Everywhere you go the World is so full of hate. Everyone is so busy
drawing boundaries and miffed about the work they have to do that they
loose focus of the humanity around them. As a loner, anything I do or
anything I say, people respond with vitriol if it's not in a constructed
social or bureaucratic environment. A caustic remark here, shunned interest
there, it all adds up. No one is sincere. No one cares. No one wants
to stop. They're wrapped up in their own problems and not interested in
anything I have to say or offer.
I'd much rather be aggressive and go out and conquer, yell and shout and
make an impact. I can and I have. The effort has to be calculated and
carfully considered because there are boundaries and if you loose control
of the expression people are anxious to take out their frustrations out on
anything out of the ordinary. It's not worth the effort to deal with the
backlash and ignorance that goes along with it. Standing out from the
crowd only invites conflict.
For this reason I believe a well fed society destroys its
entrepreneurial segment. Zig Ziglar wrote in one of his books about the
crabs in the bucket syndrome. That is if you have a bucket full of crabs,
and one starts to climb out, what do the other crabs do? They pull you
back in.
It takes strength of character to rise above the din of the masses as
they try to destroy creativity and expression. We get this strength from
family and friends, yet in this day and age of information and media we
distance those boundaries more and more.
To this end we should be concerned that law enforcement has focused on
the words 'lone wolf'. The pursuit of the lone wolf is fine if it's a
dangerous criminal, but if it is used to define new character attributes
we may overstep the boundaries of freedom and expression. At what point
does a lone wolf become dangerous. At what point does the pressure of
society, money, property rights drive the individual to fall within the
definition of law enforcements dangerous 'lone wolf'?
There's an app now to report anything suspicious. Homeland Security
has sold it, law enforcement embraces it and the public accepts it.
Bureaucrats have tapped in to social networking. How long before
neighbors start reporting neighbors? Now more than ever before we can
report anyone at anytime or from anyplace, anonymously. The framework for
paranoia and suspicion is in place.
What can we do? We can reach out to our neighbor. We can befriend
the stanger. Now more than ever before it's important to reach out and be
kind to people we don't know, or on the job. We must work to rebuild a
social fabric that can defend against the innuendo, panic and hysteria of
the 'lone wolf' mentality. The only catch is that it may be to late. I
hope nobody reports me for saying this.
