What I Learned

I promised I’d punch something up for ya’ll to read. For the past few days I’ve been trying to avoid it. Perhaps I feared the finality of it; perhaps I was too lazy; perhaps I’ve been busy; but perhaps, most likely, I’ve just been incredibly lazy. But I gave my word and I’m only as good as my word (and I’d like to think I’m damn good). So, I’m here, delivering to you, I guess, my version of a “graduation speech”, which is more like a summation of the things I’ve learned in college rather than a fancy motivational oratory (I’ll try to insert some inspiring stuff nonetheless).

As long as ya’ll know I’m writing this with extreme reluctance, then we can continue with the ordeal with mutually low expectations.

When I came into the system, I was optimistic. I was expecting to move seamlessly into an intellectual environment – something like the atmosphere I get from high school’s NHS group rather than high school’s street-trash “gangsta” group. Maybe my relative weirdness would get wider acceptance. I was walking cocky, chest puffed up and dick uncomfortably hard at how awesome me and this new situation would be. After all, I left high school *this* close to destroying its institutional credibility. In terms of lame-ass high school terrorism, I and my gang were top-dog.

Then I met the people going to university with me.

Imagine things from my perspective: I’m this cerebral guy with enough formidable social skills to run for office if I wanted to. So I go in, campaigning for the presidency of Sexmerica when I realize my majority constituency wasn’t intellectuals, or adults, or even really people. I got a huge collection of assholes and frat fags and phonies and retarded kids. Instead of working my way to the top within them (as I planned), I get disillusioned with the whole damned thing and decide to work my way without them.

Oh lemme get this out there before I continue: I was so ready to fit in. I did the drinking parties. I did the wild nights and the crazy bullshit. But I grew the hell up before I got too entrenched. I want everyone to know that I don’t drink, never will again (as per the rule “I am only as good as my word”), and anyone who does for the sole reason of getting drunk is, in my eyes, retarded. I usually respect all people but when I’m in the presence of booze fumes I easily go into contemptuous mode. More on that another time – just know my hate is strong.

Anyway, my plan to “do without” didn’t work. My whole life view was skewed by this massive disillusionment. Initially, I wanted to help people. Pull them from the rut. Then I wondered, why the hell should I? I hate these people, and the people I don’t hate – the people I like, do well without me. Screw them.

I turn inwards. I become so self-interested, my benign narcissism exploded into all-out nightly self-love-ins. I was absolutely obsessed with being better than everyone else. For a time I was locked in constant competition between me and the phonies and my A-men and my own mortality. And for a time I was the goddamned best. I directed my studies to understanding people and society in toto, and I’ve more or less succeeded in what I sought to do. It created a terrible cycle, though; for the more I learned, the more my general hatreds were justified in academia.

But then, a strange thing happened. The more I learned, the more I understood the truth. I learned that the stage and the producers; the writer and the director; the ticketholders and the critics, had tremendous control and influence over the players of the production than the players would admit. The actors would strut that stage and play their parts as written and that’d be all. My point isn’t how actors do so little and get so much glory. I’m trying to tell ya’ll that the roles the players play don’t go beyond what their roles are, however hard they struggle, they are trapped hopelessly within the confines of their part; they existed so long as the play tells them to exist.

What I’m getting at is this – these people I hate because of their “retardedness” can’t be helped. Everyone is largely the product of what the system and their environment shapes them to be; tells them to be. A lot will persevere in the face of all this, believing they’re “special” and exempt from the all-encompassing influence of the panopticon known as “society”; “culture”; “economy”; “media”; “peers”; etc. But they aren’t. The majority of them just aren’t. Those that are special usually joins the behind-the-curtain powers and abandon their retarded onstage brethren. The rest stay deluded in their own uniqueness, doomed to banality, never seeing the hands that control the strings of their life. These are the people I no longer hate; they are the people I pity.

It’s not to say I’m so damn special and know everything. I don’t. And that’s the thing I’ve learned after becoming a student of people and society; the holder of degrees in anthropology, politics, law, conflict, international studies, economics, and sociology:

People are retarded, and they can’t help it. Society is made by people. Retarded people. Society is retarded. “Life” exists within the delicate balance of society and nature, the retarded versus the real, and our retardedness has dominated the real so far. Our “life”, thus, is separated by the necessary – our connection with nature (the real), and the superfluous obligatory – our connection with society (the retarded). Our retardedness has messed up the real so freaking bad that we can’t ever go back without the retardedness falling apart (the theme of all apocalypse movies). So we don’t pay no mind to nature. But how about other people? That is real, isn’t it?

Well, we replace the necessaries of the real with a false “necessary” of the retarded. Things that go to support fellow living, like generosity of resources and time, is completely retarded unless you’re getting compensated for it. We put in that retarded qualifier. Stupidity is selflessness in our retarded-as-hell life. Meanwhile, My’s barely-subtle, incredibly ridiculous “PRAY FOR ME BECAUSE I’M SO BUSY SUCCEEDING” messages of self-pleasuring retardedness actually gets people praying for her!

Our retarded society (made up of people, who are retarded) makes us compete against each other endlessly in a mad dash for King of Retard Hill. But how many of the regular retards actually become “King Retard”? A handful, every few generations. The powerful ‘tards do what they can to gain and keep power, which means keeping the non-powerful retards down. Those powerful retards sell the rest of the retards retarded ideas to keep them busy amongst each other and not against the powerful retards. For even powerful retards know that retards are scary when they’re united in a retard-force. Meanwhile the powerful retards play their retarded games forever until the end.

While they're at it, we’re left to occupy our time in an endless, retarded struggle amongst ourselves. It’s why I hate so many people for so many reasons, because they are just unfathomably stupid. It’s why I work so damned hard to be better than everyone. It’s because I am, also, so hopelessly stupid. But now, after four years of peering into the heart of darkness, I understand my hatred. I hate not these people, but their inability to overcome their retardedness. I hate either their incapability to see their own faults and obstacles, or their refusal to overcome their obstacles, or the structure that fights to keep them down. I hate any and all of that because I hate it when it happens to me. And that’s natural. That’s real. The suffering of others is my suffering. I ain’t forgetting that, no matter how many retarded distractions and ideology gets thrown my way.

After four years of living; four years of added wisdom to pad my intellect, I can choose to assimilate into the powerfully retarded – now that I have the ability to – and be lost in it forever, to be cemented upon the rainbow-colored dumbass walls of the selfish-asshole tower high above Retard Hill. Or, I can settle in my place, a player powerless in his own fate upon the stage of life. Or, I can do both. I aim to make my way up this social ladder with the appearance of a heartless, selfish, power-hungry retard, but with the heart and spirit of the people I left behind, remembering my success came to the detriment of them and my continued triumphs will always be in a triumph against them, not because I want to but because this stupid ass system makes it so. And so I will make my fight to the top not to fit in amongst the ruthless retards, but to change the system so that everyone I passed can get their day in the sun, atop the hill.

And the reason why I can do what I aim to do: knowing that this society thing is all made up of people. People are retarded. Thus, society exists as some manifest of the retarded masses wills that continues on despite the death of the retards. We live in a world built by really stupid people and we have a chance to contribute to that stupid structure. But ya’ll must remember – it’s a damned flimsy thing, a construction formed in the imagination of a buncha morons. There’s loads you can do if only you can get over the mental limitations other retards put on you, and the blocks you put on yourself.

You just gotta be smart.