All Consequence Aside

 "Throw all consequence aside." -From The Shin's Sea Legs

Throwing "all consequence aside" seems to have become commonplace in our society. I've begun to feel, not even a general acceptance of illicit behaviors, but a sort of pressure to engage in them. And not even just from my peers-- educated individuals who are all about academic studies and promoting our changing times, not really questioning whether these changes are good, appropriate, moral, responsible, etc. People speak about sex as if it's a recreational activity, like teens and early twenty-somethings are not normal if they don't feel comfortable being intimate with strangers. What an oxymoron that is, "intimate strangers." How do people justify this? I don't think I will ever empathize, nor do I care to. I feel the same way about drinking. I indulge occasionally, but each time I feel less and less like a person. What am I doing? I'm not even living life. I'm using a drug to feel good, to feel like I'm worth something in life. I'm also killing my liver and opening the door to some unpleasant decision-making. How do you justify that? You're only young once? One time too many, for me.

Sometimes you throw consequence aside because it's something you really want. Sometimes you don't want to do it but you do it anyway because you're convinced by other people that it's just the way things are, that you can justify it because everyone else is doing it. It's disappointing that all those other people are also doing things like buying indulgences they can't afford, having sex with people they don't love, sitting on millions of dollars while others are homeless and starved, and worrying about the petty interests of their daily lives while the problems of the world swirl around them. But hey, that's just the way things are. Why try and change it? You're not poor. You're not starving. Who cares about anyone else. Who cares about humanity. 

Who cares that we could choose to live in a beautiful world but instead we choose to live in a selfish, destructive one?