My attempt at veracity

It isn't always easy to be honest with others, but it's a far more difficult thing to be honest with oneself. Some days however, you get just the right brain chemistry going to be able to accept it all. Such is today for me. I am looking back on my previous posts realizing how much I have been pontificating and how little I have actually been expressing of who I am. What incites me to make my assertions of truth is to see people in recent history making the same mistakes over and over again, all the while claiming to have progressed so far. "To be rational is so glorious a thing, that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title.". John Locke said that, and I feel that it pretty much sums up the arrogance of western thought. I can't help but believe that most people are pretty decent, and if they're not then it's usually easy to see why that is too. Perhaps I'm just a fool for hoping that some day we are going to reach a point when rationalism or altruism trumps such emotions as fear, selfishness and greed as the primary motivation for peoples actions. Maybe I should just accept the verdict of the great Buddha that suffering is inevitable as long as there is desire. It all just seems completely self imposed through stupidity and ignorance. It's hard for me to watch so many people resort to drugs and alcohol to get them through each day. There is nothing wrong with drugs as a recreational tool, but when we need them every day just to keep going, that's something different. What are we coming to when the only reason we voluntarily socialize anymore is just to get intoxicated? Am I such a ridiculous idealist in thinking that humans should be capable of more? I'm sorry, rhetorical questions are about as useful as pontificating. All I'm trying to say here is that I think we could be so very happy if only we had the ability to discipline our collective behavior. I don't like the sort of top down authoritarian way that the communists tried to do it, it must be organic to my thinking to have any chance of success. But once again, I must concede that such high minded hopes for our world are just my way of coping with this rambling symphony of sadness we call a country.