Knee Jerk

I almost titled this Response Time but then I thought, no......right now we are hearing much too much about response. Response to danger, to criminality, to rhetoric....these days there are whole groups driven or paid to respond.

I am quickly learning at my advanced age that much of our response is being whipped up to suit others’ agendas. Everyone, today, has a “cause.” And, they naturally seek out other like minded people to try to help them push that “cause” on others. Or, they give us a sucker punch in our solar plexus by appealing to our sense of right, fair and civil. This punch is pretty effective since we are constantly reminded that “facts don’t matter, just feelings.” Therefore, finding people whose feelings you can manipulate isn’t hard, because at our core, most of us are kind, generous and fair minded people.

We all see things, hear things, know things that tend to elicit a “knee jerk” reaction in us. We immediately hate it, love it, are sorry for it, or mad as hell at it. Once we hit the feelings and emotions button on things it is hard to walk them back. Our body chemicals start to do their thing and suddenly our knee jerk reaction makes us become a part of a potentially damaging issue.

I am trying these days to avoid my own “knee jerk” reactions to issues and people by hitting my own internal “pause” button. I am trying to do my own research about things before I decide to fall into “hate it, love it, sorry for it, or mad as hell at it.” The information is out there on everything, you just have to care enough to look and look in several places and then use that large melon on your neck to do some thinking........for yourself.

Issues today are NEVER what they appear to be on the surface. There is a whole multi-layered story running like a raging river beneath the surface of what we are seeing. Sometimes that story beneath is more positive than the negative one you are hearing. Sometimes not. But, I have confidence in us as a thinking people that we can think while continuing to feel. But please, think first and feel after. Doing the opposite is what is driving much of what is wrong in our country today. We have whole groups of people who can’t get a hold of their feelings and those feelings can lead to random acts of violence, civil disobedience, and much worse.

You seldom see large groups of people who are thinking decide to create problems for other people, but every day we are seeing groups of people driven by their feelings and feeding off of the feelings of others, creating a chaotic world for all of us. The danger in this “knee jerking” is that eventually the pendulum will have to swing the other direction, and that, my friends.....is a big problem.

....come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord....-Isaiah 1:18 (KJV)