Mean is Being Monetized

​Mean is being monetized. Now this is not news hot off the press, but we need to keep saying it until we realize what many of our fellow citizens are doing. They are paying for statements such as the children of Sandy Hook never existed, and the parents are actors. Or there is Trump who never misses an opportunity to give someone a derogatory nickname all the while creating a loyalty amongst his followers to him.  They accuse without evidence that Democrats are pedophiles who sacrifice babies to someone or something. They harass voter election workers, teachers, and other public servants because they can. And they use these statements to prove they are fighting for a way of life, and they raise money through campaign ads and solicitations. This is not who they are for as the wise comic character of another time said we saw the enemy and it was us. In the feel good of allowing anything to be said and the misguided moral equivalencies theory we are culturally allowing this trend of follow the mean and you will find the source of the money.

If you do not believe me, do people try to make money out of the things they say or do that are nice? No in fact those people are classified as losers and weak. This is our culture. We support this new culture when we allow people to speak these things in front of us without a challenge to be better. Silence is not nice. How we challenge is what should be defined as nice. But to allow someone to spew venom is not only not nice but also harmful to our surroundings. It is a form of cowardice to allow folk to speak evil without confronting. Yes, it is true you will not change minds, but you will help to create an atmosphere where being nice is expected and encouraged.

I know that venting or ranting is all the rage. I am even writing in the Cranky Man Philosophizes section of the blog as we read. I have been known to rant and rave on occasion. But venting and ranting are only good if it leads to a positive attitude and action. Otherwise ranting and venting is stoking the embers of hate and violent behavior. The rant becomes a narcissistic exercise where you command attention of those around you and potentially release the worse in them. It also can pollute the social climate which you are in. Many people take their ranting and raving too seriously. They forget that all of life to a certain extent is a cosmic joke. To take oneself too seriously can lead to mental health problems. The inability to change with truth or fact and the lost of the ability to love and hear others is unhealthy. I also believe it can interfere with your ability to hear God if you are so incline. God has chosen me for this task and God does not need to interfere as I work out God’s call on the earth. Afterall, what is more annoying than Someone asks you to do something and stands on the side giving you instructions how to do it. Leave it to me I am on a serious mission here.

When you find yourself called to be insulting or attempting to always to make the news you can know you are not on a mission for anyone but yourself. Now you may do some good along the way but that is the default mode. The real mode is self-promotion or self-aggrandizement. Most people can forget the mission and lose their call in life. It is easy to move from call to do good to territoriality, narcissism, or climbing the ladder of goodness. It is easy to move from offering creative things to the world to show me the money, it is all about me, and using people. It is easy to move from want to save the world to lose your soul in an attitude of by any means necessary and being always uncompromising. But the cosmic joke of it all is we are to be jesters in our quest to tell the truth. We are to be humble to rise to the top of usefulness. We are to recognize our foibles first before we attack another’s foibles. The list could go on that should ensure us the world is a place of a lot happenstance, luck and mystery to insist we should take ourselves seriously.
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So, smile at yourself often, take deep breaths, and treat others not as opponents or instruments for the achievement of your goals. Enjoy life and remember in the great scheme of things we do not even leave the primordial ooze without cooperation with each other. Divided cells stay in the slime and do not develop. We are only walking, talking mudballs according to Hebrew Scripture to paraphrase God took up the dirt and spat in it to create humanity and once we realize that everything is going to be okay.