"Just be yourself!"  It’s the guidance given to people throughout all modern times.  Whether it’s dating advice, a job interview, first day of school, or anything involving being social, the long-held wisdom is that it’s best to be honest and true; be yourself; don’t be fake.  The advice is well-meaning.  It’s useful to not pretend or lie or be fake, because you can’t keep that lie up forever.  Eventually you’ll be found out and it will be harder to dig yourself out of that mess.  The follow-up to this advice was usually, "Never apologize for being yourself."

This is what is also termed "authenticity" – you presenting your authentic self to the world.  Authenticity is also used a lot for high-profile people.  Do they walk the walk or just talk the talk? (Not sure if that’s a proper saying, but it fits here).  And if these people don’t present a level of authenticity, the accusation is "fakeness".  "They’re so fake!"  And that was considered pretty brutal, because if you can’t be respected, why are you a high-profile person, unless your goal is infamy?

When the Internet came about, there was a complete epidemic of inauthenticity. where people could say and do things they would never normally do just because the Internet gave them anonymity.  There was a lot of hand-wringing and worry about how normally upstanding citizens were behaving badly on the Internet and what can we do about it.  Oddly, the advice, "just be yourself" was not really offered.  Because, in the online world, people can take on a persona, and that persona is being authentic to itself.  It’s just that the persona is a terrible person.  To quote Billy Joel, "They’re the faces of a stranger, but we love to try them on."  It’s like role-playing, just as a villain. 

Well, I hate to say it, but all that analysis and explanation turned out to be wrong.  It’s not role-playing.  It was always about the anonymity, and it was always the authenticity.  What’s different now is that the online world has become the real world, where anonymity doesn’t matter anymore. 

if you look around there are a lot of people out there that are taking the advice of "just be yourself" and doing exactly that.  They’re being horrible people.  And they also listened to the secondary advice, "never apologize for being yourself" and that has actually become a greater mantra for how they live their lives.  If you’re offended, that’s a you problem.  Go ahead and try and cancel me, I have more supporters that cheer on my behavior than you do.  Even if I don’t have more supporters, who needs you and your kind anyway?

When the stigma of being shunned and cast out means nothing, and there is no benefit to being a polite citizen of the world, where do we go as a society?  What greater motivation can there be when fear of isolation means nothing?  And within that question is the upsetting knowledge that it was the Internet that caused it all.  What started as an opportunity for bad people to act out their inner desires individually, lead to a discovery of other like-minded malcontents.  And after years of testing the boundaries, they’ve all decided they have numbers large enough that isolation means nothing.  So, where do we go from here?

I’m generally pretty good about hating on the human race, by which I mean I generally hate the human race and am pretty good at it.  But in light of recent research on my part, I feel I need to give us some credit.  It’s hard to say this is the pinnacle of civilization, but…

A lyric in a song made a reference to “Catherine wheel” and I felt inclined to find out what it was all about.  It turns out to be a torture device.  Not a particularly clever one, but rather grotesque.  I’m not sure why the wheel was needed, but the technique employed was essentially breaking all the victim’s bones then letting them die on their own.

Of course now that I knew about this particular torture device, it would be a disservice to not understand it in context of other torture devices in use at the time.  So I had a lovely time of reading and understanding many different methodologies for punishing people.  Sounds like fun, huh?

It made me wonder how it must have been to live in that age.  Just like now, you have your rich and elite who can get away with most everything, and there’s probably a pretty narrow “middle-class”, who garner some respect and a small sphere of influence in their region.  But then there’s the working class, and working might be a generous term.

The thing that strikes me is that physical torture was entertainment to the common people in those times.  And it might have been a perpetual worry that they might be an entertainer some day.  Could they ever have imagined what the world would be like now?  Living back then, could you even visualize cities that were clean, buildings like malls and office complexes that were kept sparkling all the time?  Paved roads, lit-up city streets, safe, secure houses?  The pessimist in me is right there with you.  “Clean cities?”  “safe houses?”  But let’s all think in relative terms, here.

