During my last visit to Crystal Bridges, all I could see in Carroll Cloar’s “Charlie Mae Practicing for the Baptizing” painting was Post Malone, inexplicably standing in a river.

I can’t unsee it, no matter how much I read about the painting.
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Contrary Opinion Rationality Rule:
How you respond to contradictory and reciprocal opinion offered without malice is one of the best indicators of your temperament and ability to think rationally. Emotional or disproportionate responses to an opinion so offered are indicators of cognitive dissonance or in recognition of the frailty inherent in the arguments you choose to employ.

“That’s what he was telling me, anyway, right before I hit him with a pillowcase full of rocks.” – X

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Social Media Exclusion Observation

If you say, “I can’t be on Facebook,” you have one of 4 problems: you despise seeing contrary opinion due to the precarious and unmeasured depth of your own, your view of the world is fundamentally unhappy, you aren’t pruning your social tree to weed out those motivated by values which demean, or you don’t strive to put out into the world that which you wish to reflect back.

Facebook gives you magnificent control to decide whose content you see. It gives you the ability to ignore, block, hide, or scroll past meaningless content. It can’t give you peace if you’re not generally peaceful in your heart. It can’t grant wisdom if you can’t use it for personal and heartfelt content that you value. It can’t make the people you chose to include in your social media circle speak and behave in a manner that you feel they should. You can’t either, for that matter. Stop trying to make people align with your internal idea of how they should mold their opinions. You have permission to release them to be friends in the real world without also needlessly struggling to reconcile them to your life on social media. Let’s face it – some people simply aren’t capable of silence or the solace the scrolling past without throwing a cup of mud into your face.

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