"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation".- H.D. Thoreau.
I know I am likely preaching to the choir here, being that my readership tends to be of the hyper-individual sort, but I must speak out.
There is a great benefit to having the ability to think for oneself. There is a great benefit of having the ability to take stock in oneself and feel in charge of one's own affairs.
I remember when I was 15 my parents decided to uproot the family from the fairly middle-of-the-road Methodism I had grown accustomed to and instead took us to a non-denominational praise and worship band Evangelical church. It was an eye-opening experience for me, mostly because I had learned to take Revelations and Satan with a grain of salt.
The church was comprised of baby boomers who had lived lives of sin (i.e. hippiedom and then '70s hedonism), then drifted back to Christianity. The number one reason they did this is because they found they could not control their kids. Their children, being children, were having sex, using drugs, and being generally unruly. So the parents assumed they needed a case of the old time religion to remedy the situation. This knee-jerk reaction felt good but it really made things worse.
Baptist denial combined with self-destructive attitudes is probably worth two years of therapy in and of itself.
There are times, dear readers, where I harbor an extreme misanthropic streak. In times such as these, I really wish more people would strive to be leaders rather than joining the ranks of the adoring masses.
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