ciaI wasn’t planning on using this site to post anything other than poetry and short stories. There are enough guides and opinions posted across the internet to drive us all crazy. It isn’t like I have any kind of following or regular visitors, though, so why not post what I feel like I should say?
The problem with Americans today has nothing to do with the political spectrum. Our problem is our inability to discern actual reality from what we’re told reality is.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
– Philip K. Dick
Do some quick homework before continuing on so we’re all on the same page. I’m not asking that you read every link below, but please glance at them all.
Reification and Perspective Taking
So, we’re being told to subscribe to and fight for beliefs and phenomena that aren’t actually part of reality. Other people (who are very powerful and very clever) are motivated to convince us to subscribe to their values because they profit from it. The people that distort our vision are those we trust and care about. They’re our teachers, bosses, Television personalities, politicians, parents, me, etc.
The only things around us that we should place value in, that are really real, are other living things. The Truth: We, people, are pretty close to being the only truly real thing in our lives. Everything else: money, marriage, gender, race, taxes, political parties, nations, religion, it’s all fake. All of it is pretend. We are raised to be *extremely* passionate about things that only exist because we agree to believe they do. We assign a unique value to everything we encounter.
Because we are told through ads, shows, music, etc. what we should value, we care more about a number on a bank’s website than we care about the lives of most people around we. Does that make us bad people? I don’t know. The concept of good and bad, that’s made up, too. It does mean that we’re doing harm, though.
I am, I know. So are my friends and family, and everyone else I know and love and have ever met. Hurting others is pretty impossible to avoid. The single most important goal throughout our lives should be to constantly reduce the amount of harm we inflict.
Why?
Well, how does it feel when people harm you or someone you care about? You probably don’t like it, right? Connect the dots. Do you want to make people feel bad? Do you want people’s lives to be negatively impacted? Do you want families to be torn apart and people to die? Those are real things that happen when your top priorities lie in social constructs.
Now that we understand the concepts discussed within those articles at least a bit, we only have two choices. If we actively choose to continue causing harm, we’re choosing to make the world worse, and we are therefor worse people than we were beforehand. If we choose harm reduction, the world will be a better place.
tl;dr It doesn’t matter what views you have, we have an obligation to reduce the amount of harm we cause.
If you disagree, tell me why you think we should be hurting people.
Extra Credit: QUESTION EVERYTHING.
A. M. Langston 