Hypocrisy in an age of surveillance

You know what killed this for me?

The stultifying discovery that students are reading my blog.  That terrible moment when one of them said out loud, “Hey! You have a blog.” My mind flashed through what was actually written in the thing. Should be okay. Should. But it reminded me I couldn’t relax.

 Imagine my delight when another student walked up to me and asked, “Your blog isn’t about anything. Why do you write it?”

IT DOESN’T SAY ANYTHING BECAUSE IF IT DID SAY ANYTHING IT COULDN’T BE SAID!!!!

The question was nevertheless a good one.

The reason it irritated me was because it was true.

A friend of mine recommended that I create a pseudonym and write under that but I found it overly complicated. Creating false emails, creating false names. At the end of the day either don’t bother writing or try to be careful coz’ the damn thing’s in print.

It is SO the age of surveillance.

The age of hypocrisy.

It is amazing though. Has there ever been a time when you wanted to be published and didn’t have to get a publisher? Then you would argue about what you could and couldn’t say. Then, carefully come to some agreement about what was possible to say. What you wanted to say. I believe a lot of thought went into it. Then it was published. Completed.

Not so much now.

Of course, who the hell is reading it?

It is SO the age of surveillance.

The age of hypocrisy.

The things they will lynch you for are the very things they themselves wish they could do but pride themselves on some perceived success in a given area. The travesty committed by all of us on a daily basis is breathtaking. Scorning someone for being X,Y,Z! Then failing to recognize that you are judging people for being less than you. That’s what folk are doing when they let rip about one another. They do THIS?! We pontificate about it because we don’t do X! “Therefore, I am better than them,” we assure ourselves. 

Tragically this has befallen Churchianity. I suppose it must have always been like this. I call it Churchianity because I don’t know if I have seen Christianity. Most of what we bring to the table is our particular background/denomination. Really, if we were Christians we would be absolutely cool with rubbing shoulders with Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Baptists, Lutherans, Uniting Church, Anglicans… you get the picture. But we’re quietly assured that we’ve got it right. We might say, “Hey, we’re not perfect.” But quietly we think: ‘Yeah, we’re not perfect, but they are MORE not perfect than us.’

It’s like having a BBQ on a burning ship.

Everyone stares at the sizzling steak while someone casually says, “I’m glad that fire’s contained.” Meanwhile the ship creaks as somewhere beams collapse in the crackling heat. We’re all looking at our particular fire we think is contained while hell breaks loose.

I suspect it’d be like this wherever you work or live. Where-ever we think we’ve got our particular fire contained you can rest assured that you shouldn’t rest assured.

Bleak.

Not really. What if it was…fact. What if the things we thought we were building weren’t really all that important. What if the things that were really important were the things we rush past each day. That, given our minds and how they need to be occupied, that we had constructed importance in the ‘jobs’ we had to do and didn’t take time to have the patience to look after what we’re supposed to be looking after. Our nearest and dearest.

BORING.

That’s why people fight. It’s interesting. We love gossip. We love drama. We love to watch the deck collapsing. Provided it’s the ship across the way from us. We all tut and shake our heads waving empty hands at the row boats on our ships muttering something about there not being time to do anything.

I’d like to thank Jo who has said twice to me now that I should blog. Apparently my quips entertain him and he has expressed that they should be written down in a blog. It reminded me I needed to write. I am also reminded that as someone who writes, part of the deal is that someone reads it. That someone else’s brain rolls the ideas about and appreciates it, considers it, hates it…whatever.