THE JOY OF...

I may have used this as the title for one of my postings in the past, but I thought it was worth repeating. And considering that we are in the holiday seasons it seems even more appropriate.

Okay, I have one observation to make. You can find this as the lead in title to all kinds of items such as books. But have you ever seen one titled, "The Sad of...?" No? I haven't either.

You know why that is? I will just give you an opinion on that issue. Basically I think that is because none of us wants a book to tell us what is sad. I think we probably manage we know what depresses us without requiring anyone to point it out. And the last thing we desire is to have a book to remind us of the crap we would rather forget too.

So thus, we only find books to tell us about the joy of whatever. Which I still find a tad annoying because I feel that implies that I'm too stupid to recognize what the joy is in a given subject.

True, none of us can be an expert on all subjects. So why even try? But that still doesn't mean to me that I can figured out when something makes me happy.

My basic rule is that if it involves pain or sacrifice that it will probably not involve a whole lot of pain. Oh I know there are those fitness jocks out there that love that slogan, no pain, no gain. They're entitled to their dementia. Yeah, that is what I said, dementia.

But that is a different issue from my point of view. I'm just more venting over what I feel is an attempt to in a small and subtle way strip of our sense of independence.

In my opinion what is involved here is somebody wanting us to trust them to be guided by the nose to wherever they think we belong. They can't just point the way, they have to lead us.

And if we accept their help, then we get a small case of brain mush in the process. Well, that is how it starts as far as I'm concerned.

You can of course treat this as a situation where I'm overreacting. That I am somehow making more of this that is true.

This is exactly what I'm sure a lot of people want us to believe. That way they can help condition us to regard a certain interpretation of happy as correct.

From that juncture slowly they can massage us into accepting any other ideas they want to peddle. Thus is born the capacity to make us obedient to their whims. Then comes the advertising, the crap we are convinced we can't live without and them toddling off to the bank with a bag of cash they suckered us into giving them. Well, you don't have to take my word for it, but then just remember it the next time you are ought paying through the nose to buy some thing you really don't need using a credit card with a high interest rate.