Amerika

Have you ever thought about how much we project ourselves in this world?

Instead of looking at the world outside us, discovering how it works, and then applying those lessons, we are operating on an entirely reversed thought process.

We look at ourselves, determine what we want, and then demand that from the world. Like overgrown children.

The biggest source of our projection is pity. Pity serves two important functions:

1. Social climbing. Showing pity for the less fortunate makes you look like a good guy. More girls will sleep with you, more co-workers will be your buddy, and more people will vote for you or buy your product. They think you’re a “nice person.”
2. Self-esteem. If you feel a deep underlying sense of unease, for example because you can intuit that your civilization is collapsing from within, you will need little bits of uplifting happiness during your days. Pity makes you feel good for giving a homeless person $1, a meaningless sum to you, but a big boon to him.

The important note here is that the pity has absolutely nothing to do with the pitied, except that they look like the kind of person who needs to be pitied.

If you’re going to pity someone, make sure they look pathetic so everyone in the room can see who is the giver and who is the receiver.

A suburban kid who has great grades, works really hard and is sharp as a whip, but needs some extra cash to get to college? A terrible pity target: most people out there don’t live in as nice an area as he does, and so are pissed off that he has what they don’t.

A homeless guy who has been addicted to every drug in the book, never kept a job and yet has an inspiring message of love for the world? Perfect pity target. He will never be able to help himself, which means he will always need you. Even better, what he needs is cheap: a room, some liquor, a job.

This attitude immediately spills over into politics and business.

Any public action in a liberal democracy must be done for the downtrodden, underdog, impoverished, miserable, etc. Nothing else provides a potent enough symbol for it to have political power. As a result, we don’t build high speed rail between our universities and libraries and cultural centers, but between our ghettos. Victory for The People!

Any public action on a television commercial or news program must show how the company’s product benefits the weaker, smaller, poorer, more neurotic or less capable. Sure, you can use The Beautiful People for fashion products, but for anything else, you should show crazed modern people and pity objects together enjoying the product. Then you know it’s a good produce from nice people!

Under liberalism, our attitude has gone from “help the deserving so we all benefit” to “help the hopeless so we all feel good about ourselves.”

Whatever civilization replaces ours will first do away with the convenient, but destructive, practice of social climbing through pity.

Tags: crowdism, pity