This post started out so completely different than what is going to be offered here. I woke up this morning with the words of a friend ringing in my head.
“I am offended by people telling me that I have to be Politically Correct.”
So off I went on a research rabbit warren of Political Correctness. Why it was thought that we needed to be politically correct….did anyone see it as a negative thing….and more importantly, why?
And what a rabbit warren that turned out to be.
Through it all I found this odor, this stink of fear. Moral outrage, rudeness, and just plain fear. How do those go together? give me a minute to lay out how my head works here…..
I learned at an early age if I didn’t like something, I just didn’t do it. If I didn’t like something on television, I turned the channel until I did find something…and if I still didn’t find something that I liked I went and did something completely different. I didn’t rail to the gods of media about the injustice of it all. I didn’t have that feeling that I was entitled to something being on television at all times to entertain me.
I had choice that I could exercise at any given time.
That was pretty heady stuff for a kid. I could, and did choose my reading material, my music, the movies that I was interested in, the people I thought were influential to me. And along the way I found things I wasn’t interested in.
And in those things I didn’t like, I found that some of my friends DID like them. An example being I have a few friends who just love Rush Limbaugh…
I can’t stand him. But, that doesn’t change the fact that some of my friends do….and that is ok, because they are still good people. We just tend to disagree over this fact.
I love my Eldest Brother immensely. He is a man that I strive to be, but we almost came to blows over politics not that long ago in the kitchen of his house. This is when the aspect of people and what they fear raised its ugly head to me. His fear was of losing what he had earned and saved to others. His fear was of having to struggle…to need…to no longer be comfortable.
“Fear begins and ends with the desire to be secure; inward and outward security, with the desire to be certain, to have permanency. The continuity of permanence is sought in every direction, in virtue, in relationship, in action, in experience, in knowledge, in outward and inward things. To find security and be secure is the everlasting cry. It is this insistent demand that breeds fear.” JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI, On Fear
So my mind is circling around this universe of fear, political correctness, and moral outrage.
And I still have to wonder what the hell are we so damed afraid of? Haters gonna hate. Some of my closest friends are not going to read this because of a million different reasons. They will still be my friends. They are just exercising their right of choice. And isn’t that we need to do more of? Instead of lashing out to one another? Instead of trying to violently change another persons mind with rudeness, and insults? I don’t have to agree with you completely, and you definitely do not have to agree with me. But we do have to be able to get along in this world.
I would love to hear your comments on this.
