Minutes I: Half a Bottle of Wine. Mutterings, Ecstacy ... Little That Hasn't Been Said Before and Said Better

“Everyone is entitled to their opinion.”
This is something that I often hear—something I’d like to believe. It rings of pluralism and democratization. But really, as I see it, it is little more than an excuse for simple thinking and easy answers—answers derived not from logical analysis or anything resembling our fondest abstractions, love and truth, but instead from weakness, insecurity, and misanthropy. Critical thinking is usurped by idle chatter.
As I see it, most peoples’ opinions are wrong. Hateful. Ignorant.
“Who the fuck are you to say such a thing?”
I’m an asshole, sure. My name is Steve Ross and I’m narcissistic, and wasteful, and wholly ignorant of most of the world around me. I say stupid things that I regret and I can be manipulative and I often dream of the easy life I will have once I’m discovered by some unknown entity as an unparalleled writer, rock star, artist, etc. These are the lies I tell myself knowing them as untrue. These are the lies we inherit from watching Sesame Street and believing our parents when they tell us that we can be anything that we want to be. They forget about sadness. Nepotism. Competition. Loss. Defeat.
But they don’t really forget. They just can’t tell.
But still, as much of an asshole I am, I’m not a bigot. I’m not a racist. I’m not a misogynist.
I’m not a businessman or a cop or a good ol’ boy.
I claim no allegiance to any dogma, whether political, religious, or otherwise.
I tear up seeing sunlight fall across the sidewalk onto murmuring pigeons basking. I feel fondness for old women swearing. There’s times when I think that our species is magnanimous, beautiful, and admirable. There’s times when I think that the insipid brutality is waning and that finally, some god damn person is realizing that they have to shut the fuck up and take a look at the insects, the dirt, and later, the buildings.
That someone somewhere feels a twinge of guilt seeing the fescues brown after they mow.
Jung spoke of a collective unconscious—a common soul shared by all humans.
I don’t agree.
But I see the commonality in our genetic heritage, our phylogenic niche in the helices of churning millennia. I see the hands and minds of apes writ wise and nimble.
I see this family and I love it and I love that I can believe that I love. I love that someone so nearly identical to myself first felt the idea of love at all and called it a name, created this profound and familiar symbol.
But another, “entitlement,” has encroached upon it. Now “entitlement” calls the shots.
“Entitlement” allows us to claim that people living in ghettos don’t really ever want to leave.
That belief in a magic and belief in evolution are both theories, and therefore neither is more accurate of a description of the natural world.
That economies need be based on profit.
That buildings need be square.
That life is somehow less amazing without a purpose.
That “purpose” is real.

I want to relieve myself of my persona just this once. I, like you, are a carrier of genes, and while our temporal positioning corresponds, let’s be wise apes for once, and bare our teeth at the ones who are wrong, despite what they believe they’re entitled to. Let’s bite them and lick their wounds. For they aren't so much as wrong, but rather, misguided.

So how is this accomplished, my dear NHWC? Where do I begin?