Jack Nicholson, as mentioned in a previous article, was the winner of three Oscars, the first of which (for Best Actor) came in the compelling 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in which he played a prisoner who faked insanity in order to escape hard labour required of prisoners and was accordingly admitted to the psychiatric ward where he was confronted not just by people labelled the Acutes (who were deemed curable) and the Chronics (the incurables) but also by an extremely strict head matron. The portrayal of individuals who experienced wild hallucinations and delusion was powerful, while the fact of them being put together was highly inflammatory. It did not end well.
While one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, another type of “flew”, in the form of flu, (or influenza, to give it its formal full name) may be much milder than the illnesses that were displayed in the film mentioned above but it still can have a serious, even deadly, effect. We note that it is “primarily spread through respiratory droplets released when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks” while “symptoms can include fever, body aches, runny nose, sore throat, malaise and fatigue”. We learn that most symptoms disappear within a week though the weariness can last for weeks.
Just as there is another type of “flew” in the form of “flu”, so we may contend that there is another type of “influenza” in the form of an “influencer”. It is only in recent years, through the increase of social media, that people have actually begun to define an influencer as a job title, in the same manner we may describe someone as a banker, a baker or a builder. The very nature of the word “influencer” implies, like influenza, that it could be bad news — we can influence people for good or for bad. Sometimes we catch the influence from someone else without knowing it while it is helpful to remember that the effect can last a lot longer than weeks.
When it comes to our children, it is worth considering where everyone fits in regarding the influence on their lives. Celebrities and those on social media are clearly coming in as first influencer; youngsters will listen to them unquestioningly. Next, young people are most likely to be influenced by their peers, followed (perhaps surprisingly) by their peers’ parents, then by their chosen few teachers and lastly often by their parents, who, in reality, all too often have little more than forty minutes a day with their child.
Generally young people are less influenced by reason than by emotion. That is not to say that young people are bribed, bullied, blackmailed into doing things but they do tend to be influenced less by writing and much more pictorially or orally, by ‘following’ someone who is ‘followed’ by thousands of others. Parents try to limit the influence by adopting the three monkeys’ approach: see no evil (ban them from online activity), hear no evil (take away phones) and speak no evil.
The problem there is that it leaves a vacuum, a void, which cannot stay void for long. It will fill up; people will be influenced, one way or another. The bottom line, however, is the GIGO principle: Garbage In, Garbage Out. What goes in will come out. In that regard, therefore, it is less influence that we will look at and more effluence.
Effluence is what flows out of something, from a dog’s bad breath to the raw sewage coming from houses or industries. But effluence refers to what comes from within. Jesus shared that “It is out of a person’s heart that evil thoughts come”. The thoughts are not the problem; what touches and moves the heart is. It is the words that are the true test of what has influenced people.
Our children are bombarded by voices all around them, each trying to influence, persuade, move them in a certain direction. It is all a matter of whether they are in or out. Is it influence or effluence that we are seeing? What can we do with the influence and effluence? If we are going to have to deal with the effluence, we need to handle the influence. Who is influencing our children? It is time we flew over and away from the cuckoo’s nest that makes up much of the world of modern influencers. Influence is contagious – and can be deadly. So, one final thought, therefore: will anyone be influenced by a piece such as this? Unlikely! Is it dangerous? Judge for yourself.
