Influence 1

We are influenced by everything. And we lack everything. I do get annoyed with super individualists that seem to think they have it all, are better than all, and are above it all. They are not, and I have known enough people like that to have the right to call them self-deluded little imbeciles. We really are a needy, naked and pathetically vulnerable lot. All of us. I sometimes think of us humans as being like grubs, larval insects with little sense but to feed themselves, defecate and sleep. Of course we are more than that, or we ought to be more, much more and much better. I still like to believe that we are made for better, but to meet that kind of expectation can often mean a lot of hard work, and it isn't so much that we are lazy, as that a lot of us are simply too exhausted from having to work and labour in order to survive in a ruthlessly capitalist market economy that simply does not value anyone or anything but money and wealth. I think that the consumer culture that has resulted from global capitalism has served us very poorly, if not at all. We have been reduced to economic ciphers, as life supports for appetite. We are like a grand gaping and pneumatic maw that must always be fed, must always inhale whatever passes as nutrient or diversion. We really are like blank canvases, and anything can paint itself on us, and it does. We like to think that we are doing the art, but for the most part we are not artists, we are the canvases, and those of us who are really artists are usually sidelined to the margins. Because we don't generate wealth, which is really to say that we don't make a lot of money, and this makes it harder for us to buy things and find more stuff to fill the empty void that passes for a human soul. I don't think anyone is immune to this massive sucking vacuum of consumerism, really, and what is particularly scary is the way we are very much victims of our environment and of one another. We are constantly under the influence, of everything and everyone around us. Even so-called trendsetters are simply copping, borrowing, appropriating and mimicking whatever has gone before them, or whatever fairy dust they are breathing in the air, like fungus spores, that end up growing out of their very skin like festering yaws or become engraved on them like tattoos. They perhaps have intelligence, genius, marketing savvy, charisma, good looks and sex appeal. But I think that for the most part they are just simply ruthless and conniving and self-adulating narcissists that care so little about anything but their own precious and exalted selves that they seem to get carte blanch for doing whatever the hell they want, wherever they want, and with or to whomever the hell they want to do it. They are the rock stars, the movie stars, the divas, the fashion goddesses, the sports heroes, the politicians, anyone who lives in and aspires to live in the limelight. I don't think that anyone who has a workable dose of humility would ever choose to live with that kind of relentless attention, adoration, scrutiny, envy or contempt. The meek shall inherit the earth, but the proud and arrogant get to cash in on the illusion.