The Way of the Hermit.

The world is spinning out of control faster and faster with each passing day. Narcissism is rampant and sociopaths seem to reproduce with all the speed of aggressive and tenacious cancer cells. Embracing harmony, co-operation, kindness, sharing and compromise use to be the currency of sanity but now these traits are considered "weak" and "naive." It is a world I no longer recognize but instead feels like a parallel dimension, which embraces the opposite of what we use to consider appropriate and beneficial behavior. I have invested a lot of time and energy into politics over the past 15 years to do my part in trying to restore sanity to this world. This took the form of fighting the conservatives in nearly every venue. So naturally I supported the Democratic Party here in America as the only viable alternative. I had high hopes that I was on the right "team" and put my complete trust in them.

They have been in the minority for most of those 15 years and thus I assumed once they regained power that they would move quickly to effect change. Especially given that's what that fraud Barack Obama pumped us with for two years during the campaign. Imagine my surprise and disgust, however, when I realized that they were ineffectual leaders who couldn't even agree amongst themselves let alone change the status quo of self-destruction, which has been the direct consequence of 30 years of conservative rule and brainwashing of America. I was patient for months with the Democrats as they worked to fulfill the promises they made to a country desperate for help. Then came this health care battle and seeing how disastrously they've handle that has snapped my will to defend them any longer. I am done with their ineptitude and corruption -- and the conservatives are straight out sociopaths. Thus, I'm embracing the Green Party and European style government. So am I increasingly dropping out of the institutions of this bizarre existence and cutting my ties with society one by one.

That void is being filled by nature, which is the last barrier to total world destruction and eradication of humanity. As it is right now, we live in our own filth due to over-consumption and are destroying the only home we have--Earth. Thus, we are like parasites who suck the life force out of their host (Earth) before moving onto the next victim except there is no where else to go but the way of the dinosaurs. As a consequence I find much of humanity to be infected with insanity and as destructive and brain dead as zombies. Therefore I retreat further into the cave that is my home; surrounded by an artificial rain forest of plants. I am a happily reclusive being who embraces the simple, solitary life of a hermit because if I try to stay too much apart of society I will lose my mind. It is better for myself and everyone else that I avoid most people.

My day-dreams usually consist of various ways to be a hermit such as: Monk-hood at a far-flung Buddhist monastery, building a cabin tucked away in the deep bowels of a dark and inaccessible forest or wandering the Earth with nothing but a robe, a bowl for food and a walking staff. I want to return to the life of my ancestors -- a simpler life of balance and freedom from the traps of modernity. I want to grow a beard down to my waist in protest of societies rigid, soul strangling "rules." I have tried playing by societies rules for 34 years and it has left me drained of hope for a better society and drained of tolerance of year after year of failure upon failure of society to get its shit together -- even a little bit. I haven't asked for complete utopia in the least but American society can't even seem to handle basic progress.

In just about every way my nature is one that falls outside what rigid, American society tolerates. It's not even that I try to be someone who is on the fringe of society on purpose but it has just shaken out that way. The majority of America is Christian -- I'm a Buddhist with a Pagan streak. I have a brain disorder (schizoaffective) and America as a whole doesn't accept such illnesses as real. Or they accept them as real but reject us as "defective" and worthy of shunning. Liberalism runs in my veins yet I live in a country dominated by not just conservatives but conservative extremists. I'm bi-curious in a world that demands nothing less than straight, neanderthal manhood. I'm college educated living in a country that despises intellectualism and an environmentalist in a place that worships oil and denies global warming. Why should I continue to embrace and support a society that rejects everything that makes up who I am? One day I'll disappear into the mysteries of the mountains like a lynx and be gone.

PHOTO CREDIT: Shut up and whisper