Between Now and Zen

Is it possible to be trusting to our own detriment? The short answer is “yes”.

I spent most of Monday replying to flimsy unwarranted accusations by an anonymous source. Yes, as wonderful as checks and balances can be, sometimes the structure created by well meaning politicians, civil rights activists and communally acceptable sociopaths is skewed too far to one side. The entire system I have found myself immersed in is predicated on a structure of greed.

While our capitalist system may have worked to motivate us somewhere in our history (before the industrial revolution), it’s debilitating now.

The old axiom of “money is the root of all evil” is misquoted. It is actually “For the love of money is the root of all evil” from Timothy 6:10 in the King James Bible. It’s much like “Beam me up, Scotty” which was never said by any character in any Star Trek episode or movie but has become ingrained in our societal fabric as misquoted truism. In the same vein, we have come to believe that money is the issue. It is not.

In the meantime, the love of money (by the anonymous source) has landed a flaming paper bag of monkey dung on my doorstep and I am compelled to clomp it out with my pink bunny rabbit slippers.

Bunny slippers aside… the love of money is undeniably the root of all evil. It would seem that someone’s lust for the almighty buck has darkened my doorstep. There are three points to be made:

1. I trusted the system to protect me when I know I was doing the right thing;
2. Someone believes they can reinstate their beleaguered reputation by destroying mine;
3. My misplaced trust in humanity has been violated once again.

Unfortunately, the system I worked under is set up presume guilt. The burden of proof of innocence lies with the accused while the accuser wanders aimlessly along their merry way. The anonymous source of those accusations has what they want… a ruined reputation. I suspect they’re Cheshire grin is firmly planted.

And the world is now built this way.

We spend more time, money and energy litigating petty crap than we do building trust. Over fifty percent of our working lives are spent covering our ass rather than participating in any productive endeavor beyond sharpening a box of 2B pencils.

The myth that money (or things) will solve our problems is refuted time and again by well-meaning yet powerless influences. Expressions of common decency fall on hearing-impaired ears. Regrettably, the days of Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King may well be over. It is almost impossible to have a peaceful [re: meaningful] conversation without character assassination becoming the real theme. If someone makes a point we don’t like, we immediately seek out their past indiscretions to vilify them… or make them up to achieve our objective. The truth is irrelevant in the face of negative publicity.

Trust is difficult enough to build without a “what have you done for me lately” perspective.

I have come to understand agoraphobia. Hiding away from an untrustworthy society becomes more of a logical answer than incessantly ducking for cover wondering who will betray us today. Unfortunately, I tend to trust first… which has continued to set me up for disappointment. We’ve become a society of “winning the game” where the game is undefined and the rules are twisted to vilify its players first. Personal gain comes well before candid interaction and trust.

Psychosis is sown by doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. Trusting a system created for the benefit of a select few is psychotic.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to scrape some shit off my slippers.