As much as people talk about holidays, a place in the sun, relax and drink Margaritas, it is marred, no, not only by pushy street hustlers and relentless vendors but insects of all kinds. Admit it, you want to squash ‘em, hit ‘em, shoot ’em, poison ‘em drown ‘em in short; terminate ‘em. Now, I’m not sure who you are thinking about, but for now let’s stay with the bugs, the kind that is using more than two legs to get around and even fly.
We find them in the jungle, the streets but mainly our rooms seem to have an irresistible attraction for them and so our dishes loaded with yummy stuff. Sometimes I wonder how many insects per spoon I get to consume in a sitting. At night they are the talk of the town and movie stars wish to be talked about as much. We humans are also very popular with the bugs as we can testify in the morning in front of a mirror. When nature’s call is becoming hard to ignore in the middle of the night and staying in bed is not really an option, we wake up to the sound of our crunchy foot steps from our half-sleep. Yup, it was a not fast enough cockroach. After returning to our bed, fighting off Mexican kamikaze mosquito squads is taking up the rest of the night until we fall into an exhausted sleep. No wonder that some folks can’t recognise themselves in the mirror and look for a familiar face who could possibly identify them.
Our repertoire to control this insect plague has been limited to swatting, waving and some commercially available means to keep them at bay.
But there is a new development here and how we combat our insect population. We tried insecticides, repellents, lights, zappers, chemicals, acids and even basic hand to hand, mano a mano strategies but the odds are in favour of the marauders. They come in masses in all sizes, forms and shapes, invading our habitat and pillage shamelessly our food supplies and even leave with huge quantities of our lifeblood. What they leave behind is bumps, welts, blisters and a mounting desire to take revenge. For peace loving and all life respecting beings this is a great challenge and even though we know that eventually the life force will return, hopefully in more benign form, it is with heavy heart that we conduct our killing. ( we all know this is a lie.)
In our search for effective measures we came upon several means to get rid of the invaders, all deadly. And when even one of the enemy is vanquished we have a devilish delight over our success. We make jokes about the way the got squashed, electrocuted or poisoned before or after they had breakfast.
-Oh look. This one tried to get away with your blood. And see how flat she is now? Quick! Wash the blood of your hands or they will have evidence against you in a Court of Law. Or; This one is so ugly now that even her mother will not want her back.
Wow! Nice and crispy. Want a taste?
Others get mashed so bad, even god would have trouble to reassemble them.
When we get lucky to spray them, we remain close to the Legs-up-and-kicking, spinning and doing the Pilates workout exercises infected bug to our own risk to health just to see them meeting their Maker.
Due to concerns to our health, we came across a new method of eliminating our adversary. Booze! Yes, you read right. Booze like in alcohol. We went to a Drugstore and bought a bottle of 90% pure alcohol, filled it into a spray bottle and lay in ambush for our victims. It’s just like in some bars Down Town where the girls in their sexy outfits wait for a suitable and unsuspecting tourist, rushes them and shoots and shoots and shoots Tequila down their throats while blowing a whistle. The victim does seem to like this and staggers away with an euphoric grin on his face singing a Mariachi tune, Ay-yay-a-yay, on top of his lungs.
We think it is great. We throw a party, invite all the critters, free booze, all you can get, get them sloshed and watch them die on alcohol, It’s a killer party. The few who get away will have a hang-over that will last them for the rest of their life. And what more, they die happy, possibly with a song and a grin on their face or whatever you may call that frontal part of their head. But for sure they have a more pleasant passing then before. We hope word gets around and we will be host to many of their kind. The other bugs, you know the type I did not talk about, are not invited but we will think of something as to what to do with them.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Cynic
Andre Schwartz Page 1 6/24/08
Cynic?
Most of my life I had observed the difference between words and deeds and found humans. It amuses me how one person makes a speech and another needs to interpret what he meant and a third again understands it differently.
One only need to read a letter from their partner when in a good mood and then again when in a bad mood. The meaning changes dramatically.
Allow me to digress a little to demonstrate what I mean.
