Can it really be a surprise? This system is so filled with mixed values that any moral compass at all becomes a burden like a cross borne. The most immediate example that comes to me is the Logan Paul/KSI drama, plastered in unison across the front pages of the internet. Hyper-sensationalized celebrities who exemplify everything that would've been considered immoral in bygone eras. Logan's business acumen is honed, it seems, or at least looking on the bright side he's successful in his endeavors, creating a self-sanctifying brand. But his character is that of a stupid and inconsiderate miscreant, and yet, he's represented as a valuable contributor to society, as evidenced by his vindication and wealth.

Movies that portray unrealistic human interaction across the spectrum while arresting disbelief create worldviews that are equally disruptive. Our stupid ape brains absorb it, regardless of the divisions our higher processes might place on it. It's why horror movies can elicit their jump scares, why sad moments play the heart strings, and fictionalized steam triggers sexual response. It's all in there, and while we might deride it as fiction, and while that might detract from cross comparison to reality, it still possesses a weighted influence on each and every person's conception of reality, and they adjust their expectations accordingly.

And likewise, even in the landscape of reality, people are altering and editing their social personas with social media. Diligently rehearsed and masterfully placed. Photographs of perfection and all the words that follow, flawless relationships and airbrushed skin. Exotic vacations, and cars, with all the invisible debt that follows. All the trauma that comes alongside maintaining the smoke and mirrors of an expertly crafted life designed to erect some caricature of what we're supposed to be. How we're supposed to live.

Peers, parents, and our internal selves. Society at large. There is no union between a value system any more, and while I believe in diversity for the sake of evolutionary pressure there is no reason to except such a catastrophic schism from blame in matters like this. I won't play at the idea we need religion to survive, but I will say this: at least we had a value system that could machinistically produce a reasonably predictable environment. In the here and now everything comes with some unreasonably tumultuous hurtles, unpredictable even in the best of circumstances. Even were we to crawl back into the trenches of religion, the church is just as confused. It seems now status is god, in the church of fame.

Politics incite vitriol and divide us, first by wont and then by class. The binds of unified labor were dissolved decades ago. The poor and the middle class draw closer and closer as the ascension of the wealthy create an insurmountable gap. A continuum of exposure to the extremes of the world, the best in class in product and producer. Athletes and artists paraded around the facets of the internet, and where, and who is one left to compare themselves to? Everyone must aspire to the apex, don't you know? You're either a saint or a sinner, but there is no holy man in between. And even seditious breaths whisper at the foot of sainthood.

And everyone caught in between all this has only enough control to pound their fists, or a bottle, or a needle, or a bowl.