K!TCH:

One of the most disturbing things about working in a restaurant is the extent to which people tolerate deplorable conditions. One grows up expecting a certain standard, and working towards this ideal in all avenues of life becomes the only practical design for morality, as well as the only basis for Goodness, the denial of which constitutes the entirety of evil. Karl Marx needed very seldom to refer to something or another as evil; most of his texts are simply saturated with disturbing accounts whose import ought to be self-evident. Despite this, psychologists such as Jordan Peterson and philosophers such as Camus, despite showcasing a brilliant scholarship in their respective areas of specialization, insist on marginalizing Marx by depicting life as though it were an inevitable struggle. As Jiddu Krishnamurti attested, if we did not accept human life as misery, life and death would cease to be seen as problems. Jung insisted that man cannot tolerate a meaningless life, and neurosis is categorically NEEDLESS difficulty. Viktor Frankl insisted that those with a Why to live could bear with any How. Given the unanimity of these intellectual father figures, it is preposterous to consider that their progeny should resort to cynicism. My generation ought instead to protest Absurdity, as Camus prescribed, and to live in such an unconditionally free manner that life itself might become vindicated as a rebellion. When we perceive a situation to be unfavourable, we ought to feel the obligation to change it, for ourselves and for each other. Instead I have seen the most palpable treachery in the tendency to tolerate the intolerable, almost deriving pride from sloth, divorcing the ethic of effort from that of reform. It is not as though we do not behave as THOUGH our generation were singularly right just for being ours; we simply have disowned and lost the entire tradition of genuine progress. Even loyalty itself has become debased, as equality has begun to appeal only to the lowest common denominator. Rebellion itself, even when it is on behalf of the entire colony, warranted by the integrity of the business, is treated as though IT were sheer mutiny, though inwardly no member of the crew seems truly to believe in the integrity of the captain’s idealism more so than does the rebel, who seeks first to uphold the leader’s idealism and only by chance happens to threaten the leader’s true power. Those with a Why to live can bear with any How. Unfortunately, the “how” is born without any apparent Why. If a fetish is found to substitute for human solidarity, then it is much too myopic to be readily recognized. It follows logically that the evil that Marx ascribes to capitalist leaders is not merely a projection of his own tribal mind, but rather the deduction of an indignant conscience. What was far more tribal was the Red Scare, which appears far more repressive than the Red Terror, for its primary sin lay in that it demoralized an entire populace.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]