Not Cool To Care Too Much

I'm fascinated by the values that have taken hold of western countries, forbidding people from caring too much about things that others either don't care about or don't like.

What I mean is that if you care about the environment, you can go in your clapped out V-Dub to the pop concerts where rich pop singers who can afford solar panels, wind turbines and dentists for their dogs tell you to be green, you can buy the recycled bog-paper and talk about the latest play that shows us how environmentally unfriendly your neighbours are but, you mustn't allow it to change the way you live if it means that the way you live must become less comfortable, less 'normal' or (god forbid), less cool. You certainly must never allow yourself to care about it in equal passion if your opinion is the opposite.

In the 'woteva' world, caring is uncool if it's not what others are caring about or telling you that you should be caring about it. If it was, then the unnamed charity worker who has spent ten years in a third world country looking after children who orphaned by HIV AIDS would be as celebrated, adored and 'cool' as Madonna or Bono or pop over every now and again before returning to their not-so uncomfortable lives.

What prompted this post was this YouTube video where some Christians (allegedly) walked out of a performance by someone who was using what they considered to be crude language.

I'm not defending the person who poured water on the performer's notes, but I am defending the right of those who walked out, because they cared about something. They actually cared enough about something that mattered to them that they allowed it to change what they were doing and planning to do.

That's not cool.

They're not supposed to care about that, and the comments on that video make it clear.

In my opinion, those who are saying that these people are somehow inferior to everyone else for caring, are as wrong as the person who poured the water on the performer's paper because inasmuch as that man was saying the performer shouldn't perform with such language, they are saying that those who walked out shouldn't care.

It's sad that so many people are being swept along by the tide of popular culture that they never seem to stop and think about what they are doing. Sure, they stop and think about what people are doing differently and how they're odd and maybe even a terrorist threat because they care enough about something to let it change their behaviour, but they don't seem to stop and think about what is influencing them, what is making them do what they are doing.

Christians, Jews and Muslims are often criticised for allowing a book (or books) to tell them what is right and wrong, but what's telling you the difference between right and wrong? How did you come about your moral compass? If your moral compass different today than it was ten years ago? I'm not saying it shouldn't have changed, but what changed it (if it has changed)?

You see, everything we do is about what we care about. What we care about comes from our revelation, and many people don't even know what their revelation is.

To follow the crowd is easy and proof of that is that this is what most of us do, even when we try not to; It's like the whole Western world is like the teenager who is looking to be an individual by dressing like the person they most want to be like. We all did it... and we all do it.

But before you call someone a 'pussy' because they don't like to hear a comedian say 'fuck', where is your moral compass pointing, how did it get to point there and, more importantly, how uncool are you willing to be in order to follow it?

Or will you just not bother to think about it, call me a fundamentalist terrorist and get on with your cool, individual, completely original and totally uninfluenced life?