Saturday, April 26, 2008

Adler Online

Good morning, Charles. I commented on your show with regard to this letter (You might need to search for it, couldn't find a trackback). I'm not particularly articulate commenting on the radio, apparently :), but I was trying to say that ignorance isn't always in the eyes of those beheld. Sometimes it's just as much or more in the eyes of those doing the beholding. Your friend sees all this going on around him, and he passes judgement. That, in and of itself, I find interesting. Just how much does he know about small towns and the dynamics within which they run? Did he leave a small town because of these very reasons to go off to the big city and become more enlightened or did he grow up in said city to seek out the 'idyllic life of small town Canada'?

Assuming that people are uninformed or uncaring of world events because they choose to focus on their surroundings and their portion of the world is as narrowminded as he seems to feel that those around him in the small town are. Sure, small towns are cliquey, you work with the people you grew up with. Bonds and biases formed in grade school colour your actions every day. Does that make you bigoted? I suppose it might. It also might make you comfortable and content to live the life you do. People leave small towns for the cities to seek out the 'world' and often return to refind the simpler things in life and then complain because their version of that simpler life isn't what they idealized. Dogs still crap on the grass. Cats still dig in the flower bed. Idiots still throw beer cans at your mailbox. Do you really think you left all that wonderful stuff behind when you moved to country life? It's the same sort of stupidity only flavoured with country.

Didn't you see that Chevy Chase movie? Funny Farm. Nasty people abound. Regardless of where. When you're dealing with a pool of 300 people instead of 3000 the concentrations are going to be higher because Like Attracts Like after all. If a person is happy in a small town it's because that's the way they want to live. Leave your city enlightenment where it belongs, thank you very much.

I don't live in the country or a small town because I want to have a neighbour that comes over with brownies when I move in. Or because I don't want the world events intruding on my idyllic sunrise watching with a cup of steaming coffee, leaning over the railing of my deck. I live in the country because when all is said and done I don't much like people and it's easier to avoid them in a small town. And if I want intelligent converation beyond that I already have, I'll join one of the many grass root clubs that still run in small towns. Like the Rebekahs, or the Women's Institute. Or maybe the Lions/Lionettes

You wave and smile and keep driving and you fit in, in a small town. Believe it or not. No one really wants to know all your business. I've found more prying people, more do gooder types, more people who are gonna save me no what what I want, in the city than I have ever in the country. I've had people intrude upon my life in the country, but every single one of them was some city folk type who moved out to 'seek a simpler life'.

I've met 'farmers' who live their lives on the dirt of the land, who could articulate in 3 sentences what it takes some philsophers volumes to impart. Life is as simple or as complicated as you make it. But because they really don't give a good shake of their head about world events, they are labelled as ignorant and bigoted men who are nothing more than rednecks. Give me a good rednecked man any day, frankly. At least I'll know that he knows how to work for a living.

Sometimes it's not about whether it will kill a seal, or a tree some continent away, it's about keeping the neighbour's dog out of your sheep pen. And when it's about that, it's simple. It's your sheep pen. Livestock law. Dog runs livestock, dog dies. End of story.

Oh, we're past that, that's barbaric, that's inhumane, that's *quick get the paint and make a sign to wave*.

Bullpucky.

That's the reality of life.

Life doesn't leave time for nitpicking the actions of others, if you're actively living it.