Forgive me for being cynical

I'm 30 and I take some hits on here for being a young in but I thought I'd just share the development of my cynicism.

From the time I could walk and talk I've been aggressively targeted by marketing and advertising. Sesame Street which was noble in trying to help me learn my ABCs, counting, and the value of sharing was also at the same time trying to sell me stuffed Big Birds and Ernie's and Kermit the Frogs. Well not really sell me, more like make me want those things so my parents would buy them for me.

Once I outgrew Sesame Street, my TV watching habits switched to Transformers, Gi Joe, He-Man, and Thundercats. My parents kept a good monitor on the amount of TV I watched and also made me watch PBS programs like 3-2-1 contact, but in order to have fun with the neighborhood kids I also had to keep up with the goings on of these cartoons, which in reality were nothing more than 30 minute infomercials for plastic dolls (I guess the manly expression is action figures).

After I outgrew that it was on to MTV which fed me a steady diet of what music I should buy and what clothes I should be wearing. Not doing such things resulted in consequences at school.

Around this time I started to work as a Newspaper Delivery boy. My 3rd and last year delivering papers the local paper decided to cut cost by stopping the practice of printing a calendar of pictures of my hometown. Now this calendar was very important to paper carriers. Every year you delivered it the week before Christmas and generally you got tips for your years hard work of getting papers to people's doorsteps before they were up no matter the weather. The paper sent a note with a morning drop off of papers the second week of December they weren't doing it anymore. They neglected to tell the people who get the people that buy the paper. Many people thought the paper carriers were slighting them by not delivering the calendar that year. This all of course occurred after the Tribune company bought my local paper.

I worked at an Amusement Park as the guy who works the games stands. I learned all I ever needed to know about the stupidity of human nature right there. Watching grown men throw away $50 on an impossible and rigged game for a very badly manufactured stuffed animal that cost $10. Also watching people totally lose their mind on a Saturday Afternoon walking around a crowded Amusement Park paying $3 for a bottle of water. They paid $30 to get in.

My father was screwed by his company while I was in college. I did an analysis of his companies financial statements and told him to sell his stock. His management team told him he should be buying more. The management team was selling theirs. You can fill in the blanks on how that worked out for my dad.

I was hired by Arthur Anderson right before the Enron fiasco and patiently listened to their HR and management assure me the firm was fine. I gave up when they started to encourage the employees and the college recruits to run up the steps of the Philly Art Museum in orange shirts in an attempt to get media attention to save the firm. Needless to say Arthur Anderson is no longer with us.

I was in a training program for a fortune 500 financial services firm that gave me exposure to a lot of top management. Most of the things these guys advocated and did still makes me want to vomit till this day. I also got to observe a merger and the subsequent lay-offs. Life preservers for the executives let go many of which had been with the company a short term. Not the same treatment for the rank and file.

I've met many politicians and most of them, some with better intents than others, are concerned with one thing. Fundraising. Money is the lifeblood of politics and I honestly understand pretty well why we are in the predicament we are in today.

I could write more, but the vast majority of my life has consisted of people lying to me or trying to sell me something, most of the time I didn't need.

So I'm a cynical bastard. Just have a hard time taking anything at face value in this society.

I am... by the way...

HI

:blush:

Said to me its so odd how you always assume the worst of authority's intentions. I told her, I've spent enough time around authority to understand whose side they are on.

and it took oh two hours...

And one major shoot out between a major (at the time) drug cartel and the Mexican Army in 1984...

Been a cynic ever since. Did not realize it back then, but that was a life changing event.

I am also a realist, and though I do not expect things to get progressively bad, mostly things could be far worst, I've seen it... I just don't trust those who have the power will do the right thing at times. And trust me, as a medic and a company commander, I have had that power. I tried and did the right thing with it, but most people go with the flow. No, they are not bad... I concluded most humans do not like to rock the boat, and as much as we like to think otherwise, those who do get a pad in the back, with a nice knife.

Vision to see through the obvious to the natural balance is what divides the cynic from the thinker.

that's all I have to say.

Those didn't come out till I was about 15. I can only imagine how warped my mind would be if I had watched those at a young age.

It's why I couldn't totally embrace Obama, it's why I always question motives...

However, at the end of the day for the next 3 years....he has fund raising on his mind.

no matter who is in charge, the needs of empire supersede all. Until the empire falls...

On the bright side, it is.

by people standing at a raging fire with squirt guns and cheering at the work they are doing putting out the fire. Sometimes I'm utterly depressed and saddened by it.

She was a team leader for the Obama campaign and heavily involved in the county party. The local democratic club in the municipality she was running in became split. One of the members is a millionaire and financed a smear campaign against her. Another person on the other side retired from the local paper. He made sure she got absolute brutal press coverage. She was the best candidate by experience and by values. The local democratic party refused to intervene and just kept saying it is horrible what they are doing to her.

She still does stuff for the local democratic party. I resigned as an officer after the affair. If they wouldn't stand up for someone who works their ass off for them against a member of a local club who absolutely contributes nothing to the party, I said I really want nothing to do with you guys. I know you'll never stand up for me if it comes to it and you can all fuck yourselves.

:evilgrin:

:yoiks:

They've been slowly killing the middle class for decades.

Elizabeth Warren explains it pretty well in her lecture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

I'm 53 so I remember a bit about what it was like before corporations where given free reign to pillage and plunder to their hearts content.
I don't believe there is any turning back and that is being proven to me watching the fiasco referred to as health insurance reform. It's a nightmare, all the arguments for nafta, welfare reform and deregulation all being dragged out for this crappy piece of legislation.

It's good you see things for what they are. I know too many people born into the reagan years who think this country has always been this way, as if the new deal never happened.

My father with all his faults instilled some good values. I also grew up with extended family that still own a farm. I've seen the world outside the artificial plastic society we've created.

There is a lot of crap in the world, but in the big picture and the long views things usually get better with time. Humanity is a lot more non-violent, compassionate, knowledgeable, and understanding than it was 10,000 years ago.

We are entering the worst part of an 80-year-long social cycle, and during this period the "WE ARE DOOMED" sentiment is at it's most intense.

We don't outright sacrifice children at the altar of some God we can do it with neglect in the name of capitalism and we've invented more convenient ways to kill each other where we don't have to look each other directly in the eye when we do it.

1 billion people will go to bed hungry tonight. 1/6 of humanity. Billions of people are living in some form of slavery. I don't buy the fact that we are more evolved than our ancestors.

We just have better tools, some we use for good purpose, some we use to mastrubate and kill each other with.

:hi:

I have read that on a PER CAPITA basis traditional societies are much more violent than Modern Western society even at the height of WW2. People were ignorant, enmeshed in tabooistic thinking and superstition (not saying those people were stupid, they knew lots of facts necessary to survive, but facts are not understanding). And despite claims to the contrary by some romantics, only in modern Western society has notions of true gender equality have emerged.

access to food, shelter, and water at a regular basis. Those societies exist that way because of scarcity. When life is a constant struggle, there generally isn't gender equality because the woman relies on the man to provide for such things while she is bearing children. To a certain extent that is still the case today.

Upper middle to middle class women may have gender equality, but the lower classes not so much.

There is plenty of tabboistic thinking and superstition in modern society. Do a survey of how many people believe in Angels and that they have angels watching over them.