Are We Judgmental Bitches?

I read a post on Facebook a little while ago, about a young woman who had made the conscious decision not to have any children. I think she used the word never with some exclamation points. She wrote that afterwards she got a lot of headwind for openly refusing a life with children, and a backlash was sparked amongst mothers who allegedly have a big problem with that. She continued to appeal to the rules of a civilized and equal society, to let her do what she wants and just leave her be.

A reasonable request. I found myself wondering however to what extent the societal pressure she was talking about is an issue, if though a perceived reality it may be. Is it really other people, who make her feel badly about this decision, and by extension, is it even possible for other people to make us feel anything along the lines of doubt and insecurity?

First of all it seems to be pretty demure to not want something as a life choice. It's the opposite of needing stuff to exist. Some people think they need a Porsche to survive. In case of anything materialistic, usually people go for it or they don't, depending on the effort they are willing to put in. Either way in my experience, people generally don't really care about other people's harbored ambitions or even openly voiced desires.

We may take notice when you have something that we don't have, be jealous, or decide we want it too, but that's a different story. Most of the time, other people's aspirations don't even register - we're all much too concerned with what we want anyway.

Yes, sometimes mothers, parents, will appear judgmental, mostly in comparing their own parental style which they claim to find flawless, to other, allegedly inferior styles of parenting. This is what I think it's really about: being defensive about our own shit. Attacking not to be attacked.

I don't believe there's a single mother on planet Earth who thinks she's perfect. You may have days, moments, when you think, man, I'm great, I got this whole thing figured out, but the next minute you find your kid sitting in the corner, suckling on a beat-up cat toy and you think to yourself: damn, I'm raising a monkey. Stop licking the wall, Bingo.

Anyways, so what I think it comes down to is that parents are not in the business of judging anyone for refusing the whole child experience. We may think you're missing out on something big. Because we think it's pretty big. Parents don't know what they're missing out on by having children. Adventure, travel, the great escape? Just a wild guess. Childless people don't know what they're missing out on by not having them. There is no grounds for either of us to judge here.

Be that as it may, the declaration to adhere to a certain lifestyle, any lifestyle, for the rest of your life just isn't very reasonable. How often have you thought, OK, this is it, I'm settled, this is me. Life usually doesn't work on our terms. In case something completely surprising happens, and chances are that it will, our cores may be shaken, personalities will be disheveled and everything we thought we knew will be turned upside down.

So when it comes to life, there may be no other way than to stay flexible. It seems like a bad idea to close your mind to anything, even ideas that may seem bad or plain wrong at the time. They may appear more convenient a minute from now, or when things happen and you have to deal with the altered reality in front of you. Most of the time stuff happens despite our grand proclamations. And in a moment of crisis and change, we will find out we can deal with pretty much anything, and tackle things that are very different from our current agenda, our own prejudice, and yes, even those pesky children may add something to your life you never even imagined you'd love so much. Same goes for everything else of course. New doors open. It's out of our control when they do. And that's the terrifying and fantastic thing about life.

Among Mad People

Humans are a mad species. Mad in the sense that they are crazy, like mad scientists, Mad Max and MAD magazine. Every one of those mads describes one aspect of being human. Insane, post-apocalyptically distraught and nuts. But in terms of "being angry" we are even madder than mad. We always did have the capacity to get really really furious at stuff. Broken TV - damn you!! - slow driving people holding up the lane - you idiot! Our "mad" is a blow out, a detonation, like a thunderstorm, quick and painless.

These days, everyone is able to witness everyone else's madity (don't be mad it's not a word) on social networks, and our angriness has become an everyday condition. The madder - the better. The madder - the more we care. Like mad magicians we're in the business of abstractly spreading unfocused anger bolts at the world. And if you're not sharing those sentiments and hop the anger train, you're accused of either being a placidly naive lamb, on their side or you just don't give a damn. So, it's easiest to follow the invitation to be outraged. There's something going on every day. Nestlé, Homophobia, Amnesty, Hunting, Religion, Health, TV shows, Summer. And that was just in one week.

