Rachel's Challenge

     Today, I sat through a program called "Rachel's Challenge." I was the lone voice. I was the only asshole to criticize such a seemingly good-natured pro-kindness school outreach program. And I didn't cry. At least not during the presentation. I cried later. But, I didn't cry because of Rachel Joy Scott or her message or the tragic loss of life or the Columbine Massacre or the stories of horrific "bullying".
      I cried because it's a lie. Nobody really cares about how they treat people. Nobody will call themselves "bully". Nobody is genuinely committed to kindness or acceptance of others. It's fake. It's shock value. Rachel's Challenge is emotional manipulation and nobody is questioning it. Nobody but me. I questioned it. I asked a fundamental question that nobody could answer. Haven't we all been told that the Columbine shooting was caused because two misfit boys were bullied and decided to kill their bullies? 
      If so, wouldn't that have made Rachel a bully? I've asked this question to as many people as I could, but no one can give me a straight answer. Nobody knows and nobody else is asking why. I would honestly love if everybody would actually make a consistent effort to not only be kind people, but to do it for the right reasons. One shouldn't be kind because a professional speaker in a high school gym told them to do so or to get the most "chain links(paper links with kind deeds written on them)" of all the high schools or simply because it's trendy. People should be kind because they want to, because it's right, because they believe it. People have to want change to make change. They have to put in the effort. They have to try. But, nobody wants to try.
     No one is thinking about the reasons why. Critical thinking is lost on these people, too clouded by forced emotion. No one is really sure why they should tolerate others or who they should really tolerate. It is impossible to be tolerant of everything without being intolerant. (To accept everything is to accept intolerance and things that contradict all the values one supposedly holds.) They only know that "kind" people accept everyone--unless of course it's someone who holds values that are dramatically different from the ones they are taught. Where's the logic in that? It's very hypocritical and it's not very smart.
     Rachel's Challenge, as a whole, is not a very great program. It's way over-exaggerated and it's making some big corporations a lot of money (These seminars aren't free), as well as being heavily Christian. And, most of all, it makes kindness a fad--a novelty that will fade away by next week. People aren't going to change because of it. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do but make the best of it, be the people we want to be, question as much as we can, and accept the scam for what it is. How others choose (or don't choose) to act or think or believe is completely out of my control and I can't let it get the better of me. I can only observe and be entertained.

 

The Freak Show

     I hate people--all people. This includes me. I have clinically low self-esteem to the point that self-loathing has become my own personal sport. But, I assure you that my esteem for others is drastically lower. I am not impressed with my species. I believe humans were given great gifts: highly capable and rational minds, autonomy, and language, just to name a few. What did they do with it? Nothing. We have made no progress. We are not very evolved and have accomplished very little. Our humanity has gotten in the way--gotten the better of us. We are far too driven by greed and power and arrogance.
     So, what's an intelligent specimen to do? The answer, I suppose, would be to separate myself entirely from this stunning array of pod people and simply observe their ridiculous shenanigans as a form of entertainment. George Carlin frequently said, "When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." Now, old George has been dead for five years and can longer sit around with a notepad and observe the human experiment. I intend to pick up where he left off and record my own observations, slowly tapering off my emotional attachment to the homo-sapiens until I at last have no stake in the results.
     And so it begins.