>I am Jacks raging bile duct…

>For the most part I have always considered myself a total pacifist and very much a “live and let live” kinda guy, but the more I see the world around me – the more I want to simply go on an incredible hulk style rampage!

“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time…”

And the irony if you ask me is that most of the time its not even the major things that get to me, its the little idiocies and the news bits that show such a complete lack of growth as society and as a species…
First things first: no matter how we identify ourselves, by religion, race, country, fuckin dietary habits – whatever! How hard is it to understand that first and foremost we are human beings? I mean its bad enough we have hindu’s and christians and muslims fighting each other, but you also have them fighting and killing themselves.. where do we draw a line? Is there no one that we are not willing to destroy over ideological differences that in the long run dont matter and will inevitable change anyway with the passage of time.
No religion, culture or lifestyle choice is the same today as it was even 50 years ago – forget the state of thing further back…

The thing Ive come to realise is that today we have this uber-materialistic, image driven society that draws no lines and believes at its core (though no one will admit this in any hurry!) that the ends justify the means!
Ok, now instead of tirading on this, Im going to quote another.. Since its already been said better then anything I can think of, Im just gonna plagiarise:
“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
…who can tell me where this is from? lets see how good your gk is kiddies! Simply put, we are raised and taught to drive and achieve and accumulate but in the end only a precious few are truly HAPPY, why is this so prevelant now?

But this is why things are so messed up! Im not even going into the whole religious and such aspects of this, because man, I would just type out a damned novel if I did.
I want to talk about the social part of things here, the individual more so.. We have a society thats more global and more intimately connected then its ever been in all of human history, yet there seems to be a major breakdown in the level of communication somewhere along the line…

The world is rife with Rwanda’s, Darfur’s and Sierra Leone’s – Afghanistans, Sri Lanka’s and Nepals – Serbia’s and Palestine’s… There is this long standing backlog of misery and anger and hate and genocide all across the globe to name but a few of the more well known, but instead of solving them and improving, we rush headlong into creating more of them… its a thing to be truly sad for…

The idea of living in this insulated bubble is becoming a worldwide phenomenon… people just want their own world to be safe and secure and the rest of the planet will take care of itself.. there was a conversation from Hotel Rwanda that always stuck with me because of the sheer truth of it: “I think if people see this footage, they’ll say Oh, my God, that’s horrible. And then they’ll go on eating their dinners.”

We have become such an apathetic, glitz obsessed society that it doesnt scare me, but it saddens and sickens me.. I have always believed that no matter how bad things look, there is always hope and chance, but that doesnt make it any easier to watch the shitholes we are pulling ourselves into…
The worst (or best actually) example that I can give you is about 2 recent news articles: one was about certain letters written by Mahatma Gandhi himself just a short while before he died regarding treatment of muslims that were to be put up for auction at Christies. Now I read that and my thought was, “Wow! Now those should be worth more money then I could count, I mean not thats a worthy item to auction and own! A true piece of a great mans history, a man that is world reknowned.” Then I read that it was estimated to draw at least some 9000 pounds (or in that range). Ok, cool…
Then I read in the same paper (and several others later) that someone had sold a dog food can from Paris Hiltons garbage for over ten times that price. Seriously?!?!?

There is something very wrong with society today, everyones fighting everyone – be it physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, commercially, whatever…
Something needs to change a lot and very, very fast or we will be so far a downward spiral that we sont be able to pull out anymore.. ok… tirade done.. thank you for your patience my friends.
Cheers…

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
– Oscar Wilde

A parting shot:
“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra. Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let… lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may!” – Tyler Durden

15 Comments Add yours

  1. utopia says:

    >that quote by oscar wilde is one of my all time favourites. nice blog you got here. more like a travelogue really. couldn’t believe that some rubbish from paris hilton’s trash can was auctioned off. it is all bloody jingoism. we live in this world of virtual reality. we are more aware of of what a couple publicity hungry americans are upto than whats happening in our own backyard.btw did ya see that film on youtube where this journalist tore up the newspiece on paris hilton cos she refused to read it time after time. was quite funny.

  2. Smita says:

    >Every generation’s youth feels this angst. But the media bombardment does get to you.

