Introduction to B.G. Street

Greetings everyone, I’m B.G. and welcome to my “Street,” i.e. forum/platform for issues that affect me where I live and interact. I will be submitting writings on issues that I deal with where I live and hopefully you can take something positive from this site and take to it or them to “Your Street,” i.e. where you live and interact. I would like to dedicate this first post to a more formal introduction of why I have decided to start this blog. Many times, we watch the evening news or see internet stories about events and issues that have nothing or very little to do with our own personal lives, yet these stories get a lot of attention in the mainstream media. I not saying this to be insensitive, but as far as my own personal life is concerned, I don’t care if the new Harry Potter book broke a sales record at Barnes and Noble, or if the DNA tests confirmed the identity of the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter. Anna’s death and a motherless child, yet tragic, does not help me to focus on the relevant issues that affect me and my household. But over the years, we’ve seen unfortunate stories, such as: the Scott and Laci Petersen case, the Michael Jackson scandal, celebrity affairs, which player is going to be the next superstar athlete, and famous luxury divorce settlements. All of these types of stories are given enormous amounts of attention to keep the public entertained, and there’s nothing wrong with entertainment, we all need it sometimes. But these stories also keep the public uninformed of the relevant issues of the day. So as another alternative source of topical discussion, I decided to publish B.G. Street: to bring you relevant topics to ponder, to discuss and to analyze as an individual and then with your family and community.

There are many blogs and media outlets that endeavor to provide the public with an alternative media perspective, but no one person or group has the market cornered on insight and perspective. So I hope that you enjoy what you read, and think about what’s going on around you and in your community. Too often I see people making decisions based upon “the majority opinion,” “my family did it this way,” “my races votes this way,” “my Church believes this way,” “my political party stands for this,” “I’m doing this to keep my job,” “if I don’t do this my kids will be mad at me.” All of these answers/excuses and more are programmed responses to stimuli. They don’t require any thought, and your responses may be wrong, to boot. Just because the majority agrees against you, that doesn’t make you wrong and the majority right. For example, many people told Christopher Columbus that the earth was flat. But we all know that they were wrong. The media makes retractions all of the time to correct an error. So never take anything that you hear or see at face value. Investigate what you see and hear! Always ask yourself why you believe what you believe. It will help you get to the core of who you are and what you believe, and if you actually believe it, whatever it is. Parental, peer, contemporary, church, financial, societal, and other circumstantial influences are fine, we can glean ideas and a mind set from a myriad of sources, but ultimately, YOU are going to make the final decision about your own belief system and the actions you take in response to that belief system.

Remember, you are an individual, not a drone. Don’t subject yourself to groupthink. Groupthink is control. There is nothing wrong with supporting the community, in fact it is encouraged, but when you don’t know who you are as a unique individual and you start to follow the crowd, you get lost in the shuffle. You start to adopt the ways of your neighbors and family members, co-workers, fellow church-goers and the real you with a separate and distinct personality, never manifests. You’re allowing yourself to be a magnet for all of these influences, like seaweed on a ship. This stuff attaches itself to you and the world never gets to see the beautiful and unique person that you are. {I’ll write a future blog on media and societal influences on shaping who you are; it’s a very powerful topic for discussion concerning individuals.}

There are two very good films that I recommend to people that deal with individualism (not as the main theme, but you can see individualism in the main characters): 1984, and The Island. Winston (from 1984) and Lincoln Echo Six (from The Island) were the main characters that didn’t follow the crowd; they knew something wasn’t right about the controlled environment in which they lived. When they exercised their individuality to question and not go along with the status quo, they were ostracized by their contemporaries and the authorities. To make a long story short, their discomfort with the “herd mentality,” “go-along-to-get-along mentality” proved to be correct, and they were vilified and punished for being an individual and questioning the way things were in their society. They weren’t being disruptive, but they wanted answers, and it’s hard to follow and be apart of something that isn’t in your heart. It was their individuality being suppressed; the natural part of all of us must be free. Some people criticize individualism as some sort of isolationist view, and that’s just wrong. We are all different, even within the same ethnic race we’re still different. We’re born individually, we die individually, our DNA is different, our fingerprints are different, our likes and dislikes are different, even our body scents are different. I’ll deal with propaganda on a future blog, but some people out there are just into “muddying up the water,” so-to-speak, and marginalize your thoughts to discredit you or to discount what you’re saying. But stand firm in your individuality, again, that’s the reason BG Street is here: to bring you relevant topics to ponder, to discuss and to analyze as an individual and then with your family and community. Remember the top picture on the site, a picture of a family and the caption reads, “Strong families make strong communities.” Well, families are a bunch of individuals that make up the unit. So I guess that we can also say that “Strong individuals make strong families.” So, not to belabor the introduction, you are a unique individual and I want you to know that and to make sound decisions on relevant issues, as well as be able to articulate your own beliefs and convictions without feeling intimidated or ashamed. The whole world might be involved in “Groupthink” and just “parroting” what they heard someone else say, but you don’t have to be, and I’m going to encourage you to be the unique and beautiful individual that you are.