Common Sense

Oprah recently went off the air but in her wake she left a few cancerous nodules on the lower intestine of television programming. The four horsemen of the apocalypse Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Rachel Ray and that dolt who does interior design. These four aren't the entirety of all of the problems on planet earth but they represent a great portion of them.  Worse, they appeal to an ever growing segment of the community known as idiots.

When did common sense become a commodity? When did we as a people need guidance on how to perform the basic and obvious in our lives? Your instinct may be to defend these people but Stop! that is your idiot self talking. The idiot self enjoys the appearance of thinking without actually doing it. The idiot self likes to nod its head in recognition. The idiot likes a happy, moral ending. The idiot is paranoid, frightened and awaiting instruction.  The idiot trusts every nugget of "wisdom" that gets dropped into their ear holes.

You dear reader are not an idiot. In fact, you have made the intelligent choice to read this and you have proved your intelligence by understanding what I am saying.  There is no sane reason to toss your money toward the mediocre. Even Oprah's "Favorite Things" is not an excuse to delve into the sea of stupidity. When was the last time you watched a  t.v. show that taught you how to make instant coffee? When was the last time you took instruction on how to comb your hair, peel an orange or pick up dog excrement from a curbside clump of crab grass?

The continent is being served common sense masquerading as intelligent, useful information.  By stating the obvious people can easily agree with you and feel good about themselves. Stating the obvious helps others feel capable and knowing. It reassures people, it makes them feel like they are making the right decisions about their lives.

The problem that arises from all of this is that it over inflates what our perception of intelligence actually is. Knowing what to do should not be regarded as a skill.  Moreover, the ability to accurately view a situation does not make you a "life expert."  Indulging these people no matter how innocent the indulgence may seem is to elevate them to a position of authority which they clearly have not earned. Once people have the spotlight and begin to make money we start to admire them. We begin to adopt their behaviors and recommendations because we want to be rich and admired too.

This vicious pattern spirals out into a multitude of small claims court shows and swift justice with Nancy Grace. Maury Povich has reignited his career from spouting a few platitudes in between reading DNA results. The entire human experience cannot be rendered down to "Is it working for you?" The ability to recognize yourself in any situation is your primary objective not a level of awareness to aspire to. The subtleties of life and relationships cannot always be solved by taking a "long hard look in the mirror." Sometimes effort is required. Every once in a while a dedicated, conscious attempt to recognize and change your behavior over time is necessary. Everything in life does not have an easy answer  and if you think it does, you probably aren't really living.

Standards

I fear setting standards. The problem with standards is that people expect you to be consistent. Even if you don't plan it, if you do something long enough eventually a theme begins to develop. After awhile you become that guy who does that thing. Or, if you are horribly untalented then you become that guy who does that thing terribly on a regular basis. 


If there is one thing I am not in life, it is consistent. Scholastically I have either done really well at the beginning of a semester and then abysmally by the end or I start off poorly and I am barely able to eek it out. As far as work or labor is concerned I have always done best when I have had an assigned task that I can complete and once the task is over, I take a break. An egotistical person would spit shine that admission and say that they have an all or nothing personality but a realistic person would say that they find it excruciatingly difficult to maintain an average.

So I've got a couple months blogging under my belt and I've already started falling into a niche. Originally I planned on writing a blog with an even mixture of "intelligent" ideas combined with semi humorous musings. I aspired to be some kind of textual George Carlin making you smile while I drove home some important uncovered truth about humanity. Now I find myself writing a lot of "this sucks and here's why" articles because I think that it is what people want to read. Don't get me wrong I don't feel as if I am manufacturing a product in order to win fans. I do think however that my initial flow has been stunted or altered by a perceived desire to entertain others better. As it turns out, I am a whore for attention and recognition first and a person of morals and integrity second.

This may not be a bad thing. If I was at home cooking for myself chances are that I'd just slather about 6 slices of bread with peanut butter and scarf them down. However, if I was cooking for someone else I'd go to greater lengths to make something that is tasty that required effort. Superimposing that example onto my blog, the nagging voice in the back of my head that says "people are watching" probably does make me pay more attention and try to make what I say more fluid and easier to relate to.  


The only foreseeable problem that I alluded to earlier is that I self edit and shy away from topics that I may otherwise have written about freely. How can I be sure that the great majority of people are in on the joke? How do I still be edgy without being offensive? Ultimately we all believe that we should write for ourselves first and our audience second but I wonder about that. It seems to me that every band that makes it big doesn't do so until they write the one album that sounds conventional or mainstream. Or if the band starts out mainstream and then grow experimental then they lose most of their fan base. As much as I like to think I am typing out most of this crap because it is therapeutic, in reality I do want to be recognized and showered with praise and large sums of cash.