What the Hell?!
"I have no problem with the president's handling of Iraq," said Donna Baker, a 56-year-old Republican from Robinson Creek, Ky. "I haven't heard any plan better."
Is this the new method of rationalizing whether or not there's a problem with something? Whether or not one has "heard anything better"??? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most solutions begin with determining that there is a problem before deciding on a possible plan or solution? Does this mean that when a solution is still yet to be determined that a given problem cannot even be legitimately recognized?!! As in, "I have no problem with the current death rates of cancer. 'Cause I haven't heard of any better plan to cure it." What the Hell? Have folks like this ever even heard the cry, "There's gotta be a better way"? I mean does it make any sense at all to respond with "Yeah, but until we know what that way is, how can we even say that?" Don't worry, I'll answer for you. No, of course not! Jeez-o-pete, it does not make any sense at all to respond with that. Note: said statement was never, "There's gotta be a better way, but until there is I don't see what the problem is." Crimony!
What the Hell?! What the Hell?! What the Hell?!
I'm just tired now. I'll talk about my awesome wireless headset later.
posted by Solomon Wall @ 10:18 AM
4 Comments:
He, he. My words exactly. The old "Don't fix it if it ain't broke" will be replaced with the more fitting "It's not broke, if you don't know how to fix it". I have always wondered why people can have a thinking process like that, since it seems like the extra 14 seconds it takes to think something through, and come to a sensible solution, has been cut away.
My God, THANK YOU, MRK. My point exactly. "It's not broke, if you don't know how to fix it". Brilliant. Nice to know there's at least one other person out there who doesn't leave me feeling like I'm the only extra-terrestrial living on Crazyworld. Even if I gotta go all the way to Denmark to determine that. This has been the reanimating defibrillator on my previously close to flatlined sense of societal integration. I may just get to talking about my awesome headset, yet.
I've found the biggest challenge is to teach people who hope things will go on at least the way they have so far, to begin to hope things will get better.
Indeed. I, myself, know the feeling of fatalistic resignation creeping up. But I also know that there can be a fine line between facing dire facts honestly, and giving into the notion that they can never change. It seems that there can sometimes be an almost perversely alluring quality to letting go and just settling in to conditions previously deemed unacceptable. Give up the fight and you ease the head-banging. But no. Then I refuse (eventually). For, even though things can frustratingly erode and fall apart with relatively little time commitment, say even four years, the best things can be achieved over long-term head-banging commitment. And when I really take an honest look at history's biggest problems surmounted, the success usually seems to happen gradually, often over more than one lifetime. And it's always worth it, no matter how long it takes. Even if one doesn't live long enough to see everything pay off. Just to know that one's life contribution was part of the move towards a better place, setbacks, head-banging, and all.
I was just talking with a few people today about something as basic as "littering". One was noting how, upon recently witnessing someone doing the act, they were stunned at the behavior, almost horrified. But even more so, they were shocked that they were now part of a society where something like littering is such unbelievably unacceptable behavior. When of course 30 years ago, most people wouldn't have batted an eye at the sight of someone blithely kicking a couch off a pickup on the interstate. But our cultural paradigm has changed that much for the better. And that's just littering. With the "culture wars" going on right now, I think society is going through a learning experiment, or at least a refresher course, on what makes a diverse society truly hang together, vs. what makes it fracture and stay fractured. Of course, the current political set-up hasn't exactly been leading us towards a "hang together" one. And eventually a fractured society can no longer productively move forward before having to come together again in some fashion to at least preserve itself, while negating all that was effectively encouraging it not to do so. It's like with riots. The bad news is, they can happen. The good news is they can only last so long. Let's hope it doesn't actually take (another) one to reach what I think have to be the next inevitably progressive steps forward.
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