Why the world is so full of anger was a question my girlfriend asked me over the weekend. Being a lawyer and not a simpleton, it was a rhetorical question whereas me, I simply blame the ironically named “social media” for everything stupid, negative and hate riddled controlling the world and having it in a vice like grip.
What’s most alarming is that it’s the adults who are on this online rampage of negativity, which makes one wonder what the children looking on are picking up…
Why has this happened- this weird cocktail of goofball nonsense masquerading as intelligence and those in the online world having been residing at Happy Ever After for so long that they seem to have lost all sense of humour and ability to reason and have become dullards?
Probably because this “social media” has also made celebritydom happen overnight to just about anyone, whereas creating things are now so easy that people have more and more time to spend lending their voices to anything and everything- politics, yes, but also cricket, the Grammys, Diddy, and Timothee Chalamet’s moustache.
Everyone is such an expert on everything and nothing that standards have been allowed to slide with few bothering to care in what has become an Alfred E Neumann Mad Mad Mad world.
One of the few things that works for me these days, other than grabbing a few minutes of Serenity Now, are watching reruns of “Seinfeld”, especially the Bubble Boy and “moots” episode, and looking at the very telling and often dark cartoons of Gary Larson for the Far Side.
Gary Larson’s cartoons connect especially with those who have followed him for decades because they work on two levels- the obvious, and then when one stops and thinks about everything from his cartoon animals’ point of view, it shows up the daftness of humankind.
Gary Larson is not lecturing the world, but his cartoons show very strong feelings about protecting the environment- and his love for creatures great and small and whose habitats we have taken over and they’re kinda pissed about it.
He also uses rather grotesque albeit cuddly octopus type aliens to show them looking at or visiting earth and seeing the stupidity of human beings.
Imagine if Gary Larson was still creating and saw most of the things going on in the circus world today with different clowns and buffoons pretending to put Humpty Dumpty together again when the yolks on them along with their very scrambled thoughts.
Some might not understand what he’s saying or might not agree with his cartoonages, but it’s Larson’s uniquely quirky way of looking at the world.
I love it because his work makes me think and also laugh out loud.
Not much around me these days give me therapeutic laughter, because maybe there’s nothing to laugh about, or we’ve forgotten how to laugh?
How many times do you dread answering the phone because you know that you’ll be welcomed by a sigh and someone telling you what a rough day they’ve had?
Do they ask about your day?
Of course, not. It’s absolute selfishness droning away and you’re meant to be a good sport and patient sounding board to all kinds of everything you don’t give a toss about.
Then again, you’re kinda worried to say how you are feeling because that’s when Dr Wikipedia Wisdom will come out with everything that’s possibly wrong with you. And then you worry- very probably about nothing- and go back to bed and think you’ll wake up to the Edwin Hawkins Singers singing “Oh, Happy Day”.
Finding Happiness doesn’t really work like that. Happiness often plays hide and seek with you. This is because of distractions and people encroaching on your time- and time is something we’re running out of because it’s now a Bladerunner world run by Mad Max suffering from Mad Cow disease.
It’s a world overrun with overnight doses of those fifteen minutes of fame that have created many restless nights of the living dead ruled by clickbait and clutter.
How did we get here?
We let the trolls into our lives by leaving them a “Welcome” mat outside and also inside our addled widdled heads.
What were we thinking?
Maybe we weren’t.
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