Advertising, Pilate and Arrogance

First and foremost, I want to rant about how much information is actually accessible about us. I was on YouTube just a few hours ago and noticed an advert box on the side trying to get me to buy comic book related TV shows such as Spiderman and Avengers. On closer look this box reveals that it knows I recently bought the X-Men cartoon from play.com.

This is really concerning. How has YouTube got hold of this information? Or more importantly how has an external company got hold of this information and then passed it on to YouTube to get me to click?

I’m just saying this is really not right?

Secondly...

 I was watching Family Guy again the other day and noticed a sketch where Pontius Pilate and Judas meet and celebrate because they both want to ‘crucify the son of God’, then they march off merrily arm in arm.

 

(Sorry about subtitles, this is the only version from youtube I could find)

Now I’m all for Religion not being taken too seriously on these programmes but only if the facts are right. Don’t take the mick out of something based on false information, this becomes annoying and misleading.

It is clearly stated in the Bible that Pontius Pilate believes Jesus to be innocent of any crimes, and only goes through with the trail because the public are close to rioting. He washes his hands in that symbolic scene.

So to depict Pilate as wanting to execute Jesus is just wrong.

This feeds in nicely to what I originally planned to talk about. I really cannot stand it when people make assumptions about situations based on how they expect it to have gone. By this I mean they guess a certain event took place a certain way and then as far as they are concerned that is set in stone. This really annoys me.

Example: A guy and a female friend go out for a drink, something happens and the girl gets spiked and therefore really ill. Guy takes girl back to his apartment so he can watch her and make sure she makes it through the night. In these circumstances the best place to put the girl is in the bed, it is most comfortable and easiest place to lay someone on their side. Next morning the Girlfriend of the guy arrives and see’s the girl in his bed. Bam.

She immediately assumes that the guy cheated on her. The guy protests and tells exactly what happens but the girl does not believe. She assumes that her view of the situation is right and that the guy must automatically be lying and covering up.

Reality check here people. Things are hardly ever what they appear at first glance. So many bizarre things happen in the world that make things look suspicious, but we have to remember that every scenario has a number of different possible paths leading to it. Humans have this irritating habit of assuming the worst or the one that fits most in worldview and then regarding anything other to their view as an excuse or a lie.

This arrogance is one of the few things to truly make me angry. I guess the moral of this is don’t just assume the most likely circumstances are the true ones, but its only ‘likely’ by your world view and not in reality. Having said this, a situation like that does require care as obviously people do lie about situations to get themselves out of trouble. So the key here is don’t just assume but try and find out all of the facts and evidence before you start getting arrogant and throw around accusations.

Superpowers

I must apologise for the lack of posting so far this year. My new job has been drainning my time, typical really, I went from being stuck in bored all day to not having enough time to myself!

I am a big comic book fan and so often I end up discussing with my friends what superpowers they would want and why. I'm finding more and more, as a result of this, that people's choice of power fits very much with their deep seeded life philosophies or how they feel about life.

For example some want strength, because they feel weak in life, or they want to protect others. Some want invisibility because they feel pressured and just want to disappear. Others, time travel to reverse things that have happened.

Ask yourself what power you would have. Try not to choose one on the basis of your liking a character, say you like Wolverine and so want the claws (which by the way, isn’t actually his 'power') or you think Cyclops’s eye beam is cool. I mean purely for yourself, you may learn a little about your personality and see deeper into your own soul.

As for me, I would go with the power to create duplicates of myself. The main character in existence who does this is Multiple Man from the X-Factor franchise. Now don't get me wrong here, I don't want that power because I like Multiple Man, I like Multiple Man because he has that power. The power, although in a slightly different form, also exists in a book called Kiln People (which I highly recommend by the way).

The reason I want this power is seeded into quite possibly the deepest part of my soul. A philosophical premise that fuels my entire life, everything I do, every decision I make. All are based on this premise.

Living a full life.

It is only recently I have become Christian. I spent most of my time as an Agnostic and this lead me to think, "Well, if God does or does not exist is not going to make itself clear to me soon" so I felt I needed to make sure I lived a full life to be on the safe side.

I soon found when exploring this that what may sound like a relatively easy concept really is not.

I thought that living a full life would be like a checklist, you simply move to the next thing on the list and cross it off, so when the list is done you can die happy knowing that you have lived a full life. I have quickly discovered that this is not the case.

You can spend your entire life just trying to tick off the first item, because once you explore what could be a simple thing on your list soon splits into more sub lists with options. I hate options.

Options make this difficult. Especially if by taking one path you close off the other and cannot then explore it.

Some would say the thing to do is to take a path and follow it to it's end and as long as you reach the end you have lived a full life according to that path. This is really the only realistic way of accomplishing this. Even choosing a few paths to become a well rounded individual would leave me wondering if I chose the right combinations.

This is not good enough for me, so over the past few years, more recently in particular I have taken to exploring as many paths as possible side by side, making sure I actively find the one best for me to follow rather than just blindly following the path immediately apparent.

Doing this has lead to some good accomplishments and discoveries, but equally some terrible issues and realisations.

Multiple Man in the comic sends duplicates off to live every path of life, he gets all the memories and experiences so to me that power is the only one that can guarantee living a full life, as it would be the only way to live every life to the end game.

I have tried to do this to the best to my ability. I do actually believe that as far as a normal mortal human being can manage I am achieving this. I have many circles of friends, most of which are completely different from each other and are even polar opposites.

This way of life has been problematic especially when the different groups intermix and do not see eye to eye.

The trouble I am finding now by living so many walks of life at the same time is it has devalued each of these paths in turn, making none of them more appealing than any of the others as a permanent path to take. Hedonism, Religion, Normal, Nerd, Sporty, Lazy... each has pros and cons which when I now weight them up leaves me stuck in the middle with none being an obvious choice.

I wish I could have the confidence of so many people from all these different walks of life who know that their path is the one they want. I expect I will always doubt whatever path I take.

DFTBA