An “O” Social Commentary Dictionary
I thought of calling this dictionary the FKO Social Commentary Dictionary — after my initials, but would that give a flippant and a wrong message? Probably. You get the idea.
So, I thought “O”
As in Oh or “O”MG.
“O” is the first and last letter of my last name and could signify — “what goes around — comes around.” Maybe it is an endless cycle of karma or in a higher realm dharma.
Stupid — as in stupor — could be a zombie-like absence, operating as if conscious from a place of shock and emotional regression. In short, a dissociative state brought on by triggers. It was once thought of as being struck by too much of “something” — like information and then by fear choosing a non-rational or irrational answer. Of course I’m confabulating (see end note) and extrapolating based on a 1800s definition of stupid. Cognitively operating from this place empowers the user via anger, rage and righteousness that arise from feeling overwhelmed supersedes logic based on faulty premises. When this happens, the person falls into the ocean of stupidity.
Another nation, Torpor is where the block of non-voters live & who can blame them?
Then there’s Stupid’s cousin and sometimes spouse Ignorance. There may be a lot of inbreeding between Stupid and Ignorance, but not always. This is a common disease amongst the moderns — probably originated in the autoimmune cue. Stereotypes come to mind, but to repeat them is to dip into elitism where ignorance also breeds and may fall into the stupor.
Ignorance — to turn away or not pay attention as in ignore. Unlike stupor ignorance arises from increasingly narrowed states or focused frames of reference brought on by fears and anxiety of the other especially when the other is unfamiliar or strange. Everyone shares ignorance to some degree except perhaps those that are enlightened. When ignorance begins to feed their spouse/cousin information then Ignorance and Stupid are super-glued together dance partners headed towards the flat edge of the earth and fall off into the sluggishness of torpor. Another nation, Torpor is where the block of non-voters live and who can blame them? Sometimes seeming non-voters might be suppressed voters by those noble Night Riders the GOP protecting us from those minority illegal voters, right? Wrong!
In fairness haven’t we all been falling into occasional stupor and ignored some things out of fear? (To be dealt with in another installation of An O Social Commentary Dictionary.)
Entrenched Ignorance and Stupidity often produces children of Prejudice, Bigotry, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia and some more I’m not recalling in this instance. They huddle in camps, groups, communities maybe smoke too many cigarettes, vape, drink or do drugs as a medicinal salve in nations named Xenophobia — A Nation set out to blame the strangers.
Pointing out the ignorance and stupidity in others by identifying their logic is a fruitless endeavor, they are too much inside to see that the macro ideals are arising from a fear/anger base. For instance, I have a relative that rarely listens to me, talks non-stop and told me that we wouldn’t have to worry about climate change because we’d be dead by the time the worst comes (each of us has no spouse or children BTW). Mischievous me interjected: “What about reincarnation?” The next time we talked — or they talked, they told me “I don’t want to be reincarnated as an Indian.”; meaning a person residing in India — and from the tone of their voice they meant a poor person or an untouchable. I said “It’s highly unlikely that you’ll remember this life (meaning their current life). And, wow, you’re a racist.” Oops — didn’t follow my own advice. They denied it, of course, said they were friendly with Indians living nearby on the same street in the USA. Nevertheless, they were friendly in-person but had a racist bias towards a group but denied this. Then they segue-wayed into their disgust of younger people that expressed themselves with ink, said that tattoos were unhealthy for the skin — I interjected that tattoo artists had to have licenses from the board of health. But their anger / fear found its mark and would not have stopped save I had an upcoming appointment.
All that anger feels so sad.
The Rise of the Stupid from the Swirl of Ignorance
Part of the problem is that the education system (now more than ever is a training system and does not care about education) has thrown out critical thinking and compassionate self-examination. Other than elite private secondary education and some higher educational institutions the focus of learning is to learn how to do a skill etc. that is solely oriented towards tech, finance, or sciences with the emphasis on money, profit and whose vehicles are conquering mentalities.
Critical thinking be gone!
A good attribute of ignorance is a way of screening out the glut of weaponized commercialism thrown at people through media — including the internet. If we didn’t have a perceptual filter to ignore the barrage of information that assaults us daily we wouldn’t enter into zombie dissociative states and file mindlessly into massive stores and buy massive stuff. Right? Right? R-i-g-h-t… (Not a stutter). Although we could use critical thinking to screen out weaponized data — but OMG that might require some work, aghast!
Critical thinking be gone!
It’s all about me and carving my place out in the American Dream with as much money as possible so I can have a buffer from those in-control and blah, blah, blah…. I imagine some people think critical thinking is having mean thoughts about someone else.
Finally, there is so much loss — humans find loss unbearable — and loss begets grief. Rather than face the unbearable, grief gets rationalized, filed away, goes underground and becomes fear of change masked by anger and ignorance. We as a people — in general ignore our losses, act as if it was better in the past — pretense on some level and justify a steady state of rolling back progress or trying to keep things normal, while an existential crisis brews.
end note: confabulating can be a fabrication based on memory gaps.
