Some jerk cut me off in traffic today, so I chased him at high speed until he crashed. Then I pulled him out of his car, punched him bloody, and smashed his windshield with a rock.
Well, no, that didn’t actually happen. Yes, I got cut off in traffic, which is a near-daily occurrence because I live in Los Angeles. But I didn’t chase the guy.
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Here’s some good news: We Americans are officially happier than the French. A recent report that measures happiness says the USA ranks well above France with all its existentialism, ennui, and heavy smoking.
Ok, the Parisians have a dark side, so maybe that’s not a fair comparison. Well, how do we compare to the rest of the industrialized world? To be honest, not so great.
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With the country going to hell, nobody would get judgmental if you wanted to take the edge off. Maybe it’s a beer after work, or a quick hit on the bong, or a couple of happy pills. Regardless of the specific drug you prefer, the fact is that humans like to get buzzed, and almost every culture has a method of altering our consciousness.
But like most aspects of contemporary life, racial and class differences are prevalent in this most basic of activities. For example, both the government and big businesses have a growing interest in the pharmaceutical, medical, and psychological benefits of psychedelics. Apparently, eating shrooms and dropping ecstasy can be good for you, at least under the right circumstances.
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Perhaps you remember the bombshell news story from a few months ago that revealed the top 1% of America’s wealthy “got way richer during the pandemic.” Yes, even as millions of citizens were begging for a few hundred bucks to alleviate the devastation of Covid-19, our billionaires raked in so much money that they were in danger of suffocating in their golden bathtubs as their servants shoveled piles of cash over them.
Yes, wealthy people have some odd kinks.
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Decades ago, my mother emigrated to America to attend college. She never moved back to El Salvador, but that had less to do with chasing the American Dream and more because, you know, life stuff happens. Oh, my mom also stayed because she discovered that she had been lied to her entire life.
You see, growing up in El Salvador, my mother was never educated about some of the more horrendous facts of her country’s history. These unfortunate episodes had been hidden from her. Once in America, however, she had access to this forbidden knowledge, and after finding out how atrociously her government had acted, she was not in a big hurry to move back. Understandably, she was angry that she had to move to another nation to learn her own country’s history.
However, this cultural behavior—the active covering up of disturbing historical facts—is not unique to El Salvador. Almost every society has a problem admitting its mess-ups, failures, and outright barbarism.
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In what can only be described as a failed gotcha moment, an anti-vaxxer recently emailed me a diatribe that contained the following question: “Name one time that the people forcing compliance on others were on the right side of history.”
It took approximately 1.9 seconds for me to think, “Brown vs. Board of Education,” but I didn’t bother to email him my answer because I don’t engage with trolls.
In any case, the anti-vaxxer’s sad attempt to stump me did have an unintended effect. It got me thinking about the reverse scenario: “Name one time that White conservatives fighting social progress were on the right side of history.”
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With luck, this will be the last time I write about Covid-19.
You see, some experts believe that we may finally be nearing the end of this wretched, soul-crushing, nation-defiling pandemic. That means no more news stories about thousands of Americans dying daily, no more anti-maskers punching people out, and no more Facebook posts about robots in your bloodstream (ok, that last one will probably stick around).
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the virus will magically go away. Hey, it was supposed to do that 18 months ago.
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For the first time in two years, I went to the doctor for a physical. My numbers are good, except that my blood pressure is borderline high. My doctor recommended that I lower my stress, which I will do as soon as I leave planet Earth and fly off to a marvelous wonderland of peace and love and dancing fairies. Yes, I’ll get right on that, doc.
In any case, I’m in better shape than a lot of people my age, especially my fellow Latinos. You see, a recent study has found that many Hispanics have heart issues, and no, the cause isn’t all those sad Spanish ballads. Researchers believe that “feeling stigmatized, threatened or discriminated against correlates with structural heart abnormalities in Latinos,” meaning that racism is not just infuriating, it is literally lethal.
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I will now present my complex psychological theory that has no basis in data or scientific study, but which I am positive is true (hey, at least I’m honest when I’m just guessing).
In any case, here is my theory:
The Cold War lasted 40 years. During that time, nuclear Armageddon was a constant worry. Yes, Baby Boomers had the Cuban Missile Crisis, but Gen Xers had Reagan joking about bombing Russia. In both cases, an entire generation of Americans grew up with the threat of nuclear war and the possibility that the world would end in an instant.
It’s conceivable that this existentialist dread fucked people up and made them bitter and apocalyptic for the rest of their lives. And that’s why today we have Boomers indifferent to climate change, and Gen Xers storming the capitol. Hey, why not? Everything is going to shit anyway, right?
Again, I can’t prove any of this. But if some of you readers in grad school are looking for an honors thesis, feel free to run with this hypothesis.
And you’re welcome.
Now, you might be asking, what about the Millennials?
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In this crazed maelstrom of a society, surely there is one thing that we can all agree on. And it is simply this:
Terror Management Theory is an awesome name for a punk band.
It’s a missed opportunity, however, because this term actually describes a psychological model for how humans deal with the knowledge that we will die someday. Terror management theory (TMT) postulates that “death anxiety drives people to adopt worldviews that protect their self-esteem, worthiness, and sustainability and allow them to believe that they play an important role in a meaningful world.”
Of course, I’m Gen X, so I can’t help but bust out in cynical laughter at the phrase “important role in a meaningful world.”
Ha, there it is again. Sorry, last time, I promise.
In any case, TMT proposes that individuals develop “close relationships within their own cultural group in order to convince themselves that they will somehow live on — if only symbolically — after their inevitable death.”
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