Advice and Dissent

Advice and Dissent

   The other morning I was listening to Sirius XM, our "trial" to these virgin ears that were quite content to just listen to what the radio offered.  On this paid service, I was able to hear the full spectrum of music, news, broadway, sports and who knows what else on those 122+ channels (I certainly didn't expect to hear so many ads about hearing aids and ways to save on taxes, or for that matter, to hear ads at all since everyone told me that with "satellite," there were no ads which was why it was so worth it to pay for the service).  But it was while flipping through a dose of their five comedy channels that I noticed myself so unaffected by the raucous language now so common to today's comedians.  Wasn't it not all that long ago that Richard Pryor seemed so shocking to me, his language peppered with words I would never think of saying, and neither would my crowd of friends at the time.  Yet even then, there they were, all sorts of people laughing away.  Had he crossed the line or was it me and I was now about to move into a world I knew little about (but apparently many others did know about, and actually lived in that world)?

   It made me think, not only of the changing times in our views but how quickly it had leapt into my life.  Watching the preview rating guides on movies,  I began noticing words such as nudity, excessive violence, graphic imagery and other words appearing on almost every movie, words I would just let slide right by.  When did that happen?  And did the times change (for Hollywood) or did I?  So I was happy to see that my library carried the captivating titled book, And Man Created God by Selina O'Grady (one caveat, I haven't read it yet).  But here's the pitch by the closeout seller, Daedalus Books (which got me interested in the book in the first place):  At the end of the first century AD, the world's major empires were teeming with religious cults, holy men, and would-be messiahs; Romans worshipped the deified Augustus or the goddess Isis; the North African queen Amanirenas was venerated by her armies; and the Chinese usurper Wang Mang declared himself the reincarnation of various mythical deities.  In this history, Selina O'Grady shows how rulers used religion as a bulwark against rampant globalization, and explains how the faith adopted by Jesus's small band of followers came to be the official religion of Rome.
 
   So imagine living in those times.  The changing of what was  considered offensive language was one thing, but changing an entire set of religious views was quite another.  And moreover, did flipping this famous quotation have meaning?  The changing times have appeared, as least for me, and I guess the truth is, I have seemingly adapted, almost without my knowing it.  No, I still don't use that rowdy language (and neither do most of my friends); but I know that my rose-colored glasses have gotten so cloudy that I've now had to take them off and recognize that for some people, this type of wording is their language, their life, their world.  And it is also a world as foreign to me as robbing a bank or spending time under a bridge shooting heroin.

   Actress Zoe Sallis wrote a book called Ten Eternal Questions in which she asked people as varied as Sophia Loren and His Holiness the Dalai Lama a series of questions about life and their beliefs.  On one question she asked on wisdom and advice, Nelson Mandela told her this:  The values of yesterday are not the values of today, so one has to be very careful about giving advice, to young people in particular.  You know, my son came to see me in jail when he turned 16, and I thought it was my duty to talk to him and tell him how to behave.  I thought he was listening very carefully.  When I finished he laughed and he said, "Dad, don't give me unsolicited advice; if I want advice from you I will ask you.  Moreover, what you have told me is old hat, it no longer applies."  So I am very careful about giving advice.

   So, after all that, all the Richard Pryor stuff (I still like his humor, still shocking but still genuine), here's my advice to you...(just kidding).