The Surface Dwellers – Drop in the Ocean – Superficial

The Surface Dwellers

When I think of the word superficial, I first think of people who know no boundaries for anything they choose to do. Superficial people also don’t consider such things as whether something they’re about to do will directly affect someone else, or how the other person will be affected.

The second most likely thought that comes to mind when I think of “superficial,” would be a wound, like a scratch or a small cut. I’ve heard it used in that way many times. I’m also familiar with it being used to describe the extent of damage, as in “There’s only superficial damage to your vehicle. It will only cost you five grand to fix it instead of seven.”

Superficial people are uncaring about the feelings of, or what happens to others. They rarely ever mean what they say. A promise is just a collection of non-binding, meaningless words. They aren’t usually all that smart, but that may actually be the one thing they have going for them, as people who do care about others, will sometimes befriend them out of pity… and then learn a hard lesson.

But are we superficial ourselves without realizing it? If you think about it, do people in general today seem more superficial than people in general ten years ago? Superficial refers to what happens on the surface as the main point of interest, and that’s it. We could say that superficiality dictates there isn’t any reason or motivation to dig deeper for an answer, whether it’s responding to co-worker Alice’s cancer battle or the scratch on your elbow.

Scammers are superficial people. Most likely, they are the best people in the scamming business. Making up the “scammer top tier” are those to whom absolutely nothing whatsoever that happens to anyone else matters. Most of us either know, or have met someone like this. To many folks, they are known because they were scammed by them.

Befriending superficial people can be dangerous. If you’ve given in to doing this, without full realization that you’ve offered yourself up to them as a sacrificial lamb to throw under the bus regardless of how sure you were that they were really a “good person inside,” you’ll learn when they do it to you at the very first opportunity, regardless of how close you just knew you were.

Another thing to consider is that if you do fall into the trap of befriending a superficial person, and then end up paying the price for it, you should be made aware that you’ve just joined a relatively small group of folks that have mostly been historically referred to as “suckers” ever since P.T Barnum coined the term.

Although not all superficial people are scammers, in my opinion the potential of their becoming scammers at some point is more likely than with people who live life yearning to discover and learn things at a depth in which the superficial person has no interest.

Many a book has been written and many a movie made that features superficial characters, and many times in a main role. Why do you think a superficial person as the main story character makes for good entertainment? When celebrities “roast” each other at big gatherings, some of which are televised, they’re basically recognizing and poking fun at each other’s superficiality.

A superficial character can generally provoke any number of reactions in an entertainment vehicle. They can be majestically funny, pitiful, lovable or despicable characters - it doesn’t matter, because entertainment isn’t reality.

Perhaps more than a few are superficial simply because it’s easier to be superficial than to exert ourselves, trying to find out information that we really don’t care about knowing. But it’s the extent of the damage that can be done by not knowing something we should, that can quickly produce the power to ruin everything we love in life.

It may sound mean, but I really do think that recognizing superficiality as a destructive force, much like we recognize psychopaths as being destructive forces, is a logical way to view this, and to warn against interaction with either of these types of people as a general rule we can each choose to personally follow or not. Just take it upon yourself to consider your and your family’s safety above all.

_{The Surface Dwellers © free-reign 2019}

Sources for images used in this post:

Water Surface: Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Superficial Wound: Image by saulhm from Pixabay
Scammer: Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Popcorn: Image by Deborah Breen Whiting from Pixabay

If you’d like to write for Drop in the Ocean, write a post about the word of the week, and if you like, you can also attend the online show on Wednesdays at 7PM – UTC, when posts are presented for discussion. Visit Buddy Up’s discord server at https://discord.gg/3d5H3K8 if you’d like more information, and/or for attending Wednesday’s show. This week’s word was Superficial.

_{The Surface Dwellers © free-reign 2019}