Tag Archives: self-righteous

Brand Name

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Brand name: (n) a name given by the maker to a product

Johnson’s Baby Powder can cause cervical cancer.Dictionary B

Wow.

The brand names keep tumbling, as research proves that the products we ingest and utilize to improve our beauty and comfort have undisclosed lethal effects.

Of late I have found myself surrounded by children and grand-children who are obsessed with brand names.

Simply because someone can sew a tag with a graphic design inside a shirt does not mean the garment is legitimately tripled in worth.

I have had brand name clothes, and they fade with washing and wear out equivalent to Dollar General threads.

Did I ever find myself bragging about a pair of shoes that were made in some hamlet in Italy by little old men who had been in the trade since Leonardo di Vinci?

Probably.

But I was equally as critical of that footwear when it split out or wore out too soon, making me run to the local Wal-mart to gain a temporary replacement.

I’m not so sure that anything which makes us self-righteous, puffy, proud and arrogant has lasting value. And once a brand name loses its pungency because of scandal or lack of quality, it is very difficult to hang your hat on it anymore.

Take the brand name “Christian,” for example…

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Blithe

Blithe: (adj) showing a casual and cheerful indifference

  • Dictionary BWhen does a smile become a smirk?
  • When does it transform itself into a sneer?
  • And when is a sneer considered to be snide?

Even though it’s easy to misinterpret body language, it is nearly impossible to ignore it.

Do we have a responsibility to make sure that the attitude which precedes our persona is sending off the right signals?

And what does it mean to be blithe?

In my mind’s eye, there are many ideas which are promoted as “positive thinking” which become annoying when they’re offered at the wrong moment.

I’m tired of having people tell me they’re going to pray for me instead of spending thirty more seconds allowing me to share my heart.

I am weary of those who callously toss off the phrase, “It’s all good.”

I find it annoying to be around people who become frustrated if they can’t find their keys, but want to address my health diagnosis by informing me that “God is in control.”

If infuriates me to see pseudo-intellectuals become enraged with bigotry while refusing to lift one finger to personally assist the afflicted.

A blithe spirit comes from a self-righteous heart.

It is the childish representation that “life is going to get better”–just because we say so.

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Beet

Beet: (n) an edible root that is typically dark red, spherical and eaten as a vegetable.Dictionary B

We have a tendency to prefer things above ground to things that are in the ground.

In other words, we like apples better than beets. Apples grow on trees from pretty stems and beets dwell in the dirt.

It’s just the way we are.

Sometimes I feel that analyzing human behavior is an exercise in futility which can only make you feel desperate or self-righteous. So here’s what I’ve learned to do:

Since beets have a texture which is halfway between a potato and a pear, and they are as sweet to the taste as any plum, I just served them to my kids.

They were naturally frightened at first.

Matter of fact, they looked askance in my direction, as if I was attempting to poison them or make them outcasts from the general population of “kiddom.” After all, how would they ever be able to admit to their friends that they had consumed a beet?

I did explain to them that beets are used to make sugar, so that means they come from a sweet place. And I made sure to place the beets next to a hot dog dish of their favoring.

So to some degree, I think my children learned to enjoy beets, or at least tolerate them when they found themselves dining in my proximity.

For after all, you have to admire a food which has to dig its way out of the ground to land on a dinner plate. Many such organisms having humble beginnings just decide to die in their earthen homes.

Not the beet.

It is prepared to be consumed and relished by anyone who is willing to consider something … a little “off-beet.”

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Beeswax

Beeswax: (n) a person’s concern or business.Dictionary B

“None of your beeswax.”

I’m not so sure anyone under the age of 50 would know what that phrase means. I haven’t heard it for years. It sounds like a throw-away line from the musical, Grease.

But of course, if you are unfamiliar with the phrase, its origin lies in the sarcastic response one gives another person when they’ve stepped over the line and started interfering in one’s life.

In other words, “none of your business.”

You know what the interesting thing is about that idea? More often than not, it may very well be my business. The fact that someone gives me an adolescent, bratty response doesn’t change the fact that they may be making decisions that affect my life without consulting me.

