I used to dream, just like you. I sat and watched Star Trek over and over again and I really, really, really believed in humanity.

Then it hit me. We were born from chaos. We happen to have some great and intelligent members. We’ve been lucky to have some of them and we’ve paid dearly for having others.

We were born from chaos though. It shaped everything we are.

We followed grifters into deserts to learn about their fake gods and gave those grifters our bodies and our resources and we continue to do just that, all around the world. People are still fighting and dying for grifters who have been dead for thousands of years, and the new ones use their names for their work.

That is what we are. We pride ourselves on history that has nothing to do with us. We are either animals who want to survive all for ourselves or animals who want our group to survive. We want the other groups to join us, sure. Some of us even feel sorry for them when they don’t. Some of us don’t and we load them into camps for mass extermination.

To me, it’s all just that chaos we were born from. Just trying, trying, and trying to survive.

Rebels crop up because the system might not be working. That’s why fed people don’t complain. Take nourishment away for just a little while and activate the rebel. Epigenetic changes and all that.

I’m the wrong person to talk to. I’m in a deep depression and I’m drunk haha.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll take control of the chaos one day and we’ll be amazing. I hope so.

I’m so sorry for typing this out. If it helps, I’m a total idiot and I’m dully conscious of it.

Now you need to make it 1,234.5 hours and stop.

I have had many dangerous interactions with homeless people and I carried on doing it anyway for a long time. At this point, I’m careful. I need to be here for my kids.

I’ve had two strangers shoot up in the back of my car while I was taking them somewhere (separate occasions). I had one ask me to pull over only so they could yell to a crowd of fellow homeless people, “y’all tell fatback that if I don’t get my shoes back, y’all ain’t gonna get fatback back!!” Guns were drawn. I was threatened. Very scary. I could never forget that either haha. I still reenact it regularly to make people laugh, wasn’t funny in the moment though.

The scariest one though. My ex and I were very young. Our daughter was about 4 months old. Dude was camping outside of my house and he wouldn’t respond to anything I said to him. I had to go to work and I didn’t want to leave the wife and kid there with him just outside. I called my work, told them I might not be coming if dude didn’t leave.

I asked him how he was doing. Nothing. I asked him where he was from. Nothing. I finally said, “Look, I’m going 30 miles that way. If you want a ride, go get in my car. It’s unlocked.” He stood up immediately and went and sat in the passenger seat.

He said nothing the whole way. He pulled out a large hunting knife and picked his fingers with it. I just talked and talked about my kids and my life to him so he might see me as a person and not kill me. He just grunted and growled the whole ride.

I pulled into a McDonald’s and I told him that that was as far as I was willing to go. He looked at me, nodded his head, got out of the car and walked away. That was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I still have nightmares about to this day. I was sure he was going to cut me up and take my car.

It would be nice if we could heal people in his situation. I really hope that we make it there someday as a species.

Armless or not, he’s a villain that’s for sure.

I’m sorry. Your typo made me do it.

I don’t believe that we’re collectively smart enough. I have spent too much time around too many people.

Religion, ancient lasers, flat earth, lizard people, Illuminati. These things are waaaaaaay more common than rational people realize.

Pick any random person and talk to them about what they believe. Prepare to be amazed.

I hate to say it, but that mess in the 20th century was humanity paying the piper for insane tech advancements.

We’re going to have to pay again. We aren’t smart enough to handle it. Those that are can only sit back and watch in horror at what we do with it.

Pay them more? So they can lose their benefits? Are you crazy?

I’m kidding, of course. I know that what you mean is, “pay them so that they can afford to live without requiring benefits.”

You get into some of the poorer places in the country though, that truly would be nearly impossible for most businesses. There are some places in West Virginia that would immediately have no access to gasoline, groceries, etc.

It is crazy to think that Bobby McBusinessman gets to ride around in a giant RV all summer because the government pays his employees. They don’t see it that way though, as they collect their HUD payments and accept food stamps while all of their employees receive food stamps and medical benefits.

All while the rest of the community lives on nothing and experiences very little joy in this life.

What do I know though? I’m just a pissed off hillbilly who helped make someone who isn’t me very rich.

I just wasted my time going into a spiel about this very same thing on YouTube. Comment was immediately removed.

I just told my little daughters that if they didn’t stop fighting and go to sleep I’m bringing this woman to see them.

The sad little chorus of “nooooooooo” could have been a hit short.

Holy shit. This is what’s wrong with me. I was working and taking 15,000 steps a day and now I’m staying home with the kids and getting no exercise other than the anxiety of running back and forth between them.

Dude, more. 200% more as my wife and I sit her and suffer tonight. She’s getting it dealt with next month, mine rotting out while I wait to even get a luxury bone appointment.

You are the clear evolutionary winner.

This is my favorite comic. I’ve never seen one I didn’t like.

As someone who spent more than a decade as a functional junkie, in my own situation I can say for sure that crippling depression got me there in the first place.

