Despite whatever my family and friends might think… I am not a Conspiracy Theorist. I am not Right Wing, nor Left Wing. I have voted predominantly Green Party most of my life. I am a United States Marine (There are no Ex-Marines.), and I’ve canvassed for GreenPeace, worked with Amnesty International, protested a War, and participated in a War. Subconsciously, I believe, I’ve put myself on both sides of the fence, mainly out of curiosity… or possibly naiveté. When somebody starts talking about ‘their’ party I blow them off like I would with somebody talking about ‘their’ team. I guess you could consider this my disclaimer or that you can’t label me that easily.
The Cancel Culture loves labels.
They love to say who is bad, or who is good when we should be taking each and every person on this planet on an individual basis. Contrary to popular belief… we are all individuals. Everybody has their own ideas, their own dreams, their own beliefs. Some of us were born middle class, some upper middle, some of us rich, and some of us in extreme poverty. Some have been on welfare in hard times only to rise above that, go to college and become successful entrepreneurs. Some have stayed on welfare because they never believed they were enough. Some struggle and work their whole lives. Some follow their dreams at all costs.
You can see that there are infinite variables that make up a human. So why then do we try to label people, or put others in a box of what we believe others should be?
F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real)
We are afraid that if somebody isn’t on our team and we don’t gather enough people on our side that maybe the other side might be right? We are seeing this right now with vaccines. Half of the United States believes that the COVID-19 Vaccines are going to save us all, and that the unvaccinated are killing those who got vaccinated.
[I’m going to sidetrack here for a moment.]
When I was growing up, my Mother sent my brother and I to a Born Again Christian Camp called Word of Life. I remember the pressure at this camp to become ‘Born Again’. I succumbed to the pressure and got saved back then only to come home and find out that my team wasn’t that popular in my neighborhood. I ripped up my born again access card and never really looked back. I realized the implications at a young age of how teams work. It’s not that I wanted to be on the other team, it’s more the fact that my gut was telling me a different story. I realized that my gut feelings were what I needed to follow, not other people. This kind of made me an outsider, and contributed a lot to addiction and depression. Maybe I’ll write about that in the future, but right now I need to stay on track.
I see the Cancel Culture the same as when I went to Word of Life all those years ago. You just have to be on their team or you’re the problem. You’re the one creating all of the problems and once you agree with them then the world will turn correctly again.
Being on the winning team is an illusion.
I realized this when years later I found myself in other Countries. I saw really nice people with completely different beliefs. The Christians. The Jews. The Muslims. The Buddhists. The Hindu. All of them had their extremes. All of them had their different sects. I realized that they were all the same if you looked at the big picture. They all want to be loved. They all want their families to prosper. They all want to leave the world better than it was before they incarnated here. I would venture to say that people that don’t get the opportunity to experience other cultures are far more easily persuaded to join a team that thinks they are better than anybody else.
You can’t be objective in 280 characters.
We live in a world now where we don’t take the time to read past the headline. We base our opinions on headlines alone. Most of you that follow me know that one of my many hats that I’ve worn has been that of advertising. Shock value is huge in that industry. The more shocking, the more emotion. The more emotion, the more sales. Nobody remembers boring headlines. How many of you have read a headline and then read the whole article only to find out that the headline had nothing, or little to do with the actual content? Social media platforms have basically trained people to not take the time to look into things more deeply, and unfortunately it has created this culture that we live in now.
What is the solution?
Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy fix. It will take time and patience. It will take all of us collectively to slow down, take the time to understand each other, and be ok with somebody believing something else. A Conspiracy Theory is nothing more than people wanting the truth. When we’ve been lied to and deceived by Big Pharma, Corporations, Banks, Politicians, Social Media platforms, Lawyers, headlines… its human nature to want to see who is behind the curtain or as the band Zebra once wrote…
