I understand people maybe too well and yet not enough
Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, America - USA, Comparative Analysis and Analogic Analysis, Creating Solutions for America
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It is obvious that time is important That seems to me it is a given fact yet many people do not look at it that way. Or, perhaps each of us find a different approach to our use of time and its importance in our lives.
In one sense, I understand people will do certain things in certain ways they find either useful or appropriate from the standpoint of their experience and learned concepts of judgment. That is a fact.
It means in practice, that each person will make many series of choices based on those judgments whether they are truly appropriate or not. And, make those judgments for their choices even where new information may be needed.
That is the part I don’t understand and don’t want to understand anymore either. When people around me choose to use their time as if it is not precious, and as if nothing beyond what they knew sometime long ago about things can be the only way to look at it even now – I just shake my head and try to ignore it.
It is a futile argument to have with them. They are not going to update their files, no matter what I say or show them. But, I don’t understand why they can afford to be that way. I can’t. And, there is nothing comforting to me when I find myself doing it either.
When I’m closed minded and base everything on facts from some past that does not even begin to apply to today, it is a loss and a liability – not an asset for me. But, others around me do not look at it that way for themselves and their own choices.
And, they don’t believe it is important to use their time in ways that will help to understand how things are today and what works, what doesn’t, how it can be done now, and other ways of looking at it (whatever “it” is).
In a quick anecdote, some friends and family members in my world only watch old tv shows from the 70’s, maybe 80’s and before. That is their source of continuing information about what the world is like, what people are like and what attitudes, choices and perspectives are appropriate to use about situations and things – yet, how our daily lives and our world has changed since then.
It isn’t that everything from those tv shows is wrong and they are certainly still entertaining as part of the entertainment we feed ourselves daily, but to have only that for information is dangerous.
Many beliefs from that time have changed, many facts have changed and many attitudes about what is appropriate and what is not, have changed since those shows were made. They are a reflection of a different time and a different society entirely.
So, where that is the only information about what is normal, accepted and appropriate, or commonly believed by “everyone” – as a basis of judgment about situations, people and actions or behaviors in situations today, it can be disastrous and make everything more difficult both for the person and those around them including me.
People in my life who have or who are using these old tv shows on a constant streaming basis as their primary or only source of information, continue to shock me in the level of closed-mindedness they use commonly and overtly in their everyday lives. It is amazing that it has not gotten them killed to be honest.
It certainly makes everything that is different today about our daily lives into a source of aggravation for them, and disdain, and contempt and vicious attacks on others to make it like it “should be”, from a time that doesn’t exist anymore.
A great “for instance” is the social premise that a phone should not be called nor answered at the dinner table where in the picture obvious from old tv sitcoms, the family sits in their entirety around a table with proper plates, and dinner served by Mom.
Yet today, if a text or iPhone isn’t answered at the dinner table which is likely the coffee table in the living room or at some restaurant, a host of difficulties can arise from losing a job, to losing a business opportunity, to losing a friend’s trust, to being shamed and bullied on Facebook because you were too rude and uppity to answer your damn phone or text.
It has changed socially to become rude not to answer because technology has made it possible for that phone to be ever present and everybody knows it. That is not going to be the case in an old tv drama, sitcom or social information from thirty or forty years ago.
The people whose sole information on social conventions, behavior and choices, how to think about things and what is appropriate, comes from those old tv shows will read that phone call during dinnertime as an insult to whoever cooked the food, an infinite insult to the people gathered to eat together, a lack of caring on the part of anyone who takes such a call, and a slap in the face to the family or the friendship in general.
It is a shame to watch actions and choices unfold based on that interpretation when it is so hopelessly out of date and inappropriate to today’s facts in nearly every way possible. But that same person reacting to the situation based upon facts that are out of date, is also the least likely to want to do anything to change the way they look at it.
And, tomorrow and the next day, they will continue to absorb those old tv sitcoms and dramas for agreement with the way they see things and support their own aggravation based on those interpretations of things – based upon how things were at the time when those shows were made and only in the ways it is shown on those tv shows.
The writers of tv shows were not intending to be the voice of knowledge and information when they did their jobs. The views of life and facts given by those shows were never intended to be absolutely accurate in any sense and certainly portray only a fraction of life and thought about social mores at the time.
In the real world, every family’s lifestyle was being played out in a vast array of differences from what the tv world could or would portray for the mainstream audiences. What the appropriate way to consider anything would be in real life and the facts surrounding it, its interpretations and social conventions – would have to be different in many ways to its portrayal for any show whether television, cable, news or movies, simply because of the medium.
So, the part I don’t understand about people around me that use old tv shows as their only information source is why don’t they know it isn’t the same information as what is used and needed in everyday life – even then and certainly, now.
And, how this has anything to do with the importance of time? Think about it – lost in translations of how things should be – from a time period that no longer exists, that was portrayed for a tv show as an entertaining slice of something which didn’t even exist that way in the real world then? And to get aggravated, combative and abusive to everyone, everything and anytime today’s facts and social conventions are viewed through those tv sitcoms as textbooks for judging what is what today?
Hmmm, yes – that is a waste of time that is inherently evil no matter who does it.
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When decadence is honored
And good is not
When sadistic tyrants are given feasts and worship
But the fair and honest are not
When those who fight for what’s right
Are treated like lepers rather than heroes
When decency and tolerance
Are treated like sins and shunned
Then what can you really expect our children to do?
I wrote this the other day and then got to thinking about it. Probably, the greater problem is that every group believes a little differently or a lot differently about what is right, what is decency and tolerance, what is worth accepting from leaders or not.
During the Republican administrations that have run our nation for the 30 some odd years before President Obama came into office and have run most states across the US even during his administration, it was said that single women with children and generally, the poor were the enemy of our nation’s good. But at the same time, they feted and worshiped the very tyrants of the world who made Satan himself look good compared to their sadistic torture and massive destruction of people’s lives. They were given the best of the best in Washington, DC and New York, offered billions – sometimes even trillions of dollars in cash, grants, payments, goods, military hardware and training, business grants, economic and educational grants and funding ad infinitum to serve their public good (which often they were known to pocket instead.)
It didn’t matter that they were among the most horrific and sadistic people of any period in humanity’s history. It didn’t matter that they diverted the funds, used the resources to destroy, maim and decimate entire parts of their own populations and that of their neighbors, nor did it matter that they used those funds to sponsor terrorism AND solid gold toilets for their own shitty asses. Our leaders in every respect treated those nightmares of humanity with our taxpayer dollars as if the keys to our treasury belonged to them and not us. At the same time, every single mother and child in this nation was told that she was the enemy of the United States and the reason for its ruin. Even as Wall Street brokerage houses were perpetrating the most decadence seen in history since Nero and Caligula.
Now, the Republicans want us to go back to that because to them – it was all so “perfect” and served the United States better than this today or anything else in their estimation. It is insane.
But can I see it from their point of view – or do I want to? Maybe. Is it the set of linear thinking that said to each policy maker, conservative thinktank member and politician that these tyrants could serve our national needs for petroleum or mining resources or a regional spot to land our planes, so therefore, give them anything they want and treat them as heroes and saints regardless of the facts to the contrary so horrifically? Maybe.
Is it that Republicans though every single woman and her children was bleeding the system rather than able to make a contribution to it by offering some significant weapon, financial powerhouse or needed resource? Was it that simple?
I don’t know – but it makes me sick thinking about it.