Hi guys, it's me again, the person who runs the Lifestyle section of this site. We need to talk about some things.

The world in which we live right now is simultaneously a beautiful and awful place. It's beautiful where you look and desperate-to-the-point-of-nihilism everywhere else. We need to make it more beautiful. We need to make the world a better place.

Why us? Who is us, anyway? We are all of us. We are humanity, and we need to find a better way. The solutions we've been coming up with are only half assed and aren't really solving the problems we set out to solve in the first place. The problem of transportation has been "solved" by the problem of global warming. The problem of global warming will be probably be "solved" in some way or another by further marginalizing and, well, screwing developing nations. Problems like genocide have not been solved at all and will probably be "dealt with" through more death.

We need to stop listening to the bad ideas in society and start listening to the good ideas. We need to feverishly support the good ideas. And more than anything else, we need to stop living bad ideas and start living good ideas, ideas that enrich our lives, make people think, and indeed, help our global situation.

A short segway, why do we do what we do? We drive cars for efficiency (as opposed to, say, walking), we live in single-family residences for our own comforts, we appoint bullshit politicians to do our dirty work because we're too afraid, too scared, to grasp not only our responsibility but our right—as people—to control our own fates and futures.

We watch TV because we're too scared to think.

We spit on homeless people and ignore them on the street because we don't want to attempt to understand why, exactly, that person's homeless. We see seemingly-unassailable problems and stop, thinking they're too big to overcome. We are ignoring the indefatigable forces of beauty, love, and logic in favour of our own reptilian humanity, and it's not getting us anywhere.

And it's sad.

Hotbox Magazine.com will be publishing a series of articles in the next week about going to a place, doing some drugs, and doing some thinking. There's a lot more to it than that, but I want to emphasize that last goal, because it's important. You can do the first two without leaving your neighbourhood, but the latter involves leaving your comfort zone. Don't disregard the hippies, don't disregard first peoples; what they're talking about has been around a lot longer than you or me, and especially this quaint illusion known as "state". Use your head to see through the fog of illogic, have a scary-ass mushroom trip that strips you to your core. Go for a long walk and get lost.

Talk to people.

Even if you don't know exactly how the world is broken and how it can be fixed, there are others who have ideas. Nobody has all the answers, but we all have at least one damn good idea. Let's take all these ideas and make the world a better place.

In closing, a quote from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which I would highly recommend you read if you have not already. As the protagonist, Montag, is questioning his beliefs and the insane world around him, he exclaims:

"Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"

Let's get really fucking bothered.

-JJ.

       

Written by :

Janus Jones