Life is like building a tower. Whether it’s wealth, self-esteem or any other measure of success you build it up like you would a tower of blocks. Whoever has the tallest tower wins and the taller your tower the better you feel. There are two strategies to this. One is to build your tower as high as you can so you stand above everyone else while the other is to pull down everyone else’s tower so they are lower than you. You can do both either alone or in groups, working together to improve your towers or working as a mob to attack other towers. Both will leave your tower as highest, one will make you a positive person, the other won’t.
If you take a look around, what do you see? You will see more tearing down than building up. You will see worthwhile movements against wrongs expand and morph into mob attacks on people over minor things. You will see one political sides followers attack their enemy for a Tweet while ignoring and dismissing real acts and attacks from their own side. You will see insults like Nazi, bigot or racist thrown around until they lose their meaning. You may notice that entire groups of people build their very Being about being better than other people. That person is a racist, I am better. That person is a misogynist, I am better. That person is a snowflake, I am better.
All around you will see towers being knocked down by someone to make their own feel taller. The taller the tower the more viciously it is attacked and the lower the tower the more evil the attacker.
Orwell said. ‘Socialists don’t care about the poor, they just hate the rich.’
All of us have experienced Schadenfreude. All of us have witnessed the baying mob of media descend upon a fallen celebrity. Many of us understand the simple joy of knocking someone’s tower just a little or maybe just watching it fall from a distance.
It’s the basis of bullying and almost every evil act of human evil. How many serial killers and criminals come from a hard background where they had their towers destroyed? They go through life stealing, hurting and killing other people to destroy them, and try to make themselves feel better, to make their tower feel less low.
Although we see it and sometimes practice it, few of us understand that by knocking down someone else’s tower, we rarely build ours higher. We just bring everyone down. If we do manage to build ours higher it comes from rotten blocks, overtime the rot will spread and crumble until there is nothing left. Most of us will know someone so bitter and twisted that they just pull people down. These people aren’t happy, they don’t even know how to be happy, they just pull down others so everyone is miserable.
Each of us has options. We can choose to build our towers higher, a little more each day. We can work with others, some higher who will help us and some lower who we can help. We can work as a team and raise everyone up or we can attack and destroy and hurl insults until all we have is a life built on negativity and hate.
Once you see the options you can choose. Choose the right way to build your tower.
© 2018 David G Chambers. All rights reserved.
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