the beatles and aldous huxley - thoughts on election day

Disclaimer: this post may seem really bitter and pessimistic, but it really isn't intended to be so. These are just some thoughts I've been having lately.

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be all right

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head

-The Beatles (John Lennon)

I heard this song on the radio the other day, and it really got me thinking. Everyone wants to change the world, from the bimbos that want world peace to the guys playing the game to get elected to the hippies that only complain and never fix anything.

Here's what I realized: No one is ever going to fix the world. We can change it. We can "improve" it. But we're going around in circles.

Two weekends ago, a friend of mine asked about the ethics of giving terminal patients fake drugs to make them feel better, even though they are dying. The patients are dying. No drugs are going to help them. But the psychology that they are taking a drug that will help them makes them feel like theyre getting better, even if its just a placebo. So why waste real drugs on patients if its not going to help them?

And I realized that's what we're doing. We're taking fake drugs to make ourselves feel better, and what we don't realize is that we're just making ourselves feel better in our last moments before we die.

I've been reading Brave New World again recently, and that's a lot of what sparked this. And you can throw in 1984, if you want, cause the point is the same. Look at both of these dystopias, (a utopian society with at least one fatal flaw) even though they are completely different. You can see what is going to happen if we try too hard to be happy. We're just going to fix things and fix things and pretend more and more to be happy. Until our emotions are controlled by the government. Hahaha.

But seriously. We live in a fallen world. It's not gonna get fixed until Jesus comes back. All we're doing is running around in circles trying too hard to fix something that we can't possibly fix on our own.

---

"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.