Fear. Fear of being seen as the outsider. Fear of being seen as a conspiracy theorist. Fear of being seen as a racist. Fear of being seen as an anti-vaxxer. Fear of being seen as a Democrat. Fear of being seen as a Republican.
People are making far too many decisions based purely around fear these days.
That actually tells us that we are becoming a globe that has a growing number of cowards.
Brave doesn't mean without fear. It simply means facing and moving forward in spite of our fear.
Yet fear is clearly dominating...
Perhaps the biggest one... Fear of being wrong.
We've been conditioned to think being wrong is a bad thing. Something to admit. Something to avoid at all costs.
Yet really it is one of two ways I know of for us to learn. If you are wrong you have an opportunity to learn from it. It only becomes a bad thing if you don't learn from it and keep making the same mistakes.
The other way is when we are ignorant about things. All of us are ignorant about far more things than we likely know. This is not bad. We are ignorant about the things we don't know. When we learn new things we have removed some of the ignorance.
Learning from mistakes...
Learning new things...
Yet we've been conditioned to fear mistakes and also do everything we can to seek scapegoats and avoid admitting them.
It's a new kind of fear. Amplified. Fear on steroids. Yet there's no danger. The natural state of mind might be struggling, not even knowing where to place this stuff.
I think maybe people feel like they're being watched.
If you and I were sitting at a table in a bar, with a few others, discussing whatever, I'm wrong, you correct me, maybe I'm a little bit embarrassed, but the moment is already in the past. Live and learn. Easy to navigate. Worked for thousands of years.
So now we're on this grand stage social media style.
Same scenario, I'm wrong, you correct me, but my mistake was published, and I just spent the past ten years creating the illusion of perfection then tricking myself into thinking my friends/family/followers/whatever actually believe it because all they ever do is say nice things, while I make damn sure to never share photos of my junk drawer or that time I thought it would just be a fart.
So now, not only did everyone in the bar witness my mistake, but all the people coming and going well off into the future are going to know, as if this instance of failure was posted on the door. Whereas before, when it comes to those people, all I really had to worry about was my hygiene, knowing full well they'd never see or smell me again and if they did, my appearance is all they'd remember.
OMG I'm having a panic attack. I should have thought of all these consequences before I opened my big mouth.
Stage fright. Luckily, humanity to the rescue! Groups are formed around ideas. Stupid ideas. Smart ideas. All ideas. A safe space for everything and everyone including the folks who mock safe spaces.
Someone waltzes in to offer a correction, and the entire bar swarms them. "There will be none of that here."
Fear naturally converts itself to anger if there's no danger involved. People are putting on a show. Protected by like minds. Even something as simple as a question is converted into an insult. How is it even possible to not know what comes so naturally to us.
So I'm discovering there's a fear of being wrong combined with an illusion of being right, all while one's livelihood could be on the line if they change their position. And I can't think of one cult member in the history of cults that actually knew they were in a cult, so I'm not even sure where to begin with this.
Yeah. If you pay attention you also realize how privileged we have been and how so many concerns of the past are no longer concerns that we have turned things that should be trivial into very horrific things.
I mean I walked up to my grandkids a week or so ago and said "Punch, pow, kick, choke, slam" they looked at me. "Did I hurt you?" They said no. "They keep saying words are violence. They've completely forgot the sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me saying."
Grandpa has to try to drop some wisdom, keep them on their toes, and make them think from time to time.
You see your friend and a few strangers over there, walk up, can kind of hear what they're saying, they don't see you coming, you lightheartedly say, "You people are so full of shit."
They look, they see the dumb look on your face, relax, greet you, invite you to join. Next thing you know you're sitting there bullshitting with them.
I said, "You people are so full of shit," with that exact same social situation in mind, but on Facebook. Within one minute I received a notification thinking someone responded. Nope. I got served. Apparently what I said was hateful and I was demonstrating some form of superiority over others, according to this message, that also stated my one liner had been removed, and I was no longer welcome in the establishment. And it wasn't like any other message I had ever seen on that platform. Big, bright, bold; orange! As if they slapped a warning label on me.
So either I got reported or some fancy code stepped in to make decisions but regardless, all I could think about was how much developing this misunderstanding must have cost them...
Just giving me the ability to say, "Relax, I'm just kidding," would have been far more cost-effective.
It also prevented me from making new friends. You see, in this social situation, you can approach a group like that and sometimes one will snap back with an, "Excuse me!"
You tell them you're kidding, they observe the others and their reaction, quickly settle down feeling relieved, and the result is often two strangers feeling comfortable with one another almost instantly. Breaking the ice.
Now imagine that being interpreted as violence and that social media swarm I mentioned comes into play had the message not been removed. Convert that into a bar setting and picture all those people surrounding a gentleman attempting to shame him out of the establishment over a misunderstanding. Yelling and screaming. Feeling invincible and on top of the world. Dumping drinks on you. Spitting on you. No choice but to shove your way out of there and suddenly forty people are jumping you, and calling it self defense; because a word was the first punch?
Yep. That is it exactly. It was the lesson I was trying to convey to my grandkids. There is a big difference between words and violence. If I was not an adult and they were not my grandkids I could ask them if they need me to demonstrate the difference. It'd be their choice. I'd not say it in an antagonizing way. When I was younger I might have. :)
I'm myself around my kids. They'll be fine. And that's all I need to say about that.
Haha... yeah. My kids are all in good shape too. The grandkids too. Yet I like to keep them on their toes and make them think differently from time to time.
The only normal thing about grandpa is that things will not be normal.