Ode to the Faceless and the Tempest-tossed

I don't know about anyone else, I'm personally getting really sick and tired of "social" media. I mean, if we're really "friends," TALK TO ME EVERY NOW AND THEN, for God's sake! NO, you do NOT have to drop everything and pay attention to little old me and only me. Sure, everybody's busy living their own single solitary, self-serving little life, after all, but... names on a list, no matter how long that list may in fact be, may not necessarily represent genuine bonds of friendship, you know.

Sure, Facebook has a lot of great uses (and distractions), and it can be plenty of fun sometimes, to see all the pretty pictures, and how much "better," or simply better off everybody else may (or actually may not be) than little old you and me, but whatever you do, don't forget that there's ALSO a rather needy, sometimes even rather creepy... bizarre little pyramid scheme aspect to social media.

Because sometimes it's like, 'I'm in touch with this person, who's "friends" with all these other people, who might... MIGHT be able to help me become the next bigwig celeb-rit-ee, rich, famous, or otherwise powerful person. Or maybe... maybe they can just help me GET WHAT I WANT.' Well... sometimes, maybe. But more often, they simply can't. Not in the Real World, anyway.

Or some people just wanna show off too, I guess. Either way... mostly, if you're really honest about it, social media is more often just an incredibly vast, faceLESS, electronic forum; an endless Sargasso sea awash with messages crammed into millions upon millions of incredibly isolated, tempest tossed little bottles.

And each of those tiny little vessels contains the soul of only one of literally millions upon millions of people who are, most of the time, just out there floating along all by their lonesome. Just getting by from day to day, chattering away to themselves in that floating little glass prison, and shouting mindlessly out into the grand void of cyber-space. All of us busy as worker bees in a hive, often "sharing" like mad... with absolutely no one in particular.

Course Correction

Life is all about course correction. Because, yes, "the journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step." But... the thing is, that a whole lot of personal blunders and just plain misdirection can (and usually does) happen along the way, you know. People get sidetracked. People get lost. People get buried, quite literally, half way there, and never manage to make it to "the Promised Land."

Some, sadly, never even make it out of childhood - or even more tragically, out of their mother's womb. Some... well, many in fact, start off their journey on the wrong foot, or just end up being misled by others (peers, parents, society, religion, lack of religion, you name it), so that they just plain lose their way, and go off in all the wrong directions. Often repeatedly. Heck! Most of us come into this world completely unprepared to begin with. And that's just a fact. So Life is really all about course correction.

But some days are overcast, or just plagued with what seems like endless stretches of foul weather, and even the Heavens above sometimes seem to be falling far too short of their sacred duty to light the way. So a lot of us just get lost, because it's all too easy to just get tired, overwhelmed, sick AND tired, or... just plain give up and give in.

And some... well, many just aren't very good at reading the signs and portents. Still worse, some folks simply do not listen when they are told, "Hey, buddy! I wouldn't go in that direction, if I were you." Because we all have Free Will, you see. Or, we're supposed to.

Yes sir, Life is all about course correction. Because even the mightiest sailing ships are but an infinitesimal spec of man-made dust tossed like a tempest in seas and oceans so mighty that most of us can barely wrap our little human minds around the vastness of it all. So, without that periodic course correction, anyone - rich, poor, young, old, great, or small - can end up all smashed up on jagged, barren rocks out in the middle of nowhere, on some godforsaken distant shore. And that is just the end of that little journey of a thousand steps. No do overs. No going back. No second chances.

On the Nature of Mass Media Misinformation

Curiously enough, it's often not what people don't know that gets them into the most trouble. Rather, it's what we think we already know, or "want to believe" (in error) that usually trips us up. So, although "knowledge is power," misinformation can be downright deadly. Besides, misinformation, or "colloquial wisdom," is usually based on common misconceptions, which in turn are often based on hearsay. Or, sometimes, misinformation is even the product of outright lies, disseminated by various, clearly biased entities (the media, corrupt government agencies, CULTural and/or social groups with a self-serving agenda, etc) to an often gullible, easily hoodwinked and therefore overly excitable (often to the point of outright hysteria) general public, that either doesn't want to have to bother to take the time to check the facts, or, even worse yet, they're apathetic, and just don't give a damn to begin with.