Innocuity Takes Many Forms

     “You remember that Vonnegut book about making everyone equal, so as not to make anyone feel inferior? Had nothing to do with talent or ones inclination to work hard to achieve whatever one believed to be your calling. It had to do with digressing, not progressing. 

    Do you realize if we were all the same, how boring life and those in the parade would be? And that is what this new edict is really all about, an effort to distill the political and social split between people, attempting to neuter an entire society. 

    The concept of bipartisanism implies a contribution from each side, in an effort to reach an acceptable solution to a question shared by all. When one or both participants refuse to participate it leaves a stagnant realm that is conducive to decay rather than a regenerative posture.

    Differences, rather than being recognized as contributions to a whole and a better society, have been co-opted to benefit not those that recognize that everyone, no matter their status, contributes to the betterment of society, whether recognized immediately or not, but rather an impediment to personal worth. Those that see personal advantage in using differences to install conflict between opposing idealisms rather than extracting the best from each, are those who wear the blinders that narrow possibility and encourage disfunction for personal gain.

    When you remove the name applied to something, an idea, person, object, you take away the essence attributed to the principle of the thought, person, or object. A stop sign becomes no longer a command, but a suggestion, open to speculation and subjectivity. Both of which do nothing but increase the tension between idealisms. It’s similar to asking a room full of people if they are good drivers. The majority will raise their hands proclaiming they are not only good drivers, but the best. When asked why they perceive themselves to be the best, they will tell you, “Because everyone else is worse.” 

    The same can be said for any subject placed before people and asked to define the purpose, and how it’s relevant to society as a whole. People lie to themselves so often to justify their assumptions; they begin to believe repetitive unsubstantiated claims that affirm their beliefs. 

People are drawn to others similar in belief to themselves, moths to a flame. We feed each other’s insecurities, because it is easier than thinking about the responsibility each of us has for believing what is best for us collectively, and not just personally. We no longer ask ourselves where the idealism we hold to be the only truth came from. Was it our decision based on facts checked by varying sources, or the conclusion the result of applying those facts to a situation, or have we adopted a belief for expediency and acceptance of the one offering their vision of utopia.

    “Woah champ; don’t go getting yourself an aneurism. That is what this madness is all about. People looking for a reason to unload on anyone, everyone, so they don’t have to take responsibility for themselves or their actions. It is the group mentality that makes you forget that life is short and you shouldn’t waste it on nonsense that you don’t know anything about, therefore taking another’s opinions hostage. All it gets you is tied up in knots, and you end up doing something you’ll later regret. It takes courage to build something. It takes only suspicion and apathy to tear it down.”

    I knew he was right. Getting angry over something that holds little interest when you are taking your last breath, seems like a waste of what precious time we have, and yet we sell ourselves out for a cause we haven’t taken the time to understand, because it is convenient. Causes designed to extract judgement based on fear of an unknown, rather than on fact, attempt to exploit the weakness in ourselves, the need to belong.

    We are social animals that require companionship to thrive. The latest pandemic has shown the isolation has a deleterious affect on us because our ability to validate our beliefs has been limited, if not totally muted. When our interaction is limited, our outlook is diminished by the lack of exposure to ideas that differ from our own, and become a threat to our beliefs. Our beliefs can only be strengthened when we are forced to defend them. The challenge causes us to examine our logic and fortify our beliefs with fact not innuendo. 

    Fear and chaos are essential elements in the shell game we are immersed in. As long as we continue to be drawn into the circle of confusion, those creating the distraction are free to manipulate the message and keep varied factions from concentrating their efforts on what is the best interest of everyone not just the pollical and economic power of those promoting the division.

    Until we realize that each person deserves the same opportunity to express their beliefs without fear of repercussion, we will remain on the edge of a battle field planning for war, rather than preparing to listen and exchange solutions that will benefit what we refer to, as the human condition.

