Legal ranting

OK, this is a major rant and I actually took it down as being a 'bit heavy' for my blog... however Metropolitan Mum has asked about it so I'm putting it back up... but with this warning that my husband, the lovely Frog (the other lovely Frog) thinks that it represents the rantings of a mad woman... you have been warned.

The lovely Frog, from Frog in the Field has offered me this unrivalled opportunity to rant. Actually what she's really offered me is blog material which is thin on the ground these days. It's a tag in which one is asked to list thinks that, essentially, make one very cross.

The problem here is going to be limiting the scope of this, I suspect; as although I am a person who is easily amused and has quite a high tolerance for crap and rubbish, I have a bottomless pit of judgement lurking in the centre of my soul.

1. I hate stupidity. Which means that much of the time I hate myself because I have an enormous capacity for stupidity. Mainly because my mouth and my brain aren't really connected very well. However be that as it may, rank stupidity gets my goat. I'm not talking here about low intelligence, I'm talking about willful stupidity that can be found in everyone from the unintelligent to the genius. One of the biggest things that gets my goat is how frequently people mistake ignorance and lack of education for stupidity. Just because someone doesn't know something doesn't necessarily make them stupid; just uninformed. Stupid is willfully disbelieving facts because they don't fit one's world view.
   
   
2. After stupidity, I hate violence. Stupidity breeds fear. Fear breeds anger. Stupid people think there is only one kind of fear; the fear of pain which they see as cowardice and which they respond to in the only way they know - with intimidation, threats and reactive violence. They don't know or believe that fear presents in many ways: fear of change, fear of difference or fear of the unknown; so, when stupid people experience change, see difference or suspect the unknown they try to protect themselves in the same way they would if they had been physically attacked, ie, with intimidation, threats and reactive violence. Violence is stupid. It's also dangerous. I hate it.
   
   
3. Violence, ranging from the casual push against a stranger in the race to get onto the tube through snide verbal violence or outright attack, breeds more violence, until we live in a society where violence of all sorts is considered perfectly normal. I hate that too. You get on the tube, someone pushes you, you feel crap all day, you upset people and in turn they lash out at someone else and everything gets that extra shade of 'more shit'. If on the other hand someone smiles and steps aside to let you on first, you are happy, you smile, you're nicer to someone else, you make them happy and everything gets just that little shade of 'less shit' until perhaps everything might actually become 'quite good'.
   
   
4. There is a synthesis of the above three things that I hate more than anything and that's bullying. In the playground, the supermarket, the workplace, I see someone behaving like a bully to someone else and my seething knows no bounds. If I could press a button that would give a shock to anyone who bullied anyone anywhere ever again I would press it, tape it down, put it in the sole of my shoes and stand on it so it stayed pressed until I keel over. Making me, I suppose, quite a violent person. On the inside.
   
   
5. I hate greed. It's natural to want more, we're programmed to want more until the day we die. Seriously, I live comfortably in a lovely flat that in other countries would fit several families. I think it's tiny. I want a house. Eventually, we'll buy one from someone who is leaving for a bigger one. That's how it goes. But there is want and there is greed and greed is what drives people to push each other around. Greed is what litters our landscapes with advertising, interrupts our evenings with cold callers selling windows and bombards us constantly trying to sell us crap all day; greed is what drives up our gas bills and our mortgage rates, our rent and our food bills. Either we are too greedy and buy too much or the companies we buy from are too greedy and keep bumping up the cost. Greed makes life more shit.
   
   
6. Angst and stress. Live in a world where violence and greed and stupidity are the norm and life becomes very stressful. In the last 6 years I've had two motorbikes stolen, two break-ins, cheque-book fraud that emptied my bank account, the frog has been punched in the street and thugs tried to mug him at work; the police found a gun in the bushes opposite Charlie's bedroom window, a boy was stabbed to death in our playground, someone was stabbed outside a friend's house locally, there are regular shootings in the area; it could be worse but it's not that pleasant I'll tell you that much.
   
   
7. Pressure. There is too much to do in life. There are too many wonderful people and great things to see and places to go... I can't do them all or see them all and so I'm finding more and more that I don't want to do or see any of it. I just want to stay home, in my little flat with my little boy and my frog.
   

But, that's not what life is about is it? (Except the 'staying home with one's family' bit). Life is about getting on, getting by and trying to wring whatever little bit of pleasure one can from the whole sordid mess and you know what? There's a lot of pleasure to be had out there. There is joy to be found pretty much anywhere. People want to know the meaning of life and that's pretty much it; life means living. Living means staying alive. Staying alive means eating and drinking and staying safe and unless we can enjoy those things, we won't do them very well and that will be the end of us. So I think we should all do as much as we can to try to find enjoyment in everything we do, do it better, stay happy and stay alive.

I actually thought I was going to rant about the election. Apparently not.

Thanks Frog! I'd like to pass this on to a few choice bloggers but it's late, I'm going to bed and I'm not going to tell them quite yet. Just so you know though, I'm tagging: Glowstars, Methusula Mum, Pengelly Pastimes Iota and More Than Just a Mother.

Rant on!