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?

Living By Revelation

All sane, reasonable people live by revelation. They may not think it, but they do. Whether it is the revelation of the mundane (for example, what day you wash clothes and in what order - dark or light clothes first) to the not-so-mundane (for example, your religion or reasons for not having a religion at all).

The whole spectrum of our lives between these two are the silent revelations by which we live and they define us. But there are two types of people who don't get the most out of life because of a diseased and blocked revelation.

The first is the person who doesn't have a revelation at all and acts on purely animal instincts. These are the Don't Care or Whatever generation who would sooner smash up a bus stop that think about what it is that makes them want to smash up the bus stop. If they have any revelation, it's that it's best not to have a revelation since they see people who care about things as uncool, unchilled and old fashioned.

The other kind faces a different kind of destruction. Whereas the first kind has never really had a revelation (thus a personality) to destroy apart from that which they themselves have destroyed, this second is struggling to find a revelation but cannot because they are constantly having someone else's revelation put onto and into them.

When this second kind of person gets up in the morning, they have to try and live their life in the way that they imagine someone else would want them to live it. They will have breakfast in breakfast bowls and tea in the cups designated for tea but if they have visitors, they must use different cups. These people are as empty as the first type, but for them the emptiness is despite their efforts. These people are dead and have no avenue or means to express the person they are.

The common ground between these two types is that they are allowing themselves to be crushed under the pressure of something or someone that wants to wipe them out. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything and if you allow yourself to live by someone else's values, then when that person is absent or has departed, you will be as good as dead yourself because you allowed your soul to be wrapped up in them.

Revelation is something by which you know yourself and know others. There's no shame in knowing yourself, you have to know who you are, what you are, what you like and what you don't like. You will have been influenced and shaped by situation, parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers and friends but at the end of the day, you must call the shots. If you want to drink hot tea out of a glass then go ahead and do that.

A person's revelation can change, but it must change from inside. You can't allow yourself to go through a 'forced conversion' to please someone else and expect to be alive in your own heart and mind. You're going to destroy yourself and fail to be anything or anyone (and when I say 'fail to be anything', I'm not talking about getting rich and powerful, I'm talking about being a whole person). You can't start going to church and doing the 'church' thing and expect to become a Christian for the acts, the change comes inside. Likewise, you can't be expected to become an atheist just because someone told you that your experience is nonsense and you must abandon it. If you abandon your faith, it must be an abandonment from within else it's not real and you are only allowing someone else to govern your body and put another layer of complexity onto your mind.

Simplicity dictates that you can only live by your own revelation and if you allow anybody to try and change or destroy that revelation, then it is up to you to stand your ground and live, or cave in and die trying to please others.

Don't be afraid to say no to something or someone, especially if they're trying to control you.