“Oh lord, wontcha buy me a Mercedes Benz, my friends all drive horses, I mu–”
Wait…. That’s not right.
There are so many things in the world that are not right. Scumbags tricking gullible people into psychic readings, psychos spreading the word about how the Holocaust never happened (or wasn’t as bad as all that); even mainstream chain pharmacies are selling homeopathic “drugs”! I’m mortified by a lack of intelligence—embarrassed by rampant credulity.
With brilliant minds like Michael Shermer and James Randi out there, why is the general public so ignorant?! Skeptic Magazine is easily accessible. Why don’t more people read it? Because we want to believe in stupid stuff, that’s why. We aren’t as smart as we think we are. Look how long it took us to invent wheels for coolers! Jeesh. Sometimes I think George Carlin was right when he said that, “We like to think we’ve evolved and advanced because we can build a computer, fly an airplane, travel underwater, we can write a sonnet, paint a painting, compose an opera. But you know something? We’re barely out of the jungle on this planet. Barely out of the fucking jungle. What we are, is semi-civilized beasts, with baseball caps and automatic weapons.”
Belief and faith and knowledge and truth are no more synonymous than beagles and toads. By the way, why are the words fur and hair synonymous? I pet my cat’s fur. I don’t pet his hair. That sounds weird. But I get cat hair on my clothes. I don’t get cat fur on my clothes. An article in Scientific American explains that there is no difference between fur and hair. Humph. Not satisfied. Oh, I know. I’ll Google fur versus hair and see what happens. There we go! A non-peer reviewed crap website that proves me right! Fur IS different than hair. Guess I will “believe” that one.
Go ahead and believe whatever you want. Just don’t go spewing it as knowledge. Interpret the world as you see fit, but don’t try and tell me that Matthew Arnold’s famous poem “Dover Beach” is about unicorns. IT’S NOT! And no. Poetry is not about “whatever you want it to be about.” While there is no sacred hidden meaning available only in the teacher’s edition of some archaic textbook, there are correct and incorrect interpretations. This post is turning into Part One. See you soon for Part Two.
good stuff Lil… enjoying your twist of thought!