*"You have no idea where you are. ...ask others to explain the world to you in greater detail -- perhaps try a rich person? Rich people are educated."*
Call me R.A. Costeau because I've realized that I have no idea how the world works. Or where I even am exactly. Not many people do, because not many people even think about it. Why would they? Thoughts like these are mostly reserved for the perpetually sad and mentally ill, chances are if you're online you aren't lucky enough to not be one of the two mentioned.
But yes reality lowdown, how does the world work actually? Now sure I could pick up a basic text book and learn about the birds and the bees but we all know that this isn't what this question is asking. So who the hell does a person ask? Rich people? Maybe a few centuries ago, now they're out of touch and insane in their own ways. Priests? Scientists? Philosophers? No I think that won't do. The reality is that this question is very personal, while the world does follow some basic rules the truth is that life and "reality" is very different from person to person.
So what is reality for me? Growing up in a war torn Yugoslav republic life wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows. I grew up in a rundown roach and rat filled flat that took over a decade to become a place worthy of living in. I was chronically ill since of young age bordering on the verge of death and in a post war country my odds weren't exactly the greatest. My parents and me with my young undeveloped brain were bounced around from doctor to doctor with an actual diagnosis seeming further and further away. Until an old doctor, an expert, a great man, invited us and many others suffering from the same ailment to be diagnosed and treated under his wing cost free. So what was the decease that nearly killed me? Scoliosis of all things, yes really.
"Admittedly, it’s not very funny. But you *overcame* it! This little infant survived. So: fuck you, scoliosis!"
The fact that doctors couldn't diagnose it for months shows you the state the country was in. Sure my case was particularly bad, I could barely walk and I struggle to blame anyone when what was then the world to me was in ruins and falling apart. But besides being an expert and saving me from a life of pain and early onset death he gave me and my parents something that no one until then has: Hope. Not only the hope for my well being but the hope that this shithole still had good people, people that were not only intelligent but kind. After all he was from the old country Yugoslavia, a heaven on earth as I was told.
"It’s time you knew the truth, brother. Love… time… Yugoslavia… It’s all shit. All of it. Face it, no one’s willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary, not in this day and age. Look deep inside yourself. You know it’s true, because it hurts."
It does hurt. Yugoslavia was far from heaven on earth, if it was heaven it wouldn't have fallen apart and get so many people killed. Tito was corrupt, the whole country was corrupt and there was no successor because the man thought he could live forever.
"By Heavens, why would he not be corrupt? We live in a harsh and disordered world, see. […] the old man is corrupt for our benefit and we know it. Appreciate it, even. He is, personally, not too lavish."
It was better then the shitholes we have now sure but looking back on the past is just that. Looking back, turning back the time isn't possible. Trying to act like what happened didn't happen won't help anything. The system obviously didn't work and if something doesn't work it's not the reality lowdown I need. But it showed me the archetype of the person I want to be kind, smart and good hearted. Yugoslavia didn't cause that man to be the way he is, he chose to be like that.
That got me thinking about beyond "my reality", the world. Things obviously aren't going the way most people don't want to but why is that? Now you can blame any semblance of billionaires and ideologies and maybe there's truth to it but there isn't the whole truth, at least the way I see it.
The way I see it the world has always depended on the minority of the good, the just and the kind. And there is no illusion I'm not one of them. If I were to be generous I would say that maybe 1/4 or 1/5 of the human population is.
It's shrinking, there's less and less of the kind hearted good Samaritans because the world treats them the way it treats them. The world sees them as stupid, naïve even selfish but their sacrifice is what kept the world whole and sane. Now everything is going to hell as the largest real life freebooting scheme is slowly coming to an end, and taking societal cohesion along with it.
I'm not a kind person but I try to be. Me and most others don't have that selflessness in us but lucky for us what we do is what matters.
"You will be who you will be. We are our choices. We can choose to lead humanity away from this...darkness."
And that's what reality is, to me at least. The reality where you don't have to do good or bad, a reality where you don't have to do anything. A reality where in spite all of that you can chose to do the right thing. But... Will you?