I meant superficial not “surface people”. HA! Shows how unsmarticle I am.
In my previous post entitled “Surface People pt. I (a WiSH rambling digression)”, I
truly rambled. The approach I wanted to take with this blog was one where I
tried to capitalize on my lack of in-depth knowledge. Pretty stupid huh?
Well here is the thing. I am opinionated, but it is hard to write on anything
compellingly if you have very little knowledge about it. I really dislike a lot
of the things that are going on in society and when I see how the general
public can be so easily duped by the media, I wanted to speak on that without
being clouded with the in-depth information that people who take the time to
learn about a specific person or topic would be bogged down in.
It seemed… and still seems… to make some sort of sense to me. But I also think
I am rationalizing my laziness. I mean, look how long it is between each of my
posts. I hope to do better.
Now having said all of that, I plan to do a bit more writing and actual research to
accompany it. HA!
Why I am writing right now is because I had a discussion with a couple of friends
of mine about our government, all of the craziness going on in the world ( the
Japan crisis, Egypt, our President, etc.) and how things are perceived.
I still stand firmly by the superficial concept. I truly believe that we are overly
influenced (and I feel that I am understating this) by the media. We have a
tendency to watch just enough TV so that we can form an opinion which is
largely based on what others think and realities that are presented to us by
the collective media.
Take for instance political elections. Not only do we get a ton of info about
candidates from their campaign ads, we allow candidates to slander another
candidate to improve their own standing with us.
If a candidate was really worth a vote, they wouldn’t have to point out all of the
shortcomings of another candidate. They could simply talk about their own achievements.
Even better, talk about what they plan to do for us, the general public, and
explain how they will do things and the ramifications of their strategy.
But, alas, we are all lazy. Now some of you will be offended and want to say that
you work very hard for your family and that you are a good person and so on.
And I am not saying otherwise. I guess the term “lazy” is the
problem. Here is what I think I should say;
One big problem I see with our world (not just our American society) is how
overwhelmed we all are. So I don’t particularly blame the average citizen, BUT
we also need to take responsibility for our actions. Oops sorry… I neglected
to say who I blame.
Now I have thought and re-thought about this before I write it so I am somewhat
concerned about what might happen to me when I start this ball rolling, but so
what? Life is kinda hinky for us all right now anyway.
What the government does is make it really hard for us to survive without relying on
government assistance of some sort. We look for ways that the government can
make things easier or outright solve our problems. And there are SO MANY
REASONS why it seems okay; because of the way we might have been raised and our
personal set of Family values, our spiritual, or lack of spiritual, belief, to
name a few.
And now we are, sort of, forced to make decisions based on what our TV, Music,
Movies and the Enquirer tells us is going on around us.
I have three daughters who I have neglected and now I would love to make up for
mistakes I have made as a Father. So I spend time working and don’t really have
time to even speak to another human being outside of my work. So when I get
information I don’t always fact-check and I tend to base decisions on
soundbites and headlines and whatever CNN finds most significant at any given
moment. I really don’t have any idea what is going on in Japan besides there
were earthquakes, a tsunami and A LOT of radioactivity EVERYWHERE. I am
concerned about the citizens and want to send money and do what I can, but how
many of us are going to put this situation ahead of our day to day concerns and
responsibilities?
I don’t consider myself lazy, but I know that I could make more of an effort in places, but the truth is that this is virtually impossible.
So what happens is we make decisions that are good decisions for our families and
personal lives and feel guilty about not being able to do more in other places
that are suffering and end up letting our government handle that situation and
feel like we did our part as Americans.
Now I think I have given us all something to ponder. I will get back to you on this later today. I am spending a bit of time to formulate my thoughts and the discussion my friends and I had. more later… seriously….really…