Posted on 03/19/2014 8:53:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When I was a kid -- which wasn't that long ago, given that I just turned 30 in January -- I recall hearing a popular phrase on the playground: "Mind your own business." MYOB reared its head whenever somebody threatened to rat out a fellow student for anything from harmless roughhousing to juvenile delinquency. The phrase is sometimes attributed to the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, a rough translation of which states: " ... make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."
Unfortunately, the phrase "mind your own business" has lost all meaning. After all, you don't get to mind your own business in America today. If you're a religious business owner, the government can force you to serve a same-sex wedding and cover your employees' abortion-inclusive health care plan. If you're a landowner, the government can simply seize your property and hand it over to another private party in order to increase tax revenue. If you're an entrepreneur, the thicket of government intervention weighing you down, from minimum wage to tax regulation, stifles innovation and stymies creativity.
Today, Americans are only told to mind our own business when we're not, in fact, engaging in business. Concerned about the societal fallout from sexual promiscuity? Mind your own business. Worried about the rise of single motherhood? Mind your own business. Upset about an epidemic of young people seemingly willing to trade the responsibilities of adulthood for an infantilized freedom? Mind your own business.
Societal problems are now personal; personal problems are now societal.
That shift in the American mindset reflects a deeper shift in the nature of our relationship with government and each other. This week, Michelle Obama released a video explaining to us that we needed to sign up for Obamacare now -- for the sake of our mothers. "We nag you because we love you," the First Lady said.
But, of course, she doesn't love us. She doesn't even know us. Nonetheless, too many Americans have been convinced that individuals exercising personal choice are a societal problem; government, our Great Mother, can care for us personally. If we believe, as Hillary Clinton does, that it takes a village, then those who insist on personal privacy and freedom are obstacles to happiness and accomplishment. Only the collective is good. Any manifestation of individuality that poses a threat to that collective is by necessity evil.
We no longer live in a nation in which we can mind our own business. My business is your business, and vice versa -- unless, that is, we are engaged in activity that tears down family, church and community. If I'm a business owner rejecting service to a same-sex wedding, I have no right to invoke "mind your own business." Conversely, if I'm a member of a same-sex couple, I can invoke "mind your own business" all day long -- even if I'm making my business your business by engaging your services.
The obliteration of the distinction between the personal and the collective marks the end of American rights. But if you're worried about it, you should probably mind your own business.
Amazing how they seek to put everyone in their place, but never think they should learn theirs. I honestly look forward to the day when men are no longer expected at all to be providers, sole providers, for their families. These days it’s no major chore to keep house and I remember an anecdote about a woman who decided to quit her career and become a full time housewife. She got upset because her husband believed that she would be the only one doing the laundry.
Isn’t that perverse?
Her husband is out busting his hump and she wants him to shoulder half the household chores as well? The point of being a stay at home housewife is because they keep house, not spend the days flower arranging and also shopping with friends and enjoying posh lunches while the husband slaves.
bkmk
I’ve taken to tellin em to compartmentalize their lives.
Wanna be treated like a man in the business world? Act like one. We don’t have the time to listen to chortling all day long, as you work out a problem in your head.
Take action and be efficient.
Leave your babbling at home. It injures all you work with, as productivity and creativity are stymied while we listen, listen to nonsense.
Stick to the point. The rest really is unimportant and life will go on if we don’t pay any attention to it.
Dear DC:
MYOB.
Not every woman gossips - maybe they would just like to know you better? I get along well with men and women, but I’m only close friends with conservatives (who don’t seem to gossip as much as others and are more of the MYOB persuasion.)
And I’ve found that if I’m in a situation where gossiping occurs, I only need to offer a defense of that person to throw cold water on the conversation. Kills it every time.
I try to lead the conversation toward pleasant and humorous topics.
How about the children helping, too? Mom always made me clean my bedroom and flip and vacuum my bed’s mattress and box springs every Saturday morning before I could out to play. Didn’t hurt me at all.
