The definition of insanity is, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
We all do it, of course.
It is human nature.
However, as Katharine Hepburn tells Humphrey Bogart in “The African Queen,” “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
Here at another New Year’s Day, we will be tempted, once again, to follow human nature, to fall into the old habits, to keep doing the same thing over and over again, and to expect a different outcome.
Oh, we may suggest that this year will be different. We’re going to exercise more, or stop smoking, or start walking. Whatever.
We want the world to believe that our intentions are good, even if they are like the Platte River — a mile wide and an inch deep.
We certainly will experience this from our “leaders” as they spend more and more of our tax money to accomplish less and less.
As they continue to tell us obvious, outright lies that we will accept, based on their popularity with the boob tube talking heads.
Here in the election process — it’s not an “election year” any more since it takes half of an administration to run for reelection. Anyway, during this process the American public seems to show an incredible capacity for swallowing bull.
We are like that 98-pound Japanese lady who can somehow eat her own weight in hog dogs.
It’s hard to figure where we put it, but we just keep swallowing.
And if enough of us accept the bull, then its perpetrators can get away with substituting it for the truth.
It has happened plenty in the past and the bull machine is in high gear, presently.
That is the status quo that we are expected to just accept in 2012, and if we sit back, stare at the idiot tube, continue to stop thinking and let things go — then we will get what we deserve.
If we want real change, then we need to do some things differently in 2012.
Turn off the TV.
Seriously.
Try turning the blasted thing off.
Read.
Visit with your neighbors.
Attend a local government meeting.
Read some more.
Learn something new.
It’s worth a try.
We have been lulled into sleep-walking and it is time to wake up, step out and start educating ourselves again.
It’s also time that we start communicating with each other and working together.
The national movement to convince Americans to “cocoon” has been far too successful, because we lazily allowed it to succeed.
As we enter into another new year, we need to ask ourselves if we really want to see something change in our culture — in our own lives.
If we do, then we will have to make it happen by changing ourselves.
Or we can just sit back, do the same thing and see where we end up as we approach 2013.
But we’d have to be crazy to expect anything to be different.
— Chuck Smith