name-calling, small worlds, and selective stupidity

This won't have much form to it, but Miss April Lundberg told me she checks the blog and has been disappointed by the lack of posts, and it is exciting someone reads this! So this is for you, and please enjoy the inspiring picture found by image searching 'potential':

Here I am all out-of-college-y, and for the first time in my life few people I see on a regular basis could be considered students. College and the schooling leading up to it takes place in a land of fairies and empowerment in which ideas are thrown about as if they have importance, could actually work, and using time creating and tweaking these ideas is a self-evident good.

In other words, entry-level work is killing my brain. Faulkner won't help you run a cash register and mop floors (though he could probably describe it quite beautifully). In the last few months I have met people who, including but not limited to, believe that: Bush is hiding Bin Laden, the moon landing was a hoax, Obama is the antichrist and/or a muslim, Jews control the world, gay people want to take over the world, gay people could be straight if they wanted to, gay people don't exist, scientists are desperately trying to hide evidence the world is 6,000 years old, and 9/11 was an inside job. 'Stupid' to my coworker is dropping a chicken kabob on the floor, and going to hookah bars when you could smoke cheaper at home. 'Stupid' to me is staying in America when you hate every part of it, and swearing you will hate Jews till the day you die.

I instinctively distrust any us vs. them conspiracy theory type of talk. It ways, "please, please give us something to be angry about, feel superior for, be in the know about, something we can ignore normal moral principles fighting for (i.e. peace, charity, neighborly love), a damsel in distress we can die defending." We are a violent people, and nothing feeds our lust for being the suffering hero who enacts justice better than simplified ideas of a very small world. More or less, we don't stop playing good cops vs. bad cops and calling each other names in elementary school. "No, you're stupid."

It's not truth we're after. Power maybe, affirmation, a sense of purpose. Maybe we are all versions of each others' stupidity. Maybe trying to find a way better than prejudice is prejudice. If you keep your world small, it works. It's something you can have not just think about. Knowing you will never know seems the more honest option, but it's its own bias. Maybe our worlds aren't small enough. What if we helped people without justifying it or criticizing why they need it? Give water to the thirsty, no 'if's 'and's or 'because's. Sounds familiar, though I swear I can feel my brain going into hibernation from lack of use/argument.