The World Is Still a Madhouse and I'm Back

I didn't intend for this post to be so long, but it ended up that way.  I had a lot to say.  I feel better telling it.

The last time I posted to my blog the world was the same as now.  I think it gets worse by the month.  I believe  even madness was slower paced once.  I have no way of proving it though. I think madness used to come in new forms by the century or half century or decade or yearly or biannually, but today different forms of human neurosis appear every month if not every week.  I believe many people are no longer able or willing to stop and take a look at themselves. Many aren't coping.  They won't allow themselves to ask 'Am I a little bit out of control; why I am doing what I'm doing; does it make any sense?' 

I stop sometimes, be quiet, and just think.  I have a thick conscience so maybe it is a little easier for me to ask myself are the things I'm doing in my life of any intrinsic value?  Have I been knowingly cruel to anyone?  Who is toxic in my life and should I start avoiding them?  Am I really learning anything of benefit from these people or am I just hanging out with them so as not to be lonely?  Are the people on Facebook really my friends or since I never talk to maybe two out of over 300 people am I deluding myself and wasting time?  Should I have kept up blogging and wrote for myself instead of posting something for an audience on social media?  Is it healthy to hold on to people that make me unhappy and for whom I have little trust or respect?  

I decided to come back to blogging because I enjoyed it far more when I wrote a post then posting on social media whether Facebook or Twitter.  It felt more creative, and it was fun to express my thoughts in a long way instead of in one sentence, abbreviations, or just chunks of words. I know blogging is out of style, but I'm writing for myself.  I will post what I blog on Twitter, and people can accept my offering or not.  

I deleted, not deactivated my Facebook page on Sunday night.  It will be all gone in fourteen days.  The chains are gone, and I have such a sense of relief.  The final act of a relative made it clear to me that I was making the right decision to jettison Facebook out of my life for good.  It was a cousin I only saw once when I was girl.  I barely remember when we met.  He had come down here from New York with one of my uncles.  I think he might have been an older teenager or in his early 20s and I was much younger, still a girl, perhaps a pre-teen.  In all those years since, we had not communicated.  In fact, I had forgotten about him.  I have many cousins on my father's side of the family that I have never met.  Many of my father's people left the South years ago like many black people did to escape Jim Crow laws seeking what they believed would be a better life in the North. Some succeeded, but most did not. 

Black people tend to be blind followers.  When a few gather the courage to do something different, many others will follow if they relate to the ones who decide to make a move.  We don't give much thought or do much research to really find out whether a situation or location is suited to us on an individual level.  We go by hearsay. We do everything collectively.  Our fear to really leave the plantation has lead us to a culture of failure because many of us are anti-intellectual and easily led astray by various con artists whether they are preachers, celebrities, sport figures, one particular political party or "my president." 

Almost a month ago one of my cousins who lives here in town told me on Facebook to introduce myself to one of our cousins after I saw an old photo of my dad on the cousin's page where he had been tagged. Most of dad's people killed themselves with alcohol.  Big city life corrupted them beyond any redemption, so they self destructed.  Also before they left the South my grandparent's home was one of those early dysfunctional residences that are the norm now.  The only difference was there were more kids in the house and a father; my grandmother had a total of eighteen pregnancies, fourteen children survived.  Her husband, my grandfather, threw away his money on alcohol, gambling, and women. This is the kind home my father grew up in.  

By contrast my mother grew up in a stable home far out in the country.  Her parents were religious and kind having both black and white friends.  Both family and friends could depend on them.  My maternal grandfather had drank when he was young, but unlike my paternal grandmother who found excuses to remain with an abusive husband, my mother's mom gave my grandfather an ultimatum.  She hated alcohol even though my grandfather was never abusive or violent.  He'd go out and drink, come home and collapse.  But grandma didn't want her kids seeing that, so she threaten to take my mother and her older brother who were both small kids and leave.  Grandma was never a doormat.  Granddad never touched alcohol again.  He was good at going cold turkey like that and never returning to the garbage dump.  I remember when he stopped smoking.  I was a teenager, and he had heard from some preacher that smoking was a sin because our bodies are temples and putting everything in our bodies is not good.  Granddaddy who rolled his own cigarettes with Prince Albert tobacco and loved to chew tobacco announced he was stopping them both, and he did.  He never smoked a rolled cigarette or chewed tobacco again.  He encouraged grandma to stop dipping stuff, but it took her awhile to kick her habit.  

My father's family was stubborn, rebellious, and self destructive like way too many black people.  They have made little important progress as human beings.  They were highly materialistic and liked the "good things in life" such as big cars and nice houses, but they lacked moral strength and self control.  They tended to sink into madness, disease and self destruction.

