timberwraith
The gift of misanthropy in a profoundly dysfunctional society is this:
You feel a strong motivation not to trust or do what the majority believes is true and necessary.
And given that you live in a profoundly dysfunctional society, that's usually an accurate and sane assumption.
Ironically, all of these things are also the reason why you became a misanthrope in the first place.
timberwraith
But the joke is on the poor bastards at the bottom because the bastards at the top benefit from the average bastard's behaving like a bastard toward all of the other poor bastards who also hope to become one of those few comfortable bastards they've been taught to aspire to.
And well, we have the society that we live in.
It doesn't work well at all but people are too obsessed with punching the other poor bastard to really do anything constructive about it.
timberwraith
I'm not the first to point out that normal, average, well adjusted people in a profoundly disordered society are likely so well adjusted because they mesh rather well with the profound disorder of that society.
In other words, they're probably bastards.
timberwraith
I keep this in mind when I walk along the lake shores of Minneapolis and gawk at all the massive, pretty homes that populate the shoreline.
timberwraith
Although, given the amount of wealth at their disposal, they are not "average" in their bank accounts, but they are what usian society portrays as normal, well adjusted people.
They are "average" in the sense of being what usian society posits as "normal" and "aspirational."
Bastard is normalized, as such.
timberwraith
And the rest of the normal, average people with normal, average bank accounts aspire to this normalized variant of comfortable bastard.
Although they'll probably never see that level of comfort, it's heartening to dream of being a comfortable bastard.
During the next election, you'll probably vote as the comfortable bastards do because your vote reflects your aspirations for self and country.
A country where bastard is normalized.
timberwraith
When people who assume they are normal, average members of society tell me I'm a horrible person and I'm doing horrible things, I consider that to be a sign that I'm probably doing just fine.
timberwraith
I learned early in life that the normal, average people in society were among the worst bastards around.
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