Sunday 15 January 2012

Provocation


On Christmas Eve I attended a midnight mass in which the sermon mentioned how if the Higgs Boson particle gets discovered it will not make a difference to religious life. This got me thinking about how so quickly disagreeing groups will resort to using provoking statements which often involves attacking the other side in order to make their points seem more valid.

Science and Religion are a prime example of this. You have scientists such as Richard Dawkins who will attack and question the intelligence and even sanity of religious people because they disagree with him.

Now I am a man with both a religious life and a fondness for science and Dawkin’s statements are more provocative to someone in my position than someone who is a creationist. Part of the reason for this is it is harder for someone in the middle to just close their mind and not listen to what is being said, to ignore what is being said. Some may then be even more provocative and say the reason why people in the middle find it so frustrating and upsetting is because “they know their wrong” etc.

This irritates me even more because this is not necessarily the case. It certainly cannot be denied that this could be a factor, but to me it is more a case of resenting being put into an impossible situation when you have one party insisting your wrong if you believe one thing and another party insisting your wrong for believing the other.

I should explain that for the purposes of my point, right and wrong are not what it is important; people should have the right to be wrong in peace.

Science can be equally as provocative such as with calling the Higgs Bosen the ‘God Particle’. I think this was an extremely bad move and was naturally going to ruffle the feathers of people through all parts of the religious spectrum. It strikes me almost as patronising.

Another particularly aggravating form of this is gender battles. I hate gender battles. As far as I am concerned as soon as people start going “It’s because he is a man” or “She is a woman” you have lost your argument. It falls similar to comparing things to the Nazi’s. People only start using this when they have run out of a reasonable argument. The fact is men are all different from each other as are all women, to characterise one thing to an entire gender is just stupid. Now obviously people can explain certain natural traits through instinct or things like that. Which to a certain extent is true but never enough to justify labelling an entire gender. Particularly not with “All men are insensitive” or something like that.

A final example is with national media. By this I mean propaganda in particular with comic books and TV shows. If you look at older Marvel comics you see that Captain America’s enemies were mostly Germans with the occasional Russians or Chinese thrown in. This tradition (particularly with Nazis) is still present in modern editions although not as bad. It is still easy for the Russian Government or the German Government to take real offense to how they are portrayed or more likely, the fact that they are still being portrayed as the villains.
The TV programme Firefly is another example, having a British character and a Russian character as villains which the American heroes have to defeat. There is a fine balance between national pride and then provoking hatred in other nations.

So, do not blame someone for something because of their gender and certainly do not label or judge the rest of that gender because of one idiot. If you know you’re going to say something just to spark an emotional reaction, or hurt someone, with no real validity to your argument then keep your mouth shut or else you have devalued and disrespected yourself and resorted to acting like a child.

DFTBA

Monday 2 January 2012

2012 safe and sound

New Year is upon us!

I hope all had a marvellous Christmas and New Year; we entered what will be an interesting year, for both me personally and the general public. Brilliant lines up of movies such as ‘The Avengers’ are scheduled for release and the UK is playing host to the 2012 Olympic Games.

  By now everyone will also be aware there are a variety of apocalypse myths regarding 2012 too. Most specifically the date of 21st December in which the Mayan is said to end. I do not believe any of the various stories about 2012 because of numerous sources, but one I find particularly convincing is NASA itself:



If the world does decide to end on the 21st December 2012 I hope it's zombies.  Despite this I am still concerned about the days before the 21st. This year Britain experiences a random surge of rioting, looting and violence for no political or slightly sensible reason. I fully expect a repeat of this on the days leading towards the 'end of the world' as thugs and criminals may use the alleged stories as an excuse to start up such actions again. This in turn would likely cause even more widespread panic as people could then see it as a sign of said apocalypse. Hence causing nationwide panic.

In the 90's sci-fi show 'Sliders', and even in Doctor Who there are scenes in episodes of people looting and rioting when they believe the world is about to end.

  This would be inconvient at best.

  What interests me is some of the people convicted from the rioting last year stated that they joined in to prove they were independent from society. Some humans seem to have this natural despite to be independent from the rest of society. Many choose to dress differently, such as Goths and other 'alternatives' claiming they are independent from everyone else. Others resort to crime as a more active defiance.  What I then find annoying is when people like this then need the services provided by our society for their own interest they will be the first to complain that things are not good enough.  I do not believe it possible to be independent from society. The common quote "No man is an island" comes to mind.

As soon as we are born we become part of a complex web of society which we can never untangle ourselves from. Some find this idea terrifying and go into denial, insisting that you can become independent; you can fight society and become 'free'. Even hermits are not free from the web of society. No doubt hermits will have been born in a hospital, immediately causing them to have leeched off services that our society provides. To have already taken so much from society and then insist you will give as little back as possible (which can be an interpretation of what being free from society involves), is selfish at best.

 People may respond that we did not choose to be born into society. Well this is very true, but we have been so it is irrelevant if we wanted it or not.  One of my favourite book series is called "The Traveller" by John Twelve Hawks and is about a group of freedom fighters wanting to live "Off-Grid" meaning completely separate from what they call 'The Great machine'.  In this series society is depicted as an evil controlling mechanism wanting to know what every individual is doing at any one time. An interesting idea although completely unfounded. The result of this are a number of internet conspiracies stating that this book is closer to the truth than we believe and that society is trying to control us. In some ways I agree, Governments do place laws to control us, but for no-where near as dark and corrupted reasons as people seem to think.  The fact is society has developed the way it has because it was necessary for our survival. If we did not have this unbreakable society model where people are born into a community, feed off the community and give back into the community then we would only have one other option: anarchy and chaos.

If the 2012 apocalypse proves true it will not be meteorites or any other natural phenomena that destroys us it will be ourselves.

If society breaks down as some people wish then that would be the end of the world in a way. Likely humans would survive of course, but the world as we know it would end. Perhaps the Euro is going to collapse completely? That would certainly bring madness as we cannot do the German trick of simply resetting currency, the Euro has become far too complicated for that. Maybe rioting will start again and other countries will follow suit to such a degree that marshal law gets enforced...

This is of course merely speculation and certainly has no evidence to back up any of it...

;)

DFTBA