by Marc Cullison   (mcullison.com)

I have many interests and find myself embattled over where to direct my attention.  When the task becomes too deep for my meager mind to tackle, I sometimes turn to Facebook.  There I can revel in “Amazing Things In The World,” get information about family and friends, and check out other things I follow.  I can also enjoy a bit of humor.  You see, some of my friends are staunch conservatives, and some are just as staunch liberals.  Well, you put those two together and you get an endless array of comical comments.

I don’t subscribe to ether major political party’s ideology.  I could be considered an Independent, but I wouldn’t put that official tag on me.  So I see a post by one of my dear conservative friends, which is usually some form of propaganda for the conservative platform (if they even have one.)  Then I read the comments posted by their liberal counterparts and the fun begins.

It’s as if each camp believes that they and they alone possess the only solutions for the ills of our great country.  Sometimes, even these can be extrapolated to a world-wide perspective.  Both contingents offer claims that are exaggerated and erroneous.  Many of them fail to do their homework.  For any one claim made by one side, the retort is usually just as fallacious.  And then a counterattack followed by another volley of propaganda.  It is amazing the lengths to which a person will go to advance his own beliefs to someone who is just as stubbornly resistant to change as he is, like do you really thing you’re going to change someone’s mind about something they have adopted as a belief?  This is where it really gets entertaining.  I try to imagine what these folks are thinking when they post such things.  Do they not realize that if a person believes something to be true, then that’s not going to change without some traumatic experience.

If, for example, let’s say you believe in God.  Now, you can either believe in God, or believe in the belief in God, two very different concepts.  But either one will work for this example.  Let’s say that I have evidence, and undeniable proof, that God does not exist.  Would you believe me, or what you have always believed?  Even when Galileo performed an experiment at the Leaning Tower of Pisa to disprove Aritstotle’s teachings that heavier objects fell with greater acceleration than lighter objects, the spectators who witnessed both a heavy and light object strike the ground at the same time refused to believe what they had just seen.  They continued to follow the teachings of Aristotle.  Such is the limitation of the human mind.  It holds us captive in an imaginary universe of token beliefs that have little or no foundation other than someone’s claim that they are true.

Without our own experience to form a belief, we are slaves to the propaganda of those we perceive as more persuasive.  It is not the truth we seek, but affirmation of our own beliefs, be they right or wrong.  The more engrained we become in our beliefs, the more we are disinclined to change them.  Everyone wants to think he is right.  As humans, that’s what we do.  That’s not going to change anytime soon.  Unless indisputable evidence is presented to disprove a belief, nothing is going to change.  And even with such proof, it is doubtful.  Why is it then, that these people waste their time trying to convince everyone else that they are right and everyone else is wrong?  It’s nuts.  Of course, there are a lot of dupes out there who want someone to tell them what to think.  They can’t think for themselves because they’ve never been taught to do that.  Those are the folks who can be won over by such shallow arguments about politics, or anything else, for that matter.  And they will be become followers until someone else offers them another perspective that leads them to somewhere else they wish to go.

As I said, I don’t adhere to any one political philosophy.  Both of our major parties have good ideas.  They both also have some bad ideas.  But neither party is in possession of the solutions that will work all of the time.  Look at the history of this country.  Sometimes one party’s ideals have been the right course, and at sometimes the other party has had the magic bullet.  And at other times, neither.  It depends on the current state of affairs as to what the proper course of action should be.  We must look at what has happened in the past (honestly) and what is happening elsewhere in the world.  If something didn’t work in the past to resolve a situation we have now,  it most likely won’t work now, either.  If something isn’t working somewhere else to resolve a situation similar to ours, why would anyone thing it could work for us?  There is value to history.  If we ignore it, we repeat the same mistakes.  Just look at Iraq and Afghanistan.  We didn’t learn from Korea and we didn’t learn from Vietnam.  I guess we just stopped learning at that point.

So the banter continues and I’m having a good time with it.  Yes, folks, if you want entertainment, just turn to a social medium.  It’s free and has endless avenues of enjoyment.  Happy reading.