There are days in my life where I am confronted with extreme temptation. I get the feeling of letting go, putting down the guard and doing whatever I please. I read people who grant themselves permission to do just such every day and I wonder why they can do such things and I can't. The list of things I see is long. Whether it's someone's blog, a co-worker, a person I know from online that isn't blog related, a friend. It's not just the daily junk you see in the news - celebrities who seemingly do whatever they want to in life without and kind of consequences, but it eventually catches up with them, too.
This was one of those days. I've had strange emails coming from people I don't know asking to do things - how they got my email I have no idea. I think of all the things I'm not doing that I could be.
It happens. The mind is a battlefield. It is if you want to try to keep it pure, anyway. If you don't care what goes on in there, then there is no battle - you've already lost and are a prisoner, shackled and chained whether you want to believe it or not.
I come back to my senses eventually and fortunately do not actually ACT on those impulses. It's always a relentless battle, though. I look at the people who do whatever they please, say whatever they please, etc - and realize that many of these people's lives are mere existence. No real life, just a daily grind of doing the same thing without any more expectation than to gratify themselves in one way or the other. The excesses with which these people live are beyond imagination.
I wonder about people who can simply mouth off to anyone at a moment's notice and think nothing of it. I wonder about people whose goal it is in life is to go around and challenge anything and everything that anyone says - nothwithstanding the fact that that person hasn't got a clue. Maybe in some areas they know something, but no-one is an expert in everything, only God can make that claim, yet these people will argue with you and even start to attempt to humiliate you simply because you state something you believe, or that you KNOW for a fact.
The I'm-right-and-you're-always-wrong-crowd. Seems like the blogosphere is FULL of people like that.
I have to say that I am at a loss about situations going on at a specific blogging host. I don't hate the place but the incredible amount of hate, anger and then extreme carnality leaves me at a loss. People seem to feed on that stuff, especially controversy. Here, my mind is racked with trying to find stuff for the IRS and what did I do with it; keeping tenants in the house and making sure that I have paying tenants to boot. Paying for the house and all the bills. Trying to beautify the property and keep it maintained. My work life and attempting to keep myself pure. I'm not a lily-white angel, but I'm certainly attempting to lead a clean life, I utterly fail at times but that's the down-side to be human.
I do wonder how reading all of that stuff on a daily basis is helping me at all.
Well, I don't blame other people for my problems in life, unless of course someone has done something intentional and then I can say something about it. I also don't blame people for temptation that comes against me. We are all tempted from time to time with something - whatever your weaknesses are, it's guaranteed that some wonderful opportunity to fall into that weakness will come at you with unprecedented accuracy in it's aim at your mind, soul and heart. It's so easy to just give in, isn't it?
Yet, if you fight the battle and win, it's so wonderful to come out the other side and look back at the personal, inner battles that you conquered.
Today's stuff is over, literally. I had to sit back and start giving serious thought to what was going on inside of me, what triggered it and how to not let that happen again. The last part of that may mean some extreme decisions, really, on my online activities, and more pointedly, blogging. How can blogging tempt you, you say? How does anyone get tempted? It isn't my own blogging, this is pretty tame stuff comparitively speaking. That's the point, I think, without going into it too far here.
ben
8 comments:
That carnality stuff at the other site is really kind of pathetic, imo. I have no idea how some people are raised, but in my world you didn't talk about it.
The whole tone of that place, language, subject matter etc is going to get it blocked in public libraries and already has been blocked at some work sites.
When you look objectively at some of the people posting there (NOT you, not Low and Slow, not Pastor Larry not Fujfic, not Harpo) but some, or many of the people there are really really losers.
Good post, Ben.
I'm not going to sit here and say that I find some of that stuff to be entertaining. In fact, I find it to be offensive and degrading.
I know that Bobby said he was blocked by his company, I don't wonder that mine will do the same, many sites are blocked on our company's computers for whatever unknown reason the company dictates. Probably the prolific use of the F bomb a part of it, I don't wonder the rest of the vulgarity the other portion.
I hadn't thought about libraries, I thought that libraries had been barred from screening that kind of thing. I don't know, I don't enjoy engaging in such. On the "other" site there are certain individuals who seem to take great pleasure in posting entry after entry after entry about things better left to the imagination - to come out and openly display such even in the title to the entry is blatantly confrontational to those that have no desire to see such and I don't wonder with the huge volume of it going on over there that a majority simply want to see people offended by such - gone.
But, that's just speculation. It could simply be that they don't like one particular person's entries and his titles so much that they want to somehow offset it by filling up the home page with so much of it, a newcomer would have to wonder if they didn't just wander into a porn site without the actual pictures.
It could be a lot of things, or perhaps a lot of things mixed in together. Whatever the case, the sudden tone and direction of the place leaves me wondering if I want to be a part of it. I am sure I would be told to go to hell, f*** off, walk and don't let the gate hit you in your @$$ on the way out and several other old sayings that come to mind.
But then again, I haven't done that - yet. I'm just finding myself going to fewer and fewer blogs. I guess the thing that really pokes me about that kind of thing is that people who find it objectionable are always labelled as something or another. I honestly don't remember contending with this much lewd content on JS. Perhaps I didn't get around much over there, I don't know, but I simply don't remember it being that over-the-cliff.
In the end, it's a "if you don't like it you can leave" type of thing.
It has been a few days since the mother of five small children posted there, although she has posted other places. Imagine how she would feel if one of her kids looked at the site to see the pix she put up of them.
I have not posted there much, because frankly I do not want to be closely associated with people whose biggest pleasure in life is saying fuck. The internet abounds with filthy sites for those who need such outlets.
I continue to feel sorry for people like Pastor Larry and a few others who are decent, well-raised people with a conscience and good morals. It must be increasingly uncomfortable for them to be surrounded by tasteless, juvenile junior-high-school-locker-room filth.
I don't know who you're talking about - the mother of 5 kids?
I do agree the F bomb is flung around as much as kids would sling tomatoes in a food fight, it is like people think of it as a normal word - I have made it pretty well known that I find that word vulgar.
I just wonder what the objective really IS over there, are they just wanting it to be site with only like-minded people or is it really open to anyone? I would find it less reprehensible if the titles on the main page weren't laced with getting f***** and ass and sex this and sex that. People want to write about that in their own blogs - fine - knock yourself out, but the home page is viewable by anyone wanting to visit the place.
How many first time visitors do you expect come to that home page, see all of that trash and move on?
As for your final paragraph, there is no doubting in my mind that, on the internet, you are the most blunt, frank, direct and sometimes in-your-face person that I know! Reminds me of myself sometimes!
ben
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