ME FIRST - TOTALLY IN YOUR FACE

People are becoming very excessive in expressing their emotions these days. No longer can you usually depend on the exercise of common sense as you move through your day. Uninhibited self expression seems to be what we can expect, and must accept, wherever we go in public. Our language now includes many new words and phrases to reflect a changing reality of more emotionalism, anger and fatalistic acceptance.*

For example, Road Rage is now a commonly understood expression of anger by drivers. The warning 'Don't even go there' warns those around you that they are asking for an argument if they pursue a subject with you. In fact some of us may be 'cruising for a bruising' and could experience physical violence if we persist. 

Last year, this seemed sometimes to result in gun violence, serious injury or death. We began to wonder whether any of us might find ourselves 'caught in the crossfire' or be attacked if we accidentally antagonized someone. As a result, you may have the lowest overall crime rates in decades, but the violent nature of the crimes that are committed, makes them popular and appealing to a media, who's motto is 'if it bleeds, it leads'.  

Meanwhile, less violently thankfully, but somewhat fatalistically perhaps, 'it is what it is' now is said easily and often. This indicates a tacit acceptance, resignation even, that nothing is expected to change about an issue. Basically 'it is what it is'...so 'suck it up' and accept it. You can also 'knock yourself out'. This tells the other person that you know that whatever you say they will do what they want anyway. Unfortunately, this sometimes involves forcing those around them out of their way.

I guess more people are feeling that it is 'easier to ask forgiveness than permission'. Besides they want it, need it, gotta have it, and are gonna have it. Probably they feel they 'deserve' it. After all, 'life is short', unfair, 'everyone else is doing it' and 'you only live once'. **

In view of all this self expression, much of the above being in anger, I need to ask how did our relations with each other deteriorate to this point? Is all of this emotionalism and 'entitlement' here to stay? Must we really be made to feel everyone's 'pain'? Or do we just shut out the 'noise' coming at us and keep moving.

Let's face it, 'too much information' is not just telling people that they are telling us more than we would ever want to know about something; it is also trying to let them know that we really don't want to know any more of the details. We are imploring them to 'spare me' from hearing about this. This is especially true when someone, in a public place, seems to either not care or perhaps wants everyone within hearing range to hear whatever they are talking about today.

At least with a 'Reality Show' on the media, the people who choose to broadcast details of their lives, or play act a script purporting to do so, gives you a chance to switch it off. I wish that in 'real life', like in the movie 'Click' that you could postpone or better yet, shut off the other people around us. This applies  especially to the strangers among us who seem to have an endless need to 'share' their experiences with anyone within earshot. Fat chance.***

NOTE: See also - From 2013:  *ACTING UP AND ACTING OUT (2013) and

                                                  **LIFE IS NOT TOO SHORT and

                                                  ***UNREAL REALITY.

                             

PICK A BETTER COUNTRY (FROM 2012)

Sadly the last century's horrific death tolls seem not to have taught us two basic principles that can carry us peacefully through most of our lives: Do what you are able to do for yourself and Mind your own Business. Nevertheless, through some quirk or inherent problem in the human psyche, Totalitarianism of some type seems to occur perhaps as often as once a generation. 

As I have stated before, the isms of the past century did not hold much appeal for me. We were always aware that our grandparents homeland was 'a prison' to millions, who were not as lucky as we were to have left before the Communists so ably demonstrated what losing your freedom really meant. (See also my blog of 10/21/2011 Some comments about the 'isms' that ravaged the 20th Century)

Instead, of a Berlin Wall to keep us in, two generations of my family were happy to be in a new country that did not need to prevent people from leaving. In fact, instead we lived in Canada, where someday we might, like the United States, have to somehow try and keep people out.

As Winston Churchill once said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” My thinking exactly.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, later President of the United States, as Commanding General of the Allied Forces, made certain that hundreds of photographs were taken of the Concentration Camps in Germany and othe parts of Europe. He stated that without this, someday someone would deny it ever happened. How quickly this became reality. 

If people would consider that our system may be the least worst one in history, they would perhaps appreciate more what our country has accomplished in its brief history. Today's trend of trying to 'interpret' history to suit current popular sentiments, deprives us of understanding the times during which the events occurred.

A book such as "Eyewitnesses to History" related the accounts of people who were present when various historical events occured. For example, the Hindenburg Explosion in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937.

Keeping contemporary records and studying history as it was written, seems an excellent way for us to record and share events with both present, and perhaps more importantly, future generations.  They would soon learn that many other experiments were tried, and found in practice, to be considerably worse.

I hope that like me other Canadians, at the very least, appreciate that we enjoy greater freedoms than a hundred other countries of the world, even today. 

In fact, many people who emigrate to Canada immediately enjoy much greater freedom, than they ever would have in their native lands. This fact, however, does not stop some of them from trying to force us to accept some idea of theirs of yet another 'utopian' home (away from home) that never could or would exist where they came from. 

What is missing in the 'nationalistic' longings of immigrants, my own included, is the gratitude for and appreciation that the way of life and government which exists here in North America was and is an experiment which created a unique place on earth never tried before and which for the first time in history, accepted almost anyone who wanted to join in and contribute to it. 


NOTE: SEE ALSO - DON'T TRIVIALIZE TRAGEDY - FROM OCTOBER 22, 2011