Comin'atcha From Behind My Wall

If I were to explain to you that Black Sabbath was all about peace & love, what would your gut reaction be? Have you ever listened to Sabbath? Or are your opinions based on hearsay? Likewise, if I were to say to you that when James Hetfield, in the song "Blackened," sings: "See your mother, put to death, see your mother die..." what he is actually referring to is the damage that we humans are inflicting upon the Earth, and that the song itself is meant to educate and warn us; would you take the time to process this? Or would you cling to that misguided impression that rock bands like Metallica and Black Sabbath are somehow dark, wicked, evil; seeking to subvert the youth?

Inside each and every one of us, there exists a strange tendency to form opinions about things we have no experience with. "He said, She said." Sometimes, that's all it takes for us to make up our minds, without ever having taken the time to explore whether or not the generalizations are true. The attitude accompanying this feeling is one of "why should I?" We then go to great lengths to rationalize why we should not. What a waste of our time it "might" be, were we to make an effort to see for ourselves, only to learn that those sentiments were true. Once bitten, twice shy, right?

Swaddled in prejudice, we suckle the tit of conventional wisdoms.

What has become of the old adage "Nothing ventured, nothing gained...?" It's been replaced by that most backwards of mantras "Better safe than sorry." Just the other day, I found myself stuck in that same untenable, paralyzed line of thinking. Thankfully, blogging, and writing; conversations with friends always seems to provide me with a much needed catharsis, and I move forward. But there are some people who don't. They spend their entire lives avoiding the choices, the experiences that would allow them to free their minds of all the preconceived, preconditioned jargon. A separation from the programming, a disconnection from the matrix.

Why do we build these walls, these fortresses of solitude? Is it because we are trying to keep new ideas out? Or is it that we are looking to keep the old ideas in? I believe now that the answer is buried somewhere within a lesson taught to me by an old prof. of mine. "People do not like to question their reality, because it requires that they reinvent themselves. Doing so asks them to relearn what they thought they already knew. People desire a sense of security, and pointing out that their view of reality is flawed, removes that safety zone."

If that is true, which I believe it to be, why then am I unable to just live and let live? What drives me, like some obsessesive compulsive to want, to need, to burst the bubble? This cultural coma that so many seem content to slumber through? I'd answer that if I were able to, but I am not. I don't know whether to call this a purpose, or a naive delusion. Every bit as much a creature of habit as the rest of you hairless monkeys, I do what I have to do, and hope that in the end, there was some reason for having done it.