Oblivious

Man tries to strangle wife,
tells officer, “if you were
married you’d understand.”

There is nothing in the world more difficult to comprehend than human behavior, or so it seems to me. I have commented previously on the perversity of humans but recently I have had to rethink these claims. I have been led to rethink things probably because of the relatively innocent behavior I have been witnessing at our small but excellent library. The library has a generous parking lot, courtesy of a pizza parlor than burned down a few years back and was never rebuilt. There is an entrance to this parking lot marked with a large sign that says in large letters ENTRANCE. It has an exit marked with equally large letters that says EXIT. The entrance is not far from the exit and it is quite clear which is which, but fully 50% of the patrons enter through the exit, and exit through the entrance. I have been studying them for some time and have concluded they are not acting perversely, they are completely oblivious. They apparently just do not perceive the instructions at all. Thus things that I once described as perverse now strike me as more oblivious than perverse. For example, when people consistently pick up puppies in the pet shop even though there is a large and very prominent sign that says “PLEASE DO NOT PICK UP THE PUPPIES,” I am beginning to believe they are perhaps not perverse but merely oblivious. Similarly, at our garbage dump there is a container that is marked “ELECTRONICS ONLY, NO TELEVISIONS,” into which one can find on any given day several televisions right on top of the pile. I could give you many more examples where it is not at all easy to determine whether the behavior is perverse or merely oblivious.

Now, this would be a relatively trivial matter if it were restricted merely to the mundane everyday behavior of ordinary human beings. But it is not. Take the case of Afghanistan, for example. Is President Obama simply oblivious to the fact that this “war” is the longest one in American history and has accomplished absolutely nothing except a lot of death and destruction? I can’t imagine that he is accelerating and enlarging this “war” simply to be perverse because he knows that I and many others do not want him to do so. This could be more complicated than it seems. If Obama is neither perverse nor oblivious there must be some other reason for continuing this absolutely useless and ridiculous enterprise. Perhaps he does not want to offend the corporations that are making so much profit from this seemingly endless and pointless business? Perhaps he fears dumping a bunch of ex-military personnel on the job market when unemployment is already such a problem. Perhaps it is both of those things plus others that I am unaware of, or maybe only dimly aware of, like maintaining an “empire.”

Similarly, one can only wonder if Congress is completely oblivious to the plight of all our unemployed. It would seem so when they continue to allocate more and more money for our useless “war” in Afghanistan but refuse to extend unemployment benefits. Can Obama and others, like the mouth that roars, be oblivious to the unprecedented damage that is being done to the Gulf, such that they can continue to talk about even more drilling offshore? Maybe they are just being perverse for the publicity. If not they are either oblivious, stupid, or greedy. Again, are they oblivious to the fact that their recently enacted health care bill, with no public option, is nothing more than a huge gift to the insurance companies? And are they oblivious to the fact that the pending banking and Wall Street reforms will do nothing of substance to regulate what needs desperately to be regulated? And finally, for the moment, are they completely oblivious to the obvious, that all the money being wasted on the Pentagon and their endless “wars,” our unnecessary “empire,” and the military/industrial/political complex, if used for our national debt, urgent domestic problems, global warming, and renewable energy, we would all, including the world at large, be much better off and might even escape oblivion. I don’t know, perhaps they are just perverse.

LKBIQ:
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain

TILT:
In the wild, mountain goats live twelve to fifteen years.