The Ethos of Societal Solipsism

This is how you change the world. You stop hiding behind God's skirt, stop letting 'someone else' take responsibility for your life, and you recognize that it is all up to you.

You are the person who decides what the world will be. If you choose to be lazy, then the world will be lazy. If you choose to be selfish, then the world will be filled with selfish people. If you choose to be afraid, then the world will be terrifying. You don't have to become perfect, that's not realistic, nobody expects that of you. But you have to accept full responsibility for all the choices you do make. You have to stand up and admit to being everything you are, and choosing to remain so rather than choosing to change.

Turning to God and begging for help won't do you any good. I've seen God in my mind, he's real, I know he exists, and I also know that He. Is. Not. Going. To help us. This isn't his world anymore, it's ours, he gave it to us along with our free will. The moment we left the proverbial Garden, God handed over the metaphorical keys, told us this world was ours to do with what we wished, and look what a good fucking job we've done with it. He is not involved anymore. He's watching with morbid fascination while we fuck up our lives, knowing that whatever we do, it was our choice.

A good parent doesn't try to tell his kids how to live. He lets them learn their own harsh lessons, and that's what's happened here. We're like a drunk or drug addict whose determination to ruin his life forbids him from accepting any aid until he's been broken practically beyond repair; God is waiting for us to hit rock bottom, and wants to make sure that when we do, he's not there for us to depend on - because if you teach someone that you will fix their problems for them, they will never learn to do it themselves, and sooner or later you'll get sick of cleaning up their mess. We have to pull ourselves out of the hole, because that's our job, that's our responsibility, that's our choice. That's who we are. WE are the Alpha and the Omega.

There's no-one else but us, nobody will help us, nobody will hurt us, so we and we alone have to decide one thing. Do we want things to be right, or don't we? Are we willing to do whatever we're capable of doing to make things right, or are we going to choose, for whatever reasons we think are valid, to leave the world just as fucked-up as it is? You don't have to do everything, you don't have to succeed completely, you don't have to be perfect; these things take time, you won't live to see a perfect world, nor will your children or your children's children. There may not be a future at all; we may already be past the point of no return. But that doesn't change the fact that we have only two choices: do what we can, or remain as we are.

We need to acknowledge everything we are, every feeling we have and that it's just a feeling, every belief we have and that it's just a belief; we must completely admit to ourselves everything that we are, everything we wish we could be but can't, and everything we could be but don't care enough to bother. Nobody will judge us, except other people who are no better. God loves us unconditionally, but he's not going to kiss it and make it better, not anymore. He won't play favorites among his kids, he won't keep them dependent on him, he won't help them be weak and spoiled and self-indulgent, they do that well enough on their own. It's up to us now. We're all there is, and we are what we are, and we either do the best we can or we are personally responsible for everything that's wrong. Everything we are is everything we should be, exactly the way we should be, according to the only people who get to decide: us.

We're all different, and we are deeply divided about the things that make us different. We like to displace the blame for our problems onto other people, hoping that destroying the scapegoat will make us feel better - much as with getting drunk, it never actually helps, yet we never stop thinking it will. It's time for us to quit trying things that we know don't work, and accept our nature. We are flawed, we are fallible, and we need only the tiniest excuse to hate each other. And that's okay, there's nothing wrong with hate. It's a natural human emotion, it has a place within a healthy psyche. The problem isn't that we have hate; the problem is how we act on it, especially when we allow our deeply-ingrained beliefs and knee-jerk reactions to dictate our behavior. Rational, self-controlled people are capable of distancing themselves from their hate, that it's a mood and that it will pass - but if they think it's God's will that they must act on their hate, or if they just decide to act on their hate and leave God out of it, that is when they cross the line and cause problems for the world. Your hate is an irrational emotional response, just like your love, just like your faith, just like all the tempestuous feelings swirling around in your head. Treasure them, for they are part of what makes you who you are - but don't let them boss you around.

The reason I bring so much God into all this philosophy is quite simple: I want each of us to believe that we are God. You, whoever you are, you are God. Think about that. You are all-powerful, and what you are, the world around you is. I firmly believe that this is true of all of us, and that our refusal to acknowledge that fact is the root cause of all our problems. We are still clinging to imaginary non-Us gods, hoping that someone else will solve our problem for us, refusing to face the fact that it is our job. You, the reader: it's your job. You are one of the six billion people who are currently making the world the way it is. The fact that you are vastly outnumbered is not an excuse for you to give up, not a reason to fall into despair and apathy.

You have a job to do, for your own good, and for the benefit of everyone you care about, and everyone you don't care about, and the order of the cosmos itself. You must shoulder your one-sixbillionth of the burden. You must choose to do what you can to make your world worth living in. Don't wait for God to do it; don't wait for other people to do it. Don't be a spoiled child waiting for his parents to make everything better. Take responsibility. Recognize everything that is true about yourself, whether you like it or not, whether other people like it or not. Don't judge other people according to a standard that you yourself can't live up to - or if you must judge them, do so leniently, with understanding. With imagination.

Imagine yourself in their place, living their lives. Imagine that they were God, because they are. Imagine that you are God, because you are. Imagine that all of these Gods have a plan for how to change the world. Imagine that all these plans are different, that someone else has a plan that you hate, and that you have a plan that someone else hates. Because no matter who you are, no matter how good you are, someone hates you. And that's okay. It's not your job to make everyone like you. It's your job to be yourself, and let everyone else be themselves, and for everyone, themselves, to be God. You're all opposed to each other, all pursuing contradictory goals, but you don't have to share. You don't have to prove each other wrong. You're flawed and fallible and perfect and wonderful, unique just like everyone else, glorious and terrible and worthless like everyone else, and being all of those things is your job. Stopping other people from being those things is not your job.

You need to recognize what you are, and what other people are, and what the truth is. You don't have to change it, because you can't, it's not something you can do. But being someone who would change it if you could, that is something you can be. And that is your job. You must be yourself, even when others wish you wouldn't be yourself, even when you wish others wouldn't be themselves. You must hold fast to your beliefs, while not acting on them - because you don't have the right to do so. You don't have the right to do anything, technically. But you do have the right to BE anything. That is the purpose of the world - to limit what we can do, so that we can concentrate on what we should be.

That'd be a great world, wouldn't it? All of us at each other's throats, but never squeezing. All cooperating to survive this world, while planning to escape it separately. Treasuring our individual plans for perfection, recognizing them as impossible, doing what we have to do to survive in this imperfect world. Respecting others, accepting them for what they are, and not judging what they are, not trying to control what they are, but only what they do, and then only when it affects what we are. Forgiving others their flaws, as we would wish to be forgiven of ours, acting in the manner we want others to act. Well-behaved, but never ashamed. Generous in public, greedy in private, instead of the other way around. Together, we can change what we're able and entitled to change, and tolerate what we can't or shouldn't.

That is what we can do, by each being God.