It seems as if people need adrenalin to know whether they are alive or not.
- In generations past, young men and women left the farm and small town to find out if they were alive.
- In 2013 people indulge in Xtreme Sports, embrace an ism (fundamentalism, jihadism, Tea Party-ism).
- In high school and college people, usually girls, cut themselves over and over again.
- There are the people who drive too fast for conditions.
- Others embrace sky-diving or diving off skyscrapers.
Many of previous generations did stuff like this as well. Is it built in to the human psyche?
I made these observations in another blog (http://lustiemusings.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/what-do-we-need/) and want to expand on them.
I am particularly concerned by the savage way people embrace extremism. Whether Buddhists in Myanmar, fundamentalist Hindus in India, the IRA, white-supremacist types in both prison and out, fundamentalist Christians espousing hatred for gays and non-Christians or Muslim jihadists -- our world seems hell-bent on embracing extremist positions.
Currently (October 4, 2013) Republicans have shut the United States government down in a childish attempt to "get their way". They are held captive not just by Tea Party types in Congress, but by Tea Party rhetoric 'back home'. In attempting to represent the extremists they are failing to represent the larger majority of people in the nation.
Is it about adrenalin? Is it a way to justify the amounts of damage they do? (Think of the suicide bombers in Iraq, and on 9/11). Maybe a person doesn't need to ride a motorcycle at 120mph if he or she can disrupt an entire nation and a world economy.
What do you think? Is extremism just an excuse to foist an enormous temper tantrum on other in the name of something-ism?
Leave a comment and let us know