A member of a religious organization gave a magazine to me and on the title page was a sentence that said: “Is there a God who cares?” Because I wanted to make a point to them how they made a choice to get the meaning they wanted from the written text and to explain how anything written can be understood any way you feel like to suit a purpose, I emphasized each word differently. Here we go.
“Is there a God who cares?” –Well, is there?
“Is there a God who cares?” –Maybe somewhere else?
“Is there a God who cares?” –Perhaps many more?
“Is there a God who cares?” –Could it be something else?
“Is there a God who cares?” – Many don’t care.
“Is there a God who cares?” –Ask some battle worn Veteran.
And just for good measures: Is there a God? Who cares! -Look at some Governments leadership.
Bush’s most idiotic remark after 9/11 “You are either with us or you are against us” is harder to misconstrue.
Given that one must read the rest of the book to get the gist of the meaning, we must admit that even the following sentences can be likewise changed and this is known since people can read. We need to write books to clarify the meaning of just one sentence.
When I learned to speak the Russian language, I heard the warning: Beware of the intonation! How true!
Meaning of written words, unless spoken, is free for interpretation by clever people to manipulate others.
We seem to be the only species on this planet that practice interpretations with diligence.
It cannot be the brain that allows for this unique phenomenon because most members of the animal kingdom have that too, so it has to be something other than that.
But then again, it is possible that because they do not speak a human language and we cannot understand their sounds that we presume they don’t make that distinction and it may also be that they do make a difference between words and meaning but we will never really know until we decipher their speech.
Just for fun let’s assume that humans are the only species that have that ability and have the dubious talent to have words and meaning differing. Now, why is that?
What was the God who presumably gave us this ability thinking?
And if we were created in his likeness would that not imply that he has the same ability? What if he also said one thing and meant another?
Now that puts things in a different light. Here is a lying, conniving, scheming human created by an all-knowing Being putting shame on his creator or is it possible the proverb “The apple does not fall far from the apple tree is wrong?”
(This is the moment when religious fanatics would want to crucify me.)
Or perhaps the Greek Gods were portrayed correctly as being mischievous and we overlooked that and created a God that is so annoyingly good and noble so we can feel guilty about being humans? Food for thought.
It may sound heretical what I’m asking here but I have come to the conclusion that I’m free, even to the point of mocking believes and Gods.
“Fear thy God,” what a stupid thing to do when He or She is UNCONDITIONALLY loving. Any laws or commandments create conditional love. Is that not understood yet? If we must fear something, it better be our own ignorance.
I think that real freedom is the absence of fear and not blind devotion to some books that humans claim to have been inspired by one of the Gods.
There is no freedom in fear, only slavish obedience. And if there is a God, and I mean if, he, she or it has given men freedom as it presumably has itself, then I’m free to do as I please and only need to be aware of cause and effect and the freedom of choice is mine. So God or Gods are above insults or jokes of humans and don’t need champions to defend them. I think that only humans feel the need to defend there believes out of insecurity.
The Thesaurus describes a cynic as someone who makes joke of the human nature but this is not my intent.
cyn·i·cal or cyn·ic adj
1. doubting or contemptuous of human nature or of the motives, goodness, or sincerity of others
2. mocking, scornful, or sneering
cyn·ic n
1. somebody who believes that human actions are insincere and motivated by self-interest
2. somebody sneering and sarcastic
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
There really is no need to be making jokes of humans because most of them are not capable to understand a good joke anyway. It has not always been so.
It is the humans who are doing a good job themselves to be the butt of jokes so there is no need for me to do that. We tend to take ourselves too serious to recognise our being as a cosmic joke.
However, I do like to put a mirror in humanities face so we can see what it is we’re doing. There may be a way out of this labyrinth but only if we can see where we are. As far as I see there is no other way but to examine our actions and believes and watch carefully what we say and what we do. Anything else is untruth if the word is not the same as the deed. Actions demonstrate meaning much better than explanations.
But often I found that when things are pointed out to humans that are harmful to growth, inhuman, or plain stupid, they get really upset with the person who points it out but not with the conditions.
In a country not so far away I discovered an interesting attitude that got me thinking about some fundamental differences between the cultures.
