The Crowd

Bored meetiing

Years ago I was asked to join a Bored, I mean Board of Directors. A board of directors is one of those groups of people that agree to be trapped in various meeting rooms to listen to, "Blah blah blah" and, "We are doing this, that, and the other, and need your consensus to spend money", ever so wisely of course. 

The meetings were tedious for me, with longish agendas that rarely if ever held any interest or excitement. The tedium of "business" was discussed, voted on, approved, and we all agreed to rinse and repeat on a monthly basis. Since somehow I had moved up the ranks and was elevated to the role of Chair, the association (read here, Executive Director) deemed it valuable that I get some training as the leader, on how the bored membership was to be effectively run. I was to attend a number of sessions held by an expert on boards, with various members from other boards, meant to be educated on making everyone bored. Within the first hour of the first session of being talked at by the "facilitator" who gave us a slide show he created in 1999, I was agitated and chomping at the proverbial bit, looking longingly and almost secretively at first, toward the nearby EXIT. As the talker with control over the projector at the front droned on, I looked around me at my fellow detainees, and in my head started to scream, "There's the exit people, the door is OPEN! Who is with me? Let's go!!! But they all seemed enthralled I tell you. Much to my dismay, I couldn't detect a partner in crime to depart with: dutifully, these volunteers listened, nodded, took notes, and asked simple questions of the authority in the room when they saw an opportunity to do so. One more retelling, dear reader.

I recall being in an all day event, sponsored by and run by the government ~ I left shortly after lunch, hooray for me ~ that had me taking out my car keys and feigning suicide as I pretend ran the dull side of a key over the veins in my left wrist in view of the Executive Director, a visual suggestion that if I had to stay much longer, I might have to off myself in desperation as a way of escape. He mouthed, you can go. He knew me and my intolerance for blah blah blah ... 

And dear reader, I am still intolerant of blah blah blah. The emptiness that wants to hollow out the soul, of words, too many words, tossed hither tither and yon, must be avoided at all costs and yet, and yet ...

● Are you part of the tolerance crowd, dear reader?

● Can you listen patiently, without the urge to escape, to someone with endless words?

● What do you get out of politely sitting and waiting for them to finish talk talk talking?

● Have you heard the expressions: full of hot air, talking heads, talking nonsense, full of bull?

Objectified

If you are good at being subjected to someone that can stream words without any interest in interacting with you or others, might I suggest you were trained to be silent, thoughtless, and objectified (turned into an object). The message is, You sit still and listen while I talk and regardless of what I say, you have no say, no option, no right to an opinion, and most certainly, no out. I am confident as you just finished reading this, you recognize that the training started early in your life, either in your home or in school: it started somewhere, dear reader, and many have suffered this inconvenient truth. Like Pavlovian dogs, when a bell rings, or a whistle blows, or an instructor, facilitator, or boss tells people time is up, they are released from the control or hold from the master. Sound communistically familiar? 

My observations are:

💖 Loving people want to know what is going on in your life

💖 Loving people ask questions, listen for responses, and then interact from there

💖 Loving people never impose or force another

💖 Loving people, hear, see, and want the very best for those around them

💖 Loving people communicate, they do not command

💝 Loving people advocate for independence of thought and deed, free from someone else's determinism ~ I know what determinism means, dear reader: We must not give into the sense that we are without choice because quite simply, that is a lie

The EXIT

The EXIT, it was right there, and I had to make a choice. Stay, or go? Staying meant agreeing to someone stealing my time without a ROI (return on my investment), followed by a sense that I had compromised my integrity by pretending that I was interested, when I had loathing for what I was experiencing. Going meant FREEDOM, to do what mattered to me most, and when next we met, telling the Bored Members, and in particular, the Executive Director, that I left that meeting, that I would not be returning, and that I found it a useless waste of time and money. 

Fast forward

Fast forward to our recent common Zoom history, dear reader. You recall those dumb days of pretending the world was ending because of a fit-to-measure make believe illness that the populace embraced readily after much grooming by perpetrators that treated them as objects ... long sentence, packed with a pointed message I realize. I had to reread it myself. Let's highlight, shall we?

🥸 Zoom ~ an inexcusable way of gathering people into a small space called a screen, even though they live minutes apart and can meet in the flesh

🥸 Dumb days of pretending ~ make believe became everyones fairytale

👎 World was ending ~ this part is true, but we don't know when

😈 Fit to measure ~ after much priming, the pump of fear was ready to dispense the lies to an unsuspecting populace

🦠 Illness ~ being told you are going to die is true, but the when, where, how parts, are not determined by other humans, or a v-i-r-u-s that humans created to scare the gullible

😇 Populace embraced ~ after being told, you be you, take care of yourself, you are entitled to be happy, go to the doctor, take anti-depressants, get an annual checkup, see a specialist etc people were ready to be saved from sickness of the deadly variety. Reverse psychology was utilized to help envision themselves as heroic, taking one, two, five and six injections "for the team"

☠️ Grooming by perpetrators ~ media outlets acting in accord

😷 Treated as objects ~ do this, don't do that, you are allowed, not allowed: these were the messages that objectified adults, that ought to have exercised their own minds in decision making

Each man for himself

When board meetings and church gatherings, bible studies, birthday and anniversary celebrations, along with funerals, were moved from in person to on-line events ... when this happened, dear reader, something broke. The willingness of people to give in to their desire for self-preservation at the expense of human contact, screamed something vile in our faces, didn't it? It yelled, "To hell with you, you mean nothing to me. Each man for himself." Each man for himself: this is one of the saddest things I have ever written and is so anti-christ that I could weep. If you disagree with what you have just read, and still believe that disassociation in crisis preserves lives, then I ask you: how did you fair in your relationships with family, friends, and colleagues, at the close of the plan-dem-ick? Did closeness survive, or do you see behind you relationship carcasses, remnants of what used to be wonderful?

The crowd cares not

Going with the crowd is deadly, dear reader. The crowd does not think, formulate opinions, assess situations. The crowd moves as one without words, without foresight, and clearly without after sight. The crowd is anonymous, homogenous, and blended to the point of erasing individual brilliance. The crowd cares not for preservation of what is true, holy, healthy, wholesome. The crowd is a thing, a monster, that forms and dissipates, leaving behind strewn garbage and waste that cannot be repurposed because it ought never have been in the first place. 

Are you, part of the crowd?

I hope not dear reader. If you have been, I hope you make a decision today to never go with the crowd flow again. 

Preferred this life

People gathered to hear Jesus speak but what did they hear? Did it move them to recognizing how far they had fallen from the glory of God? Individuals had one-on-one encounters with Jesus, whilst the crowd looked on: some, knowing Who He is, chose to walk away, betray Him, and go with the many that preferred this life and what it has to offer, over life everlasting with the Eternal God. Nothing has changed, dear reader, because there is nothing new under the sun. 

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat (Matthew 7:13)

Scripture will never lead you astray, unlike cruel people that plot the demise of vulnerable humans. The guiding light instruction found in God's Word is incomparable, and has saved many a man, woman, and child, from following the crowd to the cliff's edge and either dropping off it, or being pushed over. Reading and heeding must go together though, dear reader. 

I ask you now:

How ever will you proceed?