Random observations for February 2017
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If I do ever die, I want people to say "he died", not this "passed away" horseshit. I hate euphemisms.
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If Donald Trump had not been born rich, he would probably be indigent or dead. His mentality and behavior are too weird and offensive to succeed at any ordinary job.
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I feel a special horror at regimentation, at anything that subsumes the individual within the mindless mass. The chanting of slogans, the singing of hymns or recital of creeds, marching in unison -- it all reeks of yielding one's humanity to a deadened and dangerous subhumanity.
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The fact that you personally don't understand the scientific evidence for something doesn't mean that that evidence is not conclusive.
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Can we someday do without leaders at all? It would be contrary to our nature as a species -- we are primates, and primates have dominance hierarchies. But we have already transcended our biology in so many other ways.....Who can say?
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A person who knows only one language is like a person who has only one eye. You can see just as much, but all the depth is missing.
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You are free to the extent that -- and only to the extent that -- you can say "no" to someone who gives you an order, and make it stick.
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Human lust and sexual passion are a constant across the millennia and around the world. Taboos about various forms of sexuality seem pretty much random and change like the weather, from decade to decade and from country to country. It's absurd to think that the particular configuration of clouds we see right here at the present instant constitutes a final "correct" state which will be fixed forever.
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A lifeless universe? I prefer to imagine that there are many worlds out there with their own peoples, where the stories that cannot be told on this world can have their chance to live.
[For previous random observations, see here and here.]
posted by Infidel753 at 4:04 AM
7 Comments:
"If I do ever die". Are you expecting some other outcome? What would that other outcome be?
Unknown: I have grounds for hope.
"If I do ever die, I want people to say "he died", not this "passed away" horseshit. I hate euphemisms."
Well, yes. One of my dislikes as well. I even hear people speak about their cat that's "passed." I often mentally add, "Passed what? Its final exam?"
In chaotic situations, the strong and cruel can easily oppress the weak, since the usual structures for protecting citizens have crumbled. Why any freedom-lover with two brain cells would want chaos is beyond me. (This is relevant to the graphic novel version of "V for Vendetta", which you expressed an interest in reading. I won't give away any spoilers.)
I agree with your theory about He Who Sports a Combover. I knew someone like him, and he would change jobs every two to three years because his inappropriate (and unethical) behavior kept getting him fired.
I'm in awe of multilingual people because such language skills have always been beyond my reach. As much as I would like to learn a new language, I have no foreign language proficiency. I struggled with high school Spanish classes, received Bs in my college and graduate school French and German classes, and then forgot everything once the classes concluded. I even took an adult education Spanish class a few years ago, but I retained nothing. Why can't I hold foreign languages in my head? Why can other people retain languages, but I can't?
With stars beyond number burning in our universe, there are bound to be planets with sentient life circling those stars. To think that other civilizations are thriving elsewhere in the universe fills me with wonder and happiness.
"[M]arching in unison...reeks of yielding one's humanity to a deadened and dangerous subhumanity." Now I'm wondering what you make of all my posts about marching bands and drum and bugle corps.
Shaw: When they just say "passed" it makes me think of "passed gas". Not at all the right kind of association.
I don't like euphemisms because they weaken and water down meaning. Death is death. It's a terrible thing and should be faced as such.
Ahab: I think learning foreign languages as an adult is partly a matter of innate talent, and such talents are generally unfairly distributed. Your frustration is paralleled by my own at my inability to draw or create anything visual, something which some people clearly have a natural talent for, but I just as clearly don't.
My understanding of science tells me that there probably is no intelligent life out there, but especially in times like we're going through now, it can hardly stand to believe that this is all there is -- I want there to be something, other worlds or other Earths in parallel universes, some hope that somewhere, someone is handling life more sensibly than we are.
Pinku: Well, that's rather different since it's meant as entertainment. I'm thinking of those things in more a political/military/mob context.
I remember George Carlin talking about the words we use to describe someone dying. "He expired, like a magazine subscription."
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