As I look at American life today in search of some overarching way to define it, one theme jumps out at me and it is that there is a contest or a struggle going on between various culturally different groups to preserve their sense of dignity in the presence of change these entities perceive threaten their traditional hierarchical standing. In other words, people in our country today, who once felt their personal sense of self importance buoyed by the culture they identified with, and the privilege and standing it conferred, owing to an accelerating exposure, contact and competition with a far more diverse and far more media exposed real world, have had that formerly insular sense of self confidence shaken that they are the center of the world, that their way of life was of universal significance.
And all of this is because people suffer from a mental illness everywhere, that stripped of what they were conditioned by their culture to hold in high regard, they are worthless.
Thus all issues that make up the American experience today revolve around preserving or instantiating values that are worthless, that preserve the hubris of ego. The gun issue is just one example. It isn’t about guns, but the value we attach to ourselves if we belong to gun culture or ‘get rid of guns’ in our culture. Which of these utterly valueless self identifications is the one that should convey real self respect?
If you have an answer, you’re nuts, but only in my opinion. There is a whole different way of looking at the world and, in my opinion again, it makes issues like this disappear. I have a really big issue to deal with right now and it’s that I need to go buy milk.