it's all so serious

fans fill out their ncaa brackets. high school seniors plan their prom. millions of us get home and vent about various coworkers. people cry as their favorite from american idol is voted off the show. others feel themselves to be failures if they are not rich, and those that are rich agree with them, and yet, still don't find fulfillment. we have 24 hour sports talk. we jerk off every four years by voting for one of two capitalist parties of war, and then think we have changed our society when the team we want to win does. we move, buy homes, trade in our cars, purchase stock, and don't move one inch closer to truth. we are busy, tired, alienated, angry, hopeless, unoriginal, often pathetic. we are americans in an age of war, economic desperation, and environmental degradation. i think of fromm's line "basically i'm a pessimist, but if i weren't an optimist, i would have to commit suicide." one gets optimism from wherever they can find it: a good book, a beautiful piece of music, fine food, a relationship, a walk on a spring day. and then the pessimist in me remembers what is happening to this world. sinatra said "i'm for anything that gets you through the night." perhaps it is in our coping with the sickness of modern society that we glimpse the ingenuity of our species. but, of course, it is our species that created the horrors that force us to cope in the first place. hence, the optimist/pessimist divide.

i read in a book that all cultures have comedy but only the west created tragedy. our art mirrors the tragedy of our existence. the white man may not be the devil, but the results of his work make it hard to argue the point.

and so, the shit has been thrown at us. it seems the best we can do is put a shield over our heads and move forward. the problems are large and our solutions small. sometimes, we have no solutions, and often, when we do have one, it only makes the problem worse.

welcome to the tragedy known as america, circa 2009, on a planet called earth, where clean air, pure water, and decent food is exceedingly rare, and where peace comes complete with bombs and puppet governments.

at least there is always plenty to blog about.