Let’s start the week off with a rant from Stephen L. Hall.
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An advertisement the other morning was talking about some kind of blue awareness ribbon for some cause or another. I thought it necessary thus to express my displeasure not with the cause, but with the very concept of awareness ribbons, and even the very concept of awareness itself.
It seems that we have, as a society become completely inundated, nay overwhelmed, with endeavors of awareness promulgated with vast quantities of advertisement dollars no doubt originating from tax dollars filtered through overly long and wordy grant proposals for non-profit, leftist monstrosities.
It all started, recently, with a song enjoining people to “tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree” in remembrance of both John Wayne movies and popular hippie songs that have become a part of American folklore.
But in more recent times, the yellow ribbon has been replaced with ribbons of all colors and even multiple colors. But these ribbons now just are intended to send the simple message that the wearer and observer are to be aware. (As opposed to beware.) Just how many causes can one be anticipated to maintain awareness? The answer might very well surprise you.
“And when I have heard it, what blessing brings it?” . . . “Will it serve for any model to build mischief on?” – Don John. Of what possible use it is to be aware of these things; to be aware that breast cancer exists; to be aware that chiari exists; or to be aware that domestic violence exists?
By this, I do not mean in the slightest to disparage or discourage those who would engage in fund-raising activities, no matter how tangential or unrelated to the topic, for the purpose of funding such things as medical research. No, I here address those who merely seek to raise awareness for some pet cause or another.
Awareness is the mere existential conception that this thing or another exists within the world, within society. In short, it is an overt recognition that bad things happen; that they exist.
By calling my attention to the existence of the bad things, I am meant to feel concern and caring; to fret, to worry, to empathize and sympathize with those unfortunates to which such bad things have occurred.
But as a practical matter, how is my emotion supposed to benefit those said unfortunates in their sufferings, their passions? Of what pragmatic benefit to the aggrieved is anticipated from my angst and concern which they seem so intent upon generating? That is the very source of my displeasure in this regard.
Nothing is to be done to solve these myriad problems . . . because . . . these are not problems. Those adept at programming will be fully aware that any recursive problem must have the attribute that with each successive iteration the problem has to be getting smaller or the recursion will likely end up in an infinite loop and crash the system. The computer programming background in me recognizes that this is not the case with these awareness ribbons.
The philosophical side of me simply takes a step back and recognizes that what these leftists have labeled a “problem” is not a problem, and calling is such is simply empty and meaningless. They have termed the mere existence of bad things to be a problem, for which society must spend great sums of money to be aware. Okay, we are aware, now what? Nothing.
This is not a new phenomena, similar generations of people have fretted about the meaningless in a seemingly never ending generational cycle of useless awareness. Great scholars debated for centuries such profound dilemmas as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, being insubstantial and ephemeral entities; or why bad things may happen to good people as in the biblical story of Job.
The ills of the world will exist, and will continue to exist. Bad things are not Schrodinger’s cat; they will not die if you open the box and see exactly what the state of its existence really is. Knowing that violence exists does not end violence.
Cancer exists. Mental health issues exist. Domestic violence exists. However, these bad things have existed from time immemorial, and will continue to exist whether you are aware of them or remain completely oblivious to their continued existence.
Sometimes, it gets even more foolish because those people concentrate on a specific type of existence rather than a generalized bad thing. E.g. they will complain about the existence of gun violence, and claim that if we got rid of guns there would be no gun violence. Yet violence would still exist. Their distinction is meaningless in its specificity.
The baby boomer, at an age to be called hippies, beatniks, and other assorted misfits, misspent their youths seeking to make people aware of their pet causes and general dissatisfaction with lives which were not particularly difficult or challenging. In short they created the very concept of “first world problems” by highlighting trivial things and pretending that they were something of paramount, earth shaking importance.
Between their hedonistic revelries, they would lament that bad things existed, like nuclear weapons, poverty, wealth disparity, hatred, homelessness, and general unfairness. Their solution was to hold sit-ins, complain endlessly, get stoned, and generally make a nuisance of themselves all in an effort to “raise awareness” that these things existed.
The children of these baby boomers grew up with these lamentations of pointless, existential angst. Naturally enough with enough exposure to such repeated non-sense they finally arrived at the ultimate, perfect, and sublime response to the perpetual cries for awareness.
Shit happens. Yes, a simple yet contemptuous expression of the recognition that bad things do indeed occur. In fact, many a t-shirt sale was based upon this eloquent, yet vulgar. response to the perpetual worry mongers of existential ills.
Awareness has again been revived by the boomer echo, the children of these awareness propagators of old. The Trigglypuffs of the world telling us to be aware that bad things happen and that we ought to wear a ribbon to demonstrate to the world that we are in fact aware; the SJWs of the modern era.
A quick word to the Social Justice Warriors out there e’er I proceed. A real warrior does not need safe spaces in which to hide away. Justice demands the recognition that more than one perspective exists, and thus you have to actually listen to others and recognize that their perspective may have some validity, even that your position might actually be wrong; to fail to do so is anti-social.
All of which brings me to my response to the commercial calling for my awareness to whatever cause it was they were illuminating.
I really don’t give a damn. I mean by this that the extensive, overwhelming depths of my absolute, unassailable apathy can not be underestimated. Not only do I have no empathy for the existence of the ills of which you are so concerned, I am increasingly indifferent to your existence. You are breathing and wasting valuable oxygen which could be put to much more profitable employment sustaining in the wilderness some toad or gecko which would be of far greater use to humanity.
You ask that I be aware. I am aware of a great many things. What is your point?
Yeah, I really don’t care. Get off of my lawn! Damned hippies. Get a job! And, a haircut!
