Big thought for the day

I was strolling today through a market in Phenom Phen, and got to thinking about all the ancient and beautiful cultures there are in the world, and how the people in those cultures generally feel comfortable in their skins and their place in the world. Meanwhile our western culture thrashes about, grabbing snippets of custom and belief from a variety of sources, trying to build some semblance of meaning in our lives. While others are content to exist as themselves, we constantly feel the need to create ourselves, and in so doing we drift further and further from where we started, all the while trampling the people that we borrowed from. If there's a parasite in the world making things worse for all, it is us, it is western culture. We are the problem that we are so desperately trying to solve, it's just that we can't see the problem for what it is.

Anyway, that was my big thought for the day, but I couldn't dwell on it for too long. There's a lot to do today. I need to kidnap a political dissident in a couple hours, and then I'm probably going to be up all night torturing him. Gotta get back to the hotel and grab a little cat nap.