Saturday 10 March 2007

Maybe it's better to be left...

...because sometimes it really sucks to be right.

No, it is not a reference to my political stance. Once again I have managed to give my vanity an ego trip by successfully predicting the outcome of a relationship. I won't say whose because that's their own affair and they'll suffer enough natural embarassment and despair without my assistance in rallying up more people to pass comment.

Why should I write about it then? Well the subject matter is not the important part of what I wish to discuss. However, it does put this post neatly in context.

Far too often I entertain the cute idea that you can tell a lot from someone's eyes. As far as I'm aware, there is no scientific proof for being able to tell anything from someone's eyes (except their genes, and only then to a degree). There was something on furrows in the iris being associated with particular personality traits, but that was an early stage observation without any significant evidence to make it plausible or useful.

I'll meet new people, I'll look them in the eye and I'll know something about them in an instant. I don't know what it is I know. It takes a stimulus to provoke the knowledge into not only being useful but noticeable. You understand why I think this is a silly concept. It all sounds very wonderful, but very much dreamed up. Still, it would seem to work for the moment, so I'll entertain the idea as being possible.

With this relationship, one of the couple was a very close friend of mine. I knew their character, but was interested to find out about this other person who they'd "got together" with. I looked them in the eye, and I knew that it'd run quite smoothly for a while, but that something would break them up eventually. 4 months later, it happened. Alright, so that's not amazing because break ups happen all the time, but this isn't about an amazing ability to read people and know their actions (besides I can't do that). This is about seeing the same thing over and over again. I look at couples and get to know them and I always see the same problem.

People expect too much from a relationship. You are more than welcome to argue that we do too little for a relationship in this day and age, but I'm going to go for expecting too much (the latter may simply be a consequence of the first, after all thoughts come before actions...generally :)). The idea seems to have sunk into people's minds that a relationship is meant to be perfect. Furthermore, people's ideas of perfect seem to have become this fantasy where you must think alike, act alike and speak alike. If you have any disagreements on matters, that's it. You're clearly "far too different" to be with them. And this is the problem.

We have tackled racism and sexism, but opinionism (as I have randomly chosen to refer to it as) is absolutely thriving. We find it hard to accept different opinions.

We all think differently about things. If we didn't, we wouldn't be individuals. For some reason that I haven't yet figured out (and a historian may enjoy trying to find the point where it all changed or if it "changed" at all), we have become a society clinging to similarity in opinions and thoughts. Appreciation of differences seems to have been destroyed for the most part. So it is no wonder that relationships don't work and that I keep seeing the same thing. People are different, and the moment that becomes apparent (in other words, reality checks) that's the problem. People can't take difference. Perhaps the racism and sexism fights have inspired it, I don't know. All I can say is that I've observed the destruction of our appreciation for our individuality and the result is the gradual destruction of community spirit.

It's obvious why people are part of a group who all dress alike and act alike when they're teenagers. The concept of just being in a group of friends who are all different is alien to us. It is no surprise that I should continually ask myself, "why can I get on with so many people while others refuse to speak outside of their circle?"

I now apologise for generalising grossly. I don't "know" everything about us and our many societies. However, from experience of my own society (whatever that is) I have noticed this problem in nearly everyone. Many claim to be accepting and put on a worthy façade to try and support that notion (besides they want to appear like good, balanced people), but in reality the truth is inside their head, and it is a completely different world in there.

We are all different. Our opinions are concluded by various means, unique to our own journey through life. I have always chosen to refer to life as a book, and now is another good opportunity to draw a comparison. What may have been 16 chapters in my book, leading to my conclusions on life, could've been 16 entirely different chapters in someone else's book, leading them to their different conclusions. Who is to say which book is more right? I take the stance that they're both good books, for what greater author is their than life? What could be 1984 for one person could be Pride and Prejudice for another. Both books I recommend thoroughly, yet while accepting their similarities, they are different books.

I ran this by my dad a few minutes ago and we ended up chatting about it while sitting in the sun under the window in my room. We got onto global warming eventually, but that's for another day. He said this:

"Back when we were small tribal societies, we were cohesive because that was paramount to the survival of the tribe. Everyone had their part to play. You wouldn't do a misdeed to your neighbour because that neighbour wouldn't wish to help you later, thus destroying the cohesiveness of the society. Eventually, a strain factor, such as a drought, would occur and the tribe would be left trying to find a way to make the rains come. For some reason, dancing around may have seemed to work on one occasion (I suggested by coincidence or amazingly actually working). This would be remembered by the tribe and the accepted idea would be that dancing around in a particular way would bring the rains (this is a rather short explanation for what could be far more complicated if desired)."

The obvious consequence of dance causing rain is that someone would suggest that for the dance to achieve something, there must be a sentient force that was watching them and responding to the dance by bringing the rains. Kapow, you have a rain God.

