I am speaking of the United States. I can't speak of the psychic and emotional cost of living in other countries, since I don't live in any other country. Of course, I suppose that cost can also be great.
Why so exhausting? I will sum it up: the moral obliqueness of the general population, the lack of selflessness, the quest for mindless pleasure and distraction, the anti-intellectual self-congratulation -- and all in the context of trying to live a sane and morally centered life in the midst of a society engaged in a criminal war that results daily in horrific slaughter and chaos.
Who can not be drawn downward by the circus of prosecutorial scandal, both petty (Nancy Grace) and profound (Saddam Hussein), while no U.S. official is prosecuted for war crimes for the massive bombing of Indochina, for assassinations abroad, for use of white phosphorus in Iraq, for torture and the training of torturers abroad, for lies, for stealing from the poor to give to the rich, etc.?
Who can not want to cry at the indifference to one genocidal slaughter after another (Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur)?
Who will not rage at the massive mismanagement of this society that has eviscerated the educational system, made the health care system nearly arcane and unreceptive and uncaring, and trashed the industrial and social infrastructure of the society?
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
It is morally exhausting to live in America. To breathe its air of hypocrisy and cynicism and stubborn racism. To write this diary and sleep at night, along with all the criminals that torture, kill, mislead, steal, and lie, and then sleep well at night, who send their children to the best schools, who attend conferences, and premieres, and dances, and picnics, and PTA meetings, and angry meetings, and poetry readings, and movies, or watching TV, playing video games, drinking bottled water, writing Daily Kos diaries... an infinite regression to rant, and then start all over again.
Forgive me this spate of pessimism and despair, but sometimes, if you are a thoughtful and feeling human being, it truly is exhausting to be a person in these United States, circa 2006.
What God is he, writes laws of peace, & clothes him in a tempest
What pitying Angel lusts for tears, and fans himself with sighs
What crawling villain preaches abstinence & wraps himself
In fat of lambs? no more I follow, no more obedience pay.
-- America, A Prophecy