11032012 – Words

It’s been so long. It’s been too long.

I feel that words have been calling me, pulling me in, begging me to Let Them Be.

I mute them. I go on living. I attempt to have actual conversations with actual people.

I try to hide my journal and forget the passwords to my blogs.

I’ve been living in the Real World,

But my Real World Thoughts were undeveloped, unexpressed, and uninteresting to those I shared them with.

So I let these thoughts dance around in my mind before I went to sleep, while I doodled in my lecture hall, while I drove my car.

And this made me feel crazy. In my very real world, where I could not escape to the internet, I didn’t feel like I was fully engaged in my life. I was disinterested in the things happening around me. I was not impressed by all the things that should have impressed me. I was moody. I wanted to talk and listen to others talk about things that are probably not important, but so intriguing nonetheless.

I’m back to my internet community. I enjoy all the email correspondences, comments, feedback, and everything else from my followers and others who stop by to read what I write. It’s a shame that we’re scattered around the globe and cannot meet for coffee and deep talks.

 

The Loss of Intelligent Conversation.

I guess the way to get a million followers is to write about exciting things that the majority of bloggers/blog readers find either witty, funny, and/or insightful.
These posts should also probably include a disproportionate amount of photographs, a few words, and probably a numbered list of some sort. Also, pure entertainment should be the primary goal of every post. Nobody really likes to talk about things that matter, because they are so afraid of disagreement and debate. Everyone is afraid to hurt everyone else’s feelings, and “attack” everyone else’s beliefs. The internet is known to be this great source of knowledge and a significant manifestation of progress.  But oh my God, when did we become so shallow? When did moral relativism and dismissal of this idea of “truth” become so widely accepted.  Don’t we care about our beliefs? Don’t we care about the values of others? What’s the point of believing in anything, if we go around saying things like: “We’ll never know the truth, so we might as well drop this argument”? Sure, it’s fine to believe in different things, and sure, we may never know the answers to many of our questions. But by rejecting the existence of truth, aren’t we also dismissing our own personal beliefs?

Personal beliefs are sensitive issues, but by no means are belief systems the only topics of shallow discourse online. Let’s take celebrity Twitter accounts. A celebrity says something offensive [I’m sure you can think of many of these occurrences, and therefore I won’t list names] about either politics, socio-economic issues, a TV show, another celebrity, etc.  and fans go nuts. Social media sites have brought celebrities closer to their fans, but have also forced the people involved to put on facades. Celebrities who say things the majority of people do not like later apologize or have to have some big-time interview explaining why they said what they said. The problem, though, is not in these celebrities. It’s in the fans. Why are fans constantly criticizing successful human beings? Why must these humans beings think and talk in such a way as to not offend anybody? Why do we expect public figures to be “better” than regular citizens? We want to see these stars as real life people, but we really hate when they aren’t perfect and say things that we don’t like. But most importantly, why are we so afraid of allowing people to voice the things they truly think, regardless of whether or not we think their opinions are correct? Why are we so sensitive?

There are many people out there who have world views that you and I may find to be absolutely ridiculous, yet it is ignorant to silence them: because they exist.
And when views exist they have power, regardless of whether or not they adhere to our standards.

Why are we so afraid of our own thoughts?
Why do we fear our own humanity?