I've either become more cynical as I've aged, or stupid people have multiplied across the globe, into positions of power, and have promulgated their numbers onto the highways of America. They are apparently allowed to drive now! God help us all.
Case in point. Here in this town of Cleveland, there is an intersection that contains a monument in the center, two one way streets going each direction, and a road bisecting the one-way streets behind the monument. Well, I'm approaching that intersection to cross the one-way streets and on my way to the apartment when I find someone who has chosen to pause for a length of time directly in my way of ingress. I don't know what they were doing, there were no cars coming, but yet they persisted in their immobility, until after a minute they simply drive out of the way and cease their blockage of all of the traffic at the intersection. I don't know what the heck they were doing, whey they paused in the middle of the road to block up all of the traffic, but thankfully some glimmer of reason entered their mind to trigger their self-removal from the intersection in question.
I don't know if it's that ignorance has propagated itself, or has been bred into the bulk of humanity, but it seems to be on the rise. Common sense, has become uncommon. Politeness has attempted to replace common sense on the highways with great frustration to people who happen to retain some modicum of common sense and knowledge of traffic regulations. As a polite person myself, I won't just up and stop for someone to get out of an intersection if there's no traffic behind me because I know that would confuse the shit out of me if someone did that to me. And this sort of thing happens often to me on the road.
It's not just drivers either, pedestrians, at least the college age variety that I'm coming into contact with lately as a driver are apparently cluelessly hanging out on sidewalks near intersections where drivers find themselves often. They're checking emails, or carrying on inane conversations that are probably better suited to some commissary, public park, or ladies' room in a dormitory. Don't stand on the side of the road chit-chatting, get the fuck out of the road so the rest of society can get on with their business and don't have to pause to determine if they may accidentally squish your eyeballs out of your head as their SUV runs you down at the four-way.
If I have to assign blame for the rise of ignorance in society, I'll have to set that blame squarely on our technology and marketing machine. Lately, I'm finding my intelligence assailed on a regular basis anytime that I'm exposed to advertising. I think I've brought this up before, well I'm on it again. Back off Mr. Faceinyouriphonebooktuber standing at the crosswalk not communicating whether or not you're about to step off into traffic, you're part of the problem, you media consumer! But, I can't totally lay the blame on you. You've been subjugated to something larger, this consumer culture that we seem to have been completely subjugated. For any sort of proof, turn on a television for an hour, and you'll find the most pointless information being broadcast in large quantities by news organizations, advertisers, infomercial producers, and even some television programmers. All of which want you to give them money for some dumb product that you don't need, really. You could probably do without that smartphone, heck it might even make you smarter to not have it. You might have to actually use your brain to remember where you parked your car.
All that I'm really saying is that we've apparently reached our level of incompetence as denizens of this planet. The 'Peter Principle' we haz it.
Think about the lack of common sense behind 'hydraulic fracturing' or 'fracking' if you want to call it that. What a terrible concept! Who's the lamebrain who conceived that it was a smart idea to open up fractures deep in the planet with water, when the whole planet is made up of floating plates of crust surrounded by mostly water. It's a recipe for disaster, and I hope that the human race comes out of it's mental cloud and realizes that soon. Especially, since the consequences involve earthquakes, polluted waters, and humongous sinkholes forming.
I think when you really get down to what has caused this collapse in the general gregariousness of humanity is money. There is some wisdom in that old saying, "Money is the root of all evil."
Everything has become at its' core related to generating a profit at any cost, regardless to whomever the stakeholders in whatever project it happens to be, and how much profit that project can generate for the shareholders.
Faceless corporations have been happy for so long to supply mankind's wants, needs, desires, and fetishes, it's long overdue that humanity recaptures some smidgen of self-reliance and starts to think for itself again before time runs out and we're all killed in the crosswalks.
Case in point. Here in this town of Cleveland, there is an intersection that contains a monument in the center, two one way streets going each direction, and a road bisecting the one-way streets behind the monument. Well, I'm approaching that intersection to cross the one-way streets and on my way to the apartment when I find someone who has chosen to pause for a length of time directly in my way of ingress. I don't know what they were doing, there were no cars coming, but yet they persisted in their immobility, until after a minute they simply drive out of the way and cease their blockage of all of the traffic at the intersection. I don't know what the heck they were doing, whey they paused in the middle of the road to block up all of the traffic, but thankfully some glimmer of reason entered their mind to trigger their self-removal from the intersection in question.
I don't know if it's that ignorance has propagated itself, or has been bred into the bulk of humanity, but it seems to be on the rise. Common sense, has become uncommon. Politeness has attempted to replace common sense on the highways with great frustration to people who happen to retain some modicum of common sense and knowledge of traffic regulations. As a polite person myself, I won't just up and stop for someone to get out of an intersection if there's no traffic behind me because I know that would confuse the shit out of me if someone did that to me. And this sort of thing happens often to me on the road.
It's not just drivers either, pedestrians, at least the college age variety that I'm coming into contact with lately as a driver are apparently cluelessly hanging out on sidewalks near intersections where drivers find themselves often. They're checking emails, or carrying on inane conversations that are probably better suited to some commissary, public park, or ladies' room in a dormitory. Don't stand on the side of the road chit-chatting, get the fuck out of the road so the rest of society can get on with their business and don't have to pause to determine if they may accidentally squish your eyeballs out of your head as their SUV runs you down at the four-way.
If I have to assign blame for the rise of ignorance in society, I'll have to set that blame squarely on our technology and marketing machine. Lately, I'm finding my intelligence assailed on a regular basis anytime that I'm exposed to advertising. I think I've brought this up before, well I'm on it again. Back off Mr. Faceinyouriphonebooktuber standing at the crosswalk not communicating whether or not you're about to step off into traffic, you're part of the problem, you media consumer! But, I can't totally lay the blame on you. You've been subjugated to something larger, this consumer culture that we seem to have been completely subjugated. For any sort of proof, turn on a television for an hour, and you'll find the most pointless information being broadcast in large quantities by news organizations, advertisers, infomercial producers, and even some television programmers. All of which want you to give them money for some dumb product that you don't need, really. You could probably do without that smartphone, heck it might even make you smarter to not have it. You might have to actually use your brain to remember where you parked your car.
All that I'm really saying is that we've apparently reached our level of incompetence as denizens of this planet. The 'Peter Principle' we haz it.
Think about the lack of common sense behind 'hydraulic fracturing' or 'fracking' if you want to call it that. What a terrible concept! Who's the lamebrain who conceived that it was a smart idea to open up fractures deep in the planet with water, when the whole planet is made up of floating plates of crust surrounded by mostly water. It's a recipe for disaster, and I hope that the human race comes out of it's mental cloud and realizes that soon. Especially, since the consequences involve earthquakes, polluted waters, and humongous sinkholes forming.
I think when you really get down to what has caused this collapse in the general gregariousness of humanity is money. There is some wisdom in that old saying, "Money is the root of all evil."
Everything has become at its' core related to generating a profit at any cost, regardless to whomever the stakeholders in whatever project it happens to be, and how much profit that project can generate for the shareholders.
Faceless corporations have been happy for so long to supply mankind's wants, needs, desires, and fetishes, it's long overdue that humanity recaptures some smidgen of self-reliance and starts to think for itself again before time runs out and we're all killed in the crosswalks.
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