The Symbol-Minded

Today I got a pretty scathing email from someone who did not appreciate a Facebook comment I made about the stupidity of the modern media.  I had a very long laugh (you know who you are, so be aware that you actually brightened my day – I felt much smarter after reading your demented rantings).  He called me every name in the book, and I actually counted sixteen different labels that he threw at me for what he assumed I was.

Bad news Junior.  Not a single one of those labels describe me.  In fact, many don’t actually describe anybody in reality.

I am not a liberal.  I’m also not a conservative.  I’m not a Democrat or a Republican.  I do not “worship at the altar of Obermin” (by the way, you might want to check your spelling) just because I think Glenn Beck is a complete tool.  When you get right down to it, there is no one on cable news that I would consider a true reporter.  No one.  Nada one.  Zero.  There are a few who have potential, but if I mentioned names they’d prove me wrong tomorrow.  The corporate media will do that to you.

I’m also not a hippie, a corporatist, “white trash” or a rich snob.  I’m not a “religious wingnut” or an “atheist crusader set to destroy god.”  What I am is a human being that likes to think, which makes me a giant mashup of every label you could probably ever come up with.

Labels are a lot like symbols and as George Carlin once said, “I leave symbols to the symbol-minded.”  In my personal opinion, depending on a label to define myself would mean I am pretty damn lazy.   It’s one thing to do some research, look into both sides of an issue and then decide, “you know, I think I’m fairly conservative.”  Fine.  But latching on to the word, or ANY word, because it gives you an excuse to never have to look at anything, never have to give any real thought to any real issue, and never have to feel for anybody else, is a ridiculous waste of human potential.

There is a big danger to living life on an extreme.  For one thing, you look like an idiot sometimes because you don’t seem to have the intellectual capacity to see someone else’s point and at least agree that they have a point, even if you don’t agree WITH the point.  Putting your hands over your ears and going “la, la, la” does not make a problem go away.  Secondly, if someone on the “other side” says something that makes sense, you risk destroying your entire thought process.  Living on the extremes also makes it almost impossible to feel any empathy for anybody else, and leaves you susceptible, since you’ve trained yourself not to think, to falling for any line someone from “your side” says.

It doesn’t matter if it’s not right.  It got written down in the talking points that day, so therefore it must be right, because I’m a LABEL too.  Not a person.  Not someone with the ability to sort things out.  I’m in my little corner and you can’t make me come out, so there!

And that’s what a lot of people want from you.  There are people in the media, the government, the educational system, pharmaceutical companies, almost any industry and most anyone with a personal stake in something that makes big money who NEED you to be that label.  They don’t want you considering other ideas, because that makes us smarter.  Smarter people tend to be harder to screw over.

I believe if we just dumped the labels and saw each other as human beings instead, we could work things out a lot more smoothly, or at least sound a lot smarter when we don’t agree on something (and of course we won’t sound like two-year-olds yelling, “I know you are but what am I?”). You know what they say about what happens when you assume, right? So I can jokingly call myself a “libercon independent” and get a laugh out of some people, but it is of course a joke label, trying to make a point.

So what am I?  Do I vote Democrat or Republican or Romulan?  No, no and no.  In our system as it is today, I vote for the person I think will do the least amount of damage to things that actually matter.  Why?  Because that’s about the only choice.  There is no party that represents me.  No label that fully encompasses who I am as a person. And you know what?  That’s just fine.

It gives me something else to think about.