Random Soapbox: Apparently I'm Anti-Anti

/Steps on soapbox

I know it's midweek and I've mostly given up rantings. Every once in a while, though, something just gets my goat. The irony is that what I'm hating is the overwhelming need many seem to have to hate on things that do them (and everyone else) no harm.

Now, before you toss the hypocrisy card, hear me out. I'm fine with hating things you can't fix: DMV lines, corrupt politicians (of any flavor), colonoscopies, and bad drivers. Rant away until it's fixed. Keep talking. I won't stop you (even if I disagree).

Be as angry and vocal repeatedly on issues that hurt you or others, like global warming, female circumcision, white (or any other kind of slavery), intolerance, forgoing vaccines, war, terrorism, unemployment, what-have-you. Nothing wrong with standing up for anything while people are suffering. There are certainly plenty of issues like that to keep us busy.

But there's another class of things that people rant about. that they jump in on over and over again. Opinions. Now don't get me wrong. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, about a particular celebrity or person or book or movie or song or process or set of beliefs. By all means have them. Tell your friends, answer with the truth when asked, put it on your blog. Defend your opinion if challenged if you want to.

But then, for mercy's sake, let it go if it's not hurting anyone, especially you. I was reading a bulletin on an upcoming Twilight movie (beint split into two, rather than one - which, as I've read the book, makes perfect sense), and every single comment was bemoaning the fact there'd be two and screaming out against the torture, etc. Folks, what possible impact do the number of Twilight movies remaining have on people who don't like them? Don't like it. Don't go.

I'm not saying you can't hate it. My husband hates them and doesn't pretend otherwise. But he isn't obsessed with it. He doesn't follow announcements and blast fans. He doesn't burn the books when I'm not looking. If he doesn't like the book, he doesn't read it. He doesn't like the movie, he doesn't watch it.

There are people who hate certain celebrities with a passion verging on mania. Not because they committed a crime or strangled kittens in their spare time but because they're dating/married to the wrong person or are too fat/successful/ugly/who knows what. OJ doesn't get the hate mail these celebrities get. So much vitriol.

I didn't get into Harry Potter. I'm not a fan of the Star Wars franchise (in general). I couldn't care less about horror movies like Saw and whatever. I can't stand watching Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell in a movie. There are a number of very successful authors whose books leave me cold.

So. I don't go to the movies I know I won't like. I don't read books by authors I don't care for.

As far as I'm concerns, those authors can write as many books as they can sell. It does me no harm. There are plenty of other books being published. If there aren't any good movies out one weekend, I have a DVD player. If people go see a movie I disliked a dozen times, what harm does that do me? Why should I be upset over this? Why lose my mind over something that has no real effect on me?

What is wrong with people? Why do they get rabid over stuff they don't like? Why are people spun up about what religion people are, who they go home with, what party they're with, what celebrities they admire?

I have to ask why anyone's life is so empty they have to go out of their way, track down people getting enjoyment from something harmless and try to take it away from them.

Please, folks, if you want to promote the things you like, watch it/read it/buy it. Extol it's virtues. Sing it's praises. Enjoy it over and over. And remember, if someone's enjoying something you don't like, why sweat it?

Maybe, if we stopped worrying about what other people were enjoying (that we didn't like), maybe we'd find our own lives tasted a little better than we thought.

