Most go through life with blinders on...

Recently, people have been "bashing" sometimes jokingly, sometimes passed the point of joking other people about the weather.  It's hilarious, tongue in cheek, that 50 degrees Fahrenheit means shorts weather to some and fur coat weather to others.  Generally it seems to be a regional thing.  Not surprisingly though.  Our bodies acclimate to the ambient average temperature and the average persons will have similar adjustments.  It's also so funny when people are warned to stay inside.  People from regions that are buried in snow for months at a time poke fun of people in regions where snow is a one or two day occurrence because look at how they live in it day in, day out.  First, the first couple of weeks of any snow season for the areas that are covered for months at a time have a huge spike in car accidents for the first couple of weeks and weather related deaths are not uncommon through a snow filled winter.  The fact that it happens only a couple days somewhere else should give those people more pause.  Two days to adjust to driving conditions when the average time to adjust is two weeks?  But hey, that doesn't occur to them.  They've been living in it for months so everyone else should have the same adjustment as them, right?  Tunnel vision, that inability to see anything except as it affects our own little worlds, is paramount in this misconception of the weather, to the plight of others, and honestly shows a lack of empathy--a breakdown in what actually makes us human.  Dogs can show empathy within their own pack, even dog to dog, sometimes even dog to other animal.  Perhaps, the breakdown of the ability to see the world from someone else's point of view, to show any empathy at all, stems from the fact we are human.  Perhaps in our self grandeur we have started to give up what makes us a group as a whole and place ourselves not just above the animals, but above each other.

In an interesting twist to seeing ourselves "above" each other, I had a conversation with someone that worked a plant floor.  They told me what a supervisor's job was by their perception, what the manager's job was, and what they perceived as their job.  Their perception of their job was incorrect.  The job as expected by management was different than what they thought their job was, but they were also adamant about what others' jobs were.  Where was the breakdown?  In this example, the breakdown was for various reasons that were not necessarily the person's fault.  However, the inability to see that other people have different roles to play, different responsibilities, that all drive to accomplish a goal for the group as a whole is part of that tunnel vision also.   Not all of us can do the same job when we are trying to make a product because there are various things that need to happen when we make anything.  Someone has to design it--not everyone has the talent or ability to design something.  Someone has to sell it--no use in making something if we can't sell it.  Someone has to manufacture it.  It might be easy for one person to do all of this if we are talking about handmade goods that are sold at a bazaar or farmer's market.  But a mass consumption product, like a car, is going to take a mass amount of people to assemble the car, let alone design and manufacture the thousands of sub-components that make up a car.  There's nothing wrong with being happy with our particular lot in life, but there is a problem with projecting our perceptions onto others.

In that above example, the person had a misunderstanding of what job they played, but the misunderstanding of what roles others' play is tantamount to the real problem.  We have a problem "walking" in someone else's shoes, and unfortunately, it's a mass majority of us.  Take Congress and our current President.  The mass majority, a large mass majority of them, have absolutely no idea what it is to be poor.  The President (I cannot stand a liar) tries to portray himself like he has any clue.  A little rich boy, black or white, son of a wealthy African and upper middle class white mother, stepson of a foreign diplomat...no, he has no idea what it is like to be poor.  His solutions are catastrophic not just to the poor but the middle class, because in reality, he has no idea what it means to be either.  That would be fine if he actually had people advising him that came from the ranks of the poor and middle class, but no.  His wife is from an upper middle class family and they surround themselves with more and more wealth and extravagance.  They have no idea.  "You can never know what it's like to be in another man's shoes until you've walked a mile in them," my grandfather would say.  Truth be told, most of us would never want to walk in anyone else's shoes, and those of us that have a rare glimpse into the different worlds become hopeful and dismayed at the same time.  No one in my family has ever been poor, excepting me (see one of the previous blogs).  I was raised with empathy by my grandmother, but to be quite frank, even my Grams, my wonderful empathetic Grams, had her limitations to what she could see.  She believed in helping the poor but was reside to leave them there.  To her they should learn, educate themselves and thus elevate themselves.  It seems highly reasonable from a logical point of view.  It is true that education can elevate, but there have always been plenty of self made men that have no formal education.  Hell, even Einstein never actually "earned" a college education.  Yet, a little known fact is that he taught at Princeton, one of the finest universities in the country, let alone world, with little more than an 8th grade formal education.  However, Einstein and other self made men, were the exception then and remain the exception now.  "All we are is all we know," as a Nirvana song says.  The poor should not be looked down upon with pity and handouts, but given an understanding of how to achieve, a different picture than the only one that they know, and not just a perception of what they see to be different, but what it means, how to get there, and an effort, not mouth pieces, to make the system help them elevate themselves.  Most in Congress can't see that, because they lack the ability to empathize the real situation that the poor experience.

