Have you ever read a story that completely changes how you see some aspect of the world? If not, I implore you to read as often as you can, as many books as you can. Don’t choose comfortable topics, either. Go way outside of your comfort zone. Choose stories that are taboo, that other people wouldn’t touch with a ten meter tent pole.
This kind of touches on what I was talking about yesterday when I explained how much of an odd ball I was as a child. Be weird, and I don’t mean “aren’t we crazy for wearing sandals to this wedding?! That’s us! Crazy!”
People like to be acceptably “crazy.” They like the kind of “crazy” that gets laughs and puts people at ease. There’s nothing wrong with that, but what they’re being is silly, and silly is great! It’s just not “crazy.”
I, on the other hand, am a fan of just going balls to the wall offsides at random times. Why? It’s not to hurt anyone, never to hurt anyone, but if I can make people feel at least a little uncomfortable, that’s good. People should feel uncomfortable every so often, especially when they encounter someone or something they’ve never dealt with before.
Everywhere I look, I see so much sameness. We’re streamlining our civilization to remove errant thought, and unpredictable human nature. I understand part of it. There’s a downside to humanity’s unpredictability, and it happens when an angry man who has armed himself decides he has to teach people a lesson. That is a tragedy, and it’s unnecessary. Humans don’t need more tragedy, because life is already a tragedy set in motion.
It’s just that we’re striking out words, and we’re shunning ideas without thinking what might happen if we banish them from our collective awareness. Even a well-intentioned action can cause irreparable harm to others.
Yes, lines are drawn, walls are built, borders are created, safe zones are established. I respect many of them, especially if they’re personal, but not all. Usually it’s the cultural walls I don’t mind smashing, or the legal lines I don’t mind sailing over, because those are often put in place to prevent change, to keep things the same. Reliable. Predictable. Safe.
When we allow too many lines, borders, and walls to be erected, we begin losing sight of the whole picture. We begin to see only in segments, in our own little spaces, and that sets a dangerous precedent. It creates shortsightedness, myopia, and a severe case of navel gazing that eventually leads people to avoid all differences in an effort to retain that safe zone of homogeneity.
“Variety is the spice of life,” a well worn cliche of a saying, but still true nonetheless. Take steps into mindsets you don’t understand. Examine closely the things you find off-putting. This not only builds up a tolerance for new ideas and experiences, but it also allows for empathy to grow. The more we learn about who or what we don’t understand, the better we can cope with that lack of understanding, and turn it into something beneficial for everyone.
The most dangerous book is the one you can’t read. Too many people are willing to let a lot of books lie fallow because they’re not willing to look at what’s inside because it scares them, because ideas make them afraid.
In the long run, it diminishes the human experience. It clouds our history, and dulls our senses.
In John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” Rosasharn (spoilers here for those who haven’t read the book to the end)…
…loses her baby due to malnutrition and the stresses of their remaining family going from place to place trying to find work. There is a scene towards the end, where a starving man is desperate and dying. Rosasharn, who has lost her baby, and yet has a body still capable of producing milk, feeds the dying man. She nurses him. Yep. If you’ve only seen the movie, surprise! Still, it’s a powerful metaphor that resonates the more you think about it.
There are people who have spent decades trying to get “The Grapes of Wrath” banned from bookshelves, especially in schools, something I am vehemently against.
William Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies” involves children stranded on an island, and de-evolving into primitive, baser versions of themselves; murdering, stealing, and fighting result in starvation, brutality, and torture. There are scenes where It is so full of shock and dismay one would wish to turn away, and yet I would consider us the worse for it if that book were removed from shelves because it offended people.
These books need to exist, because these ideas need to exist. I am a man who wants the world to be filled with love, kindness, peace, empathy, where no one, whether they be man, woman, or child, goes without food, shelter, clean water, and clothing, where everyone has an equal opportunity to grow and learn safely and happily.
The only way we’re going to do this is if we can conceive of terrible things that we would shy away from, or to not reject ideas that look offensive on the surface, because they may contain kernels of wisdom and awareness underneath that we need to digest.
I fear, I say as I type this long winded screed, that we’re scrubbing our humanity clean. That we think because we don’t like something that no one else should like it, that because we disapprove of some ideas, that those thoughts, those ideas should be abolished from our collective consciousness.
Words are powerful, they have meaning because words are the links to greater concepts. They allow us to dream, to imagine things we wouldn’t normally experience in our day to day lives. In cutting back our words, in forcing people to stay inside the lines out of some sense of civility, or propriety, we cut ourselves off at the knees.
Yeah, it may be weird, but it’s not weird to everyone. Sure, it may be taboo, but there are cultures that still practice it. True, it may be something no one believes any longer, but that doesn’t mean it should disappear from our memory. Be careful of wishing for a sanitized world, because in doing so you may get exactly what you wish, and in the worst possible way.
Allow for humanity. Allow for imperfections, and mistakes. Allow for idiocy, stupidity, and ignorance. Not that they should rule over our domain, but that they should be studied, understood, and their effects nullified by empathy, wisdom, and knowledge.
So when someone says “you shouldn’t look!” you should probably look right away, and in great detail, so that you know how to handle the unexpected, the unorthodox, the unknown. Step over boundaries so that you can experience as much of humanity as you can, so that you can be prepared to truly get a real understanding of what makes us tick. There’s no better way to do it, and in the process, you may just do something great that helps everyone in some fashion.
I’m not 100% certain where I was going with this, but it’s just something I wanted to talk about this morning, and now I have.