I use the word, “reference,” quite judiciously as I know of only seventy-six years of time on the personal level. Seventy-six years of what could truly be called, monumental change. Emphasis on, “mental.” What do I mean by mental? In modern terms this might mean “Hip.” Groups of individuals of the hive mind that consider what they think, true, and what you and I think, nonsense. This is because someone told them as young adults, probably college or university profs, that the way they were being taught to think was Hip. In our case, Hip, goes back to the late forties and early fifties up to and including the sixties, all of the last century.
This was a multilayered age of Beatniks, then Hippies, then idiots, that latter term may be equally applied in all instances depending on how you consider being Hip. When Vietnam came to town, all American towns, the draft was still in force. I had taken one semester off college to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and I got my draft notice. Shee-zam, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy. I figured, at the time, I was much less likely to take a bullet between the eyes aboard ship than in a rice paddie. It turned out, as I am typing this now, that I was correct.
This took me away from worse things than war like altering one’s consciousness with acid and other chemicals. I ducked out on the whole Hippie thing and have never looked back. Friends of mine had deferments of some sort or other and dove full brain into the deep end of drugs. They’re all dead now whether socially or physically doesn’t really count any longer. They tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. All I had was to stay alive by staying alert and doing my job as ordered and here I am. Alertness is tantamount to understanding truth. If you’re sleepy then most anything goes and most anything is not a way to live a life.
Now you see what I refer to using the word, Reference. It is the time that I have had to make myriad decisions about how to live my life. Looking back over seven decades, or so, gives one pause when one sees what is going on with people who have too much ease to make correct decisions. Such are our times. When a person who has regular meals, money to do with what they want yet still complain about “tough” times these have reduced themselves to brats. Spoiled brats. Our times of excess ease.
Views: 24
