Friday, October 17, 2014

National Parks

I was recently scrolling through The Front Page of the Internet when I happened across a compilation of 1 star Yelp reviews of National Parks. To save you some time, here they are:






I thought for a long time about my anger about these reviews, and would have liked to say that it didn't piss me off anymore after just realizing that some people are selfish, self-centered, terrible people who care about nothing more than themselves; however, I am not that calm of a person and I never came to that conclusion. So all I can really say at this point is: Get the Fuck Off My Planet. I don't want you here because you are the people who are willing to destroy these beautiful, peaceful places to build another strip mall with another chain store, and another chain eatery, so you can buy one more "thing" or stuff your face with one more 5 pound steak to try and fill the void in your life because you aren't content with who you are as a person.

We are destroying everything on this planet, and we are killing off entire species for our own carnal pleasure. It makes me sad, and because I am not the Dalai Lama, it also makes me extremely angry. It makes me angry to see runway models carrying a dead fox down the runway as an accessory, and people going out of their way to hit a squirrel on the road, people killing a spider that is outside of their house because they think it is "creepy," and people poaching elephants because some shaman tells them that their erection will last 6 hours with the tusk of an elephant mixed with the blood of a rhinoceros. We sit in our Westernized cultures thinking that we are above this stuff because we would NEVER kill an elephant for its tusk because we are "civilized." We comfort ourselves with this statement as we bulldoze trees to build another housing development that displaces all the animals that lived in that patch of land... then we get pissed because we hit a deer with our car and now have to pay for the damage. Stupid Dumb Sum-Bitchin deer, you were on MY highway!

The selfishness of some at the detriment to all is something that I have a very hard time coping with. Even in my personal life (not on the global level, because honestly, my life is only truly valuable to a handful of people and so is yours), this is something that I struggle with. Selfish people really get under my skin and turn me into a person that I try hard not to be. They are the "takers" of the world who will take, take, take from people but never once give back freely without condition.

I need to meditate more often, my resolve to be a better person today than I was yesterday is not working out so well for me this morning.


"Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequence."
~ Dalai Lama