“Feelings, nothing more than feelings”. It was a nice song performed by Morris Albert in 1974, reaching #6 on the Billboard Chart in America.
Feelings are driving much of our actions in our lives today, and many of our decisions in our country. Feelings dictate almost everything we do. Feelings have supplanted science and fact and reason. These days, our country is held hostage by masks. You have to wear masks, or you’re shunned by society. But on March 8, 2020, Dr. Fauci said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask… it’s not providing the perfect protection... And, often, there are unintended consequences.” So, why are we wearing masks? Fauci surmised, “wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better.” Masks make us feel better, so everybody has to do it. If you don’t, you’re an outcast, a pariah.
Many times, feelings deny science. If a man says he feels like a woman, then he is a woman, regardless of what the biology says. The physical anatomy is meaningless. Genetics, chromosomes are irrelevant. Feelings supersede all. Our feelings are our reality. Physical males can play on female sports teams, go into female locker rooms, and use female bathrooms. They feel female, so they are female. No more questions asked. The “science” is settled. The “science” of feelings prevails.
This is why it has become such a sin in our society hurt someone else’s feelings. We used to say if a guy felt too good about himself, “he needed to get knocked down a peg.” We believed that sometimes it was good to get your feelings knocked around a little bit; your ass kicked. Your feelings healed stronger after getting hurt or damaged which made you tougher, more resilient. The scars from our wounds grow back thicker and stronger. Pain provides perspective. While lack of pain creates distortions. But now, everybody’s feelings are protected in three layers of bubble wrap, and everything hurts everyone else’s feelings.
If you happen to say the “wrong” thing, or use the “wrong” tone, or look at someone the “wrong” way, the country comes to a screeching halt, and you have to fall all over yourself apologizing, or you will be canceled. We used to live in a society where getting your feelings hurt could be a good thing, it made you stronger. It was part of growing up. It was part of becoming an adult. It was part of living in a society with diverse people with diverse perspectives and diverse belief systems. But not anymore. If you say something that someone else doesn’t like, then you hurt their feelings, and that is the greatest sin of all. This all leads us to choose feelings over reality.
This is one of the reasons why we have such a serious drug issue in our country. Our youth are so protected from the emotional pain of growing up that they never develop a mechanism to deal with that pain, so they turn to drugs, whether it’s marijuana or harder drugs to block the pain. The drugs replace the inner mechanism needed to develop in our formative years from all of the painful feelings of disappointment, failure, being offended, getting our feelings hurt that we experience growing up. The wounds and the scars from the hurt make us appreciate the times in our life when there is no pain. Drugs are not solving the problems which are causing our pain. Drugs are just masking the pain, and making the problems worse, and making us weaker. But the painless life causes us to feel pain where none exists, and search for remedies where none is needed.
We are told the lie that “if it feels good, then it is good”. People use drugs because it makes them feel the way they want to feel without doing the necessary internal and external work to achieve those feelings authentically. Authenticity is irrelevant when feelings rule. Drugs create a world that would bring us a pseudo-happiness; a fictitious world based solely in our feelings that continually remove us from our true happiness, our true reality, and we go further and further and further down the rabbit hole chasing a feeling that isn’t even real, and the further down we go, the bigger our problems and our ultimate pain grows.
Drugs are just one of the many things that are used to mask the pain that our undeveloped internal mechanisms have failed to deal with. Our society is chasing that feeling around every corner, whether it’s money, power, materialism, the blips on screen, sex, gambling, pornography. They all are similar ways of chasing that ever-elusive feeling.
We have glorified and empowered feelings to a destructive extent that feelings have become a very ineffective and inaccurate method of determine the value and the efficacy of anything in our lives. But yet we allow feelings to determine the direction our society takes on many issues, even though feelings are fleeting. Feelings are fickle.
This is why we have a bunch of virtue-signalers running around our country trying to dictate the social and political order, and show the world how morally superior they are with a “woke” text, “socially aware” post or self-indulgent speech. It makes them feel better, so it must make everything better. Last night at the Golden Globes, actor Mark Ruffalo, said, “let's be courageous together, guys. Let's turn a page on the cruel past of this nation. The good news is inclusion, and justice, and care for Mother Earth is breaking out everywhere. We are all in this together. We are the ones we've been waiting for. So, let's do this.” It was such a syrupy bromide that even a 1970’s Miss America contestant would roll her eyes. But it makes everyone feel good, so it has to be good, even though it has no connection to reality.
In 1843, Karl Marx claimed that “religion is the opium of the people” but in reality, his philosophy, Communism, promising a “utopia” here on earth, a “workers’ paradise” is the real “opium of the people”, a feel-good myth that denies the stark reality of life for warm and fuzzy feelings that always leads to more pain. America’s hard move to the left, it’s shift to the false promises of Socialism and Communism, is held out to our society, and embraced by those who are constantly choosing feelings over reality. And it will always cause, more death and more destruction.
We used to say, “no pain, no gain”. We don’t have real pain, so we won’t have real gains. All we have are feelings. Feelings are good. Feelings are necessary. If, and only if, you feel everything, the pain as well as the pleasure; the hurt as well as the healing. But in modern day America, it appears that pain is forbidden, pain is outlawed, and our country is awash in warm and fuzzy, “feelings, nothing more than feelings”.
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Judd Garrett is a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He is a frequent contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.