Still work and financial situations are so easy to see.  We know basically how much money someone has by the car they drive, the neighborhood they live in, and the company they keep.  Yes, we are as a whole that shallow.  A really good friend of mine has no friends that don't have college educations.  I find it unfathomable.  How could she go through 20 plus years as an adult and have no friends that are no college educated?  Only a third of people in the United States are college educated.  (Yes, a third, and some age brackets are lower.)  How has she avoided ever making an acquaintance that became a friend that wasn't college educated?  She kind of looked at me with this incredulous look like I had lost my mind when I asked.
"I've made acquaintance with plenty, but why on earth would I need to socialize with a clerk at Walmart? What could we possibly have in common?"

Really?  I explained that probably over half the people that I knew and that I was friends with didn't.  Well, of course, because I had served in the military and to her point, I had chosen to "live like that". (Ok, we're not really friends anymore.)  Her view was that I was a bit too much like my mother in trying to empathize with people and that was a bad thing from her perspective.  I didn't know my place.  There might be some truth to that--the not knowing my place part.  My mother and father were not exactly the types that treated people any better or worse because of their lot in life. I was always told to treat others as I would want to be treated. Of course, I pointed out that I wasn't a college graduate most of the years we were friends.  The conundrum was ignored.  I was her exception to her rule.

Yet, to a deeper problem, many of us turn away from those in need.  We would rather not look, pretend not to see, than to have to feel any emotion for another person, a random stranger.  The financial issues could affect anyone.  There are plenty of homeless people that are so simply because they lost high paying jobs, were in hock to their ears, and everything hinged on them keeping that job.  They've lost their homes, their credit to find another place to live, the phone to get another job, a stable address to put on a resume.  Somehow, the friend above is sympathetic in those circumstances.  But not for the homeless vet.  Where's the VA?  Have you ever been in the VA system?, I countered  Helpful yes, able to take care of the mass number of vets with what Congress gives them?  Veterans' benefits are often the first cut.  A homeless person who's mentally incapable?  Her response is that they should be placed in homes, asylums, they don't belong on the streets.  With what money?  In what homes?  Asylums?  Seriously?  I asked her what if it was her.  She had lost her mental facilities and became homeless would she want to be in an asylum?  Well of course not, but she has family.  They would take care of her.  What if they were gone, no family to help?  Don't be ridiculous, was her reply.  Just trying to get her to the point of being able to empathize was like taking a pair of pliers crushing my own teeth and then pulling them out piece by piece.  She wasn't going to ever understand.  She just was never going to care unless it was her.

There are so many commercials for us to help dogs and help starving children overseas.  Why none for the children here?  How about commercials for 18 cents a day to help house children that have no parents and no family for whatever myriad of reasons that they have no one?  Oh, right, because it's not just 18 cents a day.  The average foster parent gets less than $104 per month per child.  That's just $3.47 a day.  How about we have a commercial for that $3.47 a day?  Half a value meal, a small latte, what price is that to pay?  Yet, we don't have the empathy for our own as we do for people completely around the world.  Why?  Because we don't like to empathize with people that could be us.  There by the grace of God go us and we don't want to have to look that cyclops in the eye.  

