MISPLACED PERCEPTION (part 2)

It is rogue to say: it’s a man’s world; and it is pretentious to say ‘it’s a man’s world dominated by women’.

I’ll give you another example (in continuation from part 1): a parent has a son who’s a professional gambler or poker player. She denounces his kind of ‘job’ as unethical, stealing and terrible. But when he rakes in money from his professional gambling and buys her a house, suddenly the poker job is okay, justified, even ‘good’ as long as it provides him a source of income. She now begins to defend him to others and say: “It is a legitimate business, you know.” What happened to all that ‘it’s unethical’ bla bla bla?

Another example is this: a mother knows that her daughter at the university does not have a job but every other day when the daughter returns home she comes along with expensive items: phones, jewelries, bags, clothes etc. not to mention food items in plastic bags. Her mother refuses to ask the source where all these comes from but chooses to be content, enjoying her daughter’s gifts. But the day she comes home pregnant and unwed or perhaps named as the mistress of a man, she’s the first to cast the stone of insult and shame as a heap on her daughter’s head. Question: why did the mother’s perception and response suddenly change? Why the pretense of pretending to ignore in the first place?

It is this same treatment of perception that is at the heart of the gay movement. Once you’re in the closet, you’re perceived as normal. You come out, you’re done for. All the good you've been known to do, your contributions to society, family and business development quickly goes down the drain in one swoop! People no longer define you by the contributions that you have made, but instead by the choice of your sex life. I ask: isn't the world saying “we like hypocrisy”? Why even put such a matter on the public burner as a worthy topic of discussion in the first place? And if it is indeed a matter of public debate, both sides must air their views: those against gay and those for it. Nobody should be indicted for not been seen as politically correct on this matter, as been politically correct is often a fad by the way. 

Meriam Yaha Ibrahim and hubby
 sphoto source: http://www.paginadepolitica.ro

When will we learn that a private matter is a private matter? Let those involve in it deal with it whether they choose to be monogamous, polygamous, partners or single. They are after all Consenting Adults (I’m not talking about child marriage here which is against the young woman’s wish) – which is what respecting the individual rights of another means, and not the perception of the collective religious right or begrudged acceptance of a group imposed on an individual. 

That is why it makes no sense that Meriam Yaha Ibrahim who chooses to marry a Christian different from her previous faith of being a Muslim has a right to marry whomever she wants to and so does Janet Jackson who chooses to marry a Muslim has as much right to choose the man that best suits her. It is a personal decision. That is where the line is drawn. When a religion feels it can impose its collective force on someone who has left that religion, it shows how bad that religion truly is even though it hides under ‘doing good’ as a religion. When a wolf leaves a pack, it seizes to be a member of that pack. Simple. But those that mean the other wolves will go hunting the lone wolf? Even nature knows that perception is a very faulty one.

Often I hear people say ‘you’re addressed as you dress’, that may be true sometimes but not all the time. The person, who chooses to address me by the way I dress, tells me that he has a serious issue of perception too. And that is why much of politics is so rotten. Politicians dress up their lies because that is the perception people want to see. It no longer matters if they live up to their promised manifestos. The case of UKIP and not Labour or LibDem or the other political parties wining the European election seats on behalf of Britain shows how powerful perceptions can be misleading. In the same vein, Nigeria’s government treatment and response to the over 200 Girls missing (even this statistics fluctuates), tells us how this misplaced and shifty perception works.  Advertising even Public Relations in more recent time colours perception; that doesn't make it true.

Perceptions should NOT be what you think it is. It is what it is. Perception is NOT pretending that things are different or we hope that what we see is different from how they are. It is what they are. 

That is why we all need to train our perceptive powers. It is not simply about been quick to ‘judge’, ‘discriminate’, or ‘label’ someone or something so we feel better or ‘superior’ than the next person. That is very subjective, careless and maybe foolish. Rather it is about seeing things as whole not because we are currently benefiting from it in the short run, but because we can live with it in the long run and still carry on with our lives accepting the bumps, accidents and misfires. 

There was a time when going to the Moon was labelled ‘an act against God’, a ‘desecration’. And those who went on the mission were labelled names not worthy of re-printing them on this page. Or for that matter when Galileo said the Earth and other planetary systems revolve around the relatively stationary Sun which is at the centre of the solar system, thus favouring Heliocentrism and not Geocentrism how he was subjected to the inquisition? He was not only found "vehemently suspect of heresy", he was forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The irony? Those persons, who spoke rashly, thoughtlessly and even name-called, were the first grabbers of the benefits of what such knowledge and discoveries have opened to mankind.

So let us always pause a little more often before we utter statements of condemnation or even praise. Let us stop feeding our minds with misplaced and pretentious perceptions. Train your mind to always try to see things as they are. Perceptions matter.

After all, if somebody didn't take the risk, we who didn't dare won’t know what the risks are.