Why people are activists

Let's get one thing straight: The current populace is pretentious. The memes that dominate our culture promote everything from ego-boosting to selfishness, which in turn are manifestations of our selfish genes' primary agenda: live forever.

However, even the most selfish of memes, in spite of serving no other purpose than to complement their genetic counterparts, are justified by pitiful attempts to correct cognitive dissonance.

The majority of "activists" (whatever that really even means) have at least one of the following two agendas:

1. Preserve a personal identity partially predicated on activism. If that danged Wall Street weren't so corrupt, what would the "Occupy" activists do with their time? What would make them feel special, like they belonged to a group or had a purpose? What would make them significant in the grander scheme of things? Without something to rail against, a lot of activists would probably feel like a part of themselves had disappeared, or that they weren't special.

2. Sustain a way of life. Even if you work for a non-profit organization, you're still earning a salary. Without the world's problems, how would such people get by in life?

It's all a selfish game. Let's stop making ourselves feel good by pretentiously justifying our animalistic preservation instincts and start cracking down on reproduction. End the perpetuation of negativity by addressing causality!

An additional thought on the idiocy of quotation and praise

In an older post of mine, I described a somewhat trivial issue that I have with quotation. I still don't see it as particularly problematic, but pretense is pretense, and I might as well bring this topic up again in the interest of hitting things from as many points as possible.

When quoting someone, you're essentially conceding that he or she is superior at representing a set of ideas -- either relatively superior to you, or the definitive authority on the ideas, period.

If the person quoted is superior only to you, good on you for bringing him or her to our attention; now remove yourself from the conversation if you don't have anything to add yourself so that we may investigate the approach and arguments presented by your source.

If the person quoted is superior to everyone, fine, but as soon as you append his or her name to the quote, you're essentially promoting adulation, which is how jealousy, war, social inequities, and deification result. It's also not even true that the person is the source of the quote, because we can't choose the ideas that come to us any more than we can choose to be incapable of passing through walls.

And honestly, if you want to give someone an award for an accomplishment, go with a Child Labor Factory Worker of the Year award over a Grammy or a Nobel prize. Productive work, especially in disingenuous or less than ideal conditions, is much more respectable than studying rocks or discovering potential musical combinations.