Tag: contemporary thinking

Under Hate/Over Love!

over love

According to psychologists, psychiatrists and the Internet, the thing most people fear is – wait for it! – speaking in front of a group.  Yep, public speaking!  That terrible moment when you have to give the toast to the bride or rally the troops for the church bake sale.  Don’t get me wrong: I understand pathological fear (been there/done that) but I think we’re aiming a little low here.  Personally, when I think of fear, my mind kinda runs to homicidal maniacs with sharp objects or those dead-eyed, bearded guys with bulky vests.  Quite frankly, speaking to the assembled PTA doesn’t come up.

The problem is we live in the most benevolent society in history, and we really don’t know how to handle it.  Strong emotions are reserved for strong situations, and our world has, for the most part, done away with those.  In short, our emotions have no place to go.  So they hang around, cluttering up our lives and making things difficult.

For example, I’ve heard people say, “I hate Kanye West.”  Okay, fair enough!  However, in a world that has Kim Jung-un and Vlad Putin in it, hating Kanye West strikes me as a little undercooked.  If you’re going to hate somebody (which isn’t actually allowed, these days) you might want to do a little research.  Kanye West is a pompous ass who has bad taste in women; those other two guys can blow up the world.  Random hate diminishes the brand.

And talking about diminishing the brand, the things we do to love oughta be illegal.  People love to cook.  They love to ski.  They love hiking and painting and going to the mall.  Hell, they even love cyberjunk like Instagram.  Yet, when it comes to that one magical moment with that one magical person, we run and hide behind “the relationship” as if even thinking “love affair” would unleash an emotional bogeyman.  Go figure!

The thing is we’ve spent the better part of a generation trying to concoct a society without sharp edges – a place that doesn’t cry.  However, in our zeal to make a better world, we’ve inadvertently smoothed out all the other stuff, too.  Unfortunately, people aren’t made that way.  We don’t even like it.  We need and want to ache with love, burn with hate and shiver in fear.  It’s the way we’re made.  (That’s why people go to horror movies and rom/coms.)  Our primal emotions are an essential part of life’s equation, and when you take them away, people start looking around for replacement parts.  That’s why the 21st century is flooded with depression instead of sadness, anxiety instead of excitement and outrage instead of disappointment.  People need to feel, and they’re willing to tie themselves in imaginary knots to do it.

So go ahead and fear public speaking, hate mediocre musicians and love video games.  Just remember: it’s a big world out there, and there’s tons more and better stuff around to get worked up about.

Neighbour Shaming!

neighbour

Today, I’m speaking out about neighbour shaming.  For too many years, thousands (if not millions) of people have quietly lived with the pain and humiliation of living on a street with a neighbour shamer.  It’s time to break the silence.

The main problem is our world has not yet woke to the social devastation caused by neighbour shaming.  Neighbour shaming behaviour is still acceptable and, in fact, even actively encouraged by many public organizations and the media.  So it’s no wonder many neighbour shamers don’t even realize that what they’re doing is inappropriate, and most victims are unaware that they’re being victimized.  They still believe that there’s actually something wrong with them.

So what is neighbour shaming?  And how do we end this unacceptable behaviour?

It’s quite easy to spot a neighbour shamer.  They’re the people whose houses have neatly manicured lawns, perfectly edged sidewalks, trimmed hedges, window boxes and nicely painted fences.  They’re the folks who spend their evenings and weekends planting, weeding, raking, pruning, sweeping and generally working their asses off to create a beautiful home and garden.  The problem is these alt-horticulturists have created a toxic urban environment by setting an unrealistic and unattainable standard for the rest of us.  Through their selfish, thoughtless actions, they make everyone else in the neighbourhood look like a bunch of lazy hillbillies.  But, we’re they’re not hillbillies.  They’re just ordinary people who are struggling – struggling with weeds, aphids and rose blight.  And they could be facing their own challenges — perhaps they grew up in an apartment or an orphanage, perhaps they were abused by florists, or maybe they suffer from gnomophobia (a fear of garden gnomes.)  At first glance at an unattractive garden, it’s easy to be judgemental, but not everyone understands soil composition, mulch, or the dos and don’ts of fertilizing.  Plus, many victims have serious time, space and financial disadvantages.  It’s time we were honest and recognized that “having a green thumb” is, in reality, “green privilege.”

