Political Purge

Greetings,
        No this is not some diatribe about a political pogrom past or present. Rather in order to take on new things old things occasionally must be set aside. This is especially true of intellectual pursuits.

        Glancing over my desk and the current reading library I keep there told a disturbing story. I had up there tales of cyclopian beings bent upon the destruction of mankind, treatises on the venality and corruption of Man and his institutions, tomes detailing the current and coming climatic catastrophe and the Bible. Basically if I looked up from my work for a moments rest I was reminded that whatever I do wicked evil creatures will come and destroy it or civilization will come to an ugly grinding halt in my grand-children's day. The good book amongst the mix did not seem to ameliorate the gloom and dread of the other works.

        Needless to say this is not a conducive environment for learning. Learning, study and the work that goes into it requires a certain hope and positive attitude and those works do not help.

        Therefore I've embarked on a purge of my daily routine of political material. I moved those books to a less obvious spot in the library, I've replaced them with books from my upcoming classes and scientific tomes. There is still fantasy and Lovecraftian fiction up there. Escapist fiction is a staple of a balanced intellectual diet I've found.

        That was fairly easy, removing political stuff from my electronic world was a much more difficult proposition. I've turned off the notifications in FB from CodePink, CommonDreams.org, and all the like. New stuff keeps popping up. You really have no idea how much you read of a certain thing until you try to exclude such things from your daily life.

        I've had to set aside my podcasts of Rachel Maddow, Countdown, Best of the Left and all of the news sites, The Guardian, The Independent, etc. Kinda quiet out there when you turn all of that off.

        The trick will be to not become as some fellows my Dad described when I was growing up. Fellows who claimed to have stopped smoking but instead just stopped buying. ☺ It means I will need to excuse myself from political arguments here at work. There may not be a more politically aware creature on the face of this Earth than a Federal Civil Servant. Oh well.

        Therefore friends if it seems I'm ignoring you, I probably am. Or at least I'm ignoring the particular political thread. Please don't take it as anything more than the guy that has to go in a different door to the building so as not to smell the cigarette smoke.

        Ad Astra Per Aspera,
        Kevin