A Successful Culture

One can tell how successful a person is by the amount of people he’s had to crawl over to get there. Certainly, every move, every gain and every decisive manoeuvre to the top is done at the expense of someone else. To acquire at all costs is the modus operandi of all sharks and carnivorous predators, to gorge until their skin breaks and they can feed no more. Ambition breathes through them—not for love or peace—but for power, an unrelenting quest for power. We, of course, give it to them.

We admire these qualities: assertiveness, boldness, arrogance and mild stupidity. In fact we elect them to office. As long as one can speak eloquently, generally appeasing our emotions and superficialness in the process, he can make garbage edible. This works perfectly well on a vapid and intellectually starved culture. Writers, artists, intellectuals, scholars and academics—all free and forward thinkers—have been violently replaced in a cerebral coup d'etat by celebrities, politicians, dogmatists and profit mongers. Where we were once inspired to create our culture and built it the way we wanted, we now lay back and suck whatever synthetic philosophy they feed us as if we were incapable—no—too lazy to do it ourselves.

How do they teach us to express ourselves these days? How do we practice art? We must do it in 140 characters or less. It’s committed on the go in between texting sessions and youtube browses. Whenever you see someone finally blessed with an opportunity for a moment to themselves—whether it’s waiting for a bus, sitting in a coffee shop or on the couch at home—where is their attention? How are they living that precious important moment? Not enjoying the powers of their own mind; not surveying the beauty around them; not building their own philosophy and culture; but dragging their knuckles and narcotic eyes across a bloody screen, a glass abstraction of the beauty thriving all around them. My heart breaks at that thought. All those beautiful and significant moments, wasted. For what? So we can see what’s going on?

We know what’s going on. We taste it in the colourless food we eat; we see it when we dare venture to the billboarded streets; we smell it everywhere we f####ng go. We are not in charge of our culture anymore—they are—the very ones who would take that culture away, the ones who we admire and support with our glazed-over attention. We envy their success so much that we almost wish we too had the ability to kill with a bleached smile…almost.

What they don’t realize is we don’t possess that ability, nor do we want to; and although we sometimes respect the amount of cruelty involved in turning oneself into such a monster, we nonetheless breathe a sigh of relief when we’re still able to remember who we really are.

The circus is now over. No longer should we pay a fare for entrance to this zoo, merely to look at these vain and decadent animals. To end it is easy—turn our back, smile and walk away. Soon enough, we will not be able to afford otherwise.

There is a simple solution to this "problem". It isn't really a problem at all if you only find the will to give up any ego investment in this culture. You are right: Walk away. Walk physically, emotionally, and mentally away from everything you ever thought you knew to be true and realize with every morsel of your being that all things are true. With that empowerment you can then begin to create your perfect world. Your very next thought turns to action, and thus begins the new world.

There is room for each and every one of us to have our own, perfect world. It all begins when you find the beauty of nothingness.