To begin with, what you are about to read almost certainly lacks wisdom and possibly sense, too. I am only a high schooler, after all, and an autist. I am moderately paranoid and definitely a critic, two things I genuinely fear. I am arrogant, stuck up, maliciously competitive, and I am altogether far too blasé about death. I am also a capital “R” Romantic (which, for reference, is the Romanticism that brought us Wagner, Shelly, and Ode to Joy, not the sort that makes breakfast in bed). All this is to say that I’m just self-aware enough to know when things I say and do are foolish, even if it’s after the fact. So, believe me when I say that there are things in this world that drive me up the wall.

Sometimes, I get the feeling that I am the only smart person in the world. My biggest gripes are with people’s hesitancy and complacency when it comes to many of the world’s issues. I feel great anger against a seemingly inexorable advance of the mediocre and subpar. How frustrating it is to feel alone or to feel things that are self-evident to you being totally overlooked. Take, for instance, seemingly simple facts about American life, such as the existence of the three fast food chains McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy’s. Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, do we need THREE unique places to get garbage food? Why? Why did we spend 30 billion dollars watching Marvel movies? Every single facet of my life is invaded by garbage. I couldn’t tell you how many Limu Emu ads I’ve had to watch and how many sexist, clickbait, exploitative pop-up ads I’ve had to see. My ears aren’t safe, either. How many tunes have been hijacked or songs ravaged to sell “medicine?”. I’ve watched for years this rot that’s growing through America; there are pills for everything, and we take pills for everything. It’s not just medicine; we have vapes and weed, not to mention energy drinks, cigarettes, and booze. I don’t mean to clutch pearls, but there should not be such an explosion in online gambling that a teenager notices.

Out of the world, there is always new evil. As an American, it pains me to see how uselessly rich and decadent we are. What does it say about us that we spend our hard-earned wages on the newest treat from Taco Bell instead of supporting a local business? What does it say about us that the most prosperous and wealthy people of all time are a vacuous, vulgar, cheap herd? Whilst people are dying because they drink and bathe in sewage, we cannot be bothered to dress up when we go outside or spit our used gum in the trash instead of the street. Does being an American mean I should spend a hundred thousand dollars on a car and ignore the homeless shooting up drugs while I walk by? Why are the leaders of the free world the fattest, most ignorant, most tasteless of all?

I am left to ponder what I can do with these feelings. I don’t want to sit and stew in the ways I am bombarded by the world. I think trying to do the best you can is all you can really do. When all is said and done, I’m a small man struggling against small problems, like an ant that can barely overcome the surface tension of a water droplet. I know enough to know that’s simply what the human experience is. I don’t believe in some lost golden age, and I don’t feel much nostalgia for anything. I only believe each person and age faces their own challenges, which are just big enough to impose states of equilibrium. Let me boast that I am weak and that my burden is light. There is something timelessly radical in that.

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