Decluttering, focusing, letting go

OK, Bill Hicks wasn't always everyone's cup of tea, what? But there were times when he just sang out with truths. One of his favourite cries, uttered when confronted with some of the more dangerous absurdities of our times, was "Is it me? Is it me?"

Maybe everyone gets that feeling- is the rest of the world mad, or just me?

So: is it me, or are we just muddling ourselves into a dangerous state with the multiplicity of "inputs" into our lives? I've got a Facebook page, which is entirely the fault of assorted German philosophers who left us with the idea of a zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, and the idea that if you don't keep up with it, it'll trundle over you and squash you flat. E.g. I guess, old people (i.e. people even older than me) who can't handle the internet.

Because I don't like being unfriendly or unkind, I collected many a Facebook friend, who then filled my page with photos and comments that actually meant very little to me, and perhaps to them also. Why would someone you've met twice in forty years be interested in photos of your grandchildren?

Then there's all the fatuous adverts, then there's....

And there's "people who bought what you've just bought also had a look at these..." Interesting enough, but they are also time sinks, energy traps.

Being mindful, living in  the moment, seems to me the reverse of dashing in a semi-involuntary way after every Tweet, blogpost, related ad and Facebook entry. We need to calm it down, exercise control, filter and focus, use these things and not let them use us. We need to de-clutter. Let it go.

The driving force behind a huge proportion of the clutter is marketing, sales. We fill our houses with Stuff we don't much use or need, our screens with twitterings; the marketing psychologists and sales people want our minds. Every inch of a printable surface is printed, usually with garbage: shampoo bottles, cereal packets...

Maybe this blog is part of your clutter. In which case, lose it, friend, and earn at least a few minutes of p&q!

You may have seen the live clip of Bill Hicks telling marketing people in his audience to go and kill themselves, because they are ruining our world and our lives. I wouldn't go quite that far...probably....