Now I have the opportunity to be infinitely controversial. I'll be interested if anyone takes offence from my next conclusions. It could well prove my point about not appreciating individuality and difference of opinion. THIS MAY NOT BE RIGHT, BUT IT IS AN IDEA NONETHELESS!

So you dance for rain, you get rain, you conclude there is a rain God. You dance for sun, you get sun, there is a sun God. Pretty soon a few coincidences of "dancing and raining" lead people to conclude that there is a God for everything. You want a disease to go, you pray to the God of health. You want a child, you pray to the God of fertility. Praying is not necessarily hands together, eyes closed. It could be dancing as I have suggested, or wearing asparagus around you legs. The method isn't important, just the concept (very Romanesque belief system).

So then what? Well there's a hell of a lot of Gods. Why not just have one God for all of it? That's so much easier than having to speak to different Gods. I am not aiming to be patronising, I'm merely identifying a possible human trail of thought. Again, if anyone takes offence and gives me a rather nasty reply and/or tries to cleverly conceal it, but while fuming, I will be disappointed, but I'll accept it happens.

But I'm being sidetracked, this is another discussion. My point is that different tribes established different beliefs with or without different Gods. Eventually tribes meet other tribes and beliefs meet other beliefs. And so ensued the argument; which one of us is right?

"Well we danced for rain and we got rain.
Oh, well we sacrificed a lamb and got rain.
Sacrificed a lamb for rain? That's crazy. Lambs are the sacred creature of our God. You cannot kill a lamb!
Look we shall show you.
You dare to anger our God!? You insult us. We shall destroy you and your heathen religion.
Oh you will will you? Stupid bunch of rain dancers."

And so we have a lovely confrontation showing humanity in all its glory; controlled by what started out as a coincidence.

Again I apologise for generalising grossly. And AGAIN I say, this is just an idea, a trail of thought. It should not be offensive, and anyone who is offended is unnecessarily sensitive. But that is my "lamb for rain". Who knows, being open with my thoughts might insult someone's God.

Linking back to the start of this post, we are all different. Our conclusions, be it as an individual or a group, are different. When we try to discuss our opinions, some people get overly defensive about it and throw a tantrum. People don't like difference. The idea of disagreement is a scary one. When we come across someone "killing sacred lambs", our response is to stop that injustice, because in our minds, it IS an injustice. There's so much more resulting from this idea because I'm sure someone will say "Well does that mean we should accept people who kill, cheat and steal?" I can't answer that question. I am merely observing a human quality. If I had an answer I'd give it to you. All I can say is that I only exercise my moral fist when I feel that someone is doing something wrong to another person. I don't care about "dancing for rain", I care about people to people relationships. The abstract is interesting, but it shouldn't dictate your reality.

Anyway, enough of a random trail of thought. As ever I'm open to comments, arguments, etc. Even if they're laughable, I'll still read them with great interest. We're all individuals and we all have our opinions. Please share them with me.

PS Apologies for a post a while back on love. I said "I myself am not contemplating whether I am in love." Surely I am always contemplating whether I am in love. I simply don't believe myself in love at the moment, although I accept the possibility of a seed.

7 comments:

Phil' said...

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.


You're right that it's better to be wrong than right in many cases. And that people do expect too much. A perfect relationship would be boring. Because it would have to be so devoid of human individuality - that vivid spark which gives us life - as to be pointless.

Bring on the conflicts. If you value the relationship, you'll fight them.

P

Tom said...

Phil, I didn't think it was possible, but you just managed to make me respect you even more.

Phil' said...

Woop

lordxor said...

Nice post. I agree with what you say, and I would add that our species has had millions of years to notice the 200 some muscles in our face twitch and move to varying degrees based on cause and effect. This is similar to how we can tell when someone is lying to us, it almost seems "hard-wired" into our DNA to detect idiosyncrasies of people's output.
The desire for a supreme being, I believe, began once we began to talk and seeing dancing shadows on cave walls and being able to express our fear in elaborate ways. The yearning for a afterlife began after Ug got splattered by a rhino and his hunting partner poked his dead friend with a stick and decayed into vulture meat. Language to express these desires evolved into all the religions we have today.
A Pulitzer prize winning book named "Guns, Germs and Steel" is a wonderful historic account of our species in the last 15,0000 years and I completely recommend it.

Tom said...

Thanks for taking a look and then taking the time to read through my blog Xor. Glad to see your brain didn't explode :)

I'll see if I can find the book you've recommended. I'm hoping to try and go to the library more often, so who knows, maybe that can be the first book I take out in years.

To anyone else, Xor is proof that not all Americans are stupid.

Anonymous said...

Reading the beginning of this post with the dire predictions for the relationