Do not contend with a man for no reason, when he has done you no harm. -- Proverbs 3:30
The world has lost its sense of humor. Oh, people still laugh, and they certainly
mock, but good humor seems to have departed.
I was out all day yesterday and swapped trucks – yes, I was pinin’ for
the Fords. When I got home, I watched
the news, and they ran a story about a local microbrewery which had put a joke on Fakebook. From the KSPR story: The
joke talks about a fake study. It says female hormones are found in beer
and, after drinking it, men gained weight, talked too much and became emotional.
People became irate.
They were offended. They accused
the WOMAN who posted the joke of being sexist.
I’m sorry to be the one to have to break this to you, but if you are
offended by the joke Ms. Whelen published, you are officially and certifiably
an idiot, a maroon, a mental midget (can I still say that?), mentally deficit,
a cognitive cripple, heuristically handicapped, not to mention stupid. What is wrong with these people? I can understand someone not finding it
excessively humorous, but why would anyone be offended?
I’m starting to think our lives are much too easy. Too many people have never known any kind of
genuine pain and suffering for any extended period of time. They are too sheltered, too insulated from
reality to understand how “nasty, brutish, and short” things can be. They think they are entitled to
civilization. In less “civilized” times,
contending with a man for no reason who had done one no harm was a good way to
get a beating or worse. As the penalty
for stupidity has decreased, the supply has increased. Thus civilization seems to encourage us to be
less civilized, as we fail to understand that we ourselves, on an individual
basis, bear the responsibility for getting along one with another.
Fragility can be a form of bullying. I was at a birthday party for a
three-year-old on Saturday along with some other three-year-olds. I was not really shocked when one of the little
guys took a toy away from another, nor was I surprised that it made the one who
lost the toy cry and look to the adults for a little support. I don’t even mind a twenty-three-year-old
getting upset if someone else takes his or her stuff without reason. But by the time a person is five or six years
old, we need to start getting over the idea that the world exists solely to
meet our needs and protect our feelings.
Infantilized fifty-year-olds tend to create welfare states, deficits, and
slavery as well as a host of regulatory and statutory nightmares.
A few more words from the wise for the grownups – Proverbs 26:17-21 --
Whoever meddles in a
quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.
Like a madman who
throws firebrands, arrows, and death is
the man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I am only joking!”
For lack of wood the
fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases.
As charcoal to hot
embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.
9 comments:
"Fragility can be a form of bullying."
There's a whole other blog post to unpack in that statement.
Totally tweeted it.
Love dem proverbs!
Just to run with the easy life idea a bit, it's what we work for, as individuals and as societies, to be free from dangers and wants and then it destroys us in the end. Well, maybe destroy is too strong a word. One of them great paradoxes.
And then a lot of this offense it is fake outrage just to push your ideology.
ep, Joan, you are right about that.
John, the fake outrage of the professional weaker brothers is one of my favorite outrages. You really need an asymptotic approach to ease because when you cross the line it is bad news.
Yep, there's a fine line (or a vast chasm, depending on your perspective) between slack and sloth.
Also, what Joan said (tm).
I'm hoping it's all just a phase. The future seems to be "the same ol stuff" just "sped up", so maybe people will get tired of this sort thing and abandon it sooner, with maturity. I mean, it must be human nature to grow tired of tiring things. I know I'm tired of it. It may take generations, however.
And of course, the Fakebook gives voice and "power" to those you'd never otherwise have heard from. They were still there, you just couldn't hear them.
That's very true. My daughter-in-law was complaining that a family member kept harassing her via FB. It's just another avenue for weirdos. Used to be phone calls.
Drove home yesterday listening to some 30-somethings whining on NPR about how the prosperous world their parents promised them did not come to fruition, and how it's the parents' fault. Therefore (via some tortured logic), the government should forgive all their student loans which amazingly started coming due after graduation. Imagine! The horror of actual work and struggle!
I feel sorry for people who bought into the idea that they could borrow money to go to college to avoid working for a few years while partying, buying $200 jeans, and getting a degree in some field that offered no employment opportunities.
Wait. No, I don't.
However, that's exactly the kind of government-subsidized insanity that drives up the cost of higher education for everybody. My advice for the high-schooler today would be something like, "If you can't do math, learn to weld."
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