Tuesday 10 July 2012

Deep, man...

One of my absolute pet hates of the 21st century is philosophical one liners on twitter.

It might be really intolerant and inflexible of me, but I just find them so insincere. And if they're not insincere they are just really f**king obvious. I don't know anybody who doesn't think that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' or 'that kindness makes the world go round'.

And all the quotes that come from somewhere else, Gandhi, Shakespeare, Siddhartha Gautama, etc - you just know that the people tweeting them have just googled 'inspirational quotes' and tried to make it look like they always knew it was said by that person and it's something they carry with them in their minds every day.

My inspirations are definitely in conversations that I have with friends and family who understand the context of their words in a bigger picture. The wisest advice that I get is from people who tell me to 'sort it out, Luce' or 'get a grip'. Genius. They have the best and most insightful words for that moment. If, when I was spinning out, someone came up to me and told me to 'be true to myself', I'd have to give them a slap. I'M BEING F**KING TRUE TO MYSELF - I'M SPINNING OUT!! THAT'S THE TRUTH!!! Unfortunately they do it on twitter now, so I can't slap them, but I shout at the screen that they are a knob.

It took me ages to realise that my boyfriend was a wise old owl. I thought at the beginning that he was just being pretentious. But the more he speaks about his commitment to Buddhism and how it makes sense to him, the more I see that his ideas and his thoughts resonate with me and have so much relevance in life and in the world.

I, personally, am completely agnostic when it comes to faith, but having studied religion in university and consequently having talked to people about it deeply for over six years, I find the people who really understand their faith and it's history are very inspirational and their words are often moderate and subtle, but effective and make a certain amount of sense. Unfortunately, so many people associate faith with homophobic, fundamentalist, nazi Christians from Mid-West America, or Jihadists. That says more about the press and the media than people, if you ask me. The vast majority of religious practitioners in the world are moderate and they use their faith to guide them into a morally good lifestyle.

Of course, the obvious exception is Scientology. That's just stupid.

Unfortunately, the people who do give religion a bad rep, quite often have the loudest voices and take the most memorable actions in support of their beliefs. It's this ill-considered, self-righteous, brain-washed and shallow reactiveness of individuals that I think is damaging for everybody.

This is why I think we should really believe what we say before we say it. Being 'true to ourselves' is living and breathing our philosophies for ourselves instead of just shouting about them in an attempt to make the world a better place. It starts with the behaviour of the individual. And this applies to social media, too. Twitter one-liners are so often an attempt to look clever, look like a 'deep' person ('I'm not relgious, I'm just spiritual, blah, blah'), or just said and not actually practiced in the real world.

So, 'deep' twitter users, if absence makes the heart grow fonder', f**k off.

I am sorry if all that offends anyone! Maybe last minute Zambia nerves are fraying my patience a little! I'm pretty sure there aren't any hardline Christian fundamentalists reading my blog, and all the tweets that I can't tolerate pretty much come from people I hardly know, but if I start getting hate mail, I'll change my tone of voice!


3 comments:

  1. i love how you write. I am going to leave you with an inspirational quote i googled. "To write simply is as difficult as to be good." - Somerset Maugham. Hope you are screaming now.

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  2. Haha! I love it! Love you x

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  3. Sometimes, people use quotes and twitter, as a form of expression. People find solace in words. Words that they could not necessarily have found themselves. Hate a racist comment, hate hate, hate ignorance or prejudice, but don't hate someone finding their own way to be positive, which the majority of these quotes are. Lazy maybe, but harmless certainly.

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