Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children’s children will despise us for wasting all the future’s fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Put this in the context of the plight of civilization and I can explain exactly why I am less angry at the people around me than I am just simply… understanding of their various situations. That FJ Cruiser that almost flattened me on my walk home from work was probably driven by an unhappy young soul too distracted by too many things: The stress of work. The emotional baggage leftover from a childhood spent taking orders in school. The decieving cultural myths that they’re stuck following in circles, whether that be a definition of success that is materialistic to the core, or simply that education is an absolute good. The crushed spirit of life within them, and the inability to dream, both of which are required to escape their current mental state. The confusion created by not being able to fully make sense of their situation, of their place in the world, and all the competing ideologies trying to cage in their mind. Maybe their mind is already caged, but this just generates more confusion, even anger when their cage doesn’t match up with the reality outside. All of these external forces acting on them, making them feel out of control of their own life. No wonder why depression is set to be the most widespread disease by 2020. And this is a yuppie we’re talking about! A person complicit in all or most of the sins of the first world. The so-called enemy.
The fact of the matter is, as the lyrics of a Choking Victim song puts it: There are no winners in this fucked reality. Not the upper class, not the middle class, not the lower class. Not developed countries, not developing countries, not undeveloped countries. If we’re going to make it through this mess, it’s going to be most of us, not just some of us.
