Civil disobedience or social destruction?

Here is something that I don't understand. A protest mob moves through city streets disrupting vehicular traffic as they go along. The people in this mob do not follow pedestrian rules for crossing streets. They flow around cars & trucks in the road. A driver tries to edge their way through the group and suddenly the people in the mob are drawn to the vehicle. The mob people begin banging on the vehicle. This banging strikes panic in to the mind of the driver and the driver tries to flee from the mob in which they find themselves stuck. The vehicle lurches forward and more mob people surge around the vehicle. More fear. More panic. More lurching. More surging.

The vehicle hits someone and then more mob people swarm around the vehicle banging on it causing more panic in the driver who needs more than ever to get out of the unbearable panic situation. Somebody gets trapped under the vehicle and more people swarm the vehicle causing more panic in the driver. After people get struck by the vehicle, I understand the need to move towards the vehicle to help out people who are in harm's way.

What I don't  understand is the swarming around a vehicle when going against the flow of pedestrian traffic. Not letting the vehicle go on its way, but rather expecting it to bend to the will of the mob and stay put. The vehicle is bigger than one person in the mob, but the driver perceives, not a group of individuals, but a mob that is larger than their vehicle thus making them feel small and then when banging on their vehicle begins the driver begins to fear for their safety against the large mob.

How does antagonizing people in cars during a protest march do anything to promote the cause for which you are supporting?  Aren't those people really just bullies who are using the cause to further their own needs for needs for attention?  Has the entire social justice community embraced social destruction as the most palatable form of civil disobedience? If so, doesn't that really mean social justice is nothing more than a disguise for anarchy?

Reasons to watch Constantine

"Between thought and action comes temptation."
- John Constantine (Matt Ryan), episode 4, "A Feast of Friends"

I'm Only As Smart As My Stupidity Allows.

So today I found a notebook of mine. It was from 1981 to 1982. It basically covers my post high school summer through my college freshman Spring term; age 17 and 18. Yes, thanks to odd enrollment rules (having to be age 6 by January 1 of the school year), and probably my ability to drive my parents bonkers, I graduated high school at age 17. This fact makes the stuff in this notebook potentially more embarrassing.

So I risked potentially fatal embarrassment and peeked inside the cover. Atop the first page I saw "The Air Head Girls." It is a poem and overwhelmed me with embarrassment. I wondered what kind of idiocy that I had scribbled in this notebook. I am going to wait to find out more until I begin trying to decipher my teenage handwriting and type them up.

Maybe I should figure out if I should go back in time and smack myself in the head for this embarrassing idiocy or pat myself on the shoulder for being so vulnerable, even if thirty three years later this stuff confuses me beyond my years of experience. All I know is that, if I ever publish this stuff, it is going to be titled "I'm Only As Smart As My Stupidity Allows."

I stand

I stand

Upon a precipice?
In a queue?
For something so I don’t fall for anything?
On my own two feet?
Thanks to someone who did something for me?
Behind someone who needs support?
Because I learned something?

I stand.

The Purpose of Writing

And so you come here to see what the writer has to say. Does He have an insight in to your problem? Does he have comfort and reassurance? Are you looking for his outrage, anger, disgust to wallow in for your emotional pleasure?

You need to understand this, a writer is not simply a monkey pounding on keys, slapping words on a page for some external goal, like a paycheck or banging groupies. A writer is not a celebrity nor a prophet nor a prancing show animal. A writer is someone seeking to get words out of the headspace and out on to a page for reflection. The writer has a storm of concepts, idea and emotions whirling around in their brain. They manifest as glimpses of action, snatches of scenes or half formed soliloquies that sound good with in the confines of their brain space.  

 
Once out of the confines of the brain space, the words show up on a page, or a computer screen. The process of reflection starts up. Did she really mean “sexually hot for her teddy bear” or is that just a way of saying she wants to go back to the visceral enjoyment of childhood? The words are out there, on the page, sitting. They are put there by a writer who slapped the letters on a keyboard with or without the intent, innuendo, inflection, impression, comprehension of the reader. It sounded good at the time. Why do you turn away?

