Popular Thinking: What the Hell Are We Doing?

The other day, as I was looking through my Facebook feed, I was reminded of the time when I wanted to get some parachute pants. That's right. Parachute pants. Don't judge me for being old.....or fashion-challenged. I wanted to be cool....Oh, and I wanted to be safe if I was ever thrown out of an airplane at 10,000 feet. So sue me.

Anyway, I wanted some parachute pants in the 80's and my mom didn't want to get them for me. I was pretty upset. I used every excuse in the book for getting them. I wanted to look cool (hard to believe that was a cool look back then), I wanted girls to think I was cute (hard to believe that they ever would), and I wanted to look like a rock star (I'm gonna go ahead and leave that one alone). In the end, I said, "C'mon Mom! All my friends are wearing them at school." Every kid has said this in their lives. Every one of them. And every parent has said this in response, the very thing my mother said:

"If all of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump with them?"

The reason I got to thinking about all of this is that we have a disease in this world. It is worse than any bird flu, and catchier (is that a word?) than any cold. It's worse than any pair of parachute pants, and it's hard to imagine anything worse than parachute pants.

The problem is: we don't like to think for ourselves anymore and we don't have good feelings about anybody who does.

So, I'm on Facebook and I run into a status where someone has posted one of those stories that circulates through Facebook all of the time. The point is it could be any story. False claims are made everyday on FB and Twitter. Anyway, then someone says that this is a fake story and has been going through the internet for time eternal. You would think everyone would say, oh okay. Dang. Well, at least we know the truth.

You would think that...

But you would be incorrect....

Instead everyone says things like, "Well, I'm sure there is a story like that. I'm sure that's probably happened before. You can't say it's not true because it's probably happened sometime before."

Have we all just lost our minds? We just aren't interested in the truth...we are only interested in popular thinking. Literally, you can yell anything now, and if enough people believe it, they will tout it like it is the gospel truth, and the more people who say it's true, the truer it is. Huh?

We don't question popular thinking anymore. We never question anything anymore, and when we do, it's always the wrong stuff...

Where is our individuality? Where are our free-thinkers? Is it even okay to be one anymore?

Shouldn't we question things? Or should we just accept things at face value, as if the internet can only publish the truth...

I sure would like to hear from some of you. I do enjoy when we can talk about things.

Do any of you have a story about how we are acting like sheep being led to the slaughter, lemmings walking off the side of a cliff? Or is it just me?

In the meantime, while you get your stories together, I'm going to try to revive the true story of the couple at the lake and the man with the hook for a hand...I'm positive that I can get a bunch of folks to believe that one and spread it all over Facebook in no time....

Remind me again...The guy with the hook? he was wearing parachute pants, right?