Tag Archives: right and wrong

Conscience

Conscience: (n) an inner guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.

I am discovering that my mind has become a garage, where I store all the memories and stuff that can no longer be used–simply because most of them are more than twenty years old.

Therefore, they are viewed as useless.

If you don’t believe me, just bring up something from the 1980’s, and look at the confused, frustrated and sometimes angry faces of the young humans around funny wisdom on words that begin with a C
you, who don’t understand that you forgot that “they weren’t born yet.”

So I have to be careful as I mention Jimminy Cricket. I do so because when I think of the word “conscience,” he is the pesky insect that comes to mind. He insisted that we should let our “conscience be our guide.”

Well, it doesn’t take me long driving down the freeway to notice that if the conscience actually does exist, it has not been evenly distributed. There are people who are courteous, and there are folks who only got the first part of the word: curt.

So I have to ask the little cricket if he could help me understand whether this conscience thing was there at birth, or if somebody didn’t need to hover over all living souls to make sure that they grew up giving a shit about anything but themselves.

Having raised a number of children, I can tell you that they do not arrive on Earth as human beings. They are actually more of a confirmation of Darwin’s theory of evolution–they are little monkeys who scream, wiggle, piss, poop and grab for everything in sight, until they are trained to escape a life in the jungle, and can be welcomed to Suburbia.

A conscience is not something we’re born with. It’s something we are taught–and hopefully taught so well that we retain it once we are no longer able to be sent to our rooms.

 

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Blur

Blur: (v) to make or become unclear or less distinct.

Dictionary B

“Blurring the lines.”

It is a phrase used to characterize the alleged growing ambiguity between right and wrong.

It is a way for those who believe they’ve cornered the market on purity to lament the intrusion of foreign ideas.

Are we really blurring the lines, or are we just admitting that there are no lines?

After all, is life really a bounty of boundaries, which when crossed, transform us into different creatures? Or are there wide-open spaces and boxes?

And what is the purpose of wide open spaces?

Why do we insist that being free-thinking is better, while simultaneously decrying those visionary concepts which are contrary to the status quo?

After all, most of the things that exist in the panorama of our daily viewing would have been impossible to achieve if someone had not objected to the prevailing offering.

Which came first? Glue, paper clip or staple? It’s a rather easy answer, isn’t it? You can see the progression. First we tried glue, which didn’t stick; then we attached a paper clip, which slipped–and we finally arrived at the staple, which literally fastened a solution.

If we’re going to believe in lines, we will have to stay within them. To do so, we must make sure that we are completely comfortable and joyous within the limits of our enclosure.

And we also had better confirm that we’re not claustrophobic when our compartment starts filling up with conformists.

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Bizarre

Bizarre: (adj) very strange or unusual

Dictionary B

The pursuit of normal has grown to abnormal proportions.

It is more than a mindset–it is a deep, ingrained fear that the slightest step from the prepared pathway will bring ridicule or destruction.

This has brought our society to an unnecessary impasse. We’ve divided into two unseemly camps–unseemly in the sense that neither gathering has acquired the high road.

There are those who believe that anything that cannot be lifted up in righteous glory from the King James Version needs to be extracted from our country, out of a fear of heavenly judgment.

Then there are those who are so uncertain where to place the lines that they’ve removed all the grid and assumed that everything is all right as long as it makes someone happy.

So we have no definition for right and wrong, just a judgment of what is wrong and a free pass on what is right.

What is bizarre?

I think anything that kills human beings is bizarre.

I would venture to say that stealing our life force and joy is also bizarre.

And certainly, it is bizarre when we set about to destroy ourselves or other people through gossip and vapid hatred.

If we could determine what is truly bizarre and agree upon the parameters, we could begin to progress and surprise ourselves at how happy we actually can be.

But until then, there will be two camps warmed by two very different fires.

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