/Steps off soapbox

Just my opinion

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RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon With a Twist

I like quotes in general. but I also like quotes that look like they’re going to say one thing and then kind of twist it into something else. Naturally, I have bunches of these and I’m going to include some today.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
–Dwight D. Eisenhower

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
–Scott Adams

We easily forget that smog is the price of freedom of our streets from manure, and from the flies and diseases it brought.
–Daniel Boorstin

By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.
–Ashleigh Brilliant

Successful organizations are programmed to eat their own brains: it’s called bureaucracy and it’s the evil offspring of Operations and Accounting. It’s the silent killer of organizations; they become enfeebled before noticing that something’s gone wrong.
–Dale Dauten

I used to be indecisive, now I’m not so sure.
–W.C. Fields

Ability will never catch up to the demand for it.
–Malcolm Forbes

Accident: Always “regrettable” or “unlucky” — as if a mishap might sometimes be a cause for rejoicing.
–Gustave Flaubert

I think it would be an excellent idea. (When asked what he thought of Western civilization)
–Mohandas Gandhi

My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group. There was much less competition there.
— Indira Gandhi

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
— Edward Abbey

Adventure is the result of poor planning.
— Col. Blatchford Snell

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
— Erica Jong

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
— Wes Izzard

A friend of mine told me to shoot first and ask questions later. I was going to ask him why, but I had to shoot him.
— John Wayne

A grain of wisdom is worth an ounce of knowledge, which is worth a ton of data.
— Neil Larson

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
— Saul Bellow

A high-school teacher, after all, is a person deputized by the rest of us to explain to the young what sort of world they are living in, and to defend, if possible, the part their elders are playing in it.
— Emile Capouya

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.
— Austin O’Malley

Alcohol is a good preservative for everything but brains.
— Mary Pettibone Poole

All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
— Julius Caesar

All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.
— Red Skelton

All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.
— Jane Wagner

All things are possible until proved impossible — and even the impossible may only be so as of now.
— Pearl S. Buck

A man can fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame someone else.
— Waite Phillips

Americans are people who laugh at African witch doctors and spend 100 million dollars on fake reducing systems.
— L.L. Levinson

An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
— Orlando A. Battista

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"Normal" People

Proposition 8 in California was overturned as unconstitutional. It's not news, but it's started an interesting discussion over on Janet Reid's excellent blog. I call it interesting, not because I feel this issue has any fuzz on it - someone else deciding who marries who? - but because I'm frequently amazed at the reasoning people come up with for whatever notions they have. Even if they make no damn sense.

Take this quote:

For many years and for many people *marriage* has always been a sacred covenant between two people and their deity. Not just the Christian god either. Gay *marriage* is an deep and personal affront to that covenant.

I don't know if anyone else noted the inherent contradiction between the first two sentences and the third, but I did. Well, heck, for centuries, marriage was a way to possess women, their wombs and sometimes fortunes. I'm sure there are people who would like to go back to that "sacred" way, too. Nor is homosexual marriage unprecedented. Sometimes history is left behind for a very good reason.

Thing is, someone is entitled to think of marriage however they want. You see it as a sacred right between a man and a woman, by all means marry someone of the opposite gender. The question isn't about changing your personal belief. It's about the concept that you can inflict your belief on someone who feels differently, can keep them from doing something so personal, so life-altering, with a person of their choosing just because you don't think they should be able to. It's the concept that some people think they have the right to take this basic right - the right to choose your own spouse - from others because they're not "normal" and the marriage they want isn't "normal."

Even assuming the majority represents "normal," I have to ask - so what? This country was founded on folks who refused to be normal, who bucked the powers that be that told them who they were, what they should believe, what they could expect from themselves. And that reverence for those that weren't "normal," who were different or odd, for those that thought outside the box or refused to be pigeonholed into one way of thinking is a key element in much of what Americans have accomplished, one reason why ingenuity and originality has been such a part of our history.

Not that we haven't had backward moments or that we didn't restrict many portions of the populace from the same respect and reverence (different races and women, for example). But it's our individual freedoms, our individuality that have, in my opinion, done the most for this country.

These "normal" folks obsessed with those that aren't "normal" (and I personally think there are any number of what I consider normal people who are perfectly comfortable with individuality) are the ones that stand against every advance, every change for the better, every improvement we've ever had, mostly because they want everyone else to become what they see as "normal." I've never been sure why there is this compulsion to make everyone the same, though I don't discount the possibility that insecurity, the need to feel accepted, is part of it. People (many of them normal) I know that are comfortable with who they are don't feel the urge to force others to be as they are. No pro-choice people I know have ever advocated forcing abortions on the unwilling. No homosexual couples I have known have ever worked heterosexuals having relationships.