What I observed was this: Many public places where equipped with boxes that had inquiry forms about the performance and conditions they encountered. This forms had been collected and then analyzed by a group of people who then suggested to the responsible people what needed to be corrected and what worked well. To mine and other peoples astonishment the criticism has been addressed and changes been made to suit the needs when possible without having had to tell visitors if they did not like what they found to go back where they came from.
I would call that an enlightened approach. But when pride of ones heritage or tradition gets in the way, it is amazing how things get out of hand.
We don’t have to look far to find heritage and traditions clash. It is being upheld like a high virtue and it is the bloodiest thing that exists.
Look at the Middle East, North and South America, Northern Ireland, Asia, Europe and Africa or wherever you care to look, including our own environment of the family that we think so much to be a sanctuary.
Everywhere people fight over ideas they are so proud of that others need to die for them. And it’s mostly about ideas and not necessities like food and water.
We consider a natural catastrophe a tragedy, far from it. What we are doing to others in the name of some ideas is a tragedy. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis and sometimes a visit from mothers in law are catastrophes.
Why do we have to have a country, a nationality or religion? Did you ever see a nationality? What is that? Does it make you look different? If you were born in outer space or in the middle of the Pacific what nationality would you have? Would you know it? What can it be used for that we could not do without? What if you were blind? Would you know the race of another or that they have three heads?
Would you encounter a God? What God would you find without anybody talking to you about it? Did you really hear a God talking to you? Did Jesus die on a cross on some other planet to “save” our souls? Had Buddha proclaimed the nature of suffering on the planet Nanu-Nanu also? What Golem herder wrote a Koran on the Pleiades?
You know, individuals have been sent into mental hospitals, and rightly so, if they claim to hear voices but when you claim it is God talking, saying to harm or kill others, it’s okay? Each religious group is asking their God to aid them in a conflict and never to cease it. Are we all nuts?
Asking questions like this gets you a title or an untimely death: Sir Heretic, Lord Rebell-rouser or Earl Anarchist. Go for it. At least it will open your mind and you may find yourself in a mental prison imposed by Religions, Politics and Superstition.
Each one of them is teaching and conditioning their flock to accept their dogmas, which includes saying one thing and doing another, to be phoney. If then they are called to accountability, they are ready to tell us, they did not mean to do that or have been misunderstood.
They claim to be Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Hebrews, just to name a few but as the teachings say: By their actions shall you know them. Words are cheap and membership is easy.
I would very much like to be light-hearted and be more relaxed about the things I observe around me but I see more and more how old folks get robbed, cloned out of their life savings and cheated. Others are overcharging for services, embezzling money and exploiting their position. I see corruption in every facet of human behaviour and it makes me wonder where this will go.
Too often I hear: The Government is corrupt. Monkey muffins!!! They are representatives in power of a corrupt population.
If this makes me cynical then so be it but I will not stand by and take it with a shrug of my shoulders and say:
“Well, this is their culture or this is the way it is, better yet, why do you try to change the world?
I know it’s not right and they know it. No excuses accepted. Would you care to change this trend of indifference in the world or do nothing and let it be? If we don’t speak up we condone it and they will think it’s okay what they do and when we do speak up, we will be called shit disturbers or cynics. Changes come about only through actions and this changes need to start with every single individual.
Let’s put an end to indifference and apathy and start caring. There are too many using the words: “ I don’t care” and those deserve to live in a world of their own creation but those who care should not have to be part of it.
Why not be called names by those who want to be living in a world of crime, hatred, dishonesty and desolation? It would be an honour.
When I’m sitting in a boat with perhaps a hundred others and a few fools start to put holes into the hull and the boat begins to sink, would you not have the right to stop them? A few of those fools are destroying our air, water and our whole planet for profit. Once it is gone, where will we live?
Maybe we could buy a new planet from Wal-Mart from the profits we made and start new.
A suggestion would be to learn first how to maintain the world we’re living on before moving on into space.
Changes would start individually with each one of us and taking responsibility for our actions is a first step.
Don’t wait for others to do it for you.
Cynic?
Most of my life I had observed the difference between words and deeds and found humans. It amuses me how one person makes a speech and another needs to interpret what he meant and a third again understands it differently.
One only need to read a letter from their partner when in a good mood and then again when in a bad mood. The meaning changes dramatically.