 It’s just an idea, unless you work for thought police who have twisted their consciousness to believe “thoughts have consequences.” Just because someone writes “Tom proudly slept twelve hours each night for the remaining sixteen weeks” doesn’t mean that they are encouraging sloth. It doesn’t mean that is a prescription for happiness through slumber. It might just be a reporting of a “fact” or a relaying of words the subject conveyed to them.  How the reader recognizes, hears or comprehends them can be very limited.

The writer is only disruptive to the barren page, putting letters, numbers, symbols and other visual markings on it to arrange their thoughts, then rearrange them and encase them in punctuation and proper emphasis markings based on a culture, maybe not the culture of the reader, or the writer.  The reader then interfaces with this mélange of visual chicanery.  It is in this transportation of idea from writer, creator, arranger  to reader, interpreter, disassembler that mental mischief, skewed perspective, predisposition, bias, ignorance or malevolent reinterpretation occurs and communication between people breaks down.

Then again, I could just be typing this to get it out of my head so I can fall asleep tonight.

Poem for the day

There Are Days

by Paul Ewert

There are days that I want to curl up in a ball

And lie still, quiet and do nothing at all.

Feel the hurts inside my head

Rolling around in misery, despair and dread.

 

Then it occurs to me that this is exactly

What my assailants wanted to do to me.

To put me down, degrade me

make me less than human

 

To give in and accept defeat, allows them to win

To continue to stuff my humanity in

To deny my beauty, my strength, my mind, my heart

Let’s them trip me up as each day starts.

 

Yet the Me that I hold back is the very thing

That they sought to attack.

My life is my own, no one abuses and hurts me

I choose to live my life and break free

 

It has been said that “living well” is the best revenge.

Not allowing a setback to determine my whole life

Not making for me misery and daily strife.

The secret leaks out in my actions and words

But I shall conquer fear, despair and doubt undeterred.

I shall turn the other cheek

Not mocking or damaging the quiet and the meek.

 

For they too have their lives to live,

Their wellness to maintain

Their hearts, minds, beauty and strength

Shining bright possibly burning out an emotional stain.

 

I am but one being, one gift from God

Who had been through much

And down many paths have trod.

Those things have been exposed to my soul

My bright, strong, helpful, compassionate soul

I can only see what I have around me,

But my actions have consequences

And I make them to be the best

Not only for myself, but for others

Who have passed me by

And go bouncing and interacting

In my wake.

 

Let the bright days begin

Pass the sorrows and fears in to the refuse bin.

For my heart fills with joy

My mind with fills with peace

My humanity again blooms

Because Life will never cease.

 

About your life. Random inspired reflection

Once you die, you are prohibited from adding actions to your biography, the story of your life. What is left in your passing is the reiteration and repetition of descriptions of the actions you took and your stated reasons for doing so.

When you die, when you stop living, your life changes from biography, the nonfiction recounting your life's actions and events, to fiction, the interpreted retelling of your life with the translation through myriad of voices passing it along.

You no longer have input about what your words and actions mean to you. Your words and actions become the grist for others to do and say things. Those people may say that you made a statement but the meaning of your statement is filtered through the motivations, intentions and desires of those persons passing along that statement. So it is for the common person, so it is for the prophet.

This is the danger of time; the danger of change. Humanity discovers new things and processes. The beliefs and opinions of past generations must be adapted, altered, tailored to current events and items. The brand of car that would have been driven by Mohammed or Jesus is irrelevant, but the respect given by the driver to others and the reciprocal respect given by others to the driver can be found by reflecting on writings found in Sacred and Holy writings pertaining to each prophet. Most notably and respectively the Qur'an and Holy Bible.

The intention of the reflectant must be set aside to understand the universal truths of humanity.