I hope you enjoyed my last post. Let's discuss the lack of lighting in this armpit-of-a-town austin. Going from Patterson to the apartment, there is a stretch without any streetlights, which can become terrifying.
See the darkness? Yes. No lights. Anyway. What do I think during these times? That there may be a cougar or mountain lion hiding in the dense foliage. Never mind that mountain lions exist in mountains... or not....
In any case, I have to calm myself down. The problem with a mountain lion or a cougar or a chimp is that they have the element of surprise. If you mentally remove that, the fight becomes fair and to be honest, kind of awesome. For example. Say you encountered a chimp. Normally, it would bite you and run away, leaving you howling** in pain.
Now. What if, when you encountered that chimp, you instantly went into some FF7*-ish RPG style battle scene? Then it would be perfectly fair, and I'd probably win against the chimp with a small decrease in HP. Yeah. Awesome. You hit, then I hit, then you hit, then I hit and so on.
It's a shame that real-life is no where near this ideal situation.
Speaking of ideal situations....
Let me talk about... gay people and their rallies. Don't get me wrong, they have a right to rally, but in some cases, I think it goes beyond social message and into an open flaunt. Yes. That was controversial. Let me make some assumptions:
1) You can't change popular belief, no matter how ideal you are (or think you are).
2) Needs of many > Needs of few.
I'm sure you can agree to both of these. I'm actually going to focus on a specific case, and let you extend this to other cases. Remember those St. Patricks day parades? YES. In New York, they were banned, probably for the wrong reasons, or what not, and I'm not getting into what they think is right, or what is most ideal, rather, most practical.
St. Patrick's day seems to be a.. Catholic holiday (and Irish, and Christian, etc, etc). Most of the people that come there probably do not support homosexuality (for whatever reason). So it seems completely valid to ban gays/lesbians from the parade! Since after all, the parade may not reach its full "audienceship" if they were to be included. It doesn't make sense to alienate large groups of people to fulfill desires of smaller ones.
Doesn't it seem like, in protesting, they're making too big of a deal out of this? Resources are limited, so majority needs should be considered before we move on to others. Yeah. It sucks and it's not ideal. Ideally, everyone (that wants to) should be able to march and everyone should be fine with that, but the fact remains that public opinion can't be changed so easily. Also, here's a tip: Loud demonstrations and protests is only going to make it*** worse. I'm not saying back off the cause, but there are other channels.
I can't have my RPG-style human vs. chimp battles, and you (probably) won't get to march for a couple of years (or decades, who knows). Get used to it?
If you can't make everyone happy, make most people happy.
By the way, I'm not homophobic. Think about what I've said before you rail accusations.
OK. Moving on to.. hippies.
I'll keep it short, but I just want to say one thing. Google "hippies in austin" and you find the first link - I'll summarize - "the blue island in a sea of red where liberals come to take refuge within our hemp walls".
Yes. Except, there's a problem. You can't proclaim to be Democratic and not know anything about the issues. A typical conversation would go as follows
Me: So why are you a democrat?
HIC****: Because.. I believe in evolution, man. [Not that.. believing in evolution has anything to do with being a democrat, but that's not my point anyway.]
Me: And.. what makes you believe in evolution over other things?
HIC: Because... there's proof..man..
Me: Like?
HIC: Like science has proven it man..
Me: What proof?
HIC: ..... [bubbling sound from the bong]
There's no point in believing something blindly. Or for the sake of being different, or for creating your own blue island or whatever. Know the facts.
Similarly, hard-core atheists also annoy me. Especially the ones that believe in science. Atheism in itself is "believing in nonexistence of gods". You can't be an atheist and completely believe in science at the same time, because science is proof based.
Proving the absence of something is infinitely difficult and can be done under very special circumstances (i.e. mathematical proofs). Otherwise, you can't prove that it's not there. Simple. Agnosticism is a better answer, more scientific.
I can almost guarantee someone's views are going to be changed by what I just said. I like cookies, and mountain dew, if you're feeling generous.
*: Or Pokemon, if you so desire.
**: Perhaps I should use a more human verb. Like scream.
***: It being... public acceptance of homosexuality.
****:HIC = hippie in cage, the only circumstance I would talk to them, although, from their perspective, they would say that they're actually the free person, and the whole world is in a cage. While I can see how they got there, saying something like that would probably anger me. Not all hippies smoke pot, but I bet they'd still put a 'man' at the end of everything they say.
No comments:
Post a Comment