HUMANS: SO EASY TO KILL, SO EASY TO SAVE

Lazy-ass gamer or Olympic star, get hit by a train and we all die the same; blood, bone, guts, and good intentions. But it’s actually easier to kill us than that; just isolate us. Not in prison or anything, nothing like that! Just, in your own home, your friends and family gradually leak away, the joy of living evaporates, your reason, your hope, your love – so easily taken away. With no one to talk to, you stop thinking and shrink; hearing no new ideas, you stew in the old. The carousel begins to run; everything I’ve done is useless, I am worthless, nothing good will ever happen, and NO ONE CARES. You turn to drugs, alcohol, maybe suicide. So sad; anyone could save you at any time, with very little effort, but no one cares. No one sees anything but their own interests; no one sees you crying, no one cares even if they do see. You might chose food instead of drugs; a slower, more punishing death, a prolonging of misery indefinitely. But it’s all the same.

When an isolated person is told that they’re special, that there are others who are also special, and that they can join the group, be important to the group, even become a leader of the group, the desperate need to belong overwhelms sense. It doesn’t matter how smart they are, how clever, how reasoning, how reasonable; we all fall into the same trap. Cults and movements attract the young, only because they feel hopelessly disenfranchised already. Violence by youth has the same root. BELONGINGNESS is far more important than we give it credit for!

When someone gradually loses their hearing, the world slowly retreats, and dementia creeps in on silent little cat-feet. You can isolate someone so easily; just spread some rumor among their friends, the equivalent of “Plague!” and watch their support system crumble, then their confidence, then their will to live. Putting a prisoner in isolation in no way cures him or her of the desire to commit crime, it just strips them of their humanity, the only thing keeping them from even more horrific crimes. But prisoners given a dog to care for pull an abrupt turn-about and become happy, purposeful people. Such a simple thing! Just someone/thing that needs us! Just one small purpose; to be there for a dog. But it means everything.

You make fun of the “cat lady,” but she has gathered her defense against the dark. You can’t defeat her now. In her frenzy for safety, she may end up with a hundred cats, but she’s right; their loyalty is stronger than human loyalty. Humans run off the first time something shiny catches their eye. They forget who fed them, which cats do not. They forget who nursed them in sickness, and cats never will. You can accuse cats of indifference, but it’s nothing compared to the indifference of one’s own family; cats are more faithful, more grateful. They are your real tribe.

Humans have very fragile devotion and very little sense of commitment. Don’t try to bring friends into it, either. The first sign of financial trouble and they’re suddenly busy elsewhere. If you’re perky and healthy and have an operation, sure; they’ll all come to visit, bringing cards and flowers. But if your health continues poorly, they won’t stick around and hold your hand, discuss your care with the nurse, bring you your favorite foods. They’ll be gone-ee. Even more so, if you’re in emotional pain; don’t even dream someone’s going to come and hold you, hand you a Kleenex, rock you to sleep, cheer you up. They’ll whisper some kind of justification among themselves (“Plague!”) and make their discreet exits. Even getting a divorce can cause this rats-leaving-a-sinking-ship behavior; people are afraid of your pain, afraid they'll catch it from you. Friendships may feel like they’re forever, but they’re as fragile as orchids. Only so long as a “reasonable” amount of substandard circumstances prevail, all is well. But not only is there a possibility that you’ll experience UNreasonable hardship in your life, but they might also desert you just because someone else seems more shiny. Maybe this drives all fashion; you must continue to be new and sparkly, just to keep people’s interest. Whether there’s anything of substance inside is irrelevant; they want to see your new clothes, hairdo, car, lover.