Our current time would surely seem like literally heaven to them.  Of course, they don’t understand anything modern, so it would all be “magic” to them.  And how could they comprehend a civilization that didn’t employ torture as a standard practice (except for those rich and elite previously mentioned)?

So, looking around, yeah, we have a lot of stupid people.  We have some bad people that do some pretty bad things on a local level and some at a global level.  We have cases where people’s rights are violated by people in power.  But at least we don’t have rotting corpses hanging in cages in our cities, or exhibitions of torture downtown.  We don’t have to fear someone coming to town and randomly accusing people of heresy and torturing them for show.

I think short-term things look bleak, but long-term – like not in my lifetime – things should continue trending toward a global social structure.  Currently, we define ourselves by race, nationality, and religion.  Nationalism is in its death throes as the Internet allows global communication.  Nations have less power to convince their populace that outsiders are “evil”.  The more we communicate disconnectedly, the less race will be a concern.  You could have years of partnership and communication history with a person and never know he or she is of a race you dislike.  That proves the ridiculousness of racism.  Religion?  That’s going to take some work, but at least the religious leaders don’t have the power they used to, so maybe in time, we can work something out.

There is an infographic I found a while ago that I found quite interesting.  At the time I found it, It was a “that’s neat” response.  Upon revisiting it and doing some critical thinking, I realize that it answers so much about the current political environment.  Some questions it explains:

• Why can we never have world peace?
• Why can we never be equals?
• Why must some people be poor?
• Why do those poor people typically vote for Democrats?
• Why are rich, white people typically Republicans?
• Why are we so screwed up right now?

The key, for me, is understanding the base motivations of Conservatives and Liberals.  It also made me realize how liberal I am, so consider this your warning.

For reference, the graphic is at: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/leftvright_world.html

Typically, when you hear pundits talk about right/left, red/blue, Republican/Democrat, they focus on stereotypes: Democrats want to raise taxes, Republicans want to start wars, Democrats want government to control your life, Republicans only care about the rich people.  No one ever talks about why these parties do this.

A simplistic view is that Liberals want everyone to get along and to be treated equally, while Conservatives want defined classes of people.  Why do Conservatives need classes of people?  Because their whole ideology is based on getting personally rewarded for your personal efforts – the harder you work, the more reward you get.  Sounds pretty good,  and I agree with it until I realize that this requires a winner and a loser.  Your success results in failure for others.  Their success results in failure for you.  So, successful people want to remain successful and keep others that would threaten their success as subordinate. “The rich get richer.” 

Why are they called Conservatives?  Because they resist change.  Things are fine just as they are, with us in control.  How far back do you have to go to see Conservatives resisting change because Conservatives were in power?  All the way back to the days of slavery.

So on the other side you have Liberals, who are always changing things in the interest of balancing power, making advancement possible for people who don’t have the resources available to richer people.  And Conservatives hate that.  First, because they didn’t get any help for their success, and second, because it gives them competition.

The other light bulb burning brightly from my study of this graphic is a key word applied to Conservatives: fear.  It is found in the relationship of parent to child.  Parents control their children through fear.  It’s been nearly 10 years that we have been besieged with a non-stop torrent of fear mongering from our Republican leaders.  When we finally received a break – in the message of “Hope” – the Republican message remained unchanged, but refocused.  Now instead of fearing an external enemy, we must fear our own government.  But only because the current president is a Democrat, once Republicans take over again, we can start worrying about the rest of the world.

So in summary, having Conservatives in charge means things will not change.  That’s great if you are a Conservative yourself and/or you are content with the way things are right now.  The problem with being Liberal is that your nature is to promote equality.  This tactic doesn’t work against a Conservative, who does not believe in equality and whose prime mission is to rise above and control others in order to succeed – little more than base, primal, instinct.

2012 can not come soon enough.