Transcending Moral Polarity

I have a moral issue with the terms "good" and "bad", because not only are they so ambiguous as to be less than helpful, but also the idea that something is either good or bad is inherently flawed. To think that something is evil merely for the sake of being evil is narrow minded and just wrong. And there's the other side of the coin. No one, and nothing, is ever truly good.

So, rather than blunder our way through the day bluntly firing off crudely fashioned statements containing or implying inherent moral polarity, we must use more appropriate adjectives. Not only does this fix the fact of assuming that something is good or bad, but it makes it a more accurate statement, and, more importantly, it puts emotion into your sentence. For example, if you where to say; "You looked good today.", how is the person receiving the compliment sure that it is, in fact, a compliment? People through out the words "good" and "bad" all the time like there's no tomorrow. But if you where to say; "You looked fabulous today.", they automatically understand that you're being sincere (as long as you adopt the right tone of voice), because now you've taken the time to select a specific word from your vocabulary for the sole purpose of complimenting another person, and that makes them feel good.

Of course, there are drawbacks. If you're texting, and you use a positive adjective to compliment another person, you have no control over how it's read. That person can read it as sincere or sarcastic, or any shade in between, and there is very little you can do to change it. If you type; "You looked fabulous today.", fabulous can be inflected to either actually mean fabulous, or to be derogatory and detrimental. Only one of the reasons I dislike communicating through text (although, the advantages pretty much break even with the disadvantages).

So, you should use words other than "good" or "bad". But everything depends on context. One slip of the tone, and you can find yourself being extremely degrading rather than helpfully uplifting.

The Question of Civilization

We tend to take civilization for granted. I don't mean that we don't appreciate all the benefits (while we certainly do plenty of that), I mean we automatically think that civilization is the only option. It certainly doesn't help that the lines of what is civilization and what isn't are blurred to such a degree that it's almost controversial. In any case, we automatically assume that civilization is advanced, it's progress. To revert to any former human organization is to regress to banging rocks together. Right?

Well, civilization certainly seem to have it's benefits. The surplus of food it generates through agriculture allows specialists dedicated to certain tasks like producing objects designed to make our lives easier. It's because of this that I can choose not to devote my life to foraging for food or hunting animals. I can become a musician or a politician or an architect. All thanks to civilization.

But would living a nomadic lifestyle be so horrible? You live in tight nit community where everybody pulls their own weight. You participate in group activities live picking fruit or hunting game. You spend your days outside, free of the pressures of a large, dense, interconnected society that usually demands that you behave a certain way in order to succeed. You know everybody, everybody knows you, and you share a special familial bond with everyone in your group. Of course, there are societies that sort of meander between these two opposites, like herders or traders along the silk road. But that's beside the point. The question is, which is superior?

Well, you might think civilization, because it's the predominant order of people today. It allows us to create technologies that further or advancement as sentiment beings and as a species as a whole. After all, every time an advanced, organized civilization has collided with any hunter-gatherer peoples, the technologically superior specialists, created by surplus of food from farms, almost always come out vitreous in war or conflict.

But prowess on the battlefield isn't the only measure of the success of humanity's attempt to better
itself. There's categories like overall health, including the prevalence of disease and malnutrition, as well as overall things like suicide and homicide rates. In both of these, hunter-gatherer clearly comes out on top.

So, the debate goes on. whether a complex, advanced, rigidly structural society is superior to a free, nomadic lifestyle or not is a matter of opinion. Most likely, the answer for humanity (like many other solutions involving the masses) lies somewhere in the middle.

The Abnormality of Normality

Statistics lie. Though, not in a traditional sense. The data they present is correct (most of the time), but the world view it gives us is fundamentally skewed. I mean, say that there was a rare genetic mutation that caused people to become temporarily paralyzed after they are startled, and it only affected 0.01% of the population. You could say; "Well then, that does seem very unlikely. I don't think I'll worry about it too much. After all, I doesn't affect alot of people." But remember this: 0.01% of Earth's population is still seven-hundred thousand people worldwide. Now, all of the sudden, it seems like a much bigger number. But it's still the same data, merely presented in a different format.