And for the record, a lot of men gossip. What’s up with that? :)
The peace, tranquility, and 'health' of my family and neighborhood IS my business.
Finding out my insurance was charged for a root canal, when I only had a filling, WAS my business, even though I wasn't charged any extra: reporting it just may prevent a premium &/or co-pay increase next renewal.
What Maude & Claude or Ole & Olga do or say in their own bedroom at night isn't my business, and I don't want to hear it.
The real problem isn't whether or not people mind their own business, but being able to distinguish what is or isn't their business.
Sorry about that ... :-) ...
The whole success of a taboo STRUCTURE in a society is that when a taboo is broken, EVERYBODY minds that business, to shun or punish the taboo breaker. Not surprisingly, the progressives in America have destroyed the whole system of taboos, in order to make room for their degeneracies.
Thanks for the ping!
Exactly.
We all possess the mixed blessing that is “free will.” How that “blessing” will be exercised is problematic. In any event; truly, we have all been advised.
Taboos are supposed to be societal boundaries understood and respected by all, but save for overt criminal acts (the meanings of those have been blurred as well) they are not codified by written law.
These taboos not being “on paper” provides the plausible deniability used by the thoughtless, disrespectful, self-serving lawless “adults” who prefer to feign shock that these rules even exist. They can then pretend to be free from accountability. I call them children-by-choice.
Only that actual children are innocent by default, because they haven’t yet learned the boundaries or good sense behind them.
Maturity is a natural development process that the children-by-choice have purposefully rejected, thinking that it gets them off the hook for proper behavior. They force responsible adults to define and vigorously defend ethical and moral standards and boundaries, only stopping when forced to by a strong hand.
It’s a cunning tactic and hardly innocent, as these self-serving “children” certainly understand that normal, respectful adults do not naturally treat other adults like children to be disciplined and controlled. The malevolent expect others to be their mommies, knowing full well that they aren’t, and thus the kiddies won’t get the spankings and discipline that they deserve. No (or rare, inconsistent)smackdowns are then interpreted as green lights to push further, much as a toddler increasingly acts out until he discovers the line he can’t cross.
Restrainst only comes by force, so no wonder that government can never be big enough for their needs. And what do you know, they use the big thug government as their personal bully, to beat down and destroy reason, virtue, and truth. The “children” being innocent, of course.
The rules aren’t that hard, but these folks constantly put it upon others to play parent. Children don’t belong in adult social or professional circles, but these types want it both ways - the respect from adults without the requisite responsibility of adults.
Decades of political pampering and undeserved respect have given the children-by-choice proof that they can indeed act with impunity, demand and stomp their feet until they get what they want, and of course nose into everyone’s business because there are no internal checks and restraints for the lawless.
The nation and world are being ruled by children. That’s a Biblical judgment right out of Isaiah 3.
Thank you for expressing what is so strongly troubling my soul for my Nation.
The spoiled brats are particularly eager to be “generous” with other people's time, money, talents, and resources while patting themselves on the back for helping themselves. Entitlement Village, built upon a foundation of lies and laziness. Destined to keel over like a Chicom school building in a minor earthquake.
Belshazzar and all his experts, administrators, and fellow travelers couldn't read the writing on the wall because they were of the same mind: ignorant-by-choice, and having no sense of dignity and respect, as they were flippantly using holy, finely crafted temple vessels to get all liquored up. Kind of like the Obamas putting their feet up on the White House furniture, loading an upholstered ottoman with greasy Super Bowl fare, and/or inviting in the Rap trash to kick back and slum up the place.
Daniel didn't need a special revelation, fast or prayer to read the writing, because the cause and effect was already plain as day to him. He didn't even need the writing, he only had to remind the king of what should have been obvious (5:17-23). After all, the idiom is used not to indicate a random warning out of nowhere, but a clear foreshadowing of a bad outcome.
And here we are. :(
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