But by the same token, “none of your beeswax” would be a very appropriate response to many things being discussed today as if we actually have some say-so in the conclusion.

1. How somebody worships God.

None of your beeswax.

2. Someone’s sexual orientation.

Not your beeswax.

3. The personal freedoms we are meant to enjoy in this country despite our differences.

Removed from your beeswax.

America may have become more intelligent or technologically savvy, but with the introduction of Facebook and social media, it has also become more intrusive, opinionated and mean.

Some things are none of my beeswax.

I suppose the genesis of the term is that whatever a bee needs to do to make honey is none of my damn business.

Exactly.

I think I’ll just stand on the other end of your life and enjoy your honey. How you get it there is up to you. But understand–we are human.

It better be sweet.

 

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Beer

Beer: (n) an alcoholic drink made from yeast-fermented malt and flavored with hops.Dictionary B

I like good taste.

This does not mean I have good taste. Let me make that distinction before it is thrust upon me.

I am one of those odd people who has never smoked marijuana, taken recreational drugs or chugged beer.

It isn’t a moral issue to me.

It isn’t any kind of sense that I am superior by abstaining.

It’s just that I’m a “watcher.”

Yes, if I had been a cave man, I would have stood back and observed what happened when my buddies ate the berries from a nearby bush, to see if they keeled over and died. I might have had a growling belly while I watched them devour the treats, but then would have been very grateful later as I saw them convulsing on the ground–delighted I delayed.

I never liked what beer does to people, and I certainly found it to be personally distasteful.

Marijuana always seemed to take people to a different place, when I was completely satisfied with the place I had located, renovated and furnished inside me.

People who drank beer also smelled of beer, or threw up a lot. (And by the way, as bad as the brew may be going in, it is even worse coming out.)

I’m always reluctant to discuss this matter because it seems I’m taking a self-righteous profile against Milwaukee’s finest. But honestly, I’ve been to Milwaukee, and the frothing stuff in the brown bottles is not their finest.

So I have come to the same conclusion on the subject with beer that I have with many things I’ve encountered in my life:

  • I’m glad you enjoy it.
  • I’m not preaching against it.
  • But I would rather not participate.

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Bastard

Bastard: (n) a person born of parents not married to each other.Dictionary B

Words of separation.

Perhaps our greatest mission during our Earth journey is to find terms, insults and references that separate us from one another, expose them for their prejudice and make them unpopular to use.

Without this, we begin to let the self-righteous and the domineering elite control the dialogue.

When I was eighteen years old, I got a girl pregnant. We loved each other. She got pregnant the same way people get pregnant who have marriage licenses. We just didn’t have the paper.

Yet there were people in my home town who had the audacity to refer to my unborn son as a “bastard.”

A little smile came across their face as they said it. It was reassuring to them that they found a way to be superior to me without needing to blame themselves for pridefulness, but instead, claiming to be advocates for morality.

About four months before my son was born, my girlfriend and I got married and have remained so for forty-five years.

Yet I will tell you, if I were to go back to my hometown and any of those judgmental people were still alive, they probably would recall that brief season when they were able to belittle me and relegate my child to insignificance.

What are the buzz words of bigotry? They are everywhere.

  • Hunt them down.
  • Mock them.
  • Kill them.

And bury them as quickly as you can in the cemetery of ignorance.

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Assurance

Assurance: (n) positive declaration intended to give confidence; a promise.dictionary with letter A

“A money-back guarantee.”

How we love such a promise.

Yet there really are no guarantees. And I’m not speaking this from a jaded position. What I mean is, life maintains its purpose and fairness by being unpredictable.

  • For every person who insists they have assurance in their finance, there are stock market crashes and bank closings.
  • For every individual who puts great confidence in beauty, there is the ever-present specter of aging.
  • Even in religion, the “blessed assurance” that “Jesus is mine” is merely a promise of a heaven which we cannot see.

So I often wonder what value a word like “assurance” actually has in the human vocabulary.

Is it merely something we demand from other people, so we can be angry with them later when they turn out to be as inconsistent as we are?

Is it a self-righteous decision to hold some things in place, with the ridiculous assumption that change is normally for the worse?

I don’t know.