  3. Anki says:

    >Instead of writing a wonderfully insightful comment…i m gonna plagiarize too”And they wonder why those of us in our twenties…refuse to work an 80-hour week…just so we can afford to buy their BMWs…why we aren’t interested…in the counterculture that they invented…as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution…for a pair of running shoes.But the question remains…what are we going to do now?How can we repair all the damage we inherited?Fellow graduates, the answer is simple.The answer is…The answer is…I don’t know.(P.S ur’s was fight club… now guess mine)

  4. The Dude says:

    >utopia:hey, welcome.. actually its jsut a travel journal whenever i travel (as i did to egypt none too long ago) but the rest of the time its, well.. everything else and some more besides..that quote is my single all time fav, has been forever. yeah i saw the clip and read about it in the papers too, i thought i was gonna die laughing but respect for the lady herself for having the guts to do that.. i think someone needed to badly!smita:its true, the angst part of it is something that every single generation goes through, but what bugs me is that ours has the potential to be so much more (no slight to the prior generations here – just plain fact) given all we have… and this – thing! is looking to be the enduring icon of our generation..anki:you have learnt well young grasshopper! there is nothing more for me to teach you. nice choice here btw, though i cant put my finger on where its from… love the part about the running shoes!!

  5. Anki says:

    >Try Reality Bites… Winona Ryder’s Valedictorian speech!!!

  6. The Dude says:

    >ooooh!!! good one… thats a sweet movie.. “you, me and five bucks.”

  7. requiem says:

    >”If you don’t know what you want,” the doorman said, “you end up with a lot you don’t.” That’s just a sample of the wisdom in Fight CLub.But anyway, thinking about what you have written. The fact remains lots of people think but how many truly do. IMO it takes just an instant of madness or courage whichever you would prefer to call it to chnage your life and maybe the world as we know it.We remember what has been done , we idolise manifestations of our deppest desires but we don’t just take up our desires and follow them. The world’s s**tty but only coz we choose to. “One man can change the world. Why can’t it be you?”The moment we realize that is the moment everything changes.I’m just ranting. Your blog is a masterpiece my brother. Keep it going. I’ll leave you with this.”We wanted to blast the world free of history…. picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You’ll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We’ll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what’s left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night.”In a way it would be good to be “Back to the Primitive”.

  8. Renovatio says:

    >I’m sleepy.I’m grumpy.I’m droopy.I’m dazed.Oh and I’m unhappy too.Amidst all that, I decided to comment on blogs again, aren’t you just thrilled?Honestly though, I see what you’re going through,and I feel for you man, I really do. Hang in there, give us more exerpts from Egypt, I promise I’ll write more for the next… um… week.Cheerio.

  9. >I couldn’t agree with you more and dont think I could have expressed the feelings, the angst and sometimes the frustration at the situation any better! We’ve got to do something soon, thats right!

  10. The Dude says:

    >requiem:nicely put my friend, really well said. My ranting aside, at the end of the day, I do genuinely believe that given a little luck anyone can make a change.. also its true, the world is crappy largely because we choose or allow it to be so.. (that was part of the reason for this post) feel free to rant here anytime, the more the better! renovatio:dude, i feel for you bro.. life can really be a bugger-up sometimes, but it always goes on – whether we like it or not – so its up to us what we do when it does.. more egypt for you now, and it starts to get real cool from here, so hope you enjoy it! look forward to hearing from you more often..still searching:thanks loads for the kind words.. sometimes i cant help it, things just get so aggravating that I want to scream (i do occassionally)… I figure that so long as we live our lives with the aim of doing something good and living genuinely good and honourable lives, things will get better themselves..cheers all..

  11. blow says:

    >thats one of my favourite’s from fight club. hell yeah somehting’s wrong. it’s time for a revolution dude. we gotta choose ours. p.s. anki: that’s one of my favourite’s from reality bites! 😛

  12. requiem says:

    >It’s kinda sad how we’ve become. Case in point – Norman Borlaughttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19886675/site/newsweek/Guess that pretty much sums it up. Anyway I guess I would like to believe you when you say that with a little luck anyone can change the world. Here’s hoping for that bit of luck.

  13. requiem says:

    >Norman Borlaug – Know who this guy is? He saved a billion people i.e. A seventh of the world’s population

  14. The Dude says:

    >requiem:hey again.. its always sad, but what can i say – lifes like that sometime.. as much as im a cynic, i dont like to lose hope, as ive said before, its all we’ve really got.dont know this dude, will check it out, thanks..

  15. The Dude says:

    >just saw it man, a good point well made… sometimes i dont know whether to laugh or cry..

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