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Everyone I encounter when they are bereft of any original ideas of their own starts by degrading personally someone who might try to add a tiny glimmer of a thought to a conversation. Commonly these senseless riffs begin with some classic obscenities which are so overused as to be so inane as to lack all stimulating value and generally continue with a plentiful flow of brown verbage and a garbage can full of  a sordid thought detritus.

The world is so loaded with narrow-minded thinking, sometimes called politically correct thinking, that it appears to be a human genetic inheritance. Generally these ideas are aimed at a differently colored outgroup and it is considered racism but these days that is so suspect within most American communities and is shut down by one’s peers. What then happens is people start picking on some closer in group which are more difficult to distinguish from across the street but which up a little closer might be, ugg Republican or double-ugg Democrat or triple-ugg Independent or even more uggs Libertarian or Green. Need I go on? People will find a reason to find other people to be out-group and they seem to need that in order to keep on breathing.

If these qualities are part of the human heritage then no doubt I am as locked into these narrow-minded attitudes as is everyone else. Of course, I don’t see it because I am the fish swimming in my own sordid water, in my own universe of personal perceptions, deductions, illusions and delusions.

The other day I wrote of watching myself as an animal in human form making all of the decisions I thought I was making as a human being but that my animal was making the actions I intended to make but a half second or more before I chose to do whatever it was I intended to do. If you pause right now and start to do anything I suspect you will soon notice that your body acts before you think to do the thing you think you are about to do. Your consciousness is just going along for the ride and makes excuses for your body’s automatic behavior. The only way around this dilemma is to train your body to react in more appropriate ways to specific stimuli. But, that takes self-conscious intentional pausing and pre-planning in order to make the changes. It requires a specific goal with specific needed behaviors decided on beforehand and then practiced, at least mentally practiced, before the intended encounters.

A lot of what I am writing about here can be observed by watching Cesar Millan in his National Geographic TV show called the Dog Whisperer. You can see where Cesar is demonstrating how dog owners should behave with their dog and then coaching them, the humans, through the learning procedures and then developing the specific required behaviors until the owners get it right. When you see this in action it becomes obvious how powerful the techniques Cesar teaches are for changing behavior both of the humans and of the dogs. It is these same techniques which anyone can apply with a little self-consciousness to their problems, perhaps totally modifying their behavior.

People who are using a lot of obscenities or find themselves shouting or even talking loudly or stridently are in fact demonstrating weakness and loss of control. They have something to say which is not being accepted by their interlocutors, which is generally the case or why would they even be talking to them? People don’t talk much about things about which they are in total agreement instead it is about the periphery of agreements or open clashes about total disagreements. The aggressive loud talk which is couched in ugliness and obscenity  is in fact loser talk. As a general rule the more scatological and nasty a person’s typical conversational style the more confused, unstable and painful their life is likely to be and when they are shouting those things it is a howl of pain.

Some people seem to be born happy and consistently see the bright side of things and easily find reasons to laugh at the tragedies of existence. Unfortunately for me, I am not one of those people and I am not even sure I wish I were because I have grown accustomed to my situation. I am me. I live in a certain time and place and I will participate in the environment in which I find myself. Things can change and certainly will change but if I live the life that is here before me it seems I can be happy. Maybe I don’t always look at the bright side of things, I like to find problems and work out ways of coping with them, this is just my style, it works for me. The one line I really liked in yesterday’s blog was –

“Go and find out for yourself”