Angry Monkeys with Sticks

I am going to write a lot about human nature in these blogs so I want to post something that outlines my fundamental belief in human nature so as to act as a disclaimer for future posts. Humans are at our core angry monkeys with sticks. Three thousand years ago those sticks were pretty close to actual sticks with points on them while today they are more like laser guided bombs and M16s. Make no mistakes about it, we maybe be technologically advanced, but our biological evolution really hasn’t gone anywhere in a while. We fight for our ideas and rights, but mainly we fight for power, wealth and mating rights. Sorry ladies but this is for the most part a man’s world even though we would like to think we have most past that. Men still control the planes and bomb and guns, and we will continue to use them as long as we feel the need to kill other men to secure to the rights to put our penises in your vaginas. We kill each other out of greed, anger, jealousy, and sometimes just because we can.

With all that said there is still hope. Humans may be fighting millions of years of evolution in our efforts to move past our primal motivations, but sometimes we are able to win that struggle but only as long as we acknowledge it and not pretend it is not within each and every one of us. We are separated from most other species because we have evolved to care for one another and form communities. The problem lies as evolutionary biologists have noted that after a certain number of people are included in that community we seem to lose our empathetical ties to that group. Evolution has played a cruel joke on us since they estimate that number is around 60-90 people at maximum for our brains to form natural empathetic bonds with. Where humanity’s real struggle lies is in finding that empathetical bond with the world community beyond just our immediate 60-90 person hard wired social connection scenario.

Lack of empathy in action. CAPITOLISM. No place in humanity is our awful evolutionary baggage more apparent than in the realm of capitalism. I am not a socialist, but capitalism to me represents the worst in humanity. We seek to rise above our peers, not raise a community to new standards of living. We are driven to accumulate wealth and not share success. We are taught that business must consume and consume regardless of the consequences to maintain growth. We destroy countless lives to enrich a few and then shake our simple primate heads when our economies fail when the wealth at the bottom can no longer support the largess at the top. This is evolutions cruel legacy in action. Economic Darwinism is not a good thing; it is a sign that we are still monkeys with sticks. The goal of humanity must be to exercise the one thing that makes us special and that is our amazing ability to empathize with people we do not even know, but choose to help regardless of association.

When I discuss future economic, political, and social happenings I hope you will remember this simple blog so you can better understand my view of humanity an how we must overcome our primitive urges to move on to a new plain of consciousness and cooperation with our fellow human beings. I am not a tree hugging hippy, I am simply and angry monkey with a stick who doesn’t want to be one anymore.

The end of conspicuous consumption.

We the internet generation, born mostly in the 1980’s, have been brought up in a time that I believe will be known by future generations as the era of conspicuous consumption. We are the generation that did not know hardship or strife. We did not grow up with the ideal of working a factory job and making a blue collar salary and supporting a family. We are the generation that was supposed to do better, live larger, and enjoy life without limits or sacrifice. We have been living a collective lie. We are the credit card generation, and we have been running our current tab for almost 30 years. Our parents watched as the government dismantled the safety net that kept rampant greedy capitalism in check and did nothing to stop it. They bought the empty promises and mantra of greed is good. They wanted the new cars and nicer homes with modern amenities that no one needs and most don’t deserve. They, along with my generation have spit on the graves of our great grandparents and grandparents whose generations suffered unimaginable cruelty at the hands of wealthy America and fought to create a better and more equitable future.

Now is our time to suffer, now is our time to repay our debts. We must be the generation that starts the trust busting movement once again. We must stand up and burn the walls of inequality that divide the socioeconomic classes in order to pave the way for future generations to live in a better world. We must abandon the xenophobic rhetoric of our leaders and embrace the world as our community and not just our own country men. We must not placate the racist south any longer or move politics to the center to make the ignorant more comfortable. We must lash out with public anger against the voices of soft bigotry like Rush Limbaugh and his like. We must reject spending and the accumulation of material wealth at the expense of moral gain. We must end conspicuous consumption before it ends us.

Welcome back

Welcome back….so I decided to start my blog fresh since I wasn’t posting as often as I would have liked and I feel like starting anew in this not so new year would be a good move. So with that said, lets move on to matters that I care about.

Welcome to 1930, oh how we missed you depression era America. I would like to give a big shout out to the religious right, wealthy aristocracy and social climbing morons who sold us all collectively down the river so you could live out your own personal John Galt/Jesus fantasies. Sorry folks but neither of the previously mentioned fictional heroes will be coming to save you so I would advise you take your head out of your collective asses and observe the mess you have made. In a future blog I will elaborate more on this subject of how we came to this mess but for now I will just say I told you so, mainly since I have been predicting this meltdown since circa 2003. If you are wondering how in the world I saw this coming so far in advance I will give you a cute anecdotal answer and a more complete one in future blogs.

Back in 2003 I had some friends get into the mortgage industry selling this brand new awesome kind of loan called “sub prime”. Long story short, they made tens of thousands of dollars and did their part to fuck the entire world over in the process. Needless to say these friends were not the most ambitious people I know, or even that smart, and if there is one thing that is a constant right up there will death and taxes, it is that when people this worthless and greedy can start making money like this….someone is getting scammed..HARD. Unfortunately the group getting scammed was the entire world financial community, and by that I mean your parents 401K because the really rich ones got golden parachutes and government hand outs. Pro tip: if the dumbest people you know are making thousands selling something to the other dumbest people you know….buy gold…lots and lots of gold and move to Canada.

Moving on to things in the news that make me laugh when I shouldn’t be, Bernnie Madoff. Ok so the politically correct thing to do in this case is to say how sorry you feel for his victims, but lets get real people. Bernnie Madoff didn’t steal from girl scouts selling cookies outside of Ralphs. He stole 65 billion from wealthy individuals who had the connections to even be invited to invest with him. Now granted, his shenanigans helped drag down other perfectly viable investments that many actual innocent people had their life savings in, and for those people I am profoundly saddened. But for those who directly invested their money with Bernnie….tough shit. If you think I or any other American should feel bad for these people, please feel free to kiss my entire ass. We as Americans need to stop siding with the rich and powerful and remember that these people would sell any one of us down the river for their own security any day of the week, and in case you haven’t looked outside lately…THEY ALREADY HAVE.

Moving on to unrelate news that is shocking and awesome…Walmart is giving 2 billion in bonuses to their employees because of a jump in sales in the first quarter. Normally I would make fun of this soulless piece of shit corporation, but for once they did good and I want to acknowledge that in case you guys missed it. I’m sure in a week I will have forgotten this kind act and will go right back to hating the shit out of them.

Thanks for reading my first blog in a while, feel free to drop in daily for updates as I am committing myself to posting at least once a day from here on out. Take care