Notes From the Overground This whole Elian mess has me pissed off! It is so ludicrous that someone who wants to do the best thing he knows how for his child is being harassed into not doing it! Who are we to judge what system is better? Yea, I know, I’m an American, and subsequently, I automatically believe that the capitalist/democratic system we live under is superior to Castro’s totalitarian regime. But does what I believe have to be true for everyone on this planet? I’d say no, which gets me to the real nub of the problem here. Just because I believe something is true, does it give me the right to impose that belief on other people? I guess this gets down to the crux of my belief system: I know I’m right, but in knowing I’m right, I know that what’s right for me isn’t right for you, necessarily. The unfortunate thing about this world is that we can’t govern it, can’t do business without the belief that persuasion is a good thing, and that the truth can be forced out via confrontation. We do live in a strange society. We in the west don’t accept that differences of opinion exist. We believe that "experts" know better than we do, hence we will listen to them above all personal experience. It’s just easier. We can "Jerry Springer" our lives, put them up to a majority vote, and hope it works out for the best. This rant grows out of a discussion I’m having on alt.acting, where some signified asshole named DGSweet@aol.com, who has written a couple of "definitive" books about Second City Improv is trying to impress me with his credentials, and trying to entice some young (16 years old) actress to attend his summer improv class in the Catskills, NY. This woman is living in the Gulf Coast area, so naturally, this would represent a significant expenditure on her part, and possibly a significant dent in her resources. Yet this jerk claims to "know" the best place for her to study her acting! OK, so how does he know? Short answer is, he doesn’t, and while I was playing Superman trying to save this poor kid from possible heartbreak (hey, the guy might be able to do something for her), it started to occur to me that this is column material. I’ve spoken in the past about the effect of persuasive efforts in media on your opinion, how it influences what you buy, want, or even believe, but what if that belief is about you? We all know horror stories about people who have been told something different about themselves than is really true, and how they’ve spent years in denial of who they are, only to find they had been lied to. Guess what? It could be even worse in cyberspace! See, the exchange of personal information is so easy (the old "bartender" syndrome, that you are more comfortable telling a stranger about who you are, and thus getting it off your chest), it seems transitory, and yet, it remains archived, locked away in some database somewhere until someone is ready to use it against you. And that’s what pisses me off about the Jeffrey Sweets of this world, and their naked aggressive avarice: it’s too damned open to blackmail and belittling in an attempt to manipulate who you are. And so, gentle reader, this is a cautionary tale: if someone tells you something is certain, and you don’t know this person from Adam, challenge him on it, make him prove it to you. He may hate you, but you’ll sleep better at night.
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