Recently Glen Beck has been using the term honor…And I find it ironic.  Let me define:

Honor: a tangible symbol signifying approval or distinction; High respect, as that shown for special merit; good name or public esteem : reputation

or

Honor:  honesty, fairness, or integrity in one’s beliefs and actions

The Desperate Attention Hound

You see of course where I am going with this.  Beck is a desperate attention hound.  He wants people to think well of him, he is desperate for recognition and he is willing to do what it takes to get it. And he does get it.  He is not particularly original in his methods, there are lots of loud mouthed opinionated attention hounds…Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, PZ Meyer, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, almost any televangelist, most world leaders….  The list goes on and on. Whenever you see one of these folks, its important to remember that whether they even recognize it or not – a huge amount of what is motivating them is desire for attention. This is the same natural desire in all of us, taken to its extreme. That doesn’t mean that this drive for attention makes everything they do wrong.  It doesn’t.

The attention seeker is a useful person.  They often bring us together to get things done.  As noted by Beck’s ridiculous antics this weekend.  The problem is that their natural charisma makes us like (or hate) them so much that we stop thinking about the message and starting accepting it or rejecting it based on the messenger.

The problem of unquestioning followers:

My point is less about the attention seeker and more about their die hard, unquestioning followers and detractors.  Because very often these attention seekers have valid points.  And very often they are wrong.  These folks are humans.    And just because they happen to have the attention of a great many people does not make EVERYTHING they say correct or incorrect.

We do not have to hate everything someone says because in one area of their life or opinions they do not agree with us.  Nor do we have to agree with everything they say because we agree with much of what they say.  I listed such divergent people up there because every single one of them is right about some things and wrong about somethings – FROM MY POINT OF VIEW.

And I say that because I use my brain to think, and I try hard to separate out my emotion from the process.  I really really dislike Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck.  Partly because they use logical fallacy to make irrelevant connections and then herald them as facts.   Partly because their egocentric voice makes their points hard to swallow.  But tucked into their randomly foolish thinking, are thoughts that I can agree with.  When that happens, I find myself trying to find a reason not to agree, to find fault because the messenger is so repugnant to me.   That is dangerous.

When Hating or Loving Melts your brain

You see, when we allow ourselves to stop thinking about what is being said and to focus on our love or hate of the personality, we stop making our own choices.  Someone else is doing our thinking.   This is happening everywhere.  The most common place is religion, where we assume the person in the pulpit is the infallible director of our spiritual life and that how he or she interprets the religion is how we should.  We do the same with our political viewpoints.  Our candidate is always correct and our party is entirely on the right page.  This is very foolish and dangerous.

The Lazy Coward

We do this out of  laziness and fear. We don’t want to look into it, we don’t want to learn, we don’t want to have to think through these issues.  Its easier to let someone who appears to be smarter and more popular do the  thinking and we will just agree.

But fear is the biggest issue.  We want to have answers.  And preferably they should be answers that are concrete and benefit us.  Our fear is that such answers don’t exist.  And we are right to fear, because there is no black and white,  there are no lines in the sand, the answers change and are not universal.   That’s the fact Jack.  If you can overcome your cowardice and face that fact, you will be much stronger and less a victim of circumstances.  You can stop being manipulated by other people’s opinions.

Remember, just because somebody was more motivated to seek attention than you were, doesn’t mean they have some special insight.  Focusing on ideas and having the courage to say what you think is always better than being manipulated by someone else’s ideas and your own emotions.

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