Should trying to empathize with others be the exception instead of the norm?  The Nazis convinced an entire country to turn on a race of people, turn their heads away and even participate in mass genocide.  There are various psychological models that explain the behavior.  But take away all the mumbo-jumbo and we are left with one sorry fact.  The German populace was unwilling to see it from the Jewish people's eyes.  They couldn't imagine that they might be the ones in such a position.  They were more than willing to think of themselves as superior.  They were more than willing to think of others as inferior.  And in that, they were more willing to give up their ability to empathize and reduce themselves to lower than human.  If animals can empathize and we cannot, who truly is the greater being?

I know this all started with some jokes about some Southerners freaking out over a major snow storm.  Truth be told, most, even the ones that are tasked with the safety of others down here, really don't know how to drive in the snow.  Some of the pictures of jackknifed semis were semi drivers from regions with snow that assumed that it was like all other snow storms they've experienced.  It is, but it isn't.  People here see it once or twice a year and a couple days later it's gone.  No one is prepared or ever acclimates.  But that really isn't the problem.  It's the surface of a bigger problem.  The inability to empathize.  There are just way too many people anymore that have given up trying to empathize, let alone can do so regularly.  So isn't it funny how stupid those people are acting in the midst of a snow storm that we've been living with for months?  No, it's really not funny and it's really not "them" that are stupid.  Stupidity is assuming that you understand something that you don't.  Assuming you understand the circumstances because you project your own circumstances on to someone else's is stupid.  Empathy gives us the ability to discern the people who need help from the people that don't.  Empathy keeps us from being stupid by assuming that we understand.  Empathy gives us the ability to grow not just from one freak moment, but when applied regularly, the ability to gain perspective all the time.  Roddy McDowell played a butler who advised Goldie Hawn's character, a rich woman who lives for a brief period as a poor middle class woman in the movie Overboard, with the following:

“… most of us go through life with blinders on. Knowing only that little station to which we were born. But you madam, have had the… rare privilege of escaping your bonds for just a spell. To see life from an entirely new perspective." 

Not many of us have the opportunity to actually "walk" in another's shoes, live another life, but we all have the ability to acknowledge that our own limitations are not the same, our own circumstances vary for numerous reasons not just the reasons that we would project onto others, and more importantly, while we may never have a full grasp, we can empathize and learn to care quite a bit more than most of us are trying right now.  We can live with blinders and judge others as we would judge them or we can become the greater beings that we like to believe we are and not only "judge not" but learn to feel and show compassion for what others are experiencing.

I know you're lonely...I know why you're lonely....

It's too bad that there is no font selection in Blogger for "Comic Sans", because honestly, as usual, internet dating is proving to be downright comical.  It's not just the stereotype of the desperate or phony types.  I signed up for 4 sites, closed out 3 within the first 24 hours and went ahead and joined one for a month.  It's painfully obviously that you will get more options from the "free" sites, but those options tend mostly to be men (and women most likely) that haven't got the funds to spend on the site--either because they are married.  Something about those stray dating site charges on a card are a big red flag to a spouse... Or, they are too cheap or can't afford it in the first place.  If someone is too cheap or can't afford twenty to twenty five bucks, yea, not to sound a little picky at all, but how are you going to afford a date?  But, hey you're not reading this except for laughs, right? Here we go:

80% are lying about their age by 5 or more years.  Since only 10% of us look better than our age and 10% look worse, yea, no way 80% of them look 50-55 and are 45.  Uh yea.  

Seriously, some of the "45" year olds look like they are trying to relive the 70s in their pictures, particularly with their hair.  Yes, darling you still have hair but you are not Justin Beiber.  Look like a damn adult.  

Ok, a goatee is so 10-15 years ago.  It can look hot on a biker.  If you're not a biker, it just looks like you can't afford a razor. 

Likewise with mustaches.  Stuck in the 1880s, a 1970s porno, or a bad rendition of Hitler.  Next.  

