Are People Stupid?

Are people stupid? There are unfortunately a great number of people who think so. Why do they think so?

People do stupid things. People say stupid things. People think stupid things. But people are not stupid. It's just the downside of the unity concept. Unfortunately sometimes when people gather, their faults can combine and multiply. Each new generation then becomes enslaved in the conditioning of the previous one.

If you take the average person and put them in the proper environment, they will flourish. It's a shame that we just think this or that person is just incapable of real intelligence. Especially here in the school environment, I can see so much potential. Yeah, most people won't be able to immediately have a practical discussion (free from repitition of religious conditioning, on what life is all about). That's not to say that religious ideas don't hold some semblance of truth, but it's to say that truth is not something that can be repeated from the intellect, no more so than the "intelligence" of a computer pulling up passages from a religious text to answer any input question. I think that human intelligence is so much more fluid than that, so much more capable than that, that it can flow in everyday life to understand our human experience, our purpose here, without relying on other people's ideas.

But people have so much to offer, and there is so much intelligence expressed in many ways. When we are thinking other people are stupid, it's usually us who are the stupid ones. I don't think that it's about being blindly optimistic about everything, just realistic in that everything exists for a reason. People behave the way they do for a reason.

Unity

Yet another thing I realized during the moving process was the concept of unity. We were loading the truck, and I looked at the friends helping, and I realized that all the psychological weight that my wife and I had been carrying by ourselves had magically been diminished significantly. It was not only being shared, but it was being cured, it was disappearing.

It's an amazing thing in itself that as husband and wife, we are a team, therefore we are never alone. That is such an amazing thing that we can come to take for granted. We can become too comfortable and instead of seeing the other person for who they are, we see them as a compilation of memories, ideas, and concepts; and we can start to want to control the other person, or have commentary on every little thing. We're all guilty of it in everyday relationships, whether it's husband-wife, father-son, mother-daughter, daughter-father, etc. - the whole myriad of relationships; we are all guilty at times. But it's so fascinating when making an effort to see our close friends anew that a deeper respect and love begins to surface.

And so, these friends were there, and I was just amazed at how with friendship, all fear dissipated. It's a shame we let things slip into habits of self-interest, and so friendship and unity die. I think it's really worth the effort to keep it alive, not in an artificial sense but in the sense of making the effort to really see people, which brings me on to yet another topic.

Prioritizing and Doing Your Best (part 2/2)

And so, we decided to just do our best with our time and quit bitching about it. And you know, in the grand scheme of things, it was so much better this way. We went ahead and got the U-Haul on Saturday and kept it overnight. The two guys who could still help us could do so much earlier in the day. So we got started right at 8:30 a.m. and it was a gorgeous day all day long, with a nice breeze. Having only 2 people was a blessing in disguise because I'm sure if there were 4 or 5 or 6 people, it would have just been hectic and chaotic. Besides, there's only one entrance to the house. One of the guys had to leave after loading, but one of my wife's friends came to help the unloading. So with a loaded truck we all headed to have a nice big lunch at Moe's. The guy left and I did most of the heavy lifting from there while my wife and her friend unloaded boxes. It all worked out great in the end. And so, it was a learning experience. I've always known intellectually when I'm given time to think about it that we are never faced with anything we can't handle in some way or another. We are human, we will die, and in the middle we can only do our best. Stress and pressure are natural in a way, but I think it's imperative that we are able to deal with it without taking it out on other people or becoming ridiculous, because that's what happens when we let it in.

Prioritizing and Doing Your Best (part 1/2)

Moving has definitely been a learning process. I'm always surprised to see lessons in the ordinary events of life that most people just look over, or maybe just aren't so hot at being able to put the learning into words (which is doesn't necessarily have to be). Anyways, so time seemed to be against me, but in it I've learned to keep my cool (or make a fool of myself by losing it) and just role with the punches. For instance, my wife and I had reserved a truck for Saturday and several coworkers were planning on meeting us to help. Everything seemed to be in place. Despite warnings about weather from numerous friends, we stayed our course. I suppose a sense of positivity was clouding sound judgment. And so Saturday morning came and the weather forecasted numerous showers. So it was then that we were faced with a judgment call. And so we decided to put it off until Sunday, which wasn't possible for several of our friends who had to recall their offer. But it was out of our hands now. Nonetheless, we decided to make use of our time and so we boxed more stuff up, and we also headed to the new house to clean up a bit (you know, people leave dirty tubs, counters, etc., made worse by the fact that one of the sellers broke his arm while doing a repair, so his wife was stressed with everything, it's no surprise she couldn't deep clean the house). So we cleaned more or less all day.

