Anyone else?

 Am now extremely bitter at having wasted all that time. From my teenage years, I've had the feeling that something was wrong with the way things are, but somehow I've always found a distraction, some superficial activity that kept my mind on more immediate issues, more fun to be had. My passion for science and technology has been the set of blinkers that allowed me to ignore the feeling at the edge of consciousness that we live in a rotten world. 

Had I spent a little more time, a little more energy scratching the surface I might have realized sooner that there were important things where I could have made a modest contribution. 

Now I sit here, looking at everything around me, wondering how everyone is so desperate to lead a "normal" life again. The more I learn about how things work, the more I get dismayed about humanity in general. Surely I'm not the only person opening my eyes?

Collectively, we are complicit in killing billions of living organisms every day, thoroughly destroying every single habitat on the planet one after the other, just so we can have a shinier phone in our pockets, a faster car in the driveway, one more channel on our television sets. Consume! Consume! It's an order, an imperative. 

Our goals are revolting. 

The way we go about achieving them is even more disgusting. We are soooo righteous about our democracy and freedoms, looking down at the way "other people" live, or attempt to live. We have rights. Us. Not them. They are not like us, so why should they have the same rights as us? They should get their own. But in the meantime, we don't have to listen to them because they don't live like us. They should be grateful we give them jobs, opportunities, cheap booze, freedom and democracy...

It's a free world out there, you can do anything you want. Anything! As long as it fits in with our way of life. Oh, and as long as you pay your way too. Ca-tching! Thank you, would you like a receipt? 

We have to extract hundred million barrels of crude oil per day to keep all of this running, nicely oiled. Hundred. Millions. Per day.

We need to keep the elevators going up and down our shiny glass offices, our trucks delivering the latest shiny toys, our trumpets celebrating the new shiny president. It's all needed to keep things running smoothly. We have important things to do. Export democracy, explore new business opportunities, exploit untapped resources. 

I'm trying to organize my thoughts about feminism, #metoo, BLM and the myriad of movements happening everywhere. All chinks in the shiny image of our society, which is not that shiny if you bother to look close enough. All proofs that what we are told is the best and only way to live and prosper is absolute bullshit.