Another gross misrepresentation of humanity's obsession with percentages is what is "normal". What is a normal person? Well let's see. If we assume they live in the US (just to make things easier), then they would have to be: white, male, straight,  ~35 and a half years old, have brown hair, brown eyes, be ~5' 9", weigh 170 lbs., have had an average college GPA of 2.93, have an income of ~$81,400, be married, have 2-3 kids, and odds are they're also a salesperson for a living. But just how many people you know fit this neat little box? And that's not even factoring in things like religion, pets, household space, diet, hobbies and interests... et cetera, et cetera. So, why do some people have such a compulsion to be "normal", when there really is no such thing? Of course, even there, the normal they're shooting for isn't even statistically correct, but that's a discussion for another time. People have this animal urge to squeeze themselves into a mold that others have sculpted for them, in order to be accepted into a group. Their dedication to this idea is quite impressive, if pitiful to watch.

However, there are exceptions that make the rule. People out there that don't give a fig about what society thinks, or what standards it sets. I applaud them. But interestingly, their numbers seem to be growing. Where people used to squeeze and stretch themselves onto a template in order to present themselves to a social group, they now revel in their uniqueness and dance in the glory of their own imperfections and humanity. People accentuate their differences from each other and from there create and find groups that match their interests, not societies. This can be attributed to the large human population and the scramble for jobs in the recession. People go out of their way to separate themselves from the masses, to distinguish themselves amongst their peers. And you need to do this, it's a necessity, a requirement in order to catch and hold someones attention long enough that they hire or promote you. But it's a delicate balance. Too uniform, you'll never succeed. Too different, and you'll end up alienating yourself from society completely. While that may sound okay, enjoyable even, it's not desirable if you seek advancement. After all, we still cling to our primeval need for order and uniformity. Who would hire a freak?

So I suppose, in a sense, that the fact that we still need to alter ourselves to our social environment still lingers, like a disease, like the parasite it is. Society's interaction with individuals is a parasitic relationship. Unfortunately for us right now, it's also a necessary relationship.

A Short Enquiry on Opinions

It is quite an interesting facet of human nature. After all, you don't see elephant seal squabbling over whether or not tax rates should be increased, and on whom, but then elephant seals don't tax other seals mostly because they don't have the mathematical capabilities to accurately deduct a certain percentage or some sort from other seals, but I digress.

Tricky thing is, if you think about it, animals also have opinions. I mean, they probably are mostly concerning the amount of food they are fed every day, but still. They don't hold lengthly debates over abstract concepts like laws and epistemology. Humans, in that area (as far as I can tell) are unique. And I am grateful that we have been endowed with the ability of higher mental capabilities. But it does cause alot of problems. Just look at politics.

Politics can be said to be the offspring of differences in opinions, at least in an elected government. Of course, there are people who scorn politics so much, the term politician can even be used as an insult. Politics is a strange mix of our basic need to have a sort of pecking order in society, and our newer instinct to organize things in order to make life easier. The form of government through which politics manifests itself depends largely on society and it's current principles and beliefs. Be it in the form of a monarchy, who rules by divine right, or a representative democracy, indirectly elected by the people.

The problem with politics is that it is, in its own way, mandatory. You have to participate in politics out of necessity. As Plato so aptly put it; "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up governed by your inferiors." Now, it should be noted that Plato could be something of   a snob at times, but his point is valid nonetheless. You refuse to engage in government? Fine, but your opinion will not be acknowledged or taken into account. And so we are drawn into this necessary evil, this child of human nature, as it expands itself to fit the needs of it's self expansion.

And as it grows, more and more does it encroach on our lives. There are riots in the streets over laws and policies. Not to mention the dangerous mix of some people having strong opinions but a weak basic courtesy towards other schools of thought. Truth be told, they seem to be the root of most of the problems facing some places. I mean, there are people who are going to disagree with you. The best course of action is taking a deep breath and calmly debate them. Screaming and yelling won't do you any good. And in any case, its good to have some different opinions around you. I mean, if everyone I know agrees with me, then I don't know enough people. How do you expect to change and grow without an environment to react to? I'm not saying that you have to disagree with them, but at least acknowledge that they think that their right, and you're wrong, and a reaction of violence will only deepen their opinion about your point of view.So just take a deep breath, and for the time being, try not to rage to the other person how incredibly stupid they are for not agreeing to every facet of your philosophy.