    I just don’t get it! The contradictions in what we claim to believe, and the actions that spill on to society and others because of them, create an atmosphere of mistrust and disregard for opposing views, and the likelihood ideas with collective merit, will be ignored.

    Abortion, a contentious issue; you are either for a person’s right to determine for themselves what is in their own best interest, or are one that believes it is not a personal decision to make, but a social and moral one endorsed by God. But when it comes to vaccines or gun rights, those who oppose personal freedom on the reproductive front, demand they have the right to defy social edicts meant to protect the society at large. Two very different interpretations of the same ethical and moral imperative.

    An individual’s choices, no matter the ethical or moral constraints, is being subjected to legal challenge by the same entities that decry the abuse of individual freedom. The state response to individual freedom seems to have taken on a selective application depending upon who believes they have control of authority, and therefore who they should pledge allegiance to.

    No one however is talking about the inability of a planet, an environment, to support nine billion people. We therefore find ourselves in a situation where consumption, touted as essential to maintain most economies, is promoted as a necessity if populations are to propel themselves to higher standards of living. The higher standard of course is the impetus for a failing environmental system which maintains all life. We are in fact trading prosperity, dependent upon consumption, for the ability to sustain future generations. Sustainability would mean acceptance of a renewable standard equitable for all.

    I don’t get how, in the span of seventy-five years, societies have gone from congruous units of human spirits to individual autonomies at any cost. The philosophy of self-sacrifice for the greater good has become an endeavor of ridicule. “If there is nothing in it for me, why should I care,” a sentiment only too broadly endorsed by those who claim to look after the interests of society as a whole, while usurping the bequeathed power to benefit only themselves.

    I just don’t get how democracy, dependent upon the will of the majority of people has been subverted to enlist only the will of those in a powerful minority, a dichotomy of definitions. The contradictions only further exemplify the difference between the meaning of majority rule and minority indifference to the assumption that equality must be tempered, by those that control the system.

    I just don’t get how elected leaders, hired by the citizenry, willfully declare their only responsibility in governance, is to obstruct anything and everything they claim to not support in our name, even when they have no alternative measures to inoculate an idealism that benefits those they claim to represent. When they abandon ship they should at least have the decency to take the last boat, not the first.

    I just don’t get how claiming an election was stolen, while participating in the act of subversion to overthrow the system you claim to represent, is not only hypocritical, but taxes the idealism behind the supposition of a democracy.

    I just don’t get how those who are prepared to circumvent the law by any means to attain what their perception of representation is, plan to operate in a system they have created, when the power shifts, and it always does.

    “Pendulums swing as pendulums do.” You may go to sleep on one side of the bed, but wake up on the other. To believe that there is only one right philosophy for life, is not only arrogant and dangerous for all concerned, but especially for those who are willing to abandon their beliefs to those, who although knighted to represent the totality of those who elected them, have decided in their wisdom that would be dangerous, and alternate views, although designed by a democratic system to illicit debate, are no longer allowed.

Suppose you believe an authoritarian system is in your best interest as it insures an application of your beliefs across the society. The idea is encouraging until you appreciate the historic significance of autocracies. They tend to change like the seasons. You have to ask yourself if when power shifts, and you find yourself with no recourse but submission or the permanent solution, the wrong end of the rope, will your entrenched values seek a more democratic means of justification. 

    I don’t get how a democratic system, birthed on the idealism of shared beliefs, which are debated in the necessity of finding a solution that benefits all people, not just those who agree with you, has been removed from the system. 

    I don’t get how we continue to hire people to represent us who do little more than represent themselves and their own interests, and do so by soliciting the aid of those who believe as they do, that there is only one right answer, and it is the one they promote at any cost.

    “I say yes, you say no! I say high, you say low! 

    I don’t have all the answers, possibly none, but until we adhere to the concept of democracy, based on the exchange of ideas by the inclusion of all for the betterment of everyone, we are fated for the destruction promised by Humpty Dumpty and All the Kings Men, and we won’t be able to put Humpty together again, after the fall.