The Decade of Odd

It has been an odd year, this year of our Lord, 2011. Odd for me and most likely odd for many others also. But then I should be used to odd. Life started getting seriously odd in my little world right after 9/11. Maybe it was just me, but I felt a change in this country, an unnerving if you will of this country's confidence in itself.

So with a decade of odd behind me, I should be used to it and not even bat an eye when another lunatic escapes from their fringe and makes some kind of impact on the rest of us. It is as if the fringes of our national personality have switched places with the mainstream. The average idiots like me are now not in charge. Nor are we what would be considered mainstream, but have now been expelled to the fringes. The extraordinary idiots have taken over control and now their agendas are pushing ours out of the way.

But have the whackos from our fringes really taken over? Or have we allowed the fringes within ourselves to take control? For whatever reason or reasons, have we begun to let some of our inner demons out into the real world?

A free society can only function effectively as a group if as individuals, we dampen our extreme views and rein in our most fanatical inclinations. But then I guess, a free society can only handle a certain amount of internalizing anger before it has to go through a period of purging.

Cycles. It is all about cycles. And right now is the end of one and the beginning of another. How we handle this unsettled time between the two will define where we go from here. Will reason catch back up with us? Or will we continue to beat each other senseless by forcing our personal fringes onto each other? Will this decade of odd turn into a generation of odd?

The Doomers and the Gloomers tell us this is it. It's all over in a short while. Or in the case of some, it was supposed to have happened already. But so far, the end has not happened contrary to many unfulfilled predictions in our recorded past. No matter what comes at us, somehow we have dodged the bullet. Given our historical tendency to screw up a good thing and then recover, I would say the odds are in our favor. That somehow, we will figure things out and move on into the rest of this century.

In the meantime, maybe we should all try to cut each other some slack again. It works for the most part. What doesn't work is what we are doing now. But then every society has to blow off some steam on a regular basis.

Later.........................