So I introduced myself to one of my cousins who lost her mom to cancer about two years ago. Immediately I could sense our personalities were not going to mix well.  I looked at her Facebook page and comments and she seemed bitter, arrogant, and angry.  She'd post these almost whiny complains on her page.  I learned that one of her sons had been murdered at age 25 and left five children behind. I felt sorry for her.  I want to help people, but I have learned only the person can help themselves, however, they must have the will-power to renew their minds.  Most don't.  Most will drive themselves down to hell.  I feel sorry for people obsessed with changing the world or some individual.  They will 99% of the time fail. 

Well, this cousin told me she would tell another cousin about me.  This other cousin who lost her father back in December had started a family reunion page on Facebook.  Suddenly I was getting several friends requests from relatives daily.  I was delighted and wanted to connect.  I was added to the group and I started to post old family photos of our uncles, aunts, grandmother, grandfather, some of their fathers and mothers.  Many  seemed to like them, but the first cousin I talked to who'd lost her son said off hand she'd seen most of them and a grandson of my uncle that the page was dedicated to give almost one of those "meh" comments. He said he'd seen them before.  I doubted all the other cousins had, but often people only think about themselves and what they've done or seen, not anyone else.  I would post photos and explain who the people were in detail along with little  stories about the photo based on what dad or mom had told me.  My uncle's grandson had been in prison and he seemed to glorify that like some African-American males do.  He appeared to get in a sort of race with me posting photos after saying he'd seen most of mine.  I had said I would only post a few at  a time because I didn't want it to seem I was spamming her page, but my cousin who started the page said to post as often as I liked.  I noticed that when I stopped posting photos he abruptly stopped.  I just felt he didn't like me.  

Black people do not want to admit this, but many black men do not like women who are highly educated.  Street smarts are fine but book smarts are not.   It is very common for some lower class or "ghetto" blacks to feel intimidated by educated or middle class blacks.  No matter how friendly we are they are suspicious and see us as more of an enemy in some cases than whites. It's OK for whites to have certain things or to have it all, but we're not supposed to.  

There is also a jealousy factor there as well.  Many black people do not want to see others succeed.  I don't have any money.  I just have an education, and I live comfortably with my parents.  I have lived alone several times, but I prefer the non-Western way of not living alone if I can help it.  I think family is very important.  The world is a hostile place for women, and if you can get along with and live with family, it makes more sense than living alone and being a prey for all kinds of predators.  This ex-con cousin might even have more money than me.  But it was something about his attitude and the first cousin that as time went on I felt uneasy on that page.  Also I don't like arrogant people.  I see arrogance as a tool of someone who is really insecure but is putting on a show for everyone else.  These two cousins were arrogant, bragging on themselves.  I was amazed at seeing how some of the attitudes that have made it difficult for the older generation in my father's family to get along showing up in the younger generation.  My father has this similar swagger and posturing also, but at 74 he has mellowed a lot.  He is very insecure still like my cousins, but unlike them he has been heavily influenced by white culture, so he does not have the "hood" mentality I see in them.  Still the arrogance and need for affirmation by other people are in most of the people that I see on his side of the family.  When people are raised in homes where there is so much chaos or neglect they become this way.  The black class clown in school is often at heart insecure and feels uncared for at home, so he or she seeks attention at school, even if it's negative attention.  

I had become fed up with Facebook in the last year.  More and more I questioned why was I on there.  I tried to justify it by saying I had people on my list with a little influence such as "friends" who were professional and independent journalists. A few worked for PressTV and others appeared as political commentators on both PressTV and Russia Today.  I had a number of people on my friends list whom I'd attended school with.  I've known some of them since elementary school.  They are black and white, but I have almost nothing in common with them outside of the fact that we grew up in the same town.  All are older now of course, but those who were the poseurs and noise makers of middle and high school are still the same except for the usual adult accessories: a home, spouses, children, grandchildren, a job.  Most are still attached to football the way they were in high school.  Some can't let go of their favorite local bands and singers from college.  I didn't see a bit of emotional or intellectual growth.  Sure I have some favorite singers from my child- and young adulthood, but I have added many of other types of singers (most are international) and genres since then.  I see nothing except an urge to cling to the past in many of my former classmates.  I don't have all of the adult things because I was not willing to settle for less in most cases like many people do, but I have traveled, taught various age groups in three different countries, interacted with varied ethnicities and races of people, people which my classmates have probably never ever encountered; I have grown in insight and intellect, and I want to continue to grow in all that as well as morally, spiritually, and philosophically.  Many of them seem to be at a standstill.  My pastor paid me a wonderful compliment the other week when she said I was a philosopher.  I never expected that.  I have a lot more work to do on myself, everyone does, but I have changed plenty even in the last decade.  Even Muhammed Ali said sometime maybe in his rambunctious days, "A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."