"Non-normal" people just want to live their lives to suit their own purposes, decide their own futures, be left to live their non-normal lives in peace with the same rights and responsibilities as all the "normal" people. A few decades back, may I remind you, the "non-normal" people were blacks and women.

A few centuries ago, they were the original settlers here.

Just sayin'.

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Sunday Soapbox: I'm a Dreamer

*Steps on soapbox*

This soapbox is less or a rant or a lecture to all my readers than it is a self-realization I'm going to share. The soapbox, in this instance, is marginal, but I'm allowing it because, hey, it's my blog.

Last week, I asked my readers what love was and I was surprised at the answers. This isn't to say that anyone answered "wrong" or that there was, in fact, anything wrong with the answers I received (and I appreciate the honest answers). Just that I was expecting more dreamers among my readers. I guess a blog titled "Rocket Scientist" doesn't attract that sort of reader so much.

What surprised me even more was my reaction. My reaction was not that the responses were wrong. My practical side acknowledges that they often are correct, that love, particularly as portrayed in song, story and movie, is largely stupid and highly impractical. Only second to the horrible garbage that romantic love and rape are compatible is my aversion to the notion that two people can do nothing but fight among themselves unless they happen to be tearing each other's clothes off is romance. That's love?

But, I was surprised at how dispassionate some were about love, that it was more a formula than a reality or that love shouldn't involve any vulnerability, any risk.

Now I don't need a degree in psychology to know that being entirely dependent on another person for happiness is a recipe for disaster and codependency, but, as always, I'm not sure the other extreme is preferable. Risk free love sounds cold and lifeless, safe but colorless, you know, like diet food. It's enough to keep you alive, but not enough to live for. Or, at least, that's how it seems to me.

And that may be a key element. Everyone needs to find the kind and level of love that works for them. For some, it might be something safe where they never are at risk. Who am I to say that isn't enough for someone? It might be just the kind of love they need.

Some are holding out for the fairy tale, the notion that love will be perfect and magical, inexplicable and solve all their problems. If I'm skeptical that that is likely, I'm not in a position to tell someone they need to set their sites lower. For all I know, it's happened, even if I don't find sacrificing my sense of self to an all-powerful adoration.

And I'm not talking about just romantic love. Some people sacrifice themselves to a full-out love whether it's devoting themselves to a challenged child, a faltering parent, or a community in need in a third world nation.

I guess I believe in it all. I believe that friendship and sharing core values is the key to any long-term commitment, but I also believe that love at first sight is possible. I believe that people can find one another beautiful, physical appearance notwithstanding, but that the attraction can be communicated immediately. I believe that one can be vulnerable to someone else without sacrificing oneself absolutely. I believe some souls belong together - and, yes, I believe in souls.

But I also believe there isn't one truth for everyone, that what I believe in or don't has no power over anyone else, so, when I read things I didn't want to believe, I realized they didn't negate my beliefs nor were they wrong. They were just wrong for me, not because they might not be true for me, but because I didn't want live the kind of life where I could believe that kind of love was impossible.

After all, I don't have to experience or find something for it to exist. And believing the world has unconditionally and selfless love within it makes me happier, believing some people were made to be together makes me happier. Ironically, I would not have reached that realization if people hadn't challenged my beliefs. So, I'm grateful.

Takes all kinds in this world, I truly believe. I think the world would be even worse if we were all skeptical or all pessimistic or all optimistic or all trusting. I think it takes a healthy mix. I'm a dreamer when it comes to life and writing, and a pessimistic skeptic when it comes to work and politics. And that's fine. I think the world needs both.

*Steps off soapbox*

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