>Babies are very similar to one another, yet as we grow we change into very different people. Why? If we change so much before having children then why aren’t our children more different to those of the neighbour (and don’t say maybe they’re the neighbour’s children)?
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In 1947 Israel was seen as David, a small power facing huge Arab Goliaths, and worthy of pity because of it. Yet now Israel is seen as a clumsy bully, and sometimes even stupid in its stubborn persistance with its ‘Iron Wall’ philosophies. The ‘Iron Wall’ philosophy was developed in the 20s, so before Israel even existed. It says any sign of non-compliance with Israel must be met with over-whelming force. And there is little doubt that from then till now that philosophy has created a bully. So was the process inevitable?
Have you ever heard the phrase “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”? I’m afraid it doesn’t have a great intellectual source. It’s from the new Batman film (unless it was said elsewhere before). Do you think it’s true? Do good guys, heros, liberators and such forth always become the bad guys of the future?
P.S. I apologize for putting something else into biblical terms Sean. It just seems appropriate with Israel.
>This is a quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Arthur Dent spoke of a feeling that there was something going on in the universe that nobody would tell him about. “Oh no” says Zaphod Beeblebrox, “That’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe has that”.
This feeling is what films like The Truman Show and The Matrix play on. But does anyone know what that feeling is? Is it really universal? If so what causes it and what is it’s function?
>http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=151763828
This article says that £10 million was donated by the British public in just 24 hours from Friday to Saturday evening (15th-16th Jan). Indeed this was when my wife and I made a donation too. But why not earlier? Outside of this 24 hours Britons only raised £2 million. And I for one did know about the issue before. So is it just that we needed time to process all the information and breach some sort of barrier within us that made us think donating was necessary? Are we so selfish that we are able to delude ourselves into not donating until the evidence is just too strong? If so this has profound implications about the synchronizations of human psychology in that so many people felt that barrier breached at the same time. On the other hand there is a possibility that people simply did not have time to think about the news until they got to the weekend. In this case it is an extremely sad indication of how much pressure and work people are put under that they can’t even find 2 minutes to donate to a good cause.
What do you think?
>Do you think they’re worthwhile? What resolution did you make if you did, and why?
Do you think it’s slightly pessimistic of us to enter the new year thinking about what went wrong in the last year and that we should turn a whole new leaf? Or do you think New Year’s resolutions are more about minor changes such as not eating so much chocolate?
>Barbara Ehreneich recently wrote a book called ‘Bright-Sided’ In it she argued that optimism is infectious, and that it contributed to the current economic recession. She argues that shortly before the crash, in the US in particular, people were starting to hold optimism above the facts i.e. ‘if I believe in it enough it will happen’. She even cites a story in a podcast about someone who is fired because they seemed too pessimistic, asking too many questions about what problems the housing market could bring.
She argues that this one-sided attitude (that optimism is always good and pessimism always bad) has entered general culture. She was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. But when she started displaying pessimism it seems many people thought her response abnormal. People wrote to her saying that she should treat her condition as a positive opportunity to reflect upon her life, embrace spiritualism and generally become happier.
I have to say I’ve noted similar things myself. In fact I took a job as a Sales Manager at the start of the recession. It was a small company and I knew very little about sales. It turned out neither did they. At a senior meeting I was told that despite the then current market trends, they still expected the business to grow on a certain path (I can’t remember by how much). I asked what they based this on and where they expected the sales to come from i.e. what were their biggest market areas in the past. Amazingly, they didn’t really know. I was promised some data but I never got it. So how did they come to their conclusion? Sheer optimism is my guess.
Do you think there was too much optimism prior to the crash? Maybe you think there still is?
>Most of us love television. Most people spend a hell of a lot of time watching it. But is it good for us?
Bhutan’s ruler nobly declared in 1972 that he would lead the nation based not on ideas of advancement and monetary growth but on happiness. On the whole this does seem to have made people more happy, even if only through providing people re-assurance that their government is trying to help them. But in 1999 it was decided that television would help people become more happy. And so Bhutan became the last nation on Earth to recieve television. What happened next?
One year later crime and suicide had surged. In April 2002 the country experienced a crime wave like no other it had ever faced. The non corrupt culture that Bhutanese had been so proud of erroded seemingly over night. In a country where drugs grow more commonly than grass drug use had never been a problem before television. Yet on April 16th 2002 Dorje, a 37-year-old truck driver, bludgeoned his wife to death after she discovered he was addicted to heroin. Stories like this would have seemed completely out of place in 1998, where the Budhist culture discourages killing anything, even insects. Have the Bhutanese experienced a culture shock and difficulties coping with change? Or is television really at fault as many Bhutanese believe?
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