Busy

I've been so unbelievably busy lately as I've been moving, working, and schooling. The moving has really thrown a wrench in there, although I will be glad to have it all done with at the same time school is out for the summer. Besides, busy is always fun in the end when you look back like, "Woah, we did all that?... Cool."

Funniest Moment Ever

Probably the funniest moment in my life happened several years ago when I was living with a couple friends in a two-story apartment. Somehow we were all too lazy to go upstairs to the bedroom to sleep so we'd all end up sleeping on couches and the floor. No problem since we had a U-shaped set of 3 sofas. One of my friends would roll out a mat on the floor and sleep there. I would sleep on one sofa, the one in the middle (the bottom of the U, not the sides), and my friend was sleeping on one of the other sofas.

Well it was one night when I had to get up really early for work the next morning, like 5 or 6 am, which is insanely early when normally we went to bed at 2 or 3 am. So to make sure I woke up, I set up an mp3 alarm clock on the computer to go off playing Rage Against the Machine (a very "hard" band) at a ridiculously loud volume when I needed to get up. No one else knew I had set the alarm clock.

The time hits and it goes off, playing this music super loud, my eyes pop open and my friend is already jumped up onto his feet from his sleep on an adjacent couch, and was several inches from my face screaming at the top of his lungs. No words, just AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! ..... AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. He didn't know what to think at all. With music blaring I tried to calm him by telling him everything was okay. He kept screaming for several seconds. I had to jump over the couch and cut the music off. I'll never forget his face. He thought it was armageddon.

On the Topic of Getting Hit

What it comes down to is the parent's psychology. I see too many people hitting their kid out of anger. If a child needs to be smacked over something, then it should be a conscious decision on the part of the adult, from a sound psychology. Everyone says, "Well I got hit, and I'm fine," or, "I never got hit and I'm fine." But there are people who got hit that are today in prison for murder. There are also people who never got hit that are today in prison for murder. So instead of just wanting to repeat what our parents did, or what other people have done, let's try to approach our kids from a sound psychology. I don't have kids, but I have cats, a nephew, and a neice. We adults need to get our s**t together, seriously - mentally, psychologically - we need to find in ourselves how to become objective, not slaves to our emotions in such situations. I think human intelligence will dictate what is right in any given situation, instead of just relying on emotional and conditioned responses.

Paddled for Prom Dress Code Violation?

The article I read said 17 of the 18 students who were in violation of prom dress codes opted for a paddling... What a ridiculous event. What kind of grown person would feel comfortable paddling a bunch of 17/18 year old girls? And more, what kind of 17/18 year old chooses to get paddled? This is why I don't pay much attention to these things... people are crazy. Both sides, crazy.

To Switch or Not to Switch...

I have recently picked up a copy of The Elegant Universe as suggested by Jennifer, the subject of my profile. It's a book that outlines the struggles in modern physics to explain the universe, and to unify the theories found in relativistic physics and quantum physics. And it supposedly does all this in layman's terms. I've begun reading it, and it's very well written. I have been thinking about math, how it's interesting to play with numbers, but at the same time I find quantum physics to be very alluring as well. It's a lot of theory, but I think there are answers out there that are much simpler than we can imagine right now. For instance, Einstein's general theory of relativity was absolutely revolutionary in the world of physics, yet the concept itself isn't all that complicated. It basically says that there is no specific vantage point for the universe. For instance, planet A might be traveling 5,000 mph through space relative to planet B, but in relation to another planet it's only traveling 2,000 mph. There is no set "stationary" in space, movement can only be defined relativistically. Then throw in the simple concept that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So now there's an insanely simple concept that has so many complex implications. I think it's that sort of thing that the new research in physics is looking for.

So I've been wondering if turning back to the first instinct for a major I had would be a good idea. That was seven years ago when I decided I wanted to go the quantum physics route. I suppose I could go after a double major possibly. Either way, I won't have to set anything in stone at least for a couple more years since physics and math pretty much go hand-in-hand for a while.