Our Own Petard

Anger, frustration, disappointment and defensiveness… where do these emotions come from? I have an inkling of an idea but that is all it truly is… an idea. See, I’m not a brain doctor, or a social expert or even a human relations board certified mentalist. Nope, I’m just an observer of human behavior and interactions.

            A voyeur so to speak. For example, if I go to the mall, airport, park or even at either one of my jobs, if I’m not careful, I end up watching people for endless hours. Usually it starts of innocently enough, just wondering where they are coming from, where they are going, what they are buying and if they are truly happy. Then, my maniac gets loose from his chains and all sorts of guttural thoughts come to mind. Is that man cheating on his wife with that woman? Has that kid just stolen something from that store? Does that young girls parents know she is not at school in the middle of the day and that she is at the mall with someone who is at least twenty years her senior?

            Yeah, and those are just the light thoughts. What I don’t see is a young couple out shopping for items for their first apartment. Or the fact that this young kid just finished his shift at the store he is currently employed at or even that the man is taking his daughter our shopping for her birthday and also to celebrate that she is an honor roll student. Nope, my head goes right to the dark side of human nature. Which can suck in life. Always seeing the bad and fighting to see the good.

            I could blame television and social media. It would be easy. After all, if any of you ever sit at home during the day and flip through the endless channels that are available to us, you will see what I mean. Steve Wilkos, Oprah, Maury Povich, Whatever-Court, any reality show and the news is enough to drive you to the dark side and call Emperor Palpatine your daddy. However, if like me, you get disgusted and try to find something on the internet to watch, like youtube videos or shows on demand, it just gets worse. I don’t understand how a video with Neil DeGrasse Tyson talking to congress on space exploration only has a few hundred thousand views and some idiot teenagers fighting in a school parking lot over something inane has over two million views.

            Actually, that’s a lie, I do understand why. It’s because at our core, as human animals, we would rather see conflict and ass-whooping over trying to educate ourselves and learn something that could be helpful to our future existence. Which is why I suppose I avoid popular shows on the black box and on the internet.

            I find myself listening to debates between creationists and atheists or watching informative videos or programs based on the advancement of the human race. No, I don’t watch cat videos, or fight videos and I try my damndest to not watch any reality based programming. It’s not easy, simply because there are times when people in my life are watching them and I can’t avoid them. When this happens, I usually end up just replaying what I’ve heard or seen on an educational podcast or video and replay the information in my head and try to understand a deeper meaning to what was said.

            I suppose my point to this so far is, we, as a human race, as americans, end up taking our cue from what we input into our own brain. If we see on television or internet men and women fighting and bickering over trivial bullshit even though they are not married and the woman has four kids from three different daddies and the man has five kids from four different women yet they both expect each other to be faithful to each other seems like a contradiction in human intelligence. After all, how can you expect someone to live up to your expectations even though you can’t live up to those expectations yourself? You can’t. And I’m sure I could look up on the internet the probability numbers on this situation, but I don’t want to. Because it just makes my head hurt and my heart ache for our future.

            Which brings me to my initial point, where does all the strife come from? I’d like to be able to just point to the media and blame them, but I can’t. Simply because the media only broadcasts what is consumed by the public. If the public likes to watch idiots fight on television over paternity tests or misdemeanor damaged property, then they’ll give it to them. If the public wants to watch half naked self-proclaimed celebrities argue the trivialities over who has the best smelling vagina, then so be it. But be warned media, I won’t partake. Sure, I’ll eventually get the information through the social networks weeks, months and sometimes years later, but to expect me to stay current on the comings and goings of the shenanigans of the media decreed kings and queens of the world at whatever moment they feel. Also, these pronounced rulers of pop culture seem to change not just on a daily basis but on an hourly basis as well. Which even writing about gives me a migraine.

            This is the crux of my problem. You see, I believe that this is where most of all the bad shit in life comes from. Not the media, they are just corporations trying to make money. Which they do through commercial sales. The only way to get good commercial sales is by showing the numbers of the people watching the programming they have. Which means, the corporations are subject to the wants and desires of the general public. Which means, we, as media consumers actually have the power to improve what we watch and what is programmed for us on not just the airwaves but also the internet. I have little faith in the American general public though. It seems they, as a whole, more than relish in the travails of the trivial.

            So, when I feel angry, frustrated, defensive or even insulted, it would be easy for me to point the finger at the media but I’d be pointing to the wrong culprit. The true culprit is the wonderful men and women of this country I served to protect and serve not just in the united states military but also as an employee of a law enforcement agency. For they are the true guilty party.

            Guilty in the fact that they demand to see people more devoid of humanity than they themselves are, just so they can feel better about their lives and how insecure in their positions they are. They thrive on the angst and frustration of people they deem less intelligent, less righteous and even less moral than they are, and those feelings in turn become a spark for their own lack of self-control when a situation comes up where they should act level headed and sane. Nope, they shelve those thoughts and dive head long into an empty pool of disaster because that is what they have seen and learned from. They end up imitating the information they themselves have demanded. Then, when the outcome is more explosive than what they thought it should be, and they are surprised… I laugh, because I know, they are only responsible for their own actions by their own actions because of their own actions.

            Have a great week.