Idiocracy- an Uphill battle.

So, Journal. Have we ever talked politics? No? Hmm. That must be why we are still friends, right? That's how people talk about politics. If they don't agree, their friendships end. I look at the world, I don’t really like what I see on the internet- one of the biggest selling points of my typewriter, is that it doesn’t show me social battles, scorn, anger, or fighting between people hundreds of miles apart. I don’t really understand how all of this anger keeps brewing online. When you put things into perspective, it is pointless. I know that there will ALWAYS be opposing views, but what happened to civility?

Is a calm demeanor during a meaningful conversation a pipedream now? If we can’t reasonably discuss our problems, concerns, and views of society, where will we go? I guess it will always be an uphill battle to not slip back downhill as a country. At least, that’s what most people believe. But I don’t want to accept it. This process of moving up the mountain, of going uphill, why does it need to be a battle? People climb mountains all the time. So why are we ‘battling’ to go forward? I think it might be because we don’t approach the situation properly. If we don’t want to go downhill, the approach we’ve been taking will most certainly exhaust us until we give up and tumble down the mountain of problems we need to climb and conquer. Battle isn’t the way to climb.

Battle isn’t the proper way to go traverse a steep mountain. What do climbers do? Well, I’ve never climbed a literal mountain before, but I know that sprinting isn’t typically associated with hiking. Nobody runs up a mountain. We can’t attack everything at once. We can’t battle all of our issues at the same time and expect to see the summit. If we all just pause for a while… Take a breath. Look at the paths ahead. Evaluate. Then proceed slowly, we might just get somewhere productive. This may alienate me from a few people. But oh well...

Instant gratification will not save the world. I can’t help but notice that most of the well-adjusted advice comes from the generations who came before the internet, before point and click entertainment. It frightens me, the thought that people will govern the the world one day, having never seen a VCR or dealt with scratches on a DVD.

Maybe having to actually get up from our chair to change the tv channel taught us to enjoy what was already being broadcasted, or at least- to watch for a moment to see if the programming was terrible enough to warrant spending the energy to walk across the room to try something different. The old world taught us the need for priorities- That ‘demanding’ things was not quite the way to success. Now living ‘on demand’ is a status symbol. So, what do we do in a world where everyone is fighting over everything and nothing positive is happening? Well, we can do anything we want to, really. We can join the ranks, get in on the battle. We can argue day in, day out… wait for the other person to give up and fall down the mountain before we do. But if we don’t pause to listen, inevitably we will join them at the bottom.

Seriously, approaching it that way will make you either look like an @$$, or you will make yourself the elephant in the room. (kudos those who get this- think 'mascots')

Maybe, we sit in our chair, not for long, but long enough to hear. To watch. To absorb the broadcast. Maybe, just maybe it’s something we are interested in. If we don’t want to watch an infomercial for the latest nonstick cookware, that’s totally fine. We can get up and change the channel in search of enjoyable television. But we can do it knowing that we haven’t missed our favorite episode of The Simpsons.