For women, it used to be that if you did you work well, if you kept clean and didn’t talk shit, you were a valuable member of the clan, right into old age. Help others if you can, but just keep to your own corner modestly. These things are no longer of any value. What is your work? Are you scrubbing us up some clean dishes? Baking bread? Making us nice clothes? No? Just pulling a pizza out of the freezer? Then who needs you? We used to NEED each other. When a man worked outdoors all day, he needed a home-maker, seamstress, cook. He couldn’t do that for himself. Now his work is minimal and “labor-saving” things have enabled him to get along just fine on his own. So what do you bring to the party? You can give him children, but other people will raise them. You won’t be educating them except in the most basic skills. They also have no need of you.

It’s not just women. A man once had to be strong and fit enough to pull a plow, hitch a carriage, drive a team of horses, bail hay and toss it into the barn he built. His usefulness is also very limited now. He provides only money, if even that. The idea of hard, honest work has become foreign to either gender, to any generation. Taking care of each other used to be a matter of nursing the other half of your hard-working team back into usefulness. A lifetime of commitment mean just that; to work as a team until you died. There was none of this nonsense about Valentine’s Day or whose last name to hyphenate or what restaurant or jewelry to romance you with.

Surprisingly, gender roles weren’t defined by one’s morals or politics, they were defined by what you could and could not do. A woman’s role was defined by her ability to bear children, because a man couldn’t do that for himself. She was kept near home and safety, was kept indoors in the hottest and coldest parts of the day, did lighter, less dangerous tasks. If a woman fell on the ice a man might lose his wife’s ability to work for a few weeks – or it might be curtailed for the rest of her life – but if she were pregnant, he might lose his child. That would mean fewer hands to help in the future, and knowing his legacy would go to someone else’s line. There's no way of knowing if or when she's pregnant, and children were borne right into a woman's late forties, sometimes even longer. On top of that, the most frequent cause of death for women was child-bearing. This is why men open doors, pull out chairs, and follow women up the stairs; to protect her and her ability to bear. There’s nothing religious or political or even romantic about it.

Being married didn’t used to mean doing everything together. In fact, each of you did your own work, had your own concerns, sought your own fulfillment. Now people seem to think they should agree on what to eat, when and where, how many new things to buy, which things to buy, who to try to impress, what movies and music to ingest, games to play, where to vacation, and especially, you are required to make each other feel happy and fulfilled sexually and emotionally at all times. That’s not an honest job, for either of you. It's not even doable.

With gender roles gone, the feeling of purpose is gone. You may create a child, but it won’t work beside you, learn your trade, follow in your footsteps. You won’t give them your wisdom, but farm them out to daycare workers who truly don’t give a shit. On any given day they’re just trying to get through their shift with a minimal of screaming and other drama, while dreaming of their own vacations or playing video games in the bathroom. Whether your child is taught anything about life is completely irrelevant, regardless of what the posters and other advertisements say.

Did you know that scientists have determined that working dogs are the happiest creatures on earth? Why? Simple; They have a job, they do the job, they are needed by others. Some housewives, remembering that their mothers used to help out people in tough circumstances by baking them a pie, started saving up their pin money to bake pies, too. Their pies were so great people started wanting to buy them. So now in addition to helping those in difficulty, they also run a pie business. Everyone’s happy! You might say that bringing a homemade pie to the poor once a week doesn’t help the poor much. But it actually serves several functions, besides starting a business. First, it distracts the person in tough circumstances; forces them to run a comb through their hair, put on a smile, and invite you in. Putting on a brave face eventually strengthens our brave face; it really works. The giver has to procure, prepare and deliver; this is good, honest work with purpose. The receiver must accept with grace, admit that someone has been kind to them, and also gets to taste something good – it may have been a while. These healing tools are priceless in restoring the will to go on.

Such simple little things. A pet who loves you, a pie, a game of cards. Should you ever feel that you’ve lost purpose in life, look to these things; do some good, honest work with purpose. Be the one people can turn to for help, for compassion. Give people a reason to smile, if only for a moment. If you’ve known isolation yourself, this is particularly good work, because it heals the giver even more than the receiver. You need never lack purpose! If you do, start looking around. However little you may have, you have something to give, if only yourself. There’s always someone with even less.

No rescue is coming; we have to save each other.