Being Right

            So, one of my Facebook friends today put up something that I found so stupid I had to make several posts to rant against it. I don’t have anything against said friend; I find him to be a fun and decent guy. I felt right. I felt good about being right, and that sort of is the problem with society today.

            We all like to be right.

            In that vein, we side with people that agree with what we see as right and we go along with them and support them and generally take what they have to say as being right and enjoy the sensation of not only being a part of something larger and being included in a group, but also the satisfaction of being right.

            This is where we are all wrong.

            Too many times things come down to party lines or religious factions. Too many times we look at something as being wholly Democratic, Republican, Christian, Jewish, what have you. We see that and we either agree if we are a part of the group or disagree if we are not and then we smile smugly cause we are right, but we’re not. We’re part of a group mentality and we are subject to the whims, changes, thoughts and ideas of the leaders of those groups and it makes us easily controllable and predictable. As much as I would like to say I am above such things, I know I am not and that I am part of the problem. I do my best to adjust my thinking and not go readily along with whatever someone has to say, but I know I lean more left than right, more thought than action, more science than spirituality and I likely tear down more of those things that I see as being opposed to me, but I am working on tearing down both sides because, in the end, they are both wrong.

            Instead of being right by just agreeing with who and whatever says we should agree, we should look at what is ACTUALLY right. We shouldn’t look at party lines and decide that way, we should look and say, is this actually right? Is this actually good for everyone? We shouldn’t disregard religion, though, admittedly, I would like to, but instead, when they propose something ask is it right? Is it beneficial? I cannot just agree with an atheist because they are an atheist, but I must research and find my own truth and find my own answers. I can’t just agree with Obama (not that I really have, but again, I know I lean more to his side than the Republican side) but I have to look at what he says and find what is actually right, what is actually true and make my OWN judgments.

             In the end, that becomes the problem. Despite the fact that we live in the age of information, no one uses it. It’s all about entertainment, and no one really uses the internet to find information or research anything. They blindly throw up whatever they find that is their truth, party line and religious faction and ignore any rationality against it without looking to see whether it’s true or not and that is exactly what we should not do. We should go out and we should see, did my political candidate lie? Did they just get their facts wrong? Did they deliberately do this to smear their opponent? Cause, let’s face it, this campaign, as in any, there were out and out lies. Now I saw more Republican lies, but that’s only because I have more Republican friends on Facebook, apparently, and I haven’t seen any political ads at all thanks to my Firefox addons and the fact that I don’t watch TV. I feel lucky for those things, but even though I saw more Republican lies, I know that there were just as many Democratic lies and propaganda as the Republicans spewed out.

            Both sides are nothing but bile and power.

            Still, they represent us, and we need to look hard at what they represent and what they ACTUALLY do versus what they say. We need to stay on the ball and become a more well informed public, looking past what one news source says to find the truth of what really happened since a lot of media outlets have a slant and an agenda (MSNBC being the worst of the left and Fox News being the worst of the right). We need to search for truth and use all the information at hand to make well informed, intelligent decisions so that, in the end, we can be satisfied not that our party was right, but that WE were right.

Later days.