Dear World

Please Kill Me,


We’ve become a cold, superficial, and ridged-minded society of isolationist thinkers, vacuous opposers, and glorified Turing machines, co-existing with a perverse omnipresent algorithm designed to birth and encourage dissent, damnation, depression, and dunking on things that we couldn’t possibly understand (–New World Order coming right up, folks. This is the recipe. Participation voluntary.).  

I don’t think that I’m breaking any new ground by saying that. But it never gets easier to say.  

Most of the last few years have been like turning back the clock to elementary school and deep-throating the residual emotion until it fuses with updated feelings, ideals, positions, sensibilities, and information. This blind commitment to confrontation was something I thought I’d left in my youth. I thought we all did. I was wrong.

The ignorance-arrogance industrial complex is alive and well. A slow implosion of repressed emotions. Turns out that emotions like hibernating and awakening to attack irrelevant targets, while concealing themselves beneath the Scooby-Doo masks of calculating power and supreme self-control. It doesn’t take much to see beneath the hood here, so people just got colder. Meaner. Angrier. Unempathetic to the Other.

This reality is being used against us. 

Remember your first REAL childhood argument—the one where someone said or did something so subjectively ludicrous, abstract, or unpopular that you irrationally wanted to hit them in the face? Are you thinking about it now? Are you getting angry all over again? Are you looking them up on FB (–to make sure they’re worse off than you)??? 

It’s a little odd, don’t you think? Those infantile arguments leading to emotions that threaten to manifest as tangible hostility? Silly, in retrospect. (If you disagree, go sit in the corner and stare at the wall for a few minutes (–don’t worry, we’ll give you a nice dunce-cap *CROWN*) and declare you CHaMpiON.)) 

Ex: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN SQUIRTTLE OVER CHARMANDER?!?! KILL YOURSELF, LYING LARRY!” (or) “NoOoO!!!! GRILLED CHEESE IS BETTER THAN CHICKEN?!?!?! ARE YOU DUMB OR TARDED?!?!” (or) “Nuh-uh!!! YOU’RE ALL WRONG BECAUSE I SAY SO?!?! Ne-Nah-Ne-Nah-NAH-NAHH!!!” 

…and on and on the merry-go-round goes.  

I thought we’d grown up. I hoped we would. A fractured and tribal society is no society at all. It’s a goddamn powder keg (see: Rome, Greece, Egypt, the 2020s, etc…)–when we stop properly communicating, society withers on the vine. It’s a (clears throat) fruitless endeavor—

*holds for applause*

*crickets*

*bathes in your disdain*

Anyway…

The harder it gets to communicate with each other; the more insular and Machiavellian we become. The less we hear each other; the more likely we are to unwittingly comply with the unseen powers at be.

The more evils we allow normalized; the easier we are to manipulate, divide, and conquer. The more that we embrace ignorance as a strength; the faster and further we slide into collective madness and uncertainty (*conspiratorial exhale*).  

Nietzsche called it: the “Death of God.”  

I call it Nonsensical Bullshit.  

Unenlightened and unencumbered BULLSHIT. But that’s just me… 

The point is that we‘ve all had stupid arguments (albeit, along a pretty varied spectrum of depth and severity). We may not remember the context, content, or characters at play. But we remember the pure unfiltered anger–if you don’t, just listen to some kids bicker the next time you venture out. You’ll notice they sound oddly familiar. That’s because so many “adults” currently act and sound like, well… children. That’s not a slight (okay, it is).  

We’ve forgotten how hostile and dumb we can be when our thoughts and beliefs are challenged, while our minds are closed-off, exclusively-critical, self-righteous, and lacking crucial information. We’ve forgotten how quickly we spin out of control when we don’t run diagnostics on our own thinking, beliefs, and methods of comprehension.

We’ve forgotten how to grow the fuck up.  

This is becoming frustratingly impossible to ignore, as perpetual content rapes our minds with “righteous”-conflicts, endless fear, and delusions of inherent superiority that leave us mentally overstimulated, exhausted, numb, and insecure. (Some Austrian guy in the early 20^th century went viral for exercising this exact type of psychological manipulation, as did slave-owners, Crusaders, the Kardashians, etc… etc…).  

Despite this, society tends to trend in this direction. Social media just made it okay (“good,” even…) to be shameless about the douchebaggery. Thankfully, people like this also tend to be fucking cowards– “It’s JuSt a JoKe! DoN’t bE SO SEnSiTiVE!” (–yeah, I’m tired of that faux alpha-shit, too). 

Unthankfully (why does that word look weird?), sooner or later, they won’t be so cowardly (because they’ll have the numbers and hide in the obscurity of volume, like droplets of piss in a bucket of shit). That’s when the current trouble evolves into something undeniably obvious, desensitized, and sinister.  

To our credit, very few people argue or speak their true intentions and desires (due to fear of loss, blowback, and the recent impossibility to retract (or grow (or apologize))). But it always goes this way. 

As the assholes gain confidence, they’ll mask their ill-motivated behaviors with some veil of word salad involving “help,” “assistance,” or (the frighteningly popular) “tough love” — fucking idiots. (STOP WEAPONIZING POSITIVITY YOU SICK NAZI-MINDED FUCKS!!!!). 

It starts with the aforementioned selective ignorance and eventually leads to things like “re-education” and public shaming (we’re already there). Plug that fact into history and you’ll find that kind of societal overreach results in things like holy wars, slavery, the Holocaust, North Korea, or whatever the fuck is going on in China. 

(Seriously, Google what’s going on with their Uyghur population and political dissenters—that shit’s happening while we fellate ourselves in the metaverse, listening to Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar 2 commentary, from some emotionally stunted twenty-something with two teeth, a fake ass, a million TikTok followers, and more Fenty than food—fucking depressing).  

It starts simple and pivots from there—feasting on (you guessed it) those unchecked childlike emotions and insecurities that we should’ve long grown out of; the same ones that we so graciously bleed out en masse as updates, follows, and searches. We’re piecemealing ourselves to the beast instead of letting it eat us whole. That’s not survival. It’s complicity.
 
“Those who DO NOT learn their past are doomed to repeat it.” 

“Those who DO learn their past are doomed to watch others repeat it.”  

It’s a vicious cycle. So, what do we do???  

Obviously, this is the kind of open-ended, non-partisan post that will be dismissed by the extreme factions of society (–they’re already too far gone to reach). Liberals will call me conservative. Conservatives will call me liberal. The alt-extremes will delude themselves, aim their finger-guns, and blast at me instead of their spouses. The undecided will scroll until they reach something sexy, salacious, silly, shitty, or sadistic.
 
So, what then???

I guess the best answer begins where the problem began: the individual. Because the individual can turn inward and ask themselves a few crucial questions. Chief among these questions should be: “What am I doing?”, “Why am I doing it?”, “How does this help anything or anyone?” 

If your answer to any of those is a variation of BECAUSE I SAID SO! (or) BECAUSE I WANT IT!—you’re probably part of the problem. Not for your narcissism, egoism, superficiality, vapidness, or self-centered nature (though, fuck you for that, too), but for the willful ignorance of consequence and shameless arrogance in your expression of self.

When logic and reason cease to exist, emotions grab the wheel. As we’ve established, it’s the fastest way to swerve off a cliff–individually and as a whole. 

For my part, I’m done ruminating for now. I’ve got an abnormally scheduled day and these lights don’t keep themselves on. (Also, it’s almost noon—YAY VODKA!!!). 

Be well and love yourself (–you sexy beast #HappyValentinesDay). 

Until Next Time, 
 
Antwan Crump