Globex Corporation Newsletter

I haven't seen any ratings numbers, but my guess wold be that ABC's "America's Funniest Home Videos" gets much higher ratings than Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters." You know it has to get higher ratings than anything on PBS or Discovery Science or the Learning Channel or the History Channel or .......

Everything I learned growing up, either in school or from my family, indicated that intelligence was a good thing to have. Our current society seems to indicate otherwise. Do more people watch "America's Funniest Home Videos" than watch "Mythbusters?" I really don't know. The fact that a show in which people get "caught on tape" doing stupid things (or, worse yet, trying to be funny) is even on TV tells me that there is a market for stupidity.

I don't particularly have a problem with stupidity. Stupid can be hilarious, but I prefer my stupidity have some thought behind it. The lyrics of "Weird" Al Yankovich, for example, are pretty damn stupid on the surface, but what he does takes a lot of creativity. Yeah, "Weird" Al really has to use his brain to be as stupid as he seems to be. Riding a skateboard off of the roof of your house into a swimming pool, missing and breaking some appendage? Well, that's just stupid. It can be funny as hell, but it shows an inability to think through the consequences of certain actions. Funny or not, it shows a deficiency of some sort, and when you get down to it, it's more sad than funny.

I try to have a healthy respect for anything that requires the use of the brain, the results of which show intelligence or creativity. Even things I don't like or understand, if they show intelligence or creativity, I respect them. Most country music, for example, isn't something I would normally listen to given my choice. Attempting to write music on my own, however, has shown me just how tough it can be to write a compelling song. It's something that requires intelligence and creativity. Even if I don't like the result, most times I can respect it for what it is. The same goes for most any form of art. Liking any art is almost always a funtion of personal taste. If I decide that all country music sucks just because I don't like some of the country music I've been exposed to, I would be showing a closed mind, decidedly the least intelligent and creative minds. OK, part of this paragraph is because I recently entered a song in a country songwriting contest. TSA and I could end up on a locally produced country album. Guess I gotta buy a hat..... a big cowboy hat......

Unfortunately the rest of the world doesn't seem to operate like that. Dealing with kids, as I do, I see closed mindedness all of the time. All country music sucks, or all movies with sub-titles suck, or all opinions other than my own are wrong. They're kids, and they simply lack the life experience to have been exposed to things and see them for what they are. How many times have you run into adults who think the same way? It's rampant. Just listen to talk radio, either from the right or that one show that has a point of view from the left.

In my personal experience, having an open mind, showing any sort of intelligence has proven to be a detrement. It's sad but true. I'll take an example from something pretty close to my heart. In a sermon at a Lutheran church this past March, the minister expressed that God would "strike dead" the probate judge in the Schiavo case. He also expressed his wish that a smimilar fated fall upon any judge who ruled against certain church doctrine. I thought this was horrible, not just because he was advocating the death of an elected official (Judge George Greer was elected by the people of the state of Florida), but because earlier that week a judge in Atlanta had been shot dead in his courtroom. A horrible coincidence, but a twisted mind could construe an escaping convict as carrying out "God's Will." The next week, a man in North Carolina was arrested for offering a $50,000 bounty for the death of Judge George Greer. This man didn't offer a bounty on Judge Greer because he didn't like the way he looked, he didn't like the way he thought. He didn't like the way the judge thought because he had undoubtedly been indoctrunated to think that way.

So I left that church. I've been back only once for an important family event. For the record, the minister did attempt to apolgize to me, in the most inappropriate environment, but he did attempt to apologize to me. He attempted to apologize to me because I'm the only one who found what he said offensive and dangerous. I appreciate the apology, but that's not the point. What needed to happen was that the minister needed to give a sermon on how it was wrong to think that way, about how the congregation should feel shame for not speaking out against such extremism. None of that has happened. I've been apologized to because I was offended. The other issues remain out there.

I was told by family members (my father is the president of that congregation) that the minister was speaking without notes. In truth he was preaching because the other minister was dealing with a dying member of the congregation. The offending minister wasn't prepared. Fine. That doesn't excuse anything. When I mentioned that a big part of the problem I had was that this type of extremism leads to whackos putting bounties on judges I was told that other people don't think like that.

They should. I feel like my intelligence, my paying attention to the news was invalidated. In short, I was at a disadvantage because I understood issues, because I could draw conclusions on my own. These are all things that I was lead to believe were good things. In this case, according to my church and family, they are a problem, they are something I should simply ignore.

I told a person in an interview this week that I like my brain. I realize that it doesn't hold all of the answers to any problem I run into, but I like my brain. I respect intelligence in others. It's been the rare circumstance where anyone has repected mine.

BOJ