The Sickening Nature of Human Nature

As I get older, it seems that I get more anxious about wrongs, things that mess with my ideology. I'll fixate on stuff, something that really bothers me--which is usually something stupid and just has to do with PRINCIPLES rather than anything else in the grander scheme of things--and lose sleep over it. For example, when I was a kid, and I still remember this clearly, I was so stuck on the wrongness of the fact that this girl at school, Angel Federline, promised to get the threads for those silly friendship bracelets at the craft store, and never got them ... but also never returned my hard-earned $20. (Which, when you're about ten, is a fortune.)

It still bothers me a great deal that my "producer," a talented scumbag and thief by the name of Alan Scott Plotkin out at Virgo Studios in Hempstead, absorbed the $3,000 he bullied out of me and refuses to honor the contract he signed and give me my music. It eats at me even more that I know he regularly rewrites and pitches songs that I've written, and tries to sell them as his own for this "rock opera" he's been working on.

Going further down the timeframe, I had a rabbit that my friend left behind when evacuating for Katrina. And rightly so; it was supposed to be a two-day evacuation and it was the bunny or two people, since the rabbit cage was huge. Well, we all know what happened after that, and my landlord reported to me that the rabbit died, and I would be subject to a $400 decontamination fee to clean up the carcass. He described the scene in bloody and sad detail and I cried with guilt for days. Actually, it still makes me feel goddamned awful and makes my eyes burn. But then, wonder of wonders, Animal Rescue contacted me and said they were able to save my rabbit! ... So then, what did my $400 pay for? What was that about?

I guess that goes to show that stemming from a young age, injustices have always really gotten to me. But the worst thing is feeling powerless to ever say anything about it or get the situation resolved. With Angel, I was afraid that if I said anything, she would make fun and call me cheap or poor. With Alan, I tried calling him every two days for an entire year and a half and he just refuses to return my call and, as I know full well having borne witness to this practice, screens every call that comes through. And with my landlord, he's my only housing reference, and he was a nice old man that'd never done me wrong other than that suspected situation in the two years I lived in his building. Even if he did lie, can I even really blame him? The roof was torn off his beautiful home and insurance was screwing him real hard.

I hate unresolved issues. And unfortunately, some things will always remain unsolved mysteries. I just find that as my idealism slips away the older I get, the more these things grate on me, since I get upset that I am becoming more cynical, jaded; I start to resent the situations that are wrong because it's taking away my faith in humanity to do the right thing, to listen to the conscience, and my belief that people can make the right choice and be "good" people.

I suppose that my nausea, then, is not a result of being wronged, but disgust in humans and human nature, which is to look out for one's own gain rather than consider someone else's circumstances. It's extremely saddening ... tragic, really.

So then, when I choose to be the better person in any situation, what are the odds I'll be rewarded when there are so many people looking to climb over any person with a naive streak of nobleness? In fact, I could even go the opposite route and say I'm jaded enough from the former situations as well as others yet unmentioned that I can go ahead and a self-serving profiteer.

However, I don't think I'm sick and anxious enough to essentially lose to inherent animalistic selfishness and become one of the very people that upset me so. I have to believe that there are others who feel the same way, because with each good-hearted person I meet, a wave of nausea ebbs away.