Reality Roulette

In engineering terms, a datum is a point in which a part or object is measured from, a fixed position. Each point thereafter can be measured against the datum for accuracy and functionality. The reason for this is simple, mechanisms don’t work if the parts don’t fit together properly. Call me the ever curious kid, I like pointing out some basic flaws in the mechanisms, and play with the toys to find the weak points. Just like anyone else though, as I play and point, I find inroads into mechanisms that were not noticed before.

There is definitely a self searching going on, reflected in these words many times and too repetitively for some. I believed it was out of a self-serving need, a whine that needed stroking. I am sure that was the initial impetus, what the heck were my problems? Over the years though, that mannerism that I used to build and deconstruct changed a bit. In speaking with others about their beliefs, political and otherwise, it occured to me. I don’t use my introspect to only find myself, I also use it to find others too. The empathy and sympathy as subjective as the humans involved. I was told that one way of taking your own inventory is to take someone else’s, pick them apart and don’t be nice. Then cross out their name and put down your own. Because when you have a problem with other people, places, or things, then ultimately that problem is yours and yours alone. Why does it bug you? Offend you? Piss you off? Dig into those before trying to make something out of… nothing?

This constant desire to seek some inner datum is directed by the actions of others. In these trying times, like any other; The need for a rooting or point of reality, whether it be spiritual, or tactile, is undertaken. My subjective reality is not lining up tight with my sensibilities, am I misinformed? Things aren’t supposed to happen like this, what’s going on? When these deep switches are triggered, the detective work is on and we are trained to find a suspect, and a victim, a right and wrong. These times are what they call trying times, judging is what we do today. There is another word that should be reintroduced into the mainstream, discerning. The thing that trying times bring is not a time of judgement, but of discertion, because truly… Who am I to judge?

So, I am called upon to be discerning, use my experiences and best efforts to derive some kind of answer to my curiosity. That is how my reality works, I do this and that, say this and that, and simply am this and that. People don’t have pedestals, and there is no higher or lower forms. That is my reality, through my heart I see the similarities, in my mind, I know the difference. The once used “They just have to be taught!” Has changed to “I wonder what they believe?” Because I can’t change them, and they can’t change me. So the output becomes, I can’t tell you what anyone else is thinking, but this is what is going on with my thoughts of it… Like I said though, these are trying times.

In Baseball, a hitting coach tells his players to respect the positions, but take their names off the jersey’s because they are just doing the same thing we are. Now, if that isn’t a definition of being human, I don’t know one. The issue arises in the bigger picture because we have no set rules, no safe bases to hit at 90 feet, only a select few hit home runs. We are supposed to have datums, laws that apply to the whole, because when you use a different set of points to measure this piece or that piece you eventually are left with a box full of junk. When you begin to apply that different set of measurements not only in laws and government, but to facts and truth as well. You are left with the reality roulette that is in evidence all around, a society with no point of measurement. 

When the tactile, real, and factual start to fail, the compensation for the lack of connections, lack of feasible answers leaves us relying on our subjective beliefs. Oh, My Goodness! How could anyone do that! That is the main focus of almost every news story out there. The thought that comes to my mind is apparently someone has, and the information I want to know is what did this person believe? Because you don’t do a lot of things newsworthy without some kind of belief, factual or not. Why do they believe that? Because they are just like batters at the plate, take their names off the jersey’s and they are just doing the same thing we are. Their baseball game and its subjective rules are part of the reality roulette folks play, knowingly or not. Freedom itself is no longer a datum of measuring the human endeavor, it has amassed itself into blanket that would smother all others.

A trip to the dentist brought me an odd insight, a mother of two whose eleven year old daughter was petrified that there were schools in Seattle. “You mean that there are schools in Seattle? That means that there are kids in Seattle that have to go to those schools? The horror from her child was startling to her, and she was truly worried about where that thinking came from? They live in a smaller town about an hour North of Seattle, her hometown. Her husband is from a liberal bastion, deep within Seattle itself, whether he is is no importance at this point. The recent news special on the homeless problems facing the city was highlighted at her school, and the response she got was when they talked about it later on that day. How could her daughter have the disconnect to the degree that at eleven, she thought there was no kids in Seattle? Or schools even? It was at that point, when a mother was amazed and shocked at what her child believes, that her reality changed. It was an opening into the introspect area that showed me the baseball analogy and inroads into the bigger picture.

There has been an epidemic of lawmaking in the past, a good part of that was with the intention of legislating our discomforts away. The only problem with that is, it took away the power of the real, necessary laws from having enough teeth. In other words, when you have so many laws that they cannot be enforced, people break the law, intentionally or unintentionally. The enforcement becomes subjective to the enforcer and either enforced or not. Take that up the ladders of any organization, private or public, local or national, government or not, and you have reality roulette. I wonder what the son of the local Sheriff in Georgia believed as he was torching Black Churches? I wonder what the officials in Yakima, Washington believe as they decide that the law that was passed in their state legalizing marijuana, doesn’t include their county. The other Sheriffs around the state and others that won’t enforce gun laws they don’t believe in. Subjective, reality roulette, their beliefs against yours, no datums.

With the introduction of the internets of things we also opened up a whole different area for people to base their belief systems in. When pushed to connect the dots, as a species, we will go to the nearest, easiest thinking a lot of the time. That next easiest answer is being presented to folks more often than not, being pre-programmed because that is what we are educated to do. The disconnect from this reality, this factual truth, is being folded and folded and folded again, beliefs, based on… beliefs, on beliefs. The smothering effects disguising the malady, the ever present and subjective beliefs in this reality roulette.