individualist regime

The US is an especially terrible capitalist country in large part due to our cult of individualism. We could call it capitalism taken to an extreme, although I'm not entirely sure our wrongheaded economic system is to blame. It could be the direction capitalism always ends up going. For now though, it's fairly distinctive to the US. Lots of countries share similar problems, but America is number one, world leader in radicalized selfishness.

I think a lot of our problems stem from this. Living here my entire life, a lot of my problems surely stem from this was well. It's interesting to me that we can look at problems in different ways, all of them true, but leading to entirely different conclusions and consequences.

Do I blame myself, or do I blame society? Do I blame the past or the present? Everything is intertwined, all of it factoring into the current situation, but one can negate the other, instead of balancing it. Blame society, and I might feel better about myself, feeling righteously helpless to do anything about it. If I blame myself, I'll feel terrible, but potentially, just maybe, do something differently.

It's also this intertwining of factors giving rise to everything in life. Pratityasamutpada. This includes people, and everything about who we are. We base our society on this rank delusion that we're all individuals capable of doing whatever we want. Anyone being trampled by our ludicrous system deserves it. Don't blame reality, only blame yourself.

Just don't blame yourself out loud. Nobody wants to hear the negativity. Grab those bootstraps and shut the fuck up about it.

So, I'm this lone crazy person, ranting into a void. I could be yelling at strangers on a street corner, but instead I just blog. How normal the view that society is fine, while I'm essentially projecting my mental illness?

People largely seem a lot happier than me, I do have to concede. On the other hand, I don't meet the ones in prison, or living on the streets. I don't meet the ones living in trailers and ghettos watching TV all day every day. Most of them don't even tweet. Suicide rates and drug overdoses have doubled in the US over the last twenty years. I don't meet the casualties of that, either.