Of evil screens and swinging things.

        The television and twisted carnival one can visit through their ethernet connection continually pit us against each other. Clearly some very savvy and unscrupulous people have perfected profiteering from all of us hating one another. Surely there are pockets of people who don't watch the news, read the paper (on some electric device) never see homelessness or abuse. Their world must be so different from the one I see, the view most of us have had force fed to us to keep us separated and controllable.

        But there is an invisible pendulum, always swinging. Whatever events are playing out today will one day pass away and new thoughts and (hopefully evolved) people will take their place. So swing pendulum! Swing! I heard that somewhere, somewhen, and it really spoke to me on a deeply spiritual and philosophical level. I say it to myself, or some version of it, when I feel the darkness about to cover me. I've been saying it a lot lately. News story to news story. Tragedy to tragedy. There is so much ugliness pouring out of these black screens that I have decided I MUST abandon them. It isn't enough to try ignoring these messages. I can't. And anyway, ignoring the weather report doesn't save you from the tornado. Neither will knowing a tornado is coming toward you protect you from its path.

         I feel I must seek out like-minded people and experience community, rather than pay to watch people (real and imaginary) hating, killing and maiming each other from my sofa. All these "reliable sources" only perpetuate this idea that humanity is a lost cause. I have forsaken us, too. It is safer. Smarter? I don't think so. Not anymore. Our whole world seems to be falling in on itself and can it be any other way when we have collectively abandoned it? Aren't I encouraging the hate and villainy to spread by being so completely absent? Yes. When I resolve to experience ACTUAL people in the world hopefully something else, something better, will begin to happen.

       It might sound naive, but I assert that unless we reconnect as a people (in the flesh, not through virtual pokes and thumb votes), the forecast is every bit as bleak as they threaten. Divided and fallen. That is the goal. There can be no doubt about it. I absolutely refuse to accept such a fate while sitting on my hands, convinced of my cynicism. Hopefully others are having similar epiphanies. Maybe we will all emerge from our hideyholes and virtuality to relearn that we can love one another. But even if I step out into the storm and perish, it can't have made more sense to languish forever in exile like this;  rendered inanimate by manipulative plastic toys and rationalizing my disconnection! So I'm coming out... swinging!