The Home and Garden Industry is a multi-billion dollar business whose profits depend on neighbour shaming, but you can fight back.  Here are just a few things you can do to raise awareness in your community.

1 — Go to the neighbour shamer on your street and tell them how their perfectly symmetrical flower beds make you feel.  Explain to them that the sound of their hedge clippers is causing you emotional harm.  Open a dialogue.  You might be surprised.  Many neighbour shamers feel the same social pressures you do; sometimes, even more.

2 — Organize a neighbourhood garden party to show that you don’t need an immaculate lawn to enjoy life, and people can still party and have fun, surrounded by brambles, weeds and dog shit.

3 — Contact home and garden magazines or websites and tell them just how offensive their “before and after” pictures really are, and then suggest they would be more inclusive if they provided equal coverage of derelict houses and waste ground.  Write or email television networks and demand they broadcast trigger warnings to caution viewers that gardening programs can cause stress or harm self-esteem.

4 — You can also start a support group to let people know they’re not alone or even turn your own garden into an empty, concrete “safe space.”

And finally, but most importantly:

5 – Always remember it’s not your fault your garden kinda sucks, and even though that workaholic, perfect-sized, handy-husbanded, helpful-childrened, cupcake-making, bikini-wearing bitch down the street can grow gorgeous rhododendrons in her sleep — you’re still a good person.

The Final Days? (2019)

Final Days

There is growing speculation that we are living in The Final Days and our society is slowly collapsing under the weight of our own decadent excesses.  I’m not so sure that our world is doomed, but … look around.  Every day there’s evidence that many of us are making some seriously sorry choices.  The problem is our benevolent society has created a cornucopia of attitudes that we all believe we’re entitled to – even though they have no intrinsic value.  In other words, we’re wasting our time and energy on crap that doesn’t matter and believe nothing should stand in the way of our self-indulgence.  Here are just four examples from the last couple of weeks – you decide!

Grumpy Cat is dead.  For those of you who never knew he was alive, Grumpy Cat was a cat who – uh — looked grumpy.  Apparently, this is enough to merit celebrity status in the 21st century, and a million dollar income, as well.  Go figure!  Anyway, officially, he died of a urinary tract infection, but I wonder if he’d just gotten curious about who was spending all the money he was generating.

A woman in Saskatoon, Canada decided she wanted to preserve her husband’s tattoos after he died.  (Icky – but to each his own!)  The thing that blows me away, though, is there’s a company in Cleveland, Ohio called Save My Ink Forever that actually does this sort of thing.  They will take your dead loved one, surgically remove the tattoo (think about that!) and frame it.  I get creeped out when somebody has an urn on the mantel.  I can’t imagine looking over and seeing a hunk of skin with Aunt Meghan’s tramp stamp, hanging on the wall.

Some guy visiting Hawaii jumped over the guardrail and fell into a volcano.  One wonders why?  It’s not like he didn’t see the damn thing.  And I’m sure there were signs, like “Danger! Hot, boiling lava ahead!”  Plus, there was a guardrail.  Maybe he just thought the physical laws of the universe didn’t apply to him.  Regardless, after a daring rescue, the man was treated for serious burns but walked away.  Personally, I think somebody should slap the rescue crew for keeping this dumbass in the gene pool.

But my favourite is:

Game of Thrones is over, and more than a million people are pissed off about it.  Not that the show’s over, but that it didn’t end the way they wanted it to.  In fact, they’ve signed a petition demanding – DEMANDING! – that the entire last season not only be rewritten but re-filmed.  That’s not how it works, people.  You’re the audience; you don’t get a vote.  That’s like going to the Louvre and demanding somebody repaint the Mona Lisa because you don’t understand the smile.  I know our society is trying its best to outlaw disappointment, but this has taken entitlement to a whole new level.