The Boogie man

   Brother's can be as evil as they can get to little brothers when it comes to living in the same house together.   Every little brother has had to endure the torture of their older brother inventing dark savage creatures of the imagination that were to be found in basements, closets, old sheds and the woods they walked by on their way to school.  These creatures all went by the same name:  The Boogie man!

   Brothers created they creatures for one reason: to have power over their little brother and make them do what they wanted.

   Boogie-men exist today even as adults.  When bad things happen we want to find the villain and put them away so we can go and sleep soundly in our beds at night once again.  Recently a boy went into his high school and shot 17 students and killed them.   We ask ourselves "why?" and "how do we stop this from happening again?".   We search like little 5 year-old's for simple and easy answers.

   Still others would point the finger at an organization demonize them.  I am speaking of course of the NRA.  I watched as I saw a young man stand on stage and challenge a politician to not take anymore money from the NRA.   He asked his question with such conviction that one can only think he believed 100% that doing so would have literally stopped the bullets from leaving the perpetrators gun.   Frankly I wish the politician had answered "YES I will no longer take money from the NRA!" because, frankly, it's a false-flag.

    Last year the NRA gave 3 million dollars to Washington DC politicians.  On a list of the Top 50 Lobbying groups, the NRA would not even be on the list at all.   The biggest donor to Washington was the Healthcare industry which gave over 120 million dollars.  The NRA donations don't even come close and would be barely missed by politicians.

   So why does the NRA have so much sway in DC?   The NRA members have 3 basic qualities politicians look for in support groups.  First, they are CONSISTENT voters.   Studies have shown that NRA members vote in virtually every election, big or small.  Unlike some vocal groups that make noise on the streets with signs and banners, the NRA shows up at the polls.   Second, they are PASSIONATE about their issue.  They care about their rights being infringed, they care about the protection of their country from those who would destroy it from outside and inside.   They care about the weakest in society being able to protect themselves from the strongest.  For example, an 80 year-old grandmother is no match for a 300 pound man.   But with a gun she can be stronger than one.  Her rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is to be protected as much as anyone else. That passion is important to politicians because its those voters who will talk you UP or DOWN as a person running for office.  They will put signs on their lawns and bumper stickers on their cars.  They will not only go to the polls, they will also bring 3 or 4 family members with them.  Finally, they are WELL INFORMED.   The NRA keeps its members informed on where politicians stand on the issues.  They know that politicians are a sneaky breed that can turn on you in a moments notice and that person you voted for in the last election no longer exists. 

   That is why the NRA is important to DC politicians and that is why I am a member too.

    The problem with pointing at the NRA is that it prevents us as a society from looking at the real problems in our country.    Yes we need more mental health help in schools, but that is too little and too late to do anything.  The REAL question is WHY are we seeing more and more mentally unstable men in our country?   What are we as parents not doing that is causing this to grow?   We will never be able to growing weeds in the garden, but you can stop putting fertilizer on them!   So what could be the agents that are fertilizing these problems today? 

Here are just a few possibilities:

Breakdown of the family
   Today more and more kids are raised in single-family homes.  I know this goes counter to all the TV shows and movies that glorify single-family homes.  But we must come to grips on whether this is a contributing factor.  Often in divorce, children are placed in the mothers care which may be fine for the girls, but what of the boys who need to have a strong male figure in their lives that will correct them? 

Two-income families
   Even in cases of families that do manage to stay together we must look at are we being present for our kids.  Today, so many families feel they need two incomes to supply all their wants and desires.  These adults come home tired and an want to be left alone.   But children need their attention.   They need their input and guidance.  I know many have lots of energy to go around, but many... many people do not. 

Increase in violence in media
    Violent video games and movies DO play a role in all of this.  Go back and look at the Columbine video of the boys entering the school dressed in all back and wearing long black overcoats and dark sunglasses.  They were mimicking the movie The Matrix.  They had convinced themselves that they were in a video game shooting people with no feelings or emotions.  It was just a game.  They were not real anymore.