But as I’ve gotten older–and hopefully, a little more mature–I’ve asked people to make less promises and give fewer assurances.

Because I think a wiser philosophy is that since we cannot make ourselves taller or lengthen our lives, we should be content to accept the value of the moment for the beauty it possesses instead of trying to lock in a permanent situation … which is usually beyond the scope of us mere mortals.

 

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Assets

Asset: (n) a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality.dictionary with letter A

Piling things up.

If we don’t discover the meaning of our existence, we just end up accumulating indiscriminately.

To find out the meaning of life without becoming terribly ethereal, we must understand that we are heart, soul, mind and strength.

Each one needs assets.

  • For my heart, I need enriching emotional experience to counteract my fear of being loved and my reticence on loving others.
  • I need spiritual assets–things to believe in which can exist on earth as they do in heaven.
  • Mentally, give me the treasure of knowing that I’m always in the process of renewing my need to know.
  • And my body requires the assets of healthy food, healthy sleep, healthy exercise and healthy usage.

Anything that assists these four units is an asset. Anything that doesn’t is a distraction.

Can it really be that simple?

I hope so–because complications make me either frustrated or self-righteous.

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Armaments

dictionary with letter A

Armament: (n) Military weapons and equipment.　

Do you realize that there are people in the world who get up every morning and go to work to try to come up with new ideas for weapons that are bigger and meaner than the ones we’ve already manufactured?

I don’t want to be self-righteous, but it’s certainly not a job I would want to pursue.

After all, once you’ve discovered an implement that’s capable of killing someone, doing it more effectively or with double power seems to be…well, over-kill.

There was a point in the 1960’s when both the U.S. and the Soviet Union touted that each was able to destroy the world ten times over through nuclear weapons.

Did they really intend on procuring nine other planets?

Or was this just little boys on the playground boasting on how far they could spit?

As long as we have a military budget which is built on discovering more creative ways to be destructive rather than maintaining an existing prowess that encourages peace, I think we may be guilty of some misappropriation of funds.

Armaments scare me. It’s not because I’m afraid to die.

It’s just because I don’t like to discuss modes of death… before I get there.

 

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Anti-intellectual

dictionary with letter A

Anti-intellectual (n): a person who scorns intellectuals and their views and methods.

I ain’t sure, but I just may be one. Darn tootin’.

Can there be anything more annoying than someone who claims to be an intellectual, or on the other hand, some other varmint who insists “they’re just country.”

It all revolves around this nasty-dastardly deed of feeling the need to be right.

I would never call myself an intellectual, but I would never make fun of progress or science just to prove that I’m “one of the people.”

I often wonder, as I view my society, if we have all just gone crazy–and the process was so subtle that no one picked up on the nuance.

After all, the things we now accept as common sense tend to avoid any reasonable commonality and reject the need to be sensible.

I will tell you this–you will never get anywhere with anyone by insisting that you’re an intellectual. The goal of the whole room at that point will be to find the chinks in your armor and insert a spear deep into your self-righteous breast.

Likewise, you don’t gain the appeal of anyone who has an IQ above 75 by insisting that you eschew new discoveries, revelations which contradict the fables and lifestyle choices that you promote as old-fashioned, apple-pie American thinking.

Of the profiles afforded in the human experience–those being rock, cement and sponge–I choose to be a sponge.

I do not want to stand on the rock of mere intellectual pursuit, portraying myself as an agnostic, self-involved pursuer of education.

On the other hand, I don’t want to have a brain that’s cemented with superstition, fear, religion and political nonsense, and pass around another bucket of chicken with my equally stubborn brethren.

I am a sponge.

  • I do not fear science because God made it.
  • I am not afraid of the turmoil of nature because they are in the chemistry of our world to protect us and simultaneously teach us how things work.
  • And I do not deny the existence of God because I’m perfectly unwilling to believe that the whole system of the Universe is run on chance and chaos.

I do not care if I’m in the minority. I happen to know that minorities fare very well in the historical account.

As it turns out, I am not anti-intellectual nor pro-homespun. I want to absorb what’s true because I need to be free.

And rumor has it that truth is the only mechanism that delivers freedom. 

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