If I Knew How To Dance, I Wouldn't Be So Handsome

 If I knew how to dance, I would not be so handsomely intelligent and charismatic.

Or so I have been told.

Personally, I wouldn’t have a clue either way.

I learned many years ago that how others perceive the intellectual me is their reality.

Not mine.

The physical ‘self’ I project on the behalf of ‘others’ is the ‘me’ that I manafest to appease their perception of the ‘me’ that they ‘see’.

This applies whether it be singular, multiple or virtual “others”

Communal living in modern society is no different today then it was five hundred years or even ten thousand years ago.

People do not change.

Architecture changes. Technology changes. Religion changes. Music changes. Education changes. Medicine changes. Hospitals change. Transportation changes.

Even the Universe itself, changes.

People?

I regret to inform you that against popular demand,

People, the “Others”, do not, I repeat, do not change!

At this very moment you are thinking to yourself,

“LightHouse Dann is either full of crap or the Sixties were far too good to him”

Next you will ponder,

“People change all the time!”

“LightHouse“, (Me), being of unsound mind and body may be “Insane“, but I certainly am not ‘Crazy‘.

Yes, people do change. I will agree with that.

But …

People do not “change”.

Their physical ‘self’ they project on the behalf of us is the ‘Them’ that they manafest to appease our perception of the ‘Them’ that we see.

What has changed is our individual ability to change our exterior selves. The self that we pretend to be in whatever scenario the Universe has presented to us in real time.

I am referring to how we change our voice, our stance, our behaviour and our attitudes to suit the present time and situation.

Our ”Masks”.

We wear numerous masks throughout each and every moment of our lives.

The work mask. Shopping mask. Beggar’s mask. Lover’s mask. Curious mask. Sad mask. Happy mask.

I am sure that you understand what I mean to say.

We have to wear these masks. It’s how we communicate with all people and animals.

We wore them far before speech came to be, or writing, or the ability to read what we wrote.

I am not referring to those type of changes.

No Campers!

Definitely not.

I am speaking about “Evolutionary” change.

No, not “Revolutionary” change!

Mankind’s evolutionary change is severely hindered by it’s genetics.

Evolutionary change is slow, very slow. We are talking about centuries before the evolution is noticeable.

Revolutionary change is immediate.

Due to our embedded “Fight or Flight” emotion we are capable of instantaneously changing our attitudes and actions.

We do so to protect ourselves from our fears.

Fear of being discovered for who we are beneath our masks.

From birth we are taught to conceal our emotions and beliefs from others.

“Why?”

Because we are only human, after all!

Perhaps it goes all the way back to mankind’s evolution from cave dwellers to inquisitiveness.

From keeping our people in a tightly knit group of relatives. Knowing that they are the ones we should be able to trust.

Any strangers who we may meet are automatically to be assumed as a threat. Our genetics and our survival instincts do this to protect us from harm and deception.

We see this throughout our recorded history.

The greatest example of this is seen in every Sci-Fi film. Where they potray the visiting space travelers as threats. Where we are taught that instead of asking who they are and what circumstance brought them across the galaxy to our home, we immediately deploy our ‘Military’ strength.

Which in reality would cause the visitors to fear us because our first reaction was to weaponize ourselves.

Doing so without stopping to think about the fact that the visitors are obviously of greater intelligence and technology to simply have been able to ‘visit’ our world.

It has become the norm to have mistrust as our first and foremost response to anything that is foreign to our immediate collective.

“What is your first response when you meet a stranger?”

I am confident it is,

“Who is this and what do they want from me?”

Which is a flaw in our evolution.

A flaw that until we surpass we will never be able to reach the mythical Utopian society we all search for.

It is a two way street.

We are leary of strangers and strangers are leary of us.

Our ‘mistrust’ is far greater a presence than our ‘trust’.

It will be several millenniums before mankind evolves beyond the hinderinstances and fallacies of being human.

The bigger question is,

“Will mankind destroy itself before it reaches an Utopian society?”

I believe we will.

I believe our barbarism will eventually cause the destruction of life as we know it to be.

Which is why I state,

“If I knew how to dance, I would not be so handsomely intelligent and charismatic”.

What I am actually stating is that I, too, wear many masks. Masks I wish I could remove and lay bare the ‘real’ me.

My genetics will not allow my unmasking due to the fears implanted by generation after generation of being told,

“Trust no one.”