The antagonist does not change. Vulnerability is relative but uses the weakness that was always there. Sooner or later the wild card arrives, Doris walks into the Bar where Leroy is playing cards and we all know what happens next.
A recent visit from the current (you-know-what-19) has me thinking about leaving ourselves open to attack. I have learned much over the years. My experiences have proven that what we hear is not true. It is good to pay close attention to how we instinctively feel. If we ponder past experiences, that incredible pull from deep inside, warning, guiding, protecting us, we get it.
This misinformation runs deep. Our grandparents, born at the dawn of the previous century knew everything. They could not be fooled. Our parents also knew, but they were romanced into convenience, and to some degree, so was I. Fortunately, I got to know my grandparents and parents well enough to know what lies beyond our facade of helplessness and incompetence.
Sadly jokes are going around the internet about how an automotive owner’s manual from 1960 had instructions on how to adjust valve clearance and today in 2023’s owner’s manuals, there are warnings about not trying to drink the antifreeze. I wish this WAS funny, but it is not.
I have a friend who has a friend who lives in Florida. There is a website (which I do not have) where you can take a test that asks random questions in all high school subjects to assess your intelligence. The way that it grades you is against all of the other people taking the test in your state. He has done this a couple times a year for the past few years. Mind you, these are not the same questions. Every time he takes the test, he is graded as being smarter than the last time he took the test. He does nothing to further his knowledge and somehow he comes out better than before. We know the answer, the general population is becoming less intelligent all of the time. The bar which they measure him against keeps falling.
This does not mean it is everyone of course. There are many creative, intelligent, inspiring people from every place and of every age group. The real blame is upon the puppeteers behind the scenes who are reprogramming the perceptions of the people of the world. Social media is a huge one. Well, the social media that “they” have control over.
Somewhere in the last 60 years, they reprogrammed us to think that it is too hard to make our own laundry soap for example. Then, when most of the generation who used to make their own was gone,, inflation spiked and suddenly my $7.97 128-ounce bottle of Arm and Hammer Free laundry detergent was $9.96 and only 96 ounces. We become prisoners because at this point, erasing history and the knowledge of our wonderful grandparents, we are left in the shackles of ignorance that we allowed because we were told to be kind to ourselves.
That is only the beginning. I often wonder how the information age can give us so much, and yet erase all skill and progress from our collective consciousness. The answer is simple. As someone familiar with the tech industry, one of the most effective ways to inhibit purposeful communication is to jam it with useless data, overwhelming it with white noise so loud, that the quality information is lost or delayed and forgotten.
Some of you won’t like this. It began in the early 80s with CNN. News that ran 24 hours a day, what an innovative idea! But this was the conduit with which great deception could be delivered. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not picking on CNN by itself all media outlets are guilty of this. It is anyone who knows I refer to these as “the Pez dispenser”.
Let’s not forget the big, beautiful Trojan horse that we know as MTV. We all got lured in with these wonderful music videos that edified the story of the music that we love so much and then, while we were not looking, it changed its personality and started raising our kids. They may as well have had serial port interfaces plugged into the backs of their skulls Creating some of the most dangerous slippage in society in our lifetime.
Finally, the grandmaster itself, the information super highway. It rode into town bearing gifts beyond everyone’s imagination. It slain all of the criminals holding music hostage. It opened so many doors, some unimaginably excellent and others unfathomably bad.
30 years into its journey, despite not seeming possible, the masters were able to control even this uncontrollable entity. Give people vanity, and they will follow you anywhere.
It is interesting, that these tools that seem to give people a voice and power get support in actions. But please ask yourself wouldn’t it be interesting to see what they are opposed to? When you look at it from this angle it seems legitimate when you look at one thing and their reasoning. But then look at another and then another. The more you see the more things make sense. They denounce what they do not control.
Where does this leave us? We all have a vulnerability that can be exploited with that wild card event that makes it unavoidable. How we deal with that is just as important as prevention. Understanding that sooner or later, Doris walks into the bar, and knowing that it was us and not her that brought us down will determine if we can get back up off the floor.
Why did I choose Leroy Brown? On my first night of being sick, I was listening to music from the 1970s as I drifted off to sleep. Croce’s Leroy Brown began playing and it was quite vivid as I ran a fever. I have listened to this song for over 50 years. The song wasn’t about how Doris’ man put Leroy down, it is about how Leroy’s open vulnerability took him down.
Want to take a real ride? Do the fever, half asleep, then Leroy Brown, follow that up with Anne Murray singing Danny’s Song about trying to earn what lovers own. What a crazy mixed-up world.