I used to think I was normal. Nerdy, sure, but normal. The more I observe the world around me, however, the more I realize that I am not normal. I don’t mean that in the cute, cheeky, Facebook “abnormal” way that people love to talk about.
What I mean is that my brain is clearly not fashioned, nor does it function, in the traditionally accepted sense for the culture in which I live. It’s not satisfied with pat answers. It doesn’t accept “because” as a reasonable conclusion to a question.
I’m more than a bit scared, to be honest. That’s actually an understatement, I’m sorry. I am terrified of the world around me, especially where I’m living now. Technology plus a mob mentality is a recipe for disaster, and I’m surrounded by the mob armed with instant access to every bit of information available, and minds only geared to accept certain kinds while outright rejecting anything else.
They are easily mollified by those in authority, whether that be political or economic authority, and distracted to the point where they require only a constant stream of stimulation to keep them in line and nodding their heads.
When people ask “why?,” are they asking to find the answer, or just to confirm what they already believe? A civilization can handle a small group of people behaving as the latter, but a whole nation filled with them? When everyone knows everything, there is no room to know anything other than what everyone thinks they know.
We’re heading into 2018, and I don’t know what to expect. My country has begun eschewing hard data in exchange for hard stances. We’re withdrawing our compassion, our kindness, our ability to think things out. We’re making snap judgments and holding fast to them whether they’re right or wrong. We’re calling moral and ethical things which are immoral and unethical because they hurt others, but we’re okay with that as long as it gets us what we want, and what we want is more mental stimulation. Not in the educational sense, but in a desperate attempt to remove ourselves from our own humanity.
We want to feel good without any requirements beyond pressing a button and paying a fee, and if you can’t pay the fee then you don’t deserve to feel good. That is what we are hurtling towards in the new year, and it frightens me. It frightens me because my brain doesn’t work that way. I do good for others because I want to, because I need to. When someone does something wrong, I want to know why because I wish to understand the reasoning behind what they’re doing, and what they’ve done. Not necessarily to judge them, but to prevent it from happening again.
I make mistakes, I see others make mistakes, and then I see hard judgments come down on them from others, people who were not involved and are not involved, but because they have a free voice they’re more than willing to condemn everyone for one mistake, or even a handful of mistakes. We’ve become a hard, unloving, unforgiving nation, and now we have a President, a judicial system, and a Congress, willing to enforce that hard, unyielding judgment upon everyone, and with little cause.
Is 2018 going to be the year we learn compassion and kindness? To give people the benefit of the doubt? Or will it be one more step further on our journey towards a land of greedy misanthropes, caring only for what people can do for them, rather than realizing what we do to one person we do to all people?
With our leadership choosing profit over all else, and our national conversation being more of a shouting match between two fools trapped in quicksand, each of them blaming the other, I simply do not know.
The water level’s rising, folks, and we don’t wish to move. What do we do? Or are you also among those who believe we’ll be fine, it’s none of our business, and that’s all you need to know?