Higher education, drinks, "Normalize," gift horses, news cycle, vaccines, fear, fire in the sky

Monday 9/2/24

Higher education is being told what to look at because you didn't know what to look at on your own. And usually it's not even the right things to be looking at. I see so many people boast that they're educated because they went to school here and have this degree(s).

You have to be so obtuse to think you know anything about, say, literature, because you went to a number of room sometimes--and not even that much--for a very short time in your life and received a degree in English. Only someone who is very simple-minded can think that way, a person who has no clue what it means to know things and how much that entails.

There is no one more educated in terms of actual knowledge than I. No one, save I, is responsible for what I know.

I see many people say that not drinking alcohol is what prevents them from having people in their lives. Not because of temptation, but because--according to them--they are judged for choosing to abstain from alcohol.

This is untrue. A person could think this, but usually they're lying. The truth is, no one cares if you drink. People, for the most part, only care about themselves. They care what they drink. They don't care about what you're swallowing. It matters not at all to them, unless you are giving them a hard time about what they should be swallowing as a result of what you are.

There are many work stories of this nature. Someone--it's usually a woman--will say that she can't even go out with colleagues to an establishment every now and again after work because she doesn't drink. You have the sense that these people are there for an hour or two, not from six until closing time. They stop off, then they go home, some of them, of course, to their families.

What that woman will want people to believe is that if she orders a cranberry juice, then these co-workers who are having one or two drinks will give her a hard time. Does that sound believable? Also, do you know how unobservant people are? They don't notice anything. Most wouldn't even know what you were drinking.

Starting a sentence with "Normalize" has joined the ever-growing list of annoying, narcissistic, arrogant, mindless things in our society. It's a way for dumb people to lecture other people while congratulating themselves, but not in this overt way but rather an implied one, so they can do a lot of this without anyone being able to say, "You are so full of yourself." But make no mistake: Anyone who does this is a vapid narcissist for whom attention is the most important thing in the world.

I have found that when someone complains about something, even in the most hysterical, dramatic terms, that if that person is presented with a solution to what they're complaining about, or is offered that thing they say they want so much, they will essentially defecate in that gift horse's mouth and continue to complain, and, if anything, more often. Defecating in the gift horse's mouth takes all kinds of forms. Sometimes it's pretending that the gift horse is not actually there, wrapped up with a big bow and ten brightly-colored arrows pointing at it.

By yesterday I was seeing various bits of writing across various mediums saying things like, "The NHL continues to mourn Johnny Gaudreau," and this disturbed me. It tells you how fast the world wants to move on as if someone was never there. And it speaks to the monster that is the news cycle in this world of idiocy and the next thing and only looking at things for two seconds. Back on Friday I was already seeing posts about whether Johnny Gaudreau should be in the Hall of Fame. He obviously shouldn't be, so that set up a scenario where things that weren't solely positive would be said. Why on earth would you do that?

Something you see right now is how few people treat life as if it's something real. It's more like some video game or online construction to them. They think in these two-dimensional terms. Or how like when a character dies in the game one is playing. Or as if it's a series of screens that you can just click out of. That can change when people experience life in some unavoidably life-like way--that is, when life really has at you, and you have to take that. But then again, there are now so many people who won't understand or feel the gravity of what just happened, even when it happened to them. People are less alive than at any time previously. They breathe and they are here. But they are at the surface; they don't extend down through the textures of life.

Last night I saw this from someone: "What is the purpose of the Covid Vaccine if it neither stops you from getting nor spreading the virus?"

They were not that old and worked as a pastor. How can you be this much of imbecile? I wasn't exaggerating yesterday about the ants. You don't think an ant is smarter than someone like this? Then you read some comments, and you see how so few people have any clue about the most basic things.

I understood the thinking behind vaccines when I was like four. Whenever I got shots as a kid, I knew the thinking behind them. Take something like the flu shot, which I'm trying to schedule for today along with a COVID vaccine: At no point did I ever think a flu shot magically stopped me from getting the flu. What do some people think these things do? Put up this forcefield around you? As for COVID: I hardly even believe in it. Stairs are much more real than COVID in my thinking. Run some stairs and you need not ever worry about what COVID can do to you personally (special cases aside). This was always true. There was a bad thing for me with COVID, though: The Monument closed for several years. I simply ran other stairs. But Monument stairs are the best. I feel like I'm getting back to where I was in terms of Monument stairs proficiency. I have certain marks to hit yet.

Then there are these people who still complain about others not "masking up." I saw some comments from a teacher along these lines yesterday, but if you click on said comments, you're ushered into a whole world within the world of these people. The teacher was young. Prime of life, as they say. And she was complaining about having to go to some school-related "super spreader" event, by which she meant something in the assembly hall, and how no one would have masks on, etc.

Fear will kill you. Living your life in fear such that you are often paralyzed will kill you. It will kill you while you are alive if you let it. You'll continue to breathe but you'll really be dead.

I saw a post where a woman decided she'd go online and ask the world how the sun manages to stay on fire--again, I'm being serious--because had been led to believe that there was no oxygen in space and a fire couldn't burn without oxygen but the sun existed all the same like she thought some giant had lit a match to a big pile of tinder and that was how we got the thing.

There's not knowing something like this, which is bad enough. But you're also so dumb, lazy, or needy for attention, no matter if it's a result of your imbecility, that you send this out on social media? But it's also stupidity rather than intelligence that drives engagement, which is one of the worst things about the world right now.