Don’t tell a soul
July 18, 2013 2 Comments
I have a secret. I’m really not into having secrets. I think that they cause nothing but problems. I know that most people have secrets. I actually hold a lot of other people’s secrets and I’m good at keeping secrets. But this is my secret. No one else knows what I know. I didn’t plan for it to be a secret. I expected to get caught. But I didn’t. So now I have this secret. What do I do?
Like anything else in my life I’m going to treat it as a gift. I’m going to see what I can learn from it. If I’m called out on this secret I’m going to come clean. I really don’t believe that it is possible to keep a secret. Chances are someone already knows my secret and is keeping it for me even without my knowing about it. Everybody knows something that no one else knows and someone knows everything that is out there to be known and anything you think is a secret is probably known to someone whether you know it or not.
When I think about the current debate over public surveillance this is what comes to mind. I don’t give a shit about surveillance or what anybody knows about me. The fact is most people don’t really care what I’m doing. What does concerns me is that a harmless, loving person like myself still probably breaks the law 6 times a day whether by accident, through ignorance or with benign intent. If someone really wanted to label me a criminal, they could. Fuck, anyone could be labeled a criminal.
I think that we have created far too many laws and in doing so have made it nearly impossible for anyone to be a law-abiding citizen. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe laws are the only thing keeping us from plummeting into complete chaos and we really just need more of them. I don’t know but I’m up for a debate.
By the way, the thing I did which I am keeping secret is just embarrassing, not illegal.
*The title of this post is a reference to the 1989 Replacements album, the first to feature Slim Dunlap on guitar. The Replacements released a new record this year titled, “Songs for Slim”, to raise money for the guitarist who is recovering from a stroke.
About lefreakshow
Life Sucks, So What?!? 
I’d like to see an America that has two territories. One where we keep the laws and one where there are no laws and depending on ones personal preferences you can choose to go live in a society that has no laws against who you want to be with, what you want to put in your body and how many times you feel like stabbing a stranger on the street and taking their money. We have laws because we have proven time and again that we are incapable of being decent and responsible. We will get away with as much as we are allowed to and that hasn’t changed in our entire span of civilization. Perhaps we should remind people why we have the laws. They were only created because some asshole went and ruined it for the rest of us. Maybe if we create an environment that lawbreakers would gravitate to we could lessen the amount of laws the rest of us have to abide by.
That’s a very intriguing proposition. My son told me of a story (a book or movie or something) where one day a year all laws are suspended. On that one day people can do whatever they want without risk of prosecution. Neither your suggestion of two territories or the one my son spoke of would be perfect solutions but it has me wondering if it would be better what we have now. I happen to believe that most people desire to be decent and responsible people but that we currently don’t have an environment that fosters that desire.We certainly can do better! I’m just not sure what better is.