There’s a mountain near my house which I occasionally like to hike around. As you might expect, you often run into various people doing the same thing. The weird thing is, were I to encounter these people walking around the neighborhood, I wouldn’t feel any need to acknowledge them, but out in nature, you feel this need to say hi.

The problem is that often people don’t return your hello. Or they return it with a lesser, inferior version of your greeting. Like you say, “Hello,” and they say, “Mmm.” Or you say, “Hi,” and they just give you a little curt nod. You want to grab them by the throat and say, “Look you dick fucker, ‘mmm’ is not equal to ‘hello’! Do you think you’re better than me or something!?”

The result of all this is that when I now see someone coming I question whether I should even acknowledge them at all. Because of being poorly greeted by all those people in the past, I am now becoming like them. And thus society is slipping into the abyss of evil.