October 16, 2009
I was on the AOL home page today and saw a link to “best & worst of tv season so far.” My initial impulse was to click on the link to read the story. Then it occurred to me, why do I care what someone else thinks about what’s on television?
Not a big television fan. There are some shows I enjoy but I can basically take or leave any show – except I must watch “Lost” and “Dancing with the Stars.” But that’s beside the point. I just don’t really care what anyone else thinks of the shows I enjoy. I can make up my own mind, thanks anyway.
A discussion of a storyline, characters, etc. is one thing. But it seems like some people out there are trying to get us to think the way they do about a whole assortment of things.
Cruising around the Internet you’ll be presented with a veritable smorgasbord of “what other people think” (including my site, evidently.) It can be entertaining. But it can also become inappropriate.
I suppose it can be presumed that anyone, including myself, who posts on the Internet in a public fashion, is trying to get a message across. But how many are also trying to change your consciousness and to what effect?
I think the public’s mores, the collective current ethos, has become progressively, well, more progressive. There is more encouragement for people to think for themselves and to blaze their own paths. That might be truer now than any other time in our lifetimes.
Still, at the same time, all you have to do is get into some research online to find message boards full of people telling you what to do in just about any situation.
There are message boards stuffed full of people giving one another advice on every aspect of relationships imaginable. People who will gladly tell you what you’re doing wrong and where you need a course correct to reach your dreams.
But if you’re following someone else’s idea of how to proceed aren’t you also following a path they see rather than your own?
When are we actually taught to think for ourselves? As children we are socialized to behave and follow rules. To not do a whole assortment of things.
Then at adolescence we rebel against this and try to finally figure out our own identity. At this time, we’re also presented with a whole bunch of other hormonally-driven teens doing the same. And we all know how that works out.
So, then there’s college and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives. And then there’s trying to find our way… so when do we stop and figure out how we feel about things?
I think ideally we should always be the ones deciding for ourselves. And wouldn’t it be great if there was a course in school teaching young children to not care what others think, to do what suits you as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else.
Actually, I think if we all did what we wanted most in our hearts then we would not be hurting other people as much just because we’d be doing what we loved to do!
Of course, it might be impossible to have a course teaching people to think for themselves since that would run into a whole lotta grey areas in the actual teaching process. Teaching, after all, is telling people how to think…..hmmm, I’ll have to ponder that part.