Pornagraphy
    Porn plays in this unhealthy development of boys brains even more.  They become desensitized to woman and humanity in general.  People are just objects for my pleasure and destruction.  It is a plague on our culture today and nothing is being done about it.   It is the ten 800 pound gorillas in the room we are ignoring.   Just GOOGLE search any topic on SEX and you will have more porn to view in an hour than people my age would see in a life-time.

Social Media
    Many of us were able to grow up without knowing what people around us were thinking of us.  Today's youth are bombarded on a regular basis with horrendous comments about their looks, their abilities, their lack of smarts and their lack of friends.  Social media has also hurt our kids because it has stolen from them the most important factor they need to become well-rounded adults.   That factor is us as their parents.   I am disgusted with how many parents I see in restaurants sitting inches away from their kids but are million miles away from them in spirit.  They sit with their head bowed to their devices scrolling with their thumb while their child tries to get their attention.  These children have been raised to think that from those devices is where all wisdom and answers to life's problems comes from.   They have not learned to communicate verbally and connect emotionally to adults and so they seek out answers from other emotionally disconnected and feeble brained kids like them.

And the list goes on and on....

But go ahead and keep blaming the Boogie-man for all your woes and things that are wrong in the world.   All that matters is YOU can go to sleep at night feeling content that tomorrow will hopefully be better day.

Gilligan was right

   I, like many people from my generation, loved to watch the re-runs of Gilligan's Island.  A show that was only on TV for 3 years seemed to live on forever in re-run-world.  Everyday when I came home from school (about 3:30) Gilligan would teach us a new lesson about living in harmony with others.  The island was a microcosm of our real world.  Represented by Scipper (authority), Gilligan (working class), Mary Ann (midwest values), Ginger (Hollywood), the Howls (upper class) and the Professor (educated class).  These people struggled through countless (and sometimes weird escapades) to show us how we can all get along and survive.  They taught us, friendship, money doesn't matter, fame isn't what it's cracked up to be, trust, support in bad times, being okay with who you are, not to be jealous and much more.

   One lesson I remember well was their lesson on why we don't need to no what the other person is thinking.  In this episode, Gilligan happens across some seeds that give people the power to read other people's thoughts.  By the end of the show everyone is angry with each other as they hear everything they never heard before.  (see below) Gilligan sees the problem and knows the only solution is to burn the plant that makes the seeds.

    Keeping ones thoughts to themselves is a gift we often don't appreciate either.  We sometime's think that being able to read another person's thoughts would be a wonderful power to have (mostly save us the energy of moving our lips), but in reality it's more dangerous than you can imagine.  Gilligan shows us that while we can have these thoughts, as long as they don't turn into actions we can live with each other in harmony.  In short, 

THOUGHTS DO NOT EQUATE WITH ACTIONS

   We can have ill thoughts about another person, but unless those thoughts translate into some perceivable action,  they don't really exist (except of course to God who sees all).  

   Today, we willing let others read our minds on a daily basis.  We do this not with magic seeds, but with social media as we spill out our thoughts constantly.   We post videos, comments and pictures  on every subject imaginable (politics, sports, work, fitness, relaxation, social issues, religion etc), and let everyone around us know what we THINK.  If people LIKE our comment or reply with positive comments we feel accepted and empowered.  But if people leave negative comments  (or people you think should at least LIKE don't respond) we feel anger and vilified. If repeated, we might change the persons relationship to us on social-media to "acquaintance" or "blocked".   It might even cause us to physically remove them from our lives by ignoring them or avoiding them in person.  

   Personally, I think the social media experiment has been an utter failure.  It has caused us to migrate into smaller and smaller circles rather than become closer to each other.  We say things to each other on Facebook we would never say to them in person.  We also have replaced a physical contact with a person (verbal over the phone or in person) with a "LIKE" or a "Have a nice day!" comment.  We think that pressing a LIKE/SEND button equates to being there for the person physically.  Our friends and family sitting right next to us are yearning for help and support all the while we are online sending "our thoughts and prayers" to people we barely know. 

   The answer to the problem comes from Gilligan.  First, we need to burn our mind-reading-seed-bush by deleting our Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts and other social media.  But after we have done that we need to ask for forgiveness and go back to being REAL FRIENDS.