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It's hard to verify whether beauty comes from within, because requesting to view a person's insides is generally frowned upon - even if its done with the best of intentions.
At what point do we stop expecting people will change and make the change within ourselves?24/1/2015
I love evolution. I'm not usually a fan of cruel jokes, but I think what has happened to human-kind is a bit funny. Humans have evolved a mind which seeks out patterns in their surroundings because it helps them survive; Days- in the morning the animals will be found at the watering hole and be easier to hunt, at night if I go out I'll be eaten. Months- menstrual cycles; now is a good time to breed. Years- Did anyone notice that we can never find any animals at the waterhole when it's cold? Appearance- don't eat the berries that look like this, watch out for that coloured snake... etc. We see faces in things because we need to immediately discern if something is a threat or not. The funny part is that once the need for these traits has abated we still see patterns, but because they are in non threatening objects we then make up theories to explain them. We end up with pareidolia (tendency to read significance into random or vague stimuli) Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (If I don't switch the light on in a multiple of 3 something bad will happen), psychosis (I see Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich) or popsexification (the watching of pop music videos until everything looks like a naked female).
Humans try and find meaning in everything because once upon a time patterns, cycles and facial recognition kept them alive. The meaning behind a rainbow is not that god will never send a flood to wipe out the population of the earth again, it means you are standing between the sun and the rain. Seeing a comet is not a bad omen, it's just doing its elliptical orbit around the sun. Occams Razor is often incorrectly summarised as, 'The simplest explanation is often the best', but there is a prefix to that; 'Without any ridiculous leaps in logic, the simplest explanation is often the best.' Otherwise if one stumbled across a single footprint on the beach, one may be inclined to assume that a one legged person had ascended to heaven, when in all likelihood, the rest of the footprints have just been washed away. We try and find meaning amongst the meaningless. We try to reason with the unreasonable. We find patterns in an infinite universe because order comes out of chaos, but there is no meaning to chaos. We won't be ascending to heaven like the one legged person on the beach. And we should be okay with that. Pretending that a life will come after this one simply makes this one so much less dignified. There was no me before me and there'll be no me after me. My footprints will just wash away. People are weird. Here's a conversation I just had, verbatim: Me - "Good morning." Him - "Hey. How are you?" Me - "Good. I'm Great. You?" Him - "Yeah, good." Me - "Got plan's for Australia Day?" Him - "Yep." Me - "... " Him - "..." And the bastard just leaves. What the fuck is that? You don't just leave someone hanging! Now I'm not gonna sleep tonight. I'll be imagining all the fun things he could be doing on the public holiday, when he's probably doing something banal. Fucking rude! The 80 richest people in the world are worth the same as the poorest 3,644,822,004 (this is half the population of the world at the time of publishing). This just makes me want to shout and yell and throw things. How do they rationalise this inequity...? I had a look at a few statistics sites to try and gain some of this rationale. Out of the top 20 richest people in the world Bill Gates and Warren Buffet appear to be the most charitable billionaires. Gates is one of two atheists that make up the Forbes top 20 richest, and Buffet one of two agnostics, the rest of the list are all religious, with Christians making up over half the list. The Walton family, who take up 4 separate places in the top 20 richest people in the world are (as a unit) 5th on the list of the most philanthropic people giving $4.6 billion to charity in their lifetime (again, as a unit, not each). Gates and Buffet (1st and 2nd respectively on the philanthropy list) have given over 25 billion each. Interestingly enough, our 3rd and 4th place philanthropists (George Soros, an atheist) and (Mark Zuckerberg, also an atheist) aren't even on the list of Forbes top 20 richest people. Lets recap. Most philanthropic people in the world: Bill Gates an atheist, Warren Buffet an agnostic, George Soros an atheist, Mark Zuckerberg an atheist, followed by The Walton family (Christians) who had to combine their contributions to make 5th on the list (despite all four of their members being in the top 20 richest people in the world separately). Just as an added twist of the knife; 3 out of the 5 richest people in the world (First, third and fifth to be precise) are not in the top 10 philanthropists at all. Respectively and completely without respect they are two Christians and a Jew. How do these people rationalise this inequity? God? |
About the authorLouie is not as smart as he is tall, less sensible than he is bearded, and as green as he is blue. Archives
August 2016
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