Random observations for May 2018
o o o o o
In a conflict, the blame almost never lies all on one side. But it also almost never lies equally on both sides.
o o o o o
When you're a kid, you think adults all have some kind of guidebook or rules for being an adult, something you don't know anything about. In your twenties, you realize you still don't know the rules, so you start faking it. By your forties at the latest, you should have figured out that everyone else is doing the same.
o o o o o
The best way to reduce inefficiency in the American office environment would be to make reorganization a felony.
o o o o o
For pretty much any shitty thing a person can imagine, there is a Republican somewhere who actually wants to do it.
o o o o o
If you can call the country you're in "fascist" or a "police state" in public and not get arrested, it probably isn't one.
o o o o o
From a logical perspective, what purpose is supposed to be served by praying? God is supposed to be omniscient, right? That means he already knows what you want, and how badly you want it, and whether or not you deserve to get it. What possible difference can it make to ask him for it? Do you think you're going to make him aware of some aspect of your wish that he had previously overlooked?
o o o o o
If you want a vision of a stupefyingly-boring eternity, consider the Christian view of Heaven. Since Heaven is supposed to be perfect, it couldn't progress or change. Most enjoyable activities, being considered "sinful" to some degree or at least hardly godly, would presumably be unavailable there. The traditional vision of Heaven would have me impatiently checking my watch after half an hour, never mind all eternity. Worst of all, the place would presumably be swarming with the kind of insufferable Bible-besotted prigs whose smug holiness makes everyone avoid them in real life.
o o o o o
I wouldn’t be impressed by the concept of reincarnation even if I believed in it. Believers in the idea generally hold that a reincarnated person has no, or almost no, memory of his previous life. If I die, and later another entity is born which is supposed to be a continuation of me, but that entity has no memory of being me, then it isn’t me.
[For previous random observations, see here.]
posted by Infidel753 at 12:52 PM
10 Comments:
Green Eagle's view on reincarnation: I absolutely believe in it (sort of) with the qualification that what we are on now is a starter planet. We don't remember any past lives because we haven't had any yet, but starting with the next one, we will remember everything from our past lives.
There- what I think is a totally new theological concept. Not every day you come across one of those.
The best/worst part of the traditional view of Heaven is the idea of spending an eternity praising God. Like he needs constant reinforcement. I picture God as Kim Jong Il.
These are all good.
I've always had a problem with modern Libertarians. For starters, they seem to believe they're FORCED to taker ugly positions, "I'm not saying that poisoning our children is a good thing, but as a Libertarian, I MUST say that government does not have the right to impose limits regarding X, and that if X poisons children, then the free market is the way to address the poisoning..."
I've also racked my brain about the prayer thing. If God is OUTSIDE of time, in Eternity, then he's presumably looking at the whole timeline, into which my praying or not praying at some point must have been written in all along, right? So prayer having an effect outside of time doesn't make any more sense than the God of the Old testament changing his mind about something (as he does with punishing the descendants of sinners between the time of Exodus and Ezekiel).
Green: You should totally start a religion based on that idea.
Professor: God does seem pitifully insecure, to need such constant praise. And worship has always struck me as a fundamentally subhuman state of mind.
Harry: The libertarians are stuck on a particular algorithm and feel compelled to follow it rigidly to its logical conclusion regardless of pragmatic considerations. That inevitably leads to insane results.
All I’ve got to say is THANK YOU Infidel753 and commenters. The universe feels a little more sane with all of you in it.
That's so true about kids and adults. I always thought that the adults in my life just knew how to be adults because they learned it somehow. But we're all just faking it through the years.
"The best way to reduce inefficiency in the American office environment would be to make reorganization a felony."
Without reorganization, structures and procedures ossify, thus increasing inefficiency.
Am I missing something?
Donna: Thanks! I'm not sure how much of that is due to the brilliance of my posts and how much to the defectiveness of the universe.....
Mary: I wish I'd figured it out a lot earlier.
Zog: Every reorganization I've been through in an office environment was pointless and counterproductive. In some cases it's the result of a new upper-level manager trying to "make his mark" on the company (I call this the "dog and fire hydrant" concept of reorganization); in other cases it's following some kind of fad. In no case was there any good reason for it.
As one who was a plant manager when the division I was part of underwent an upper management change I can totally agree with you Infidel. Eventually I resigned and moved on as I grew tired of fighting what I saw as wrongheaded and being the only man on the "outside". The division AND company were eventually sold.
Rational: That sounds familiar. In the idiot reorganizations I've been through, the more sensible managers knew what was going on was bullshit, but they weren't the ones making the decisions.
Post a Comment
<< Home