What if America Falls? So What?

I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the Fall of America. It isn't a question of if, it's a question when. To most, the Fall of America is terrifying prospect, and most wouldn't want it to happen in their lifetime. I personally don't care. Sure, I've thought I would run, but to where? Canada? Mexico? India? China? Even if the collapse of America doesn't effect other countries, which it will, what about running will make it easier? Move into the woods? I would love to do that; you know, hunt and grow my own food, build a little hut, sit by a fire, and other romantic ideas about living in the wilderness. But the likelihood is I would die in about a year from some disease or another.

But really, what is wrong with being the guy who just wants to watch the world burn? I mean, if you didn't start the fire, what's wrong with watching it all burn? It's not like I'm praying for the Apocalypse, like some Evangelicals do.

Since I was in high school I have said to myself that I want to be awake and conscious when I die. I don't want to pass peacefully in my sleep, nor shot in the head; I want to know I'm dying. Why so morbid? you might ask. Well, you only get to die once, so might as well get to experience the only time you're going to die. I didn't have enough synaptic connects when I was born to remember it, and you're only born once. So I would like to know I'm dying.

Likewise, empires only fall every couple of centuries or so. What's wrong with wanting to see an empire fall? Supernovas don't happen often in our little corner of the galaxy, nor do they happen enough so we can see them without a telescope. The last one was 600 years ago. I would have loved to have seen that. But supernovas are the aftermath of a dying star, when the star runs out of nuclear fuel and blows off most of its mass in a giant explosion.

Seeing a supernova in our proximity without a telescope is rarer than the fall of an empire. Yes, I understand it will suck to live through the Fall of America, but what a rare experience that is, though not a heavily envied experience. I'm sure no one wants to go back in time and experience the Fall of the Roman Empire. But none the less, rare things are always valuable.

Let me clarify though that in no way do I welcome the end of empire. I welcome it about as much as seeing an asteroid hit the earth creating a mass extinction, and those are pretty rare (they happen about every 27 million years). But the rarity of such events make me want to hang around for them when they happen. All things have an ending, so if the ending comes, I just want to hang around just to see what it's like. But it does give me some comfort to know that this is the way things happen. Buildings burn. People die. Empires fall. Understanding the nature of things makes them less disturbing, and easier to embrace the inevitable ending of all things. We're supposed to lose the things we love, or how else would we appreciate them. You know that old saying, "You don't know what you have until it's gone." Well, when you think about, it sounds less like advice, and more like prophecy.

"Why should I lament the disappearance of my people? All things die."
~Chief Seattle

The Freedom of being Homeless

I was thinking about a particular line from Fight Club, one of the lines I consider the most important:

"Goddammit, an entire generation waiting tables, pumping gas, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working shit jobs we hate so we buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We have all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we are very, very pissed off."

In the spirit of Eric Fromm I would like to illustrate how enslaved we really are, and just how the freedoms we think we have are really social constraints, balls-and-chains, and boundaries that give us the illusion of happiness. Are we as free as we think we are? Albert Pike said, and I paraphrase, that difficult freedom is far superior to comfortable enslavement, which has been said many different ways by other people, but the same concept. Ben Franklin said, and I paraphrase again, "Those who would give up a little freedom for a little security have neither, nor do they deserve either."

So think about how comfortable you are. Seriously, think about. We are all quite comfortable in the first world. In fact, we are so comfortable that we have to make up problems (first world problems) in order to feel like we have some sort of strife to confront. But that strife is usually taken care of with absolute ease with a swipe of a piece of plastic in your wallet that has imaginary points of credit on it, which we think has value, and we just can't seem to desire more of these imaginary points. And if you run out of points, well, luckily for all of us, we can use imaginary points that we don't have and promise to pay back later!

And when we really think about it, all those comforts are really shackles and chains, an invisible prison. We have homes that give us boundaries, which we have mortgages that we have to pay so we can live in these boundaries; and, even if we don't have a mortgage anymore, we still have a coercion tax, called a property tax, that we pay to the government for protection against the Indians. And to pay for this and other things we work "shit jobs we hate," where we answer to a monarch known as "the boss" and sit in little 8 foot by 8 foot windowless prisons all day, all the while shackled to a desk by a computer. And just so we can stay chained to these prisons, we made the prison boundless with the advent of smart phones and tablets! Now the desk we are chained to is imaginary and mobile.

But, oh! the freedom of being able to do work at my local coffee shop! Yes, yes, slave, what freedom you have. You replaced a 9-to-5 prison for a 24 hour prison. And what else we consider freedom that is actually little more than enslavement? Going skiing in Aspen sounds like freedom; you get away, feel the cold wind on your face while racing down a freaking mountain, and afterward go for some hot cocoa spiked with some whiskey... yes, yes, slave, it is freedom. "Advertisements has us chasing a thousands of dollars in skis, Northface outfits, Oakley sunglasses, hotel lodgings, dinning out, and bar tabs." Even if you can't afford it, just use your imaginary points, so you stay chained to the bank. Half the fun stuff we do is little more than social activities that are considered acceptable, so now you're chained to what society thinks is okay to do.

Okay, so you've gotten the point. But I have to ask, are people who have none of these liberated? I think so, and the homeless are the best example, at least those who don't do drugs (yes, they do exist, and I've met several of them). One might argue, "Hey dumbass, don't those people, you know, depend on the change I give them as I leave the Starbucks with my double-chai-latte-mochiato? Don't they depend on Salvation Army and soup kitchens? Aren't they enslaved to those things?" Why, yes, they are, to be frank.

But then again, are they really tied to all that much? They aren't tied to the bank because they had to run up their credit card debt to get the new IPad and a shopping spree at Ikea. They aren't tied to a place. Hell, they travel more than most people. I met a homeless woman once in Boston who told me she had been to South America, Mexico, Canada, and to almost every major city in the Continental United States. She more traveled than me, but then again, she doesn't need an airplane, hotel rooms, or a schedule. They aren't tied to jobs, clients, mortgages, or anything else that keeps most of us in an office working "shit jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need."

I rather admire homeless people. I mean sure a good number of them stink, and some of them are crazy, and a lot are addicted to drugs (not that most of America isn't addicted to some pharmaceutical or another). But for the most part, homeless people are interesting. They usually have cool stories, which they love to tell because they usually only get to talk to other homeless people. They know the system that governs our imaginary prisons we call society, and they know how to exploit it. One homeless man I met in Boston told me that most homeless people own a nice pair of clothes, if not a suit. He said that when he really needed some good food and a nice place to sleep he would put it on and go into a hotel unsuspectingly. Go into a ladies room, since they have a couch, lock the door and get a few hours of comfortable rest (this is actually so common that Law and Order talked about it once). And sometimes in the hotel or somewhere nearby is going to be fancy food someone didn't eat. I was astonished how well this guy knew how to get by.

Sure, they're lives are difficult. But at least they have real problems, and even in the face of those problems, they could really care less. What is it for most of us to not have a bite to eat for a day? For most of us, that's a big deal. To most homeless people, who cares? It's easier to get laid than find food sometimes, so might as well go score (yes, homeless people have rules and systems for dating and casual sex, much like the rest of society).

In short, we are all slaves. But I must admit, the homeless have a much longer and fragile ball-and-chain than the rest of us. Want to know the taste of real freedom, go find some real problems. As for me, I prefer to be a realist, no matter if I'm a slave or not.