The Jonathan Swift Vantage Point

Seeing the world from the Swift vantage point clashes with one's chance for happiness. Human nature is rather sordid, and we often come up short. There is so much craziness, game-playing, needless suffering, cruelty, sickness and self-destructiveness that obsessing about what is wrong can corrode one's soul to the point that darkness and corruption is all that one purviews.

Where we encounter darkness, we must accept that it exists and is a large part of what is inside us, as well as what is going on up and down the street where we live.

There is also light, the spirit of God radiating out to shed light on the stygian world, to brighten and cleanse it.

We cannot eradicate the darkness, but we can make life livable, enjoyable, even emerging at the end of our lives as victors. We can lead classy lives. We can adopt the right values, and make good choices. We can reign in our group connections, and conform mostly to our own wills instead. We can engage in right living, and shed wrong living.

All these steps are ameliorative.