Bully Nation U.S.A....Bullies are Everywhere
Bullies - that small minority that makes life rough for the rest of us. Wrong. Most of us are bullies or have been at one time or another. You need not be physical to pick on someone, there are idealistic and political bullies everywhere who want to make you do things their way.
No wonder we have such a problem with children when they learn it from the adults. Our society thrives on bullying one another, shoving our views down each other’s throats.
It comes from the left and the right, no partiality here. Religious groups try and force their morals on us as a nation, despite separation of church and state, they take active political roles trying to bring laws of the nation into their liking. Eco groups try to restrict our choices too, for the benefits they see. None of these people care about you, your rights, or anything - except what you do that that disagrees with their personal agendas.
Maybe it is time to start being a bully too. I can be a cyber bully, shutting down all those with big mouths and agendas that infringe upon my privacy and right to believe what I want, and ruining their lives and organizations from my computer. Why not?
Because I would be just like them, forcing them to shut up when I can simply ignore most of them. Yet we have to stand up to these bullies. I am so sick of the gay marriage debate, for example. Gay rights groups believe laws should be changed to allow same sex marriages, well that is ok if the states and local authorities agree to it, but you cannot force the churches to marry people they do not want to. On the other hand churches or anyone else for that matter, have no right to deny these people a civil union or marriage in the eye of the state. After all, all marriages have to be registered with the state you live in. Personally I don’t care either way, but I do care that each side is bullying people trying to force their opinions on all.
I am an atheist, and would never think it is okay to tell a church what they have to do, whether I think they are stupid or not. But I also don’t want the church trying to mandate that I, or others, live according to their values, most of which I follow, but not all and certainly not in the name of any religion. I do not try to force religions to disband because I believe their creator is a figment of ancient imaginations and more empirical evidence exists for evolution that creation, and if we were created it was likely the result of another species similar to ours advancing as we are to the point where we are on the doorstep of creation ourselves. It is not my place to tell others what to think, nor theirs to tell me what to think.
We have evolved from a society of tolerance and freedom into a clique society that tries to force their wills upon one another. Kind of like my 2nd high school - only these aren’t juveniles we are talking about, just people that still act like 10 to 12 year olds.
The fact that we are losing respect for each other and turning the other way when people’s life choices differ from theirs means that we are going down fast. You wonder why everyone fears economic collapse, because with our lack of respect for each other we would soon have violence and no nation, just a series of territories with fighting everywhere as most of these groups would try to assert their views and authority. It is about the closest thing to anarchy that you could get.
I am not talking about murder, child abuse, etc. There are some laws that are universal in societies. We need to grow up and stop the bullying, religiously, politically and socially and learn to get along and share differences, or at least ignore them if you truly despise them. I have friends who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddist, Socialists, Tea Partiers, democrats, republicans, conservative and liberal, smart and stupid. We may have interesting conversations and debates, but no one insists on changing the others life or views to conform to theirs. In fact we have all learned more about similarities than differences, we all have more in common than not - on everything from values to lifestyles. Also the fact that we don’t want to feel like others are forcing their ways upon any of us.
There is only one solution to the whole problem, but I don’t see it happening. People need to simply leave others alone and quit trying to make choices for other people. That means politically too, who are we to tell China how to run their affairs, they have over a billion people and problems that come with that which we have no clue about. How would we like it if those billion people suddenly came landing in Los Angeles and tried telling us what to do – we are outnumbered over 3 to 1.
It is a better person who lives their values not infringing them on others and yet is not frightened, scared or offended by others who believe differently. If every artist painted the same picture, recorded the same song or wrote the same books over and over again – life would be pretty boring. It is our differences which teach us, expand our knowledge and sometimes even gives us a different perspective that makes a difference.
The only other choice is a dissolving society, increased violence, possibly even revolution. I would rather see us wake up and realize how good we have it, never in the history of man have we built a society that generally allows a person freedom of choice in health, life, politics, death and religion. I for one would like to keep that.
