When I was twelve we lived in a big 'ol two story, five bedroom house. The only heat was a floor furnace. Money for gas was scarce. There were eight kids in the family, money for everything was scarce. One nice sunny day I was out in the front yard playing and having a good time. My step-mother came out on the steps and told me to come in to the house. "It is to cold out there." She was very insistent, I came in. It was freezing in the house!
I wonder how she came to the conclusion it was to cold for me to play outside. Maybe she assumed that since there was a furnace in the house it must be warmer inside. Or maybe she was just being a bitch and didn't like seeing me have fun. Either way I learned a very valuable lesson. You don't know what someone else's perception is. You are not in there body. There is no way to tell if someone is hot or cold, hungry or full, unless you ask them.
Likewise, you are not inside their head. you don't know what their experience is. I try not dismiss out of hand those who tell me they saw, or felt, or heard or feel things that I have not. "I saw a ghost", "God told me", "It was in another life". Who am I to say no that is not possible. Just because it hasn't happened to me doesn't mean it can't happen. And more importantly I have no idea what their experience has been. I may have been there with them, but I was not in their head.
My ex-wife told me once, at least once, when I had asked what she had said, "You heard me, I said it loud enough."
Yeah, well she was mumbling.
OWL
Nov. 19, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
Lead posioning
Matt Dillon wore a cowboy hat and killed people. It seemed like every week the protagonist of the popular television series Gunsmoke shot somebody. Dead. Some weeks he had more than one victim, if victim is the right word. The killing was always justifiable. Usually it was in a gunfight and the other guy always drew first.
Miss Kitty had red hair and ran the saloon. She never showed her titties. Nor did her saloon girls. That is the way it was in those days. Not the 1870's, I mean the nineteen sixties and seventies. You could show violence on TV but not the human body. Matt beat people up, got into fights on a regular basis, and he had real good reasons to get angry. His clothes and his mouth were always clean. Nothing anyone did would make him swear. Oddly enough the bad guys who killed in cold blood didn't cuss either.
Seeing someone naked or hearing them use the Lord's name in vain was considered to be harmful, especially to children. It still is considered harmful by many people. So much so that such things are still restricted on public airways. But graphic depictions or murder, rape, assault, and mental cruelty were and are completely acceptable. The CBS network got fined $500,000 for allowing Janet Jackson's nipple to show for a few seconds during a Superbowl broadcast. Rather stiff considering the offending part could barely be seen.
Although the rules are not as strict as they once were the broadcast airwaves are still for the most part free of bad language and sex organs, but full of violence and mayhem. Carnage is pervasive, carnality is prohibited.
I have never understood this but I have learned that people are often unwilling to talk about subjects that bring up feelings of guilt and shame. It troubles me to think that those institutions who claim to be this country's moral compass are more offended by the occasional image of an areola than by nightly depictions of the death of one person at the hands of another.
OWL
Nov. 25, 2011
Miss Kitty had red hair and ran the saloon. She never showed her titties. Nor did her saloon girls. That is the way it was in those days. Not the 1870's, I mean the nineteen sixties and seventies. You could show violence on TV but not the human body. Matt beat people up, got into fights on a regular basis, and he had real good reasons to get angry. His clothes and his mouth were always clean. Nothing anyone did would make him swear. Oddly enough the bad guys who killed in cold blood didn't cuss either.
Seeing someone naked or hearing them use the Lord's name in vain was considered to be harmful, especially to children. It still is considered harmful by many people. So much so that such things are still restricted on public airways. But graphic depictions or murder, rape, assault, and mental cruelty were and are completely acceptable. The CBS network got fined $500,000 for allowing Janet Jackson's nipple to show for a few seconds during a Superbowl broadcast. Rather stiff considering the offending part could barely be seen.
Although the rules are not as strict as they once were the broadcast airwaves are still for the most part free of bad language and sex organs, but full of violence and mayhem. Carnage is pervasive, carnality is prohibited.
I have never understood this but I have learned that people are often unwilling to talk about subjects that bring up feelings of guilt and shame. It troubles me to think that those institutions who claim to be this country's moral compass are more offended by the occasional image of an areola than by nightly depictions of the death of one person at the hands of another.
OWL
Nov. 25, 2011
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