Are you scared? You should be. We all should be.
There is only one thing that roots nearly all of our fears: uncertainty. Uncertainty, a root of fear so possessive, influential, and invasive that we cannot fully comprehend, is what makes uncertainty so frightening.
The reason you fear death? Uncertainty. The reason you fear darkness? Uncertainty. The reason why you’re scared of emotional attachment? Uncertainty. Even things such as fear of heights stem from the fear of death, which stems from uncertainty.
Now, why should you be scared? Why should we all be scared? I’ll tell you.
America has consistently been depicted as a perfect country in our history books, feeding into extensive nationalism and making our lower and middle classes easy to control. This makes Americans think they are untouchable; they are extensively trying to force the blame and judgment onto a single group.
This is America’s biggest mistake; however, these ideas aren’t created by everyday Americans. These ideas are created by those in higher power. These ideas of arguments are made to force people to fight.
The government officials are tweeting and adding fuel to the flames of disagreement when the government should be promoting peace. This is a dangerous game, and our two-party system has us in a blinding rage.
A rage where we swing and only hit ourselves.
Have we not all noticed that life in America has consistently been getting worse? That all of the people who get to pick what happens to and how OUR generation gets to live won’t even be alive to witness the results in a few years (but get to reap the benefits of today)? That is what’s scary. We don’t know how bad the consequences of the actions of our federal or state government are going to fully affect us until it happens, and the people who do it won’t have to feel those consequences.
Now, I do consistently fall into the thick webbed layer of functional stupidity at times, but in order not to be a functionally stupid person, you have to be able to recognize when this is happening.
If you’re not aware of what functional stupidity is, it is when people focus so much on following rules and procedures without thinking critically that it actually hinders their ability to solve problems and innovate. Americans have been doing this on a downward slope for years now (much blame goes to the internet). People are so focused on adhering to their parties, their families, or their friend groups that they genuinely become ignorant of major problems.
I’m sure that most of us would agree that the “golden rule” is a good, if not decent, standard to live by. However, this standard became null as we grew older and were affected by the groups that surrounded us.
We were the “test generation” who had a vast amount of knowledge within a few buttons and never had to grow up without it. We are by far the most vulnerable generation when it comes to political parties. Since we have almost too much information at our fingertips, we can’t and won’t read everything on the internet willingly, and sometimes facts go against our way of life, so our confirmation bias makes us willingly choose to inform ourselves about things that confirm what we already believe. We don’t acknowledge other people’s ideas and information because if they seem to be more informed or have the upper hand, we assume we haven’t informed ourselves enough and just continue to stay in our ignorant little boxes. We also allow the media to demonize our political views by changing narratives and making us start to heroize politicians when they are supposed to be serving us.
I don’t say this out of judgment; I speak out of empathy, as I was once someone who listened to his family, to his teachers, and to online celebrities without an ounce of critical thought. This is why I know this functional stupidity is real. We can always live our day-to-day lives and be ignorant, but at some point, that ignorance is going to come back to haunt us.
My message to my generation is to please question your parents, your media sources, and maybe try arguing for the other side sometimes. Just trying to understand the perspective of another can go a long way. We would stop forcibly hating each other if we just tried to understand why people think a certain way, without stupidly simplifying it to “communist,” “racist,” “idiots,” or “fascist.”
The truth is, this is everyone’s first time living, so don’t be scared to question things that you have grown up with your entire life; don’t be scared to question your teachers, your parents, your friends, or your sources of media.
If you believe our country is divided, uniting it starts with you.