Allow me to digress a little to demonstrate what I mean.
A member of a religious organization gave a magazine to me and on the title page was a sentence that said: “Is there a God who cares?” Because I wanted to make a point to them how they made a choice to get the meaning they wanted from the written text and to explain how anything written can be understood any way you feel like to suit a purpose, I emphasized each word differently. Here we go.
“Is there a God who cares?” –Well, is there?
“Is there a God who cares?” –Maybe somewhere else?
“Is there a God who cares?” –Perhaps many more?
“Is there a God who cares?” –Could it be something else?
“Is there a God who cares?” – Many don’t care.
“Is there a God who cares?” –Ask some battle worn Veteran.
And just for good measures: Is there a God? Who cares! -Look at some Governments leadership.
Bush’s most idiotic remark after 9/11 “You are either with us or you are against us” is harder to misconstrue.
Given that one must read the rest of the book to get the gist of the meaning, we must admit that even the following sentences can be likewise changed and this is known since people can read. We need to write books to clarify the meaning of just one sentence.
When I learned to speak the Russian language, I heard the warning: Beware of the intonation! How true!
Meaning of written words, unless spoken, is free for interpretation by clever people to manipulate others.
We seem to be the only species on this planet that practice interpretations with diligence.
It cannot be the brain that allows for this unique phenomenon because most members of the animal kingdom have that too, so it has to be something other than that.
But then again, it is possible that because they do not speak a human language and we cannot understand their sounds that we presume they don’t make that distinction and it may also be that they do make a difference between words and meaning but we will never really know until we decipher their speech.
Just for fun let’s assume that humans are the only species that have that ability and have the dubious talent to have words and meaning differing. Now, why is that?
What was the God who presumably gave us this ability thinking?
And if we were created in his likeness would that not imply that he has the same ability? What if he also said one thing and meant another?
Now that puts things in a different light. Here is a lying, conniving, scheming human created by an all-knowing Being putting shame on his creator or is it possible the proverb “The apple does not fall far from the apple tree is wrong?”
(This is the moment when religious fanatics would want to crucify me.)
Or perhaps the Greek Gods were portrayed correctly as being mischievous and we overlooked that and created a God that is so annoyingly good and noble so we can feel guilty about being humans? Food for thought.
It may sound heretical what I’m asking here but I have come to the conclusion that I’m free, even to the point of mocking believes and Gods.
“Fear thy God,” what a stupid thing to do when He or She is UNCONDITIONALLY loving. Any laws or commandments create conditional love. Is that not understood yet? If we must fear something, it better be our own ignorance.
I think that real freedom is the absence of fear and not blind devotion to some books that humans claim to have been inspired by one of the Gods.
There is no freedom in fear, only slavish obedience. And if there is a God, and I mean if, he, she or it has given men freedom as it presumably has itself, then I’m free to do as I please and only need to be aware of cause and effect and the freedom of choice is mine. So God or Gods are above insults or jokes of humans and don’t need champions to defend them. I think that only humans feel the need to defend there believes out of insecurity.
The Thesaurus describes a cynic as someone who makes joke of the human nature but this is not my intent.
cyn·i·cal or cyn·ic adj
1. doubting or contemptuous of human nature or of the motives, goodness, or sincerity of others
2. mocking, scornful, or sneering
cyn·ic n
1. somebody who believes that human actions are insincere and motivated by self-interest
2. somebody sneering and sarcastic
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
There really is no need to be making jokes of humans because most of them are not capable to understand a good joke anyway. It has not always been so.
It is the humans who are doing a good job themselves to be the butt of jokes so there is no need for me to do that. We tend to take ourselves too serious to recognise our being as a cosmic joke.
However, I do like to put a mirror in humanities face so we can see what it is we’re doing. There may be a way out of this labyrinth but only if we can see where we are. As far as I see there is no other way but to examine our actions and believes and watch carefully what we say and what we do. Anything else is untruth if the word is not the same as the deed. Actions demonstrate meaning much better than explanations.
But often I found that when things are pointed out to humans that are harmful to growth, inhuman, or plain stupid, they get really upset with the person who points it out but not with the conditions.
