In a past episode of Private Practice one of the characters was dying of cancer and gave herself permission to speak her truth. No lying, no rescuing, no Mr. Nice Guy. It was incredibly refreshing. One of the other characters said of her when they met “ooh, she doesn’t filter. I like her.”
In
real life, people who don't filter are quite rare, at least in western society;
I can’t speak for any other. It's not unusual for them to be seen as having something wrong with them. We’ve developed a veil of politeness behind which
we hide the reality of what we think and feel. I’ve never really understood it
and it sure makes life complicated if you register the underlying emotions,
because you’re constantly seeing two opposing aspects of people.
It’s especially confusing if they don’t register their own underlying emotions. Like phobics.
Some are aware of their phobias. It’s kind of difficult not to know you’re
scared of spiders or open spaces for example.
When it comes to Obama, Latinos, gays and foreigners, phobics usually
aren’t aware that what they see as rational justification for attack and
exclusion is just fear. To mix metaphors horribly, they’re like empty drums
making a lot of noise but coated in dung, rolling downhill, gathering more dung
unto themselves.
Mind you, that metaphor doesn’t work at all, because the more they roll
and gather like-minded phobics to themselves, the noisier they become. The
noise makes for great headlines so the media grabs onto it and blows it up as
big as possible. Because we give such weight to whatever impacts the strongest
on our immediate senses, before long it can seem as if the phobics are the
majority. That can
make a person very disillusioned about society. Disheartened and disinterested
in speaking out, because what’s the use when you’re a lone voice in the crowd?
But it’s important to remember that the people filled with rage and fear
and prejudice against immigrants, homosexuals, Latinos and Barack Obama, aren’t
necessarily the majority; they just make the most noise. People who’ve got
nothing of any value to say always do.
