So it is that I decided to start fresh with this whole blog concept. However, before I detail what I will be covering here, I owe an explanation or two.
I had a pretty well established blog previously, but had to take it down for two reasons. First, my best friend, who was also an ex-girlfriend, decided we could never ever talk again or be friends – despite a whole lot of promises, and a past as friends that was pretty profound. And when I became understandably upset, though never in person, her response actions were so diabolical and calculating, so incredibly treacherous, that they killed any feelings I ever had for her as a friend. The whole thing is so maddening, so utterly indescribable, I honestly don’t have the words to write about it; I don't even have the words to think about it (at least in detail). "Disgust" is probably the one description I would choose, but again, I simply do not have any words. All the posts where I recounted various dealings with her were rendered meaningless, and I simply wanted them erased for good. And that’s all I care to say about any of this ever again.
However, as I said, there are two reasons. As I was considering deleting my blog, I begin to notice something. The majority of my postings fit in with two phenomena I have noticed recently about society in general. First, I saw how I was justifying almost anything under the sun as being not only acceptable, but as something I’m entitled to. You can see this is everywhere in society, people justifying being an asshole or completely selfish. For instance, when I was out at a bar with my friend DK (all names will remain anonymous)the night before Thanksgiving, at a crowded lounge on the Lower East Side, we asked a group twenty-something year old Europeans to move so we could get by and sit down in a booth, next to a few girls we were hoping to talk to. Their response? "Make us." Now, my friend and I were polite and courteous, and that’s the response they thought to give us. As I tried to move by, the guy pushed me back on my shoulder and was smiling as he asked, "What?" Nothing came of it, and a few minutes later we eventually made my way to the desired booth. However, this person and his friends felt they were entitled to give that response, and they were so completely arrogant in how they went about it. It didn't matter I was a head taller, and that I had on nicer, more expensive clothing; their hipster appearance, complete with tribal tattoos and pre-pubescent facial hair (I'm being sarcastic, but accurate) supposedly made them cool enough to act like that - far cooler than me.
There were shades of that exact attitude throughout my old blog: instances where I was sounding like a complete asshole, and that I was entitled to be that way because I was better than everyone else. I didn’t intend for my writings to turn into that, but they did. You see this everywhere in society, especially on peoples’ blogs, but also in mainstream media. Talk show hosts being completely out of line, yet justifying it through ridiculous arguments about what is “decent,” and what society “accepts.” All the while, people are out there justifying buying $300,000 cars or multi-million dollar apartments using inheritance to do so. People are justifying having no money, because they spent it all on indulgences, but insisting they are quality people. The flip side of course is for one to say I have no right to judge people, that I’m being self-righteous. Yet that’s just someone justifying their own self-righteousness at the expense of someone else doing the same thing. I could go on forever, but the sad part is I had multiple forms of this justifying-asshole-behavior-and-thinking spread around my blog. It’s not surprising, given how prevalent it is in society.
Coupled with this phenomenon is the idea of Karma: what goes around comes around. This is everywhere in society too, and it’s so people can feel more secure with the first phenomenon I described. Its so people can live with the idea that people who act in a completely selfish and ridiculous manner, will end up somehow paying for their actions. However, this is not true, it's just not the way the world works.
On a broad level, did Holocaust victims or Baghdad residents get what they deserved? No, and the same can be said for a lot of tragedies in the world. But then, why do criminals and cheats always seem to get caught? Because most people are not smart enough to get away with it. But look closer: Mexico’s most infamous Drug Baron, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, amassed a $28 billion fortune flooding the US with drugs, and was never once arrested in the US or Mexico. He died under mysterious circumstances during a plastic surgery procedure, and it’s widely rumored his corpse was not his. He probably got away with it and is still alive, and if he died, he definitely got away with it (just Wikipedia his name). And for every person caught in a Wall Street insider-trading scam, ten are never caught – just look at the option activity of a stock for a company three days before a merger is announced – millions of questionable trades, right?
Simply put, this idea appears true, but its not. I was using it to justify things I saw as unfair in the world – that people who cheat or lie will simply “get what they deserve." Most of the time they do, but that’s because they are stupid, and they don’t think enough before they act. The truly smart usually can do whatever they want, and never suffer repercussions.
I was espousing both ideas in my blog, in connection with nearly everything I discussed. I was shocked, but realized I had not been careful enough in my writings to weed these traits out. Obviously you can’t write anything that is completely unbiased or objective, especially on a blog, but you can write pieces that are void of these two prevailing traits. Also, my writings were too concerned with my personal life, which I allowed to happen; despite saying I didn’t want that to happen.
So, after this opening post, the vast majority of my blog will be concerned with Sports (with which I’m hopelessly obsessed about), media-coverage of news, and random, hilarious events that befall me. Hopefully it’s entertaining to those that stumble across whatever I write.
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