I think I finally understand Tom...

Mood: Angry...disillusioned...

After almost 3 years out of grad school...

I think I finally understand how my grad school advisor got to be so cynical...

Because people are such a goddamned crock of shit...

Noone ever takes responsibility for anything...except to take credit...

Noone ever says they're sorry when they fuck up...

Just a bunch of bullshit...

And when you see all of it in its totality...all of the ways that people drop the ball on being big people...especially on the really important things...

And when you see that they have no interest in doing a goddamn thing except for reinforcing their own stupid fucking rationalizations for how things are...or how they think about them...

And when you feel finally so goddamned trapped and hopeless about being able to change that...because people are more committed to their goddamn egoes than they are to doing better...

You give up...

And the cynicism sets in...

Because you finally accept that there's nothing you can do about it anyway...

I have never in my life felt as serious about this route than I feel today...

I have never in my life thought to myself, "Humanity is really just unredeemable"...

And thinking like that has always seem so fruitless...

Because if I were to ever truly believe it...

What use would there be in going on in this world, for goodness fucking sakes?...

Who the fuck cares if people are unredeemable?...

If people can't ever take responsibility for their bullshit...

I mean really...

Then there's nowhere to go...

There's no progress...

There's no way forward...

There's no improvement...

There's not shit...

There is just some miserable fucking existence...

As Hobbes wrote..."nasty, brutish, and short"...

And then a world where we only care about getting our way...and getting more of whatever it is that we want...

And generally being selfish shitheads...

Only makes sense...

But death makes as much sense in the face of that...

Because it just doesn't matter what direction we take at all, really...

Because if the only thing that matters is all the stupid shit in the world...

The money...the power...the fame...the sex...the drugs...the alcohol...

...the gluttony...the lust...the greed...the vanity...the wrath...the envy...the sloth...

And the eighth deadly sin...

The self-righteousness...

The most persistent and least recognized amongst religious and non-religious folks who portend to take such matters seriously...

If those are really all the things that really matter in life...

Then nothing really does matter in life...

Life doesn't really matter...

For some reason...

No matter how alienated I feel from people right now...I suppose the feeling you feel when you feel alienated from your closest friends...

I just can't believe that completely...

I can believe it enough to smoke my first cigarette in months...

But I just can't believe it for real...

But the truth is...

I don't know what to believe in anymore...

Because goddamn if I'm going to believe that this is all she wrote...this petty little life that we've created for ourselves...this petty little bullshit life...

I don't think I've ever quite felt this betrayed by friends...

And I don't think they give much of a shit about anything, really, except avoiding their own bullshit...

And fuck them for it...

"Why?" is always the question I go to when something fucked up happens...

But...there just hasn't been an answer to why on a whole range of issues...

There's just been "Because that's the way I'm going to handle it, motherfucker"...

The rationalization of the bully...

Not the thinker...

But the lesson I've learned that I'm sure must have made Tom so cynical after years of dealing with it...

Is that people just don't give a shit much of the time...about thinking about a goddamn thing...

Except about what will stroke their goddamn egoes...

And I've never believed in that bullshit...

Because ever since I was...I don't how old I was...

I believed...and was involved in efforts to make life a better place to be...for everyone...not just for me...

But I'm learning that no matter how hard I do that...

It will never matter...

Ever...

Ben