I was sittin' on my front porch this evening talking to my dog Squarepig and I realized that I could be inside watchin' Howie Mandel or Dancing With the Stars or any of a number of other network television shows. I don't have cable and my antenna consists of a wire attached to the back of my 1984 RCA set. Anyway, I realized that I had chosen instead to spend my evening sipping a beer and talking to a dog. There wasn't another soul out, so I could talk as loud as I wanted. Squarepig likes to hear me talk. Sometimes I talk about politics a little , or music. She doesn't care what the subject is. Tonight I talked about American culture. Now you might look at me and think, "that throwback doesn't know anything about American culture." But you'd be wrong. I'm a observer. I watch how people live and how what we do changes everything else around us. Everything we do is like a ripple in a pond. Just me sittin' out here talkin' to Squarepig change how somethin' else might have happened. The guy across the street may have seen me sittin' here and decided he didn't want to go out and walk his dog for fear he might have to converse with me. Not an unfounded fear, as I might holler at him just to get a reaction. But his stayin' inside might have had any number of effects that I can't begin to imagine and each one of those effects caused somthing else to happen. Anyway, what I'm gettin' at is that I watch the way the things we do affect our culture. And like I was tellin' Squarepig, American culture ain't nothin' but broke. It mostly just consists of TV and internet now. I saw an article in the newspaper today that said 2 out of 5 three year olds have a TV in their rooms. What the heck for? Because it's part of our culture now to let the cable system educate and inform our kids. I don't have any kids myself, but I think I could teach a kid how to think a whole lot better than HBO can. Anytime I talk about to people about TV most of them say parents need to use the off button, and be in control of what their kids watch and that it's just a personal responsibility issue. But what that talkin' overlooks is that the parents who need to exercise that personal responsibility of raisin' their kids are mostly irresponsible idiots.
All in all, I think God kinda' screwed up when he gave folks free will. That's like givin' a gun to a maniac. Folks'll screw up free will in the end no matter what. When he gave us free will he should have given us access to some kind of inner guidance system. Like a Help button or something. I know, my Christian friends will say that's the Bible and the promise of salvation. But for most of us that's not a built-in thing. Somebody has to sit you down and talk you into lookin' at that. But the free will thing's there from the gitgo. Maybe he should have given us a little more of the guidance system with the free will. That might have saved a lot of bloodbaths and carnage since the beginning of time. Maybe not, I don't know. Squarepig has free will. He does stuff all the time that he just chooses to do, some of it stuff that he knows better than to do because it goes against what I've taught him. But he makes his own mind up about it. I think some dogs have more of an off the shelf guidance system than people.
Now don't get me wrong. I talk to God all the time. He and I have a very close deal goin'. But it took a lotta' years of nudgin' and proddin' to get me to see what the guidance system was. And it didn't come from my friends tellin' me I had to be saved and washed in the blood and whatnot. It come from me stubbin' my metaphorical toe a thousand times against what he was tryin' to show me to try and kick it out of the way and do what my free will wanted. After a while I began to think instead of tryin' to kick it out of the way, I might be better off pickin' it up and holdin' on to it.
Now how did I ramble off into this. I was suppose to kick you a BIG IDEA. Second day of the blog and I let the world down.
All in all, I think God kinda' screwed up when he gave folks free will. That's like givin' a gun to a maniac. Folks'll screw up free will in the end no matter what. When he gave us free will he should have given us access to some kind of inner guidance system. Like a Help button or something. I know, my Christian friends will say that's the Bible and the promise of salvation. But for most of us that's not a built-in thing. Somebody has to sit you down and talk you into lookin' at that. But the free will thing's there from the gitgo. Maybe he should have given us a little more of the guidance system with the free will. That might have saved a lot of bloodbaths and carnage since the beginning of time. Maybe not, I don't know. Squarepig has free will. He does stuff all the time that he just chooses to do, some of it stuff that he knows better than to do because it goes against what I've taught him. But he makes his own mind up about it. I think some dogs have more of an off the shelf guidance system than people.
Now don't get me wrong. I talk to God all the time. He and I have a very close deal goin'. But it took a lotta' years of nudgin' and proddin' to get me to see what the guidance system was. And it didn't come from my friends tellin' me I had to be saved and washed in the blood and whatnot. It come from me stubbin' my metaphorical toe a thousand times against what he was tryin' to show me to try and kick it out of the way and do what my free will wanted. After a while I began to think instead of tryin' to kick it out of the way, I might be better off pickin' it up and holdin' on to it.
Now how did I ramble off into this. I was suppose to kick you a BIG IDEA. Second day of the blog and I let the world down.
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