.

We have become creatures of perpetual indulgence where the slightest of inconveniences are railed against like they are crimes against humanity, people give up on their life dreams because pursuing them involves competing and hard work, and we whip out our phones at the slightest pause in our lives because God forbid that we go a single freaking second of our lives unentertained.

And as long as we stay in this petulant state, the one percent know they are perfectly safe because they know that they can continue to steal all the public money they want if the alternative is people actually having to do something hard.

Hard, in this case, meaning it involves absolutely any discomfort, boredom, inconvenience, sacrifice, risk, effort, or time.

In other words, it involves actually doing something.

There is no change without sacrifice. There is no progress without effort. There is no action without risk.

And there is no such thing as a comfortable revolution.

So until people are willing to leave their comfort zones and actually face the world and push for what they believe, nothing will change.

Change will only come when people are willing to confront the problems and demand change and keep on demanding it and punishing those blocking until it happens.

That involves (GASP) sustained effort and attention. It involves doing things even if you do not feel like it at the time. It means spending time away from our addictive distractions in order to stop merely dealing with the symptoms and start dealing with the root causes of the disease.

This skit illustrates it perfectly :

How did we get this way? Why are we so spoiled? Is it just the effects of technologicla progress,. or is something more fundamentally wrong with us?

If someone said to you, “The problem with people today is apathy! Nobody cares, so nobody is willing to lift a finger to do anything to help!”, odds are you would say something like, “Yeah! Apathy is a real problem! Somebody should do somethingv about these things!”.

But if said person then said, “Awesome, then you’ll be at the protest outside City Hall at 9 am Saturday morning, right?”, odds are you’d say something like, “Um… well… you see I have this thing, and um…. that’s awfully early and… “.

Getting mad about problems is easy. Venting that anger online is easy. Thinking somebody should do something about it is easy. And getting mad about how little other people are doing to address these problems is the easiest of all.

But until people realize that they are one of those “somebodies” who should do something to address the issues, nothing is going to change.

And that’s just how the parasites at the top like it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.