So it was doomed with my cousins really from the beginning.  Sadly, we had little or nothing in common, and two of them just did not accept me.  I believe they wanted to, but we are from different worlds that will never mingle.  They probably see me as too "white" for their tastes.  They can't open themselves to my language.  I can't quite open myself to theirs.  I have tried to relate to all kinds of people in the past.  I understand now that it is not always possible.  Sometimes relating to your own can be the hardest task.  

It so turned out that I was so tired because of several bad experiences I'd had on Facebook in the last year that I decided to close my account for good.  It had been on my mind weeks before all of these cousins had sent invitations to be friends.  No matter where your privacy settings are you are still listed somewhere on there as "maybe you know so and so," and I've seen a drop down list of people I "might know" under the friend invite icon.  I had to deal with three monsters last year that were on my friends' list.  I had long stopped commenting on pages especially if the topic was controversial, but I did make a statement the other week about a cartoon concerning Africa and whether Christianity and homosexuality are indigenous to the continent.  I am not for the persecution of gays, but I am against this Western obsession with gay and exporting it.  It has nothing to do with human rights  and freedom just like humanitarian intervention did not.  At the heart of it is population control.  I didn't touch on the part about gays, but I argued that Christianity has roots in Africa.  Christ lived there as a child in Egypt.  European monasticism was an offshoot of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt.  Ethiopia was one of the first nations to make Christianity its' official religion.  I also mentioned St. Augustine who lived in what's now Algeria and the martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas in what's now Tunisia.  But then some black guy who looked at least middle aged started arguing that Christianity is a European religion brought to Africa by slave masters.  Even though he was putting out some Afrocentric arguments that were quite strange, his hatred of Christianity  and whites was blinding him to over 1000 years of Christian history that was long before the first Europeans came to Africa to trade and kidnap human cargo.  Really he was advocating without even knowing it the white Western view that history began five centuries ago and nothing previous was of any value since we weren't involved.  He trolled away with me and some Africans who agreed with me.  I was put off by him and didn't want to waste my time.  I invited him to Google all that I had written, but he only wanted to make ridiculous statements that even I had never seen written anywhere else.  I was even more disgusted when one of the Ethiopians who was a young woman born America and who had agreed with me sent a friend invitation.  I accepted it.  She stayed on my page for most of the day, but then unfriended me and changed her page so only people could message her.  I had a number of African Facebook friends in Africa, and no one had ever done anything this stupid and psychotic before. 

Facebook has become about 70% insanity and 30% sanity along with the government spying on people.  I really came to see it as a highly unappealing outlet.  I liked a lot of good pages on there pertaining to my interests in current events, art, history, literature, poetry, architecture, and cultures.  I will miss those pages, but I will not miss the banality of Turks constantly taking photos of themselves sitting at a table with food before them, people lying about someone's baby they don't really think is adorable, people seeking attention with their doomed relationships, women bragging they have the most wonderful husband in the world or the greatest kids; do they ever tell them that or is it all for grandstanding on Facebook?  I had a complete lunatic and nuisance on there who expected me to chat with him everyday for hours.  I blocked him.  I don't like life in the virtual, and he needed to get a life.  I was sick of it all, and my cousins weren't putting anything out there to make me eager to keep my account open.  I can  see black women with blonde wigs  and tattoos any time especially if I turn on the television.  My cousins have not broken the cycle of ignorance and self destruction that started as far back as my grandfather who drank and my grandmother who put up with his abuse until it killed her at a young age.  

So when I announced I was going to close my Facebook page the cousin I mentioned at the first who had only seen me once years ago and knew nothing of my life or who I really am, unfriended me.  I messaged him and politely asked why, but then I told him it didn't matter since I was ridding myself of my account anyway.  I told him to take care and God bless.  I know he got the message because when anyone sees your message on Facebook, a little check mark appears below the message.  I suppose he was too cowardly to say anything.  I have asked black guys why in the past on Facebook when they displayed certain bad and off the wall behavior and most say nothing.  For all the bluster of some of them, they are the worst cowards.      

I deleted my Facebook page late last night.  I had fallen asleep early, and after I woke up I wanted to wipe away the nagging little demon that lurked in the back of my mind.  Deactivating Facebook was not enough.  I learned how to delete it, and I did. 

You have to get all of those devils out of your life to have peace.  Some times that devil is a person or a group of people.  Sometimes it's a website like Facebook that is just a vampire and time waster anyway particularly for a person like me. 

The last time I looked the world is still a madhouse.  I'm back blogging again.