Expectations

Many humans spend a lot of time being miserable because of their perceived Failure To Live Up To Expectations. These expectations can be self-imposed, or can be placed on an individual by society (the media, parents, peers). These social expectations don't even need to be real - in order to feel them, the individual only has to make a judgement about what they think others expect of them.

Some expectations are arguably useful, especially those that involve such things as distribution of chores, being at least civil towards other humans, closing the refrigerator door and so on. But others are simply a load of tripe and actually interfere with the happiness of the individual. For instance,

• "I'm x years old, I should be married/on a career path/something or rather by now!"

• "I have to give up on my dreams and get a REAL job."

• "I must hide my true personality in order to have meaningful relationships."

are some of the "big ones" causing misery to people in your street RIGHT NOW. Of course this is from a particular cultural perspective, but there are probably similarly crippling mind-poisons just about everywhere. These are unreasonable and place constraints on what an afflicted individual can and will do with their short time in this reality.

Granted, some of these expectations are enforced by peer group pressure - ignoring them can have dire consequences. Fear of rejection is potent, especially if an individual has no social alternative. Other times, there is physical or maybe financial coercion involved - behave this way, or you will suffer! This is an expression of an uneven power relationship. Unfortunately, there is not much to be done in these cases - from a self-preservation perspective the only thing to do is bow down and follow the set norms. However, living in this way is not entirely good for preservation of sanity!

Returning to a 'softer' situation, failure to meet expectations (real or otherwise) will not actually result in disaster or loss of life. In these cases, the expectations are probably only inside the head of the individual, implanted through paranoia and insidious whispers of 'normal' from media and other sources. The individual needs to look long and hard at the expectations they place upon themselves, and those they believe others place on them. The expectations that destroy self-esteem, force the abandonment of friends, dreams and interests, and otherwise cause denial of the self, should be cornered and destroyed.

This process can take time. It's a case of catching the expectations in the act of modifying behaviour, and making a conscious effort to defy this malignant programming.

Good luck in freeing yourself!

Dampening effect on artistic expression

Expectations can also have a profound effect on artistic endeavours. Taking music as an example, performers can experience an oppression of their creative spark when expectations lie heavy in the air. And this seems to happen often in our culture. Musicians can experience expectations of themselves ("I have to be able to play really fast"), expectations of other musicians ("The saxophone player should do a solo now, because I have stopped singing") or of the audience ("They shouldn't make any sound because the music must be respected"). Audiences can also have deep-seated expectations about what a concert is, what music is, the type of music to be performed, and what makes music worthwhile. Breaking conventions is a necessary process in art, but often brings to the surface discomfort with personal attitudes, which can produce bodily and subjective dis-ease in audiences. All of these expectations have a dampening effect on creativity, because creativity is not produced by repetition, but by diversification and the production of craze.

Think globally, act stupidly

Crapping on about injustice is all very well and good, but how the hell are you going to "cahnge the world™ (sic)" when you're too afraid to upset even the status quo that exists in the misery of your backyard barbecue? Who needs a police state when everybody is a self-oppressing automaton, whose main outlet for rebellion is alcohol poisoning when not required to be a 'responsible employee'? The whole time you are answering the uncomfortable question in your head 'is this OK' with a resounding 'no but I don't want to cause a fuss'; you're a starving man eying off the buffet at the other table, but you're worried about looking like an idiot if you knock over your chair getting up. So you stay right there with your fellow starving inmates, publicly despising but privately admiring the misshapen weirdos who are messily stuffing their faces with all of that food, hoping for the tiniest wet chunk to glance off a blackened tooth and land in your lap so you can suck the grease out of the weave of your pants when nobody is looking.

In short, you are doing what you hate because you are concerned with maintaining the situation that causes you to do what you hate. You masquerade as something you hate so that people who you should hate like you BUT they hate you anyway because YOU IN ALL YOUR INFINITE COWARDICE are causing them to LIVE THE EXACT SAME SHADOW LIFE you are! YOU ARE THE ENEMY - maybe if you all weren't trying SO HARD to get along, you might just get along. The effort that you've expended in DESTROYING EACH OTHERS' LIVES probably precludes this though, as you've now got plenty of reasons to hate one another, whoever they are.

You are part of a rich foundation of viciousness that allows the most horrible crimes you can read about on Wikipedia (and worse) to be perpetrated! It's not apathy or complacency that is at the wheel of the semi trailer of human suffering - it's YOU and your desire to FIT IN! Your response to the isotropic curse-rays of NORMALITY, emanating from EVERYBODY ELSE, is to bury all of your truths deep inside and become yet another broadcast tower for LIES FM. This is a level of containment that only appears in the wet dreams of nuclear waste merchants - the overfiends stride comfortably on the surface formed by this desperate nobodiness, picking out locations for Their latest self-aggrandising missions. If They somehow noticed you in the grain of this concrete of wasted life, They would laugh at your attempts to avoid offending anybody; the overfiend can only be the overfiend BECAUSE offense is meaningless to Them. It is Their capacity for not caring about offense that allows Them to cause maximum offense to EVERYONE. Mind you, these are the ones lucky enough to survive the mockery and beatings issued by their peers, and to not be eaten by other overfiends upon burrowing out of the substrate. If it's the future of human civilisation you're trying to cahnge(sic), then this is the challenge that awaits you.

If, as I suspect, you have really given up on "the world™", then at least you can live your life in such a way that you don't notice when the hammer falls. Stop being the enemy of yourself and those around you - and prepare to become the enemy of yourself and those around you in a way that gives your existence some kind of pep. Praise "Bob".