My cynicism is something I wear on my sleeve - I'm utterly and completely cynical about the world, about human beings and about society in general. I find it ridiculous to believe that humans have any purpose greater than biological reproduction and self preservation, and born from that genetic thrust, all human endeavors are just as shallow, dumb and meaningless. There is no difference between humans and animals but the amount of surface area our wrinkled brains allow us to have.

But logic lets us move beyond our primitive ancestry. Fine, but Economics and Politics are the worst examples of human institutions. Economics have fed us horrible products and devastated ecology and society for the sake of profit. Politicians are invariably corrupt no matter their ideals, and even if some idealist makes it to office, they're wrapped up in so much red tape that nothing changes.

(Yes, these are absolutes, I don't mean them, except, perhaps, in as much as anyone means anything in poetry which might be the most naked form of communication we have at our disposal, but never use.)

Art is the exception, it has the potential to hint at something that separates us from the animals, but art is only possible because of other, more basic human institutions - people needed society and food and shelter before they could begin scratching drawings into the walls and grunting out stories to each other. So Art feels like a privilege that we've earned on the back of work that we mock through the art, and would never do ourselves.

Yet, things are changing and improving. We care not just for our offspring but each other, because, in this modern day and age of planetwide networks, we see other human beings and interact with them, and stop from making judgments based on some blind concept of a person rather than an actual example of a person.

Institutions, however, are reckless, earning profit with no accountability, and they will bulldoze us all into the gray afterlife of the planet. Politics hand in hand with corporations will only escalate the rate of decay. Planetary death is imminent.

But such concepts are counter-profit, you need people to make money from, and people free enough to spend money in the market, so in that sense, corporations are at least better than political dictatorships which work to eliminate humanness. Corporations work instead, by exploiting humanness - greed, lust, self doubt, self pity and envy all work to their benefits, self image is easily and often targeted by advertising - and by advocating private ownership. Not a molecule of soil nor air left unowned by someone, every square inch of the planet, a commodity owned by a human being, and if you can't afford it, well, tough.

This. Sucks. Make. It. Better.

I wish I knew a way out. When I listen to songs or read books, when I see the natural, effortless, organic beauty of the planet, when I interact with human beings who are beautiful inside and out, I want to believe in some poetry written into this base and rough matter, but on the other side of the coin is the sound of mortar shells falling in crowded streets and butchered people screaming under the blows of machetes and homeless people huddling on the sidwalk as I walk by on my way to the next bar to spend an amount of money on a pleasure meal that would be enough for that man to recover himself, if only he wasn't an alcoholic.

Rather than volunteer to work in a hospital, we sign an e-protest. Rather than donate money to a clinic in Africa, we buy a new pair of shoes. Of course we do. I want my wife and I to be comfortable. To ignore her comfort would be a crime. No human being can withstand the horror without becoming numb or grasping on some pleasant artifact of the present to focus on. So, how then, can I pass judgment on others when I do nothing myself but sign the occasional check? When I buy A|X clothes and Apple products produced by the hands of child labor?

This sort of argument goes around forever. We're bound by economics and politics into a world that seldom has room for any poetry except as a quaint artifact of culture.

I would like to believe that my life wouldn't function without art. I know it can. I would miss it terribly, I would yearn for it constantly, but to go a day without food would be more terrible by far. To sleep just one night in the open without shelter or security would break many of us.

That's when jobs and money and politics and government step in, like the safe, old guards that they are, of basic, brutal living artifacts and say, "You can judge us all you like, but you cannot live without us."

And they're right.

There are small victories we can claim - and that is all any of us can achieve. Buying from smaller retailers, supporting ethical institutions and companies, conserving as much energy as we can, perhaps even living off our own grown materials, or coming together to form a community that can live in a self-sustained way outside of corporate control.

Yet, I cherish civilization, and art, and technology, but the cost is too high.

What, then, is best for us?

That we can support ourselves, we exclude the corporate interest and crimes from our lives, that we connect with our organic roots, perhaps then, we will see poetry in the way of our life - unburdened for once, and released from the blood of torn hands, and the screams of tormented animals, and a planet strip mined until there is nothing left.