Blackbird Flies in the Face of Moderation

9. Moderation: Avoid extremes, forbear resenting injuries and do as much as you think they deserve.

This means I have been doing this for nine weeks now, contemplating the virtues of Benjamin Franklin for a week at a time.  The process itself sounds fairly moderate, but doesn't feel like it sometimes, like last week, with Justice.  Contemplating Justice highlighted how little Justice there really is in the world and I wanted to go on a rant, then remembered Temperance and said, but 'chicken little'.  I guess because this is so public, or perhaps because Moderation sets in when your age resembles a speed sign.

Who are 'they' Ben?  My father use to ask me that question all the time, it would only stop me briefly, and on and on I would rant about what 'they' said, what 'they' told me...'they say...' this, that and another thing, but how often do people pop out and say 'I say'...'I decided'...I believe it is moderate to include one's self for the equal distribution of blame and or credit, it is time to balance the ledger of public discourse.

I say moderation is certainly subjective, like so many things, one person's moderate portion of chocolate is another's version of greedy indulgence and they can both stand in the same room and discuss what 'they' say and not realize that 'they' are them, too, in some ways, but in many, 'they' are simply those we allow to exist for us because we spend too much time repeating what 'they' say, instead of what 'I say', too.

I say, I still like many things in moderation that have been absolutely forbidden by what 'they' say.  Like smoking a cigarette, or an illegal marijuana joint.  It is becoming not just unpopular, but illegal inside the grounds of some institutions to go out into the parking lot and 'light up' either.  This really bothers me even when I chose to give it up, I want to know that I can if I should decide to, not because it is 'my right' to, but because it is just another thing taken away by what 'they' say and used as a 'smoke screen' to hide the rabid growth of commercialism and even worse, totalitarianism...like driving your car when you could walk, or flying around in a plane needlessly, or using all kinds of things that harm the atmosphere, as well as ourselves, far worse than second hand smoke or a person high on marijuana who wants to sit and hold a love fest rather than get in their car and chase demons and possibly kill someone on the way.  I say, 'they' say a lot of things that takes away any moderation but provokes PROFITS financially and creates institutions of conformity, at the expense of many things that should be, if they were not made illegal by what 'they' say, to be freely and moderately chosen.

However, even when I was a young one and my father asked me who 'they' were, it was already too late to distinguish, as 'they' had been ruling the world for as long as anyone can remember.  'They' are the few who rule the many since anyone can remember and with enough finesse to be completely invisible like the gods 'they' create to make us all feel guilty or absolutely empowered to say what 'they' say and not one thing original that might create a moderate world wherein everyone gets to make good or bad on what 'I say' any further.

Moderation has become nothing but mediation's tool to dictate what I can say and do any further.  That's why I say that Justice is not just blind folded, she is damned near dead.  So much for avoiding extremes my friend Ben, we are all thrown out with the bath water of legislation gone mad, mad, mad...and 'chicken little' is getting braver and learning how to peck her words into the 'dead of night'.  'Blackbird, fly...'

So, what do 'they' deserve from me?  A sincere rebuke for taking away moderation and putting into its place an opportunity for physical and mental prisons to exist, wherein, one cannot chose a moderate life, but must conform to the mediation of what 'they' say should and should not happen on matters that do not truly matter to the existence of life lived in the pursuit of happiness, but...are matters invented to confuse, confound and keep all the pigeons on the home roost, but then, "I decided" I was a blackbird anyway.