Everybody is stupid. Everybody is ugly. Everybody is lazy. Everybody is evil.
This idea that the small differences between you and your neighbor are equivalent to a moral failure on their part is perhaps the leading cause of loneliness. This “failure” might be intellectual, where everybody is stupid and you are intelligent. It could be aesthetic, where everybody is ugly and you are beautiful. It could be a failure of effort, where everybody is lazy and you are hardworking. But at its worst, it is spiritual: where everybody is evil and you are holy.
Before you know it, this way of looking at others forces you to isolate yourself from your immediate neighbor. You start to cultivate relationships with imaginary people instead: your favorite podcaster who drops “intelligent” analyses every week on YouTube; your favorite beauty influencer who shares hygiene tips daily on Instagram; your favorite self-help guru who shares their routine on TikTok; or your favorite pastor at church.
But the real people near you, the ones who are stupid, ugly, lazy, or corrupt only some of the time, get reduced to “the immoral.” They become the kind of people your perfect, albeit imaginary, friends have warned you to stay wary of. Slowly, you start to shrink socially. You close your circle to the very few you cannot do without: the ones you are responsible for, the ones who employ you, or those who hold a significant stake in the institutions you need.
But because those people aren’t perfect either, you realize that in order to keep them in your life, you too must now be stupid sometimes. You have to be ugly, lazy, and corrupt sometimes.
Then, you learn: your pastor is sexually molesting his underage sheep; your guru is addicted to steroids and amphetamines; your favorite influencer has had more than ten operations done on her face; and the “intelligent” podcaster is simply a Mossad agent.
That is when you gradually start to resent yourself, too. You must have been stupid to be fooled by these idiots. The resentment manifests as political purism or religious cultism. You become a hater on social media, a critic at work, and bitter at home. You are in denial of the simple fact that evil has won.
You’re not just evil. You are lazy, ugly, and very stupid.
But you cannot be an individual in society. Part of being a self is interacting with others. The burden of moral expectations you place on others is the same burden you place on yourself. Just as judging another for their laziness won’t make them hardworking, judging yourself for your ugliness won’t make you beautiful.
Immorality is part of the fabric that weaves this universe. Instead of fighting it, find the amount that completes your life and empathize with the rest of us as we find the right immorality to complete ours. If we knew how to live happily without immorality, don’t you think we would have?
We are just as stupid as you are.
You don’t need a moral code to live happily in this universe. You don’t have to worship any gods, follow any rules, or obey any laws. Just do what you want. I would advise, however, that you start by studying those laws to understand why they exist. To ignore them out of hubris is to claim you are smarter than the history that created your world. You are claiming to be smarter than your ancestors.
But do not forget that history is in the past. Your ancestors are dead. May their souls live eternally in peace, but they are dead. If they were the peak of knowing, they would be alive today. If they were the peak of beauty, we would still prefer their faces to ours. If hard work were a virtue, we would enjoy being slaves. If they are so happy in heaven, why do they need your worship? If they are so rich, why do they need your envy?
For most of you, what you actually want is no different from what your society or environment wants. You don't need to ignore poverty to save the climate, go to Mars, to look like Kim Kardashian or add a fiftieth car to your convoy. If you ignore poverty to build more industries than you need, the environment suffers. If you ignore poverty to optimize the advertising machine, your waste will be addiction. If you ignore poverty to look prettier than you already are, you’ll turn yourself into a robot. If you ignore poverty to work harder than you should, you’ll become a slave. If you ignore poverty to become a corrupt leader, you’ll lock yourself in a hell that looks like Epstein Island.
Poverty is not a lifestyle or a disease. Poverty is not a financial state. Poverty is a mindset. Unlike growth or stoicism, poverty is a social mindset. It is a lack of permission to love. It is the feeling that you need to be somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else, at a different time, just to deserve your own love. But loving yourself is the only love that exists. Because you are your family. You are your society. You are your environment. You are the universe. You are not separate from these things.
The Baganda say, “Obwaavu Lubaale.” And I wonder: why create gods you wouldn’t want to worship? And so Matovu commands you: “Kola lubaale gwonayagala.” (Make only the gods you’ll love). Poverty doesn’t thrive where there is love, and love doesn’t thrive where there is poverty.
“Okwagala bwebugaga kuba okwagala ye Lubaale. Okwagala bwebutonzi.” Only love is wisdom. Only love is wealth. Only love is beauty. Only love is God. Only love creates.
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