Skim milk masquerades as cream
Highlows pass as patent leather
Jackdaws strut in peacocks' feathers..."
There are days, and then there are days.
There are days where I wonder how this world has survived thus far.
It's okay for our kids to see war and gratuitous violence and drugs (in spite of "just say no" (or "just fly low", whichever you prefer)) and the six o'clock news.
It's okay for our kids to listen to music of questionable origin which makes overt references to acts of violence against people of other races.
It's okay for our kids to be exposed to constant attitude, and to turn around and give lip to their parents (remember, physical discipline, which is what these little upstarts needed before they got too out of hand and turned into big upstarts, is no longer permitted. Your kid could turn you in for spanking them.).
Heaven forbid they should be exposed to love, tenderness, caring, or (gasp!) public display of affection.
Or, more so, forbid that they should be exposed to "unusual living arrangements." Even if a mother lives in perfect harmony with two other men (or women, for that matter!), it's not all right, because it goes against the "fahn, upstandin' Murkin morrle strutcher" which so many of the blind sheep embrace.
What an amazingly hypocritical society we live in.
We can't leave well enough alone. We don't seem to have enough to do with our lives that we can't pass so much judgment on other people. We can't just let other people live lives without ostracising them for living in unusual harmony.
There's truth out there to the Wiccan law, "an it harm none, do what thou will." As long as you're not hurting anyone, what's the problem?
More of the most stupid conflicts have taken place over some righteous charlatan's stance on morals. It's amazing. Just because one small group of people cannot wrap their minds around the concept of harmony within an alien arrangement, suddenly they have to rally other people to their cause.
And yet, it is permissible for the depression mongers on the six o'clock news to spread doom, depression and other bad feelings to the multitudes, to do everything in their power to keep down the morale of the populace.
I get a lot of funny looks when people find out that I don't watch the news.
And then there's change. People change, and we never see it coming. Sometimes we never see it coming in ourselves. We swear that, after the first time, we'll never ...oh, get married again, for example. ...and along comes someone to sweep us off our feet, and we forget every reservation we had about repeating past mistakes, probably because the person is of sufficient quality of character to make us realise that the past is the past, and that we won't make the same mistakes with this one that we made last time.
Of course, there's always the "Ugh. I'll never do that again", which of course we do again. Seriously, which of us will never party that hard ever again?
It's hard, really, to remain immutable. After all, if you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?
Ask yourself this, if you are set in your ways: Could you crawl off, somewhere, knowing that you are a Dinosaur doomed to extinction, and just die in the desert? There are a number of people who could answer yes to this question. There are a number of people who could answer no to this question.
The mind-blower is going to be not how many people fall into either camp, but *which* people fall into either camp.
There are actually times that I feel like a dinosaur. I'm not as abreast of the technology as I could be, largely because I lack the self-discipline to do so. I've always learned better in a group situation. Could I walk out into the desert and lay down and call it? Sometimes. Quite often. I'm content with what I know. I find the world moves too fast for me to keep up. I'll be lucky if I know 10% of what's current by the time I'm 50.
And I'm okay with this, unless you want to come keep me company on a journey to higher learning...
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