So its a lazy Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting here in my recliner, a bit stoned, and I have finally decided to write the post that I’ve been dancing around on this blog for awhile now. It won’t be as angry because I’m writing while listening to the Simon and Garfunkel “The Concert in Central Park” LP I picked up while out of town last month. You can’t really be angry while listening to that kind of wonderful harmony.
But you can be sad, especially after you realize that this kind of harmony is on the verge of extinction in todays world. I don’t mean musically of course. In terms of society, things are falling apart. The system isn’t really working anymore. Instead of operating as a relatively well oiled machine, parts still work in spite of itself but deep down everybody is just waiting for the mechanism to grind to a final halt. Everybody distrusts one another. People are basically loose lids on top of simmering rage. We are all on edge and we are all ready to blow. At least, I know I am. I know others feel the same way.
I have spent a lot of time trying to understand why this is. As a problem it has been around for awhile, even though it’s only now becoming obvious to more casual observers. It has certainly gotten worse over time. As a problem its not just political either, though in terms of politics, it is far easier to recognize as an actual problem. The truth is that it is everywhere and it has infected everything.
For years I had only reached a partial conclusion on this. That partial conclusion was simple: “We no longer respect the expertise of others”. This is a great description of the general problem. But its not enough on its own. It doesn’t explain why it happened. It wasn’t until the last few weeks when it finally hit me like a bolt of lightning.
“We don’t respect the expertise of others because we assume that everybody else cares only for profit.”
-IT Fossil on October 5th, 2025
I have spent years lambasting the endless greed of tech companies. But until a couple weeks ago, I had never tied society’s greed and people’s lack of respect for expertise together. But as soon as the idea popped into my head, it became impossible to ignore. It was basically a eureka kind of moment for me as it allowed me to finally understand why every single aspect of society seems to be going to shit.
Society only works when we are willing to assume positive intent on the part of others. Obviously there will always be those who don’t deserve such an accommodation, but in general until we have been given reason to believe otherwise, a functioning society must be willing to generally assume positive intent. However we are not willing to do that anymore. By my reckoning this is because most of us inhabit a mental prison / worldview in which we presume that other people are only acting in an attempt to profit.
We aren’t capable of assuming that the people out there protesting for equal rights are genuinely expressing themselves. We instead assume that they are being paid to astroturf. We aren’t capable of assuming that the medical professionals who recommend children take a vaccine are doing it because the data proves that it will save lives. We instead assume that they are going to get a cut of the increased vaccine sales. We aren’t capable of assuming that anybody actually needs a helping hand or is even willing to offer one. We instead assume that they are all scamming the system in some way or another.
This more than any other phenomena is at the root of the institutional and societal decay that plagues us today. We have worshipped so long and so hard at the altar of greed that we are seemingly incapable of recognizing that it has literally poisoned everything else. Instead we’ve gone so far over the edge that we actually see it as a virtue. Hence the election of a monster like Donald J. Trump.
It however is not a virtue. But our slovenly embrace of it as the sole virtue worth measuring one’s worth against, when it isn’t even a fucking virtue, has wildly twisted our perception. We literally can’t see it as anything else now. Not only that but we now intrinsically act as if it is the sole reason anybody can, does and even should do anything at all. The terrible consequences of this run far and deep. It touches literally every aspect of our lives, much like a malignant cancer spreads through the body until its virtually everywhere and inseparable from its soon to be dead host. The greed is the cancer. Our society is that host and it is now entering its final days.
This becomes even more clear when you start measuring actual positive societal impacts against compensation. Since greed is now the only thing we value, the best way to determine how much we appreciate something is to measure the average compensation of the people who chose to do that thing. EMTs literally drive around saving peoples lives all day long and we are effectively paying them less than minimum wage. I literally cannot imagine a more impactful thing one could do. Yet we clearly discount its value.
The same goes for teachers - they are literally playing the roles of educators and of part time parents, because the actual full time parents who work at least one job for forty hours a week (and that’s if they are lucky and well off) simply don’t have the time to do it all on their own. How about the people working at the free clinics? Not a one of those nurses and doctors is making bank, but they do it each and every day because they choose to stand steadfast against this terrible ideal and persist in the belief that there is fact a purpose to life beyond the quintessential theme expressed by 50 Cent: “Get Rich or Die Tryin'”
The absolute worst part of this is that deep down every last one of us fucking knows it. We feel it down in our very souls. Our shared disgust with the idea of a society that functions solely with greed as its motivator resonates so much that it is now the primary reason why we no longer respect the expertise of others. We assume they can only be acting as part of some scheme to profit at the expense of others. We then respond to that by scorning and downplaying whatever conclusion or summarization they attempt to share.
We all know this is wrong. But instead of doing something about it, we just keep doubling down on it. This is akin to trying to dig our way out of the hole despite the fact that the hole is very deep and a torrential storm lingering above is about to unleash hell. We elected Donald Trump, who is arguably not a very effective businessman, but happens to be one of the greediest people on the planet.
Why?
Because to even the most jaded among us at least he isn’t lying. He is clearly up front about what kind of monster he is. On some fucked up level that is admirable. Doubly so within this twisted worldview and system that we now occupy.
But here’s the thing. The underlying premise that drives all of this is not true. People can and do act altruistically each and every day. There are legions of decent and kind hearted people who wake up each and every day and are just trying to make their small corner of the world a brighter place. Sure they might just be creating art, making music, teaching your children, or even just volunteering at a soup kitchen or a library but at least they are trying. Most of them live hand to mouth but despite that most of them manage to get by. Society would be a better place if we joined them instead of jeering them.
Instead of rejecting the expertise and the charity of others, we should embrace it. We should cheer those who wish to freely share with us in an attempt to better our shared situation. But in order to do that, we have to take greed off the pedestal. We have to stop worshipping it like some kind of golden calf in the book of Exodus. We have to stop lifting up the high priests of this debauchery as the only possible saviors of society. By the way, these high priests are also more colloquially known as “billionaires”.
They are merely the architects of our destruction. They live to suck as much oxygen out of the room as possible so as to enrich themselves at the expense of literally everything else. They aren’t populists, though they sometimes like to pretend that they are. They don’t care about you. The fact they have a billion dollars is the most concrete proof you could ever have of that fact.
If we do not cast these people down along with their greed driven dystopian society, we are doomed. It really is that simple. Our only power to overcome lies in our ability to collectively decide on a shared ethos and to then act upon it as a group and therefore impart that will upon the stragglers. If we cannot do that or the underlying ethos is in fact an anti-ethos then our power to negate and push back on any of this has effectively been neutered.
That is where we are today. Our future can be better. But we must take ownership of the mess that we are living in first. It doesn’t matter that my generation or your generation effectively inherited it. What matters is that short of taking a shared responsibility for it, we will not be able to clean it up. There will be no profit in this. None of us will become rich. Many of us may well die tryin'.
But it’ll be worth it. You’ll know because our children, nieces and nephews will all thank us for it.