My big problem right now is that I don’t have a lot of enemies, and the ones that I do have are pretty incompetant.
I don’t really hate anybody right now except the French and the Amish (and I hate them in a fond kind of way,) and it’s becoming a real problem. I’m pretty happy and content and therefore I’m not at my best.
To really get my blood going, to make myself a winner, to strive, and innovate I need to be competing against somebody I really despise. Once I’m focussed on their destruction, humiliation or whatever then I really overachieve.
Indeed, this is when mankind is at his best. The Indians knew this and they used to measure themselves by the quality of their enemies (At least that’s what they said in that movie “Jeremiah Johnson” with Robert Redford.)
Look at the Great advances made during and in the period after the Civil War, World War I, World War II.
During the cold war we got to hate the Russians and at the height of that conflict we put a man on the moon. To show you how far we’ve backslid, this is a feat we could not repeat today.
Hitler knew this, and the hatred he built against the jews was a calculated thing, designed to focus the German people.
Without a really bad enemy, we’ll focus on lesser differences. We can hate because of race or religion. We can hate because of economic differences. Lately we’ve been getting kind of pathetic creating anti-hate hate groups (groups that hate people who hate,) and the nutball things like Peta that give people that can’t control their hate an outlet. This is of course a temporary overflow valve. It’s like starvation where the body feeds on itself. We can’t do this too long, getting our hate out on Jerry Springer and Oprah.
Fortunately we got to hate Saddam Hussein for a while, but he doesn’t seem up to the role, just like Qadaffi, and Castro before him.
Mankind evolved in small groups “We,” that competed against other small groups, “they.”
“They” aren’t like us at all. They are different. THey want ot kill our babies and rape our women. They want to steal what is rightfully ours.
“We” have become countries, and now international communities. Where are “They?”
We know “They” are out there. It’s hardwired into our very brains, and nervous systems. We know that “They” are out to get us, and the fact that we can’t find “Them,” is somewhat ominous because that means that “They” are operating behind the scenes, unseen.
Without a readily apparent “they,” we make them up. We automatically form into groups of consanguinity, be it appearance, economics, or whatever. What are professional sports if not a battle of “we” and “they?”
But again, this doesn’t cut the mustard. Without something to strive against we become enamored of Pokemon, social activism, and the relentless pursuit of that most worthless of all human activities “fun.” We become a culture of fatso , amusement park thrill seekers striving for political correctness and meaning in a sea of irrelevance.
What we need is a great big boogeyman of a “they,” to get us scared off our asses and doing something meaningful.
Don’t you wnat somebody to hate?
Don’t you need somebody to hate?
WHere are "They’ when we need them most? I can’t beleive that “They” will let us down.
Don’t worry though, with a little luck Russia will revert, or China will go forth in search of food and resources. We may even get a Muslim Jihad to tide us over in the meantime.
Still, it would do me a lot of good to have a convenient enemy right about now.
How about you?