I could complain about this forever, but I don't want to sound too old or bitter...
Seriously, what is going on with the decibel levels emitted by regular, every day people? On the street at traffic lights, on the train, in restaurants, in the apartment above me... people talking somehow manages to be louder than traffic, television, music on my iPod. I don't understand how two people sitting or standing within a few feet of each other need to speak so loudly that (a) they are pretty much shouting already and (b) they don't realise that the rest of the planet can hear them.
Sometimes, I'm quite tempted to pay attention for 2 minutes (I wouldn't call it eavesdropping, since they are the ones yelling into my ear canal), and then join in the conversation, amazing them by "you know, like, totally, OMG, yeah" understanding what they were going on about.
Most times though, I have to restrain myself from finding the nearest large, blunt object...
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Limited resources
Consider this.
The world has a limited supply of "common sense". One giant dollop, spread across the globe like slightly melted butter spread across a piece of toast. This supply is a constant amount, never being consumed, and never being created. It simply is.
Unfortunately, this level of common sense must be shared across the entire population of planet Earth. In the good old days (let's say Ice Age/Neanderthal times, leading in to the rise of Homo Sapiens), this common sense was distributed within a tiny population. The end result - humans survived, flourished, evolved, found fire, developed the wheel, began farming and agricultural practices, domesticated animals, discovered ores and metals etc.
That evolutionary process was quite impressive, and led us to our current state, many, many billion people on a tiny rock, spinning through the universe. That fixed level of common sense now has to be shared across billions and billions of people, young and old, tall and short, rich and poor. Just like butter on toast, the process of spreading the common sense isn't necessarily even when considering such large population. Clumps of common sense may be left on the edges of society, providing us with the brilliance and inspiration of artists, musicians, scientists... But for too many other millions and millions of people, there just wasn't enough common sense to go around, leaving us with...well, quite frankly, idiots.
I like to remind myself of this theory each day when I'm watching tv, reading the paper or just walking around, shaking my head at the multitude of acts of sheer stupidity, rudeness, incompetence and ignorance I've witnessed.
This theory does have the occasional flaw, like what about rude geniuses? Millionaire fools? But that's a thought for another day...
PS. In case the point of this entire post didn't make sense, here's the answer - I've finally decided to start writing down my genius theories before they slip away, back into the ether, never to be remembered again. More for amusement than any particular reason. I've already started forgetting the details of my karmic marketplace for hangover symptom sharing...
The world has a limited supply of "common sense". One giant dollop, spread across the globe like slightly melted butter spread across a piece of toast. This supply is a constant amount, never being consumed, and never being created. It simply is.
Unfortunately, this level of common sense must be shared across the entire population of planet Earth. In the good old days (let's say Ice Age/Neanderthal times, leading in to the rise of Homo Sapiens), this common sense was distributed within a tiny population. The end result - humans survived, flourished, evolved, found fire, developed the wheel, began farming and agricultural practices, domesticated animals, discovered ores and metals etc.
That evolutionary process was quite impressive, and led us to our current state, many, many billion people on a tiny rock, spinning through the universe. That fixed level of common sense now has to be shared across billions and billions of people, young and old, tall and short, rich and poor. Just like butter on toast, the process of spreading the common sense isn't necessarily even when considering such large population. Clumps of common sense may be left on the edges of society, providing us with the brilliance and inspiration of artists, musicians, scientists... But for too many other millions and millions of people, there just wasn't enough common sense to go around, leaving us with...well, quite frankly, idiots.
I like to remind myself of this theory each day when I'm watching tv, reading the paper or just walking around, shaking my head at the multitude of acts of sheer stupidity, rudeness, incompetence and ignorance I've witnessed.
This theory does have the occasional flaw, like what about rude geniuses? Millionaire fools? But that's a thought for another day...
PS. In case the point of this entire post didn't make sense, here's the answer - I've finally decided to start writing down my genius theories before they slip away, back into the ether, never to be remembered again. More for amusement than any particular reason. I've already started forgetting the details of my karmic marketplace for hangover symptom sharing...
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