Have You Ever Wondered

..... What goes through some peoples heads at any given time?

I have, actually I am sitting here pondering that exact thing at this exact moment in time.  What makes people think that they can actively and passionately push their thoughts and beliefs down other peoples throats when the other party is nothing but polite and kind and asks to be left alone?  Why do people treat people with disrespect when the other party is doing their best to be respectful?  Why do people abuse power?

And I think that is the one that is really really irking me.  The abuse of power.  Marvel Comics, I think, got it right with the teaching of Uncle Ben to Peter Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility."  That rings so true with anything, from parenting to police officers, political figures to the President, military officials to their lower enlisted on down the line. 

Now I understand the theory of gravity, shit rolls down hill.  I get that, but things also go up, given enough force- and some things don't even take a lot of force to go up. Somethings rise on their own and are marveled at by the young and the old.  Somethings that aren't as tangible do the same, like praise, respect and love.  Maybe respect should be at the front of that list, because when a person that is socially below another person respects the one in power, that respect rises on wings of fire and lights the one in power up like the sun.  We've all seen it in history, look back at any person whom has earned a lot of respect, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Don't you think that they have a glow about them?  Something that makes them shine just a bit brighter than Joe Blow walking down the street?  It's not the fame, it's our respect for them.

But I did say something important there, if you caught it.  These people have power, even though some of them are gone from us, but they EARN respect.  They didn't bask in it.  They didn't or don't abuse their power, they remained equal to those whom felt socially below them, and because of that they EARNED all of our respect, our loyality and most of all our trust.  

Now we have people in every walk of life that hold power, hold dominion over other people and they don't seem to remember that they are people just like those they hold power over.  They instead put themselves on this pedestal of  self righteousness and believe themselves to be better than those under them.  Those people we can look upon and see that they don't shine. They don't even try to come close to glowing.  They just sit there and bask in their own power, which makes them dull to look upon.  Uninteresting, and in some cases down right unpleasant to lay our eyes on. Yet a lot of these people hold a lot of power over the rest of us, like those in congress, like nut jobs in our government that believe, more for financial reasons, that science should be taught through biblical glasses and that they should have full control over what we think. 

 This is wrong.  They don't hold our trust, our loyalty or our respect because they have done nothing to earn it.  They've actually done the opposite but because they hold this power, because money has put them in this position, we just turn our eyes away and let them bask, and ruin our lives.

I am talking big picture stuff here, stuff that a lot of people stay willfully ignorant of, and that is one thing I personal loath, but this also happens on every level of the social stratum.  Not just in politics, but in family life, in the Judaical branch, in work environments. It happens all the way down to the pack mentality of the human condition, where you can see exactly what I am talking about on the play grounds of grade-school children, of bullying in middle and high school.  The teachers playing favorites to those few students they can see out of their forty or fifty kids in a class room.  Of the workers in fast food joints that have one poor soul whom works and works and works but never gets recognized because they are a decent human being and are unwilling to step on other people to advance.  In college for those middle classers whom are neither genius or jock, but do very well in school, do we hear about them?  Those are the ones that deserve to shine with our respect.  Those are the people whom we should be loyal to because they are loyal to us.

Now what happens to those who do everything they need to do and keep getting knocked over by the logs o' crap rolling down the hill?  Nothing, is the first thing that pops into most peoples heads, or they deserve it because they don't move, comes to other peoples minds.  Yet when they try to move, when they try to rise up and be seen so they are not trodden over, they are put down like dogs because door mats are not supposed to complain.  They are not supposed to argue or get the respect they deserve because they have prostrated themselves into that position at the beginning. And they only did it to show respect for those above them. 

To this I say: Stand up.  No one person, no matter their income, no matter their social standing, or lack there of, their religious beliefs, or political positions are above any other person.  Just because I can't do mental math very well, or spell for anything, does not mean that I am any less than a human being than the President or Thomas Edison. It just means that I am a person just like them with a different calling in life.  Just because I never spoke up about things that irritated me, or my true feelings, doesn't mean that when I can no longer hold my tongue because the situation has gone too far that I should be put down like a dog and punished for not being the good little door mat I prostrated myself to be.

What it really means is that I am a human being, and I am an equal to you and any one else reading this.  It means that I am entitled to my opinion and my thoughts and my beliefs, and I am not going to lay down and take it any longer- because shit stinks.  It means that any one who does voice their opinion, or their thoughts or their grievances should be respected just like they respect the person they are speaking to.  And if the person doesn't respect their audience they still SHOULD be given respect, because as a human they deserve a bit, and if they have a valid point then a bit more, and if they do everything they can to show you the validity of their point with out using personal opinions as fact then they deserve even more of your respect.  And if you, the one they are speaking to are on your own pedestal and you don't see a glow about you, or you notice that no one looks your direction then listen to the one speaking to you.  Listen, because your social life really does depend on how you treat that person, and if you want to glow, even just a little bit, maybe you'll take what they say with a grain of salt and remember what Uncle Ben said.