Strange, random thought of the day, but it’s been bugging me, so here you go.
A number of atheists cite the idea that a god who spends their time obsessing over what people think doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s hard to disagree with them. Given the scope of the universe and even the complexities and insanities of our own lives, you would figure God has better things to do than judge us on our internal monologues. Yet, interestingly enough, we as a society are entirely obsessed with what other people think. Not just people around us, but people we don’t even know and most likely will never meet. Look at how many people follow pro athletes on Twitter.
How many celebrity and political careers have been turned upside-down because of a brief thought posted online? How many times in the last couple of years have you read about someone losing their job because someone else posted a thought about them online? That original thought might have seemed harmless, but suddenly the internet community posted their thoughts on the original thought and enough thoughts supported the original thought that the employer thought it must be true enough to be harmful to business and fired the subject of the original thought? (Hopefully that wasn’t confusing.) Look what Justin Bieber got in return for his thoughts about Anne Frank (which clearly show how self-absorbed celebs can sometimes be but, as far as I can tell, held no malice).
The Thought Police are out in full force these days.
But then, of course, comes the TV show Big Brother, which seems to justify the existence of the Thought Police. These people just make you shake your head in despair for the human race http://www.today.com/entertainment/big-brother-airs-contestants-racist-homophobic-remarks-6C10560772.
But here’s my question: Why do so many of us care what these people think? I can see employers parting ways with them to protect their corporate image, but the outcry from others with no connection to these people whatsoever boggles my mind. If you ignore people like the Big Brother cast, they eventually go away. The other upside of ignoring them is, you don’t have to waste your energy being upset with them and your life will be better. These people aren’t your friends or family or co-workers. Why do you really care what people you’ve never met and will probably never see again think? Why waste your time? Are you really making the world a better place by getting strangers fired from their jobs?
Oh, well. I don’t think it’s possible to answer that question without having a degree of some sort. But I can’t help but wonder if the Big Brother we always thought would be the government or mega-corporations is really the faceless internet community. I don’t think there is an intention to be Big Brother, but it happens anyway. Sometimes they make good things happen. But sometimes they get the wrong people accused of terrorism. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/business/media/bombings-trip-up-reddit-in-its-turn-in-spotlight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Bonus thought: Back to the beginning. For the sake of argument, let’s say God exists. If man is obsessed with what other people think and if man is made in God’s image, then…
MojoFiction 
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