In a country not so far away I discovered an interesting attitude that got me thinking about some fundamental differences between the cultures.
What I observed was this: Many public places where equipped with boxes that had inquiry forms about the performance and conditions they encountered. This forms had been collected and then analyzed by a group of people who then suggested to the responsible people what needed to be corrected and what worked well. To mine and other peoples astonishment the criticism has been addressed and changes been made to suit the needs when possible without having had to tell visitors if they did not like what they found to go back where they came from.
I would call that an enlightened approach. But when pride of ones heritage or tradition gets in the way, it is amazing how things get out of hand.
We don’t have to look far to find heritage and traditions clash. It is being upheld like a high virtue and it is the bloodiest thing that exists.
Look at the Middle East, North and South America, Northern Ireland, Asia, Europe and Africa or wherever you care to look, including our own environment of the family that we think so much to be a sanctuary.
Everywhere people fight over ideas they are so proud of that others need to die for them. And it’s mostly about ideas and not necessities like food and water.
We consider a natural catastrophe a tragedy, far from it. What we are doing to others in the name of some ideas is a tragedy. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis and sometimes a visit from mothers in law are catastrophes.
Why do we have to have a country, a nationality or religion? Did you ever see a nationality? What is that? Does it make you look different? If you were born in outer space or in the middle of the Pacific what nationality would you have? Would you know it? What can it be used for that we could not do without? What if you were blind? Would you know the race of another or that they have three heads?
Would you encounter a God? What God would you find without anybody talking to you about it? Did you really hear a God talking to you? Did Jesus die on a cross on some other planet to “save” our souls? Had Buddha proclaimed the nature of suffering on the planet Nanu-Nanu also? What Golem herder wrote a Koran on the Pleiades?
You know, individuals have been sent into mental hospitals, and rightly so, if they claim to hear voices but when you claim it is God talking, saying to harm or kill others, it’s okay? Each religious group is asking their God to aid them in a conflict and never to cease it. Are we all nuts?
Asking questions like this gets you a title or an untimely death: Sir Heretic, Lord Rebell-rouser or Earl Anarchist. Go for it. At least it will open your mind and you may find yourself in a mental prison imposed by Religions, Politics and Superstition.
Each one of them is teaching and conditioning their flock to accept their dogmas, which includes saying one thing and doing another, to be phoney. If then they are called to accountability, they are ready to tell us, they did not mean to do that or have been misunderstood.
They claim to be Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Hebrews, just to name a few but as the teachings say: By their actions shall you know them. Words are cheap and membership is easy.
I would very much like to be light-hearted and be more relaxed about the things I observe around me but I see more and more how old folks get robbed, cloned out of their life savings and cheated. Others are overcharging for services, embezzling money and exploiting their position. I see corruption in every facet of human behaviour and it makes me wonder where this will go.
Too often I hear: The Government is corrupt. Monkey muffins!!! They are representatives in power of a corrupt population.
If this makes me cynical then so be it but I will not stand by and take it with a shrug of my shoulders and say:
“Well, this is their culture or this is the way it is, better yet, why do you try to change the world?
I know it’s not right and they know it. No excuses accepted. Would you care to change this trend of indifference in the world or do nothing and let it be? If we don’t speak up we condone it and they will think it’s okay what they do and when we do speak up, we will be called shit disturbers or cynics. Changes come about only through actions and this changes need to start with every single individual.
Let’s put an end to indifference and apathy and start caring. There are too many using the words: “ I don’t care” and those deserve to live in a world of their own creation but those who care should not have to be part of it.
Why not be called names by those who want to be living in a world of crime, hatred, dishonesty and desolation? It would be an honour.
When I’m sitting in a boat with perhaps a hundred others and a few fools start to put holes into the hull and the boat begins to sink, would you not have the right to stop them? A few of those fools are destroying our air, water and our whole planet for profit. Once it is gone, where will we live?
Maybe we could buy a new planet from Wal-Mart from the profits we made and start new.
A suggestion would be to learn first how to maintain the world we’re living on before moving on into space.
Changes would start individually with each one of us and taking responsibility for our actions is a first step.
Don’t wait for others to do it for you.
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