Given the title, obviously, this blog will state some things that are negative, so if you're sensitive in heart, perhaps you ought to hit that little "X" in the corner of the screen and YouTube some more kitten videos, because after writing this, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
Because I don't hate kittens. I don't hate babies. I don't even hate vegetables. But very often I DO hate people. People can be downright terrible.
My mother, bless her heart, has a history of falling down. It's some nerve thing in her leg, she thinks, but it's the reason I encourage her not to lose too much weight. She hasn't broken anything severely, yet, but I know if she were skin and bones and continued to fall as much as she does, it wouldn't be long before it was the hip fracture that did her in. (I make her sound terribly old. She's not old. She has an active job as a physical therapist, and travels the world for fun in her free time. She just keeps tripping herself up!)
Yesterday, walking independently down a busy road, without her cell phone, mind, my mother took another fall. "Face-planted" she describes it, a good mile away from home. She fell, rolled over, and sat, convinced she may have broken her patella, due to the pain she was feeling. Eventually she dragged herself to her feet, and, tears streaming down her face, walked/dragged herself the mile back home. "It was ugly," she reported.
This happened on a busy road. Hundreds of cars streaming past, and not a one of them stopped. Psychologically, this can be explained through Bystander Effect, but it still sucks, because it was MY mother, and no one cared enough to see if she was alright, or if they could drive her back home.
I understand that people have fears about helping strangers. I get that. I, myself, have been burned from helping others - ever since that one time I picked up a woman near the bank, who asked if I could give her a lift to the hospital. Of course, sweet old me, I picked her up and drove her there. She then proceeded to ask for money from me, to pay her copay. I gave her money, she got out of my car, and then, before I'd even driven away, started walking back towards the bank.
I get that helping strangers can be hard. It can be risky. But a stranger who face-plants it in front of you? A stranger who is literally crying and limping down the road? She's obviously not manipulating anybody. Why don't you help her? What's the worst thing that happens? She snaps at you, because she's in pain, and tells you that she's fine, and doesn't need your stinkin' help? She takes you up on the offer to drive her home, and then decides that she might need to go to the hospital instead, and it takes an hour of your time out of a busy Saturday?
And you know, it's not just Bystander Effect that makes me hate people. I hate people because they're manipulative. It's the people who are your "friends" who try to make you buy the things that will make you live longer, get skinnier, run faster - but really all it is they're selling you is salt water, overpriced vitamins, and mint oil bandaids - all overpriced, to line their pyramid scheme pockets. (Sorry, multi-marketing plan.) If I get one more group invitation to a jewelry "party," I just might go, and verbally rake the crap out of them.
I hate people because they don't have integrity. They say they're one thing, and believe a certain way, but they don't act on it. It's the politicians, and the "religious" people who say, "We'll stop abortion," or "Love one another," but then never politically DO anything, or in the religious scenario, find new and interesting ways to despise their neighbor - be it calling them perverts, socialists, mocking or saying they "deserve" their misfortunes, or putting their own preferences above the needs of others, because they believe that they alone are "right."
I hate people because the only things people care about are the things that are "popular." Truth doesn't matter, anymore, if it will make you uncomfortable, unpopular, disadvantaged, or hindered from what YOU want, in any way. You can be your own god, in determining what is right, and what is wrong, because you WANT it that way. Like the toddler that bold-faced tells their mother that yes, they will have ice cream for dinner, they are WRONG, but insist that because they said it, it is fact. We have stopped looking for truths where we used to find them, but now look to ourselves to be our own judges.
So maybe the word IS "disappointed." I'm disappointed in people. People have so much potential, and to study the lives of people who have made a difference to humanity only proves this. But I feel that people have lost even that - the desire to make a positive difference. What matters now is "me," and what "I" want. We close our eyes to everyone else. I'm disappointed in people.
And that's why I want to be a dog. Because dogs are awesome.
