The Fantasy of Impractical Tomfoolery

I saw the other day where the good folks who govern the state of Florida are trying to pass legislation to protect white people from getting their feelings hurt. Guys! Look, I’m a white guy…It could even be my picture in your Funk and Wangles when you look up white guys. I, therefore, would like to go on the record as saying that I don’t want anyone protecting my feelings. They couldn’t even if they tried. It isn’t because I’m such a hard ass that no one can get to me, it’s because my emotions write and run my feelings. Not only that, but what I believe is real writes and runs my emotions. Now ain’t that a kick in the head?

Look, this whole thing of folks talking about their thought processes as though someone else can control them is such a silly position to try to defend, don’t you think? I mean, from the kid who claims that you hurt his feelings, to the girlfriend who claims you make her mad, to the boss that tries to control his work force, to the nice lady in the grocery store who apologizes for being in your way, we have gotten to the place where we’re all dealing with pure fantasy about what and who we can control.

We probably come by this foolishness naturally. After all, we’ve recently had a president who insisted and still to this day insists that people protect his feelings by Agreeing with him about absurdly silly things he wishes were true. His wishes have become such a malady at this point that you see politicians standing up with their bare faces hanging out in front of God and everyone, saying such silly things as, “Trump won.” No preamble, nothing to make the point, just them saying bluntly that the “flim flam man” won. I don’t mind that they stand in front of a public crowd and say such tomfoolery, but are there people in the crowd who are also trying to make the old guy happy by going along?

The problem I see with all of this is not that it’s a lie. I don’t think for a minute it’s true, but that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is what are those people from the fat old white guy to the Qanon believers trying to make real? Have they actually thought about what they’re trying to accomplish? They aren’t trying to get Trump back in office any more than they’re actually waiting for JFK to return to Texas. Those are such impractical ideas that they’re nearly laughable. Okay not nearly. They are laughable. Even when folks claim to believe those outlandish ideas are real or about to become real. They can’t become real and we all know it. But our news people report such foolishness with straight faces. I don’t mean the people at Fox News either. CNN’s newscasters have just as straight a face as the Fox people do. I’ve not heard a single one of them say this is total bullshit. Nope, they all try to treat it as if it has another side - it doesn’t. Foolishness can not have another side. It’s foolish because it’s not practical. Anyone with even a modicum of common sense knows this. So I have to ask, what are these people trying to make real? I can’t see anything good that can be made real on pure fantasy, can you?

Let me see if I can explain this so that it makes sense. In this day and age we all have cell phones and laptop computers. We have desktop computers and iPads that we all use to accomplish any number of day to day tasks. All of those computing devices have a few common traits - they all have an operating system. They all have big programs that are called metaprograms which can be borrowed from to make applications. They all have applications or programs. And they all have screens so we can see what we’re doing with the computer. Now here’s the kicker. If you want to change the way something works in a computing device you change the written code which makes up the operating system. The operating system then affects the metaprograms and then the metaprograms affect the programs and so on. It just doesn’t go the other way around. Really it doesn’t.

The human brain can be thought of as a bio-computing device. In other words the brain can be considered as a computer just like my iPad can be considered to be a computer. The brain is bigger and more complex than my iPad but it works the same way. Vacuum tube computers, silicon chip computers and bio-computers all have those common characteristics. We have an operating system we call beliefs in real. My iPad has an operating system which it treats as it’s reality. We have metaprograms which we often call emotions. My iPad has metaprograms which are borrowed from for use in constructing applications. We have applications which we refer to as feelings. And we could think about conscious thought as our computer screen.

Now I’d like for the reader to consider this analogy as being possibly true. I’m not asking you to take what I’m saying here as gospel, but I am asking you to consider it as a catalytic thought. If we were to treat that progression of thought as possible, we would have to understand that to concentrate on our feelings for any reason would be pure foolishness. We could, in theory, protect our feelings, but it would do nothing at all for what we believe is real. And unless that belief in real code is rewritten it will continue to be the controlling force in the computing device.

So maybe you can understand why I deem people who try to solve problems which can not be solved with half-assed solutions, as being foolish. I don’t care if the persons’ with the half-assed solution is the governor of the state of Florida or not. One would hope that a man in such a high position of authority would at least do some basic homework before trying to show how wise and all knowing he is. I understand that he’s a politician and is expected to act the fool to a certain extent. He is from Florida after all - same as Matt Gaetz. So I don’t really expect those fellas to understand much about good ol’ horse sense. And they don’t disappoint in that regard.

The point of this rant is to demonstrate that a practical understanding of even basic thought when applied, can save a man from embarrassing himself. One would think that if a politician was serious about being elected as the leader of a practical people, he himself would have to be a paragon of practicality. That does not seem to be the case. So, I have to wonder if the folks who vote for such foolishness are so bored that they need something silly enough to be entertaining to deliver them from their boredom. That, at least, would make sense. Otherwise I just don’t get it.