The good thing: we're not bearing grudges it seems. Maybe we have evolved to be a more forgiving species. No more feuds? Giggles, no. More likely that with this large a variety of annoyances to pick from, we forget what we were mad about yesterday.

Why I care? The abundance of red flags everywhere made me lose the will to rant. And that makes me really really mad. But seriously, in all this time being spent angrily, the ability to be critical, to go look for information beyond the bias we seem to lack. We think we're more enlightened than we actually are. There is so much information. We just don't take the time to get it. All of it. Too busy being mad.

Journalism, Morality and other Conundrums

Journalism is important. Journalism is inquisitive, and news analysis provides an indispensable service to the public. What ever would we do without the daily coverage of a wide range of subjects, too complex to understand, or too insignificant to appear worthy of our mental efforts! Thank goodness, all those news we consume are served in neat little packages, rehashed like microwave dinners fit for the attention span, we, the public, are willing to provide. The absurd part is that generally we don't want to know things we don't already know. Per definition - that would be real news.

What we do want to know however are old news, not really new things about people we already know; things we suspected all along: the oft-cited confirmation bias.

With the rise of the tabloid and the public's binge for information about celebrities, one has to question what happened to so-called investigative journalism. The kind of journalism that offers a social service to all of us, the one that puts fear into the eyes of politicians and the government in its place. It's basically degraded to a supplier of daily outrage. What falls under investigative are things hardly suitable for public education, but short-lived indignation, like, if someone we know carts off money to an account somewhere else. Yes, I don't like it when they do that either. For one, because I myself am not in a position to do so.

More importantly though, it's lowly for someone who indulges in the advantages of a country's benevolent legal system not to pay for that privilege (among other things). We all need to contribute to the status quo. And how good we have it here compared to those other countries we don't want to hear anything about!

And although many of us don't have enough coin to cart away towards a Swiss bank account, how does our lack of riches put us in a position to judge those who do have some money?

Law says there is such a thing as voluntary declaration. Legislature decided that it's more important for rich people to pay what they owe, stay in Germany, than be labeled guilty. Them moving away to other countries and taking their money and business with them for good would be a loss worse than allowing people to call them frauds and wave them goodbye. Money comes first. I understand that logic. Voluntary declaration appears to be an extraordinary privilege given to the rich, when in fact, it's in favor of all of us, since we all profit from those rich people's riches, and taxes, if paid. And they will be paid one way or another. A statute of limitation speeds up the practice.

Someone who carts away tax paid money and doesn't declare earned interest needs to pay what he owes. Someone who refuses to pay interest is a criminal and will be penalized. Someone who does everything along the lines of legality, even paying back charges after the fact that he initially didn't, is not. And that's the difference. In fact, in the latter case, the law retroactively rids him of his guilt.

The only problem is, that we, the lecherous harpies, who, self-absorbed as we are, feel as though we're the reason for that person being that rich, need to make sure that he is not rid of his personal guilt, at least not in the public eye, because that's the celebrity's cubicle, and we built it. He apparently relinquishes the right to make any more money with the deceit. And it seems we really are that powerful. The media, being the mouthpieces of stupidity join in on the sad sad song of we make and we break.

And we won't forgive anyone for being that rich, while we're not, and for trying to get away with it, while we can't, although we'd all do the same if we were in that kind of position.

Unfortunately greed is not only a malady of the rich, it's a sickness of the little ape trying to get his grabby little hands on what he doesn't have. That's what we are. Hairy little wannabes. And morality starting from a sense of jealousy is not a good position to judge other people by, or to do any kind of thinking, especially about the principles of our legal system. Sadly it's all we have, and it's all we are. How could we be more, when all we can focus on is the shiny and how much we want it for ourselves.