The Real Problem Is….

Is that life sucks. It sucks because it is not what we want it to be. It is not what we want it to be because we have very little control over it. We have very little control over it because there are 7 billion other people who also want life to be what they want it to be.

Not to mention stuff like earthquakes and hurricanes and disease….and just stupid random chance.

The real problem is that we have no idea what we are doing. Not only do we have no idea what we are doing….but every time we get close to figuring out what we are doing, everything changes and we have to start over again.

The Real Problem is, is that we want life to be better than it is. Life on earth has always pretty much sucked. The strong have always subjugated the weak, there have always been wars, there has always been torture, there has always been betrayals and infidelities and the petty personality bullshit that derails progress, great and small.

Humans have always been greedy and weak willed and violent and not in fully control of these things or themselves. Humans have more often than not chosen to do the easy thing over the hard thing. People constantly choose ‘evil’ over ‘good’….for a myriad of reasons. The chief among them being that we are human and imperfect and subject to our own and others human nature. And Human Nature….sucks.

We write codes and laws and moral treatise and invent religions and establish hierarchies and governments to enforce them so we can try to tell other people not to suck so much. But they still do. And so far nothing humans have come up with has solved the Real Problem.

Humans suck, life sucks….it is an impossible situation. And there is no easy solution, if there is a solution at all.

You can tell humans not to suck all you want, you can hold other humans to the standard you want them to uphold and you will be disappointed every time. There is and never has been a perfect human. We ALL suck to some degree or other. And there has also always been about 10% of humans who REALLY suck. Most of us try to not suck quite so much. The 10% actually study (howdy KKKArl!) at how to suck as much as possible.

Every once in a while, a human comes along who doesn’t suck as much as the rest of us humans: Christ, Ghandi, MLK, The Kennedy’s…..

We kill them for not sucking quite as much and for trying to help us to not suck so much.

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There are two ways to approach the fact that humans suck.

You can try to change yourself and others to get them and you to not suck as much. Or you can find a peaceful valley somewhere and stay away from as much as the suckiness as possible.

Or…if you REALY suck (Howdy George! Howdy James Dobson et al!) you can exploit the easily exploitable base nature of your fellow suckees to build your personal power and wealth.

As the human species and culture has evolved…with most of us trying to suck as little as possible and to use or time on the planet to decrease the general level of suckiness and spurring the positive evolution of society and humanness in that direction….the opposite is also true. The people who REALLY suck have evolved as well. They have become incredible able and efficient at sucking.

One of the methods they have developed of becoming very good at sucking is to get the vast middle….the people who neither REALLY suck but also aren’t particularly interested in working against the general suckitude….to give up and not care.

As we see from America today, they have done a bang up job. The average human (not just Americans) if fed and sheltered sufficiently and left to his own devices….will play computer solitaire all day.

The OTHER 10%….the 10% who work as hard as they humanly (iow, imperfectly and occasionally suckily) can. To do all that is in their power (which is usually not very much) to help the people and the planet to not suck as much.

Yes, I mean us.

We are noble and self sacrificing and very cool and we honestly do our best to help the world and our fellow humans to not suck, it is a passion with us.

We see the problems of the world and we see folks suffering and we do all we can to help. But WE fuck up all the time too. Because we are humans because, frankly, we suck. We have limitations and weaknesses and egos and human natures. So even though we give it our all, we often fail.

I am going to stop there.

I am not going to draw any conclusions or solve The Real Problem or try to tell you how to solve the real problem.

Because I just plain don’t know.

No one does.

Remember when you were a kid and you felt like adults really knew what they were doing, that they could keep you safe and solve your problems and make everything ok? Well they couldn’t…and they still can’t.

They…..everyone, every human…..is making it up as they go along, just like you are.

The best we can do is draw on the wisdom of the past and learn from history and try our VERY best to always do exactly the right thing.

But guess what? If the wisdom of the past held the answers…..the people in the past would have solved that whole suckiness thing long ago.

And each and everyone of us WILL fail occasionally at always doing exactly the right thing.

Even Leaders…..leaders don’t know crap. They are no better or wiser or stronger than you are….at least not much.

They are making it up as they go along too. (I know I am, to whatever degree I am a leader) Leaders are only focal points. No one really knows what creates a leader or why people follow them….maybe they just talk goodly….maybe they can just say what is on everybodies mind a little better than most.

This is why we need to move away from leaders….why we need ALL of us to lead, to join together in leading.

But guess what?

That doesn’t work, because the same human nature that makes us all suck, seems to dictate to some part of us to make leaders. And once we make leaders….we find out that the people we have made into leaders suck just as much as we do. Or maybe even more, because they actually try to lead…because they see that people want leaders….and they think that they can help…that they can make things suck less. So they try and often fail…and are often attacked and destroyed for their failings. Humans create leaders because they think that a leader is better than them somehow….and they rarely are. But we still perpetuate the same pattern. We need to find a way to all work together, to count on all of us, not some poor schmuck we select to lead us until we find out he is just a poor schmuck like us. We need to find a way fr all of us to cooperate, to all lead together. And no one has any idea how to overcome our human nature in order to do that. Every thing we have ever tried has brought, at best, a little bit of progress.

But the only alternative to trying to solve or at least mitigate the whole suckiness problem is to just give up. Personally, I am not going to give up. I am going to continue to stumble along in my imperfect, very human fashion, doing the best I can…..even though the best I can does, indeed, suck. If y’all want to come along and all try to work together…. to stumble along together… and do the best we can together, and thus to suck a little bit less by combining the parts of ourselves that don’t suck into some slightly less sucky whole, that’s frikkin wonderful. We can support each other through the worst of the suckiness and try to help each other with the worst aspects of our individual suckiness and all work together to reduce the suckiness quotient of the world.

Or …..not.

So there we go.

No conclusions, no great revelations, no solution to the Real Problem.

Just the same blind impulse that is part of MY human nature (and yours) to do the best I can to relieve and cure human suckiness as much as possible.