That first couple of months on opiates was the happiest I had ever been, especially that first night.

I sat back in this extremely comfortable gaming chair and listened to Nick Drake all night and felt like I was on another planet. I cried tears of joy and bliss. I was hooked immediately despite what I was telling myself at the time.

It didn’t take long for the opiates to become their own problem and then get wrapped up in the depression and self loathing.

Once I clawed my way out of depression, now I had this huge mountain to climb to end the problems of addiction. I didn’t think I could do it and I wanted to die. I was ashamed of myself and tired of dealing with all of the miserable souls caught up in that world. I hate to say it like this, but most of them were pitifully dumb. The main reason everyone I knew had spent time in jail and I hadn’t was the dumb stuff they constantly did. Driving around in cars with no tags or insurance, busted lights, fighting, yelling, just constant chaos.

If you’re a junkie, you will be ripped off. You’ll be desperate and someone will show up and they’ll be your last option. You’ll hand them your money and you’ll never see it again. That’s just the way it is. A lot of people I knew ended up in jail fighting over that. I just adapted and learned who I could trust.

It got to a point where every bit of living I was doing was a fight to keep from being sick. If I hadn’t gotten out of that I probably would’ve ended my own life, mostly because I hated having to have a social life wrapped up in the drugs. I was so sick of those people.

It was easy for me to drop the people, places, and things that kept me wrapped up in my addiction because I hated them all with a passion I can’t begin to describe, even the ones I loved.

I was suicidal before I ever did that, but I was driven and motivated to die by it. That’s for sure.

I’m glad I didn’t. I’m fighting depression right now, but it is NOTHING like what led me to become an addict.

You’re not wrong to point it out, but happy, healthy people don’t take risks like heroin. Before I ended up in that state I had a healthy fear of the drug. Depression erased that fear.

Sorry if I seem all over the place on it. I kind of am. Haha

It’s amazing to me that Hawaii has around half the population of Puerto Rico and still they aren’t a state.

It’s sad.

Worked on me. Been a lifelong problem and by the time I was old enough to realize it wasn’t cool I was hooked. I collected camel dollars as a child.

I thought I looked so rad at 11 marching down the road with a cigarette. I see that now and it just looks so wrong. It’s still like that where I’m from too. Little kids with cigarettes are a common sight.

I get where you’re coming from. I’m an isolated nobody from nowhere with no interest in anything but riding out my time on this rock haha.

If I had as much to think about, I’d be more conscious of those things as well. You have to be.

Thank goodness I don’t. Sometimes I get depressed when I think about who I am and how nihilism and lack of opportunity has made it impossible for me to participate in humanity (hillbilly from the middle of nowhere, 2nd poorest place in America). I’m glad I don’t have that kind of anxiety though. I’m not built for it.

Or maybe I was. I’ll never know.

We should always talk first and roll our eyes later, huh?

My wife burns through the pickles here. And get this. She eats them with little cubes of sharp cheddar. Makes my stomach turn just seeing the bowl.

If I like a song by the Spice Girls I’m telling everyone.

I do. It’s 2 Become 1. It’s cheesy as hell and I’ve been listening to it since I was 10 years old. Check it out. You’ll probably hate it. I don’t.

I did some reading. It would be spot on if he wasn’t convinced that he was perfect and everyone else wasn’t.

No one is smarter than him. No one does it better than him. No one could even come close to comprehending his work. When he dies he feels sorry for anyone who has to work behind him and it will take teams of people to understand the genius of his work. Anyone who has a slightly different worldview than him is “thinking wrong”.

He isn’t obsessed with perfection. He is perfection. No lover could please a woman like him. No one is stronger or more capable. He has done the work of 500 men in one lifetime.

He prides himself on being the best, but not because he has anything to prove to anyone. He knows he’s the best. No one is better.

His father’s dying words were, “Please God. Let my son find some humility. Please. He’ll have no peace until he finds it.”

His father was a great man. An activist. A man who actually worked to change the world.

He wasn’t always that guy though. He had to learn some hard lessons to get there and his son suffered while he learned those lessons. He knew that. He took accountability for it.

I don’t know. I wouldn’t have made it without him in this life, but it was always a transaction. He doesn’t know how to do anything without it being a transaction. I’ve been trying to show him that it isn’t always about that. Every job we do, he tells me to keep track of my hours so he can pay me. I don’t want him to pay me. I want him to see that life can be something we experience and enjoy without it being a transaction.

I’m probably wasting my time, but I love my uncle irrationally and I don’t know why.

My body aches right now as I type this from driving a pick into slate to find some wires for him. It’s probably stupid, but a year from now when I still haven’t asked for a dime, maybe he’ll think about it. Or maybe he is who he is and he’ll think I’m an idiot.

I would have been more than happy to drink tap water and have my kids drink tap water.

We’ve had a couple lead warnings though and I don’t want to fuck with it. They’re going to have a hard enough time with the misfortune of getting my genes. I don’t want to make it even harder for them.