Guy posts in his profile "looking for a good woman" but selected that he's looking for "casual fun".  Ummm, yes, darling, you do realize most "good women" are not the "casual fun" types.  Translation.  He's not looking for a good woman.  He's looking for whatever will fall on its back on the first date.  

46, never married, no children and posts he's "not picky".  Ok, he's never been married and never had any kids and he's not picky?  So he's still in love with the game, he really is picky or he's really a total loser and you seriously don't want to know how bad.  

All head shots from his computer.  Big smile, good looking, a pretty husky in the background noise, nice touches in the background picture that scream woman's touch.  Married, physical issues he doesn't want you to know about and/or living at home with his parents.  Next.

Half of his pictures are sideways.  Not smart enough to flip his photos 90 degrees or to even notice he needs to.  Next.

"2hard2handle"...either reference is ridiculous.  Since he's not that good looking, let's go with he a difficult *ss that has issues.  Not really interested in what those issues are. 

Separated.  The word alone screams issues.  Period.  Separated means not currently emotionally available and looking for tail, hoping that you will fall on your back in the first 5 minutes of the "date" because he's paying legal fees on top of whatever expenses he has.  He can't afford a cheap prostitute; he's hoping internet dating means he can find a free one.  

The LL Cool J look.  Come on we all know it.  The hand to the chin.  The solid player pose.  Even white guys use it in their pics.  Player or wanna be player.  Either way, he thinks he's a player.  Next.

No.  Black & White photos do not hide your crow's feet that are moving down your cheekbones to your ears.  (45 my dying *ss.)

Grizzly Adams was not "sexy" in the 70s.  He's still not sexy.  That mountain man look is amusing, but most women do not want to be turned away from a nice restaurant because the hostess thinks something is going to crawl out of your facial hair.  

Post "family oriented, faithful and believe in karma".   Translation.  My wife cheated on me, I wasn't the reason (at least not from his point of view) and more importantly it screams:  "Still not over it!"  Next.

"I enjoy church" and 4 out of 5 pics are drinking with buddies and in bars.  Yes, dear, I'm sure you enjoy church, but something in the pics screams hypocrite.  

Harley pics.  I'm just amazed at how many guys, particularly the geeky looking ones, that have their main pic of them with their bikes.  It's not working anymore in the bars; it's probably not going to work online.  

Pics with the former (or current for that matter) girlfriend or wife cut out.  Her hair is the same in all 3 photos.  Yes, either a cheater or recently separated or divorced or has no life and is hoping for you to make all his dreams come true.  Phew.  That sounds like too much work.  

Pics of tattoos.  I've seen some awesome ink work online and a lot of it, most of it, has been on dating websites.  I get it.  You don't want to be judged, but some of the things people tat themselves with are really too weird without an explanation of why you have it.  A giant squid crushing something?? No matter how cool looking, it's also little creepy without explanation.  Yea, should've stopped at blurb "have tattoos".   

Asked to describe his "perfect match":  "a young lady...who isn't influenced by books, doesn't say how independent she is...would prefer someone at least 21."  42, never married, never had children.  I'm shocked!!  Never married and never had children?  Translation:  "Looking for dumb 21 year old, who isn't her own woman, who can't read and preferably does exactly what I tell her to do."  Winner, winner, chicken dinner.  Thanks for the wink, but I'll pass.

"Stubborn but very devoted".  But?  So stubborn and very devoted.  Translation:  Stalker. 

"Just split up from the "one"...looking to pick up the pieces."  Don't have the time Humpty Dumpty.  On the bright side, he's honest.  Pass.

And for the finale, my personal favorite:  "Open marriage and looking...even the best relationships are only satisfying to a certain degree.  I need you to be the other 5-10%...pic is not really me, for obvious reasons."  WTF?!?!  Ok, I appreciate the honesty, but WTF?!?!  And if the wifey knows, then why pic not really you?  WTF?!?!  Buy a hooker sweetie.  If you were good looking enough and had enough money there would plenty of women you could find that would be ok with that arrangement.  I know you're lonely. I know why you're lonely.  Now go away.