I made the mistake of reading the news headlines this morning. I was fortunate, I think, that they were in general so disappointing (I mean, seriously reducing my fondness for humanity, the longer I scrolled), that I didn’t bother to read more than one or two articles. Fucking hell. Maybe save the news bullshit for after the coffee next time?

Better than “news”.

It was less that the news itself was specifically “good” or “bad”, and more that… omg… human beings are such unreserved colossal dicks to each other! Cruel. Petty. Irritable. Self-righteous. Territorial. Deceitful. This morning’s news feed amounted to a serious disappointment – in humanity. Just, overall. Fuck.

Day-to-day squirrels observably treat each other better than human beings treat each other.

Do better, humanity, for fucks’ sake, please just do better. We’re killing each other, destroying the planet we live on, sowing discord instead of feeding the world, fomenting war, elevating gossip, undermining science, promoting lies as truth, and just generally being fucking dickbags all the damned time. We can do better.

…I can do better. This is my own fault every bit as much as it is yours. We each have a share in this mess, however small you may think your share is… you’ve still got a piece of this madness. Fix your fucking mess. I’ll work on fixing mine. If we could each be convinced to heal our racist/sexist/ageist/able-ist/xenophobic bullshit tendency to divide our world into in-groups and out-groups, and vile us vs. them foolishness… we might actually build a world fit to live in. I’m so exhausted from being astonished and outraged. I’m so bored and frustrated with being angry about it.

I can still do better. The verbs pile up, don’t they? The Big 5 are a good fit here: Respect, Reciprocity, Consideration, Compassion, and Openness. Yeah, those are practices, and grammar notwithstanding, manage to be substantially very verb-y. What I’m saying is we’re making choices to be what we are, each of us, every day, all of us, all the time.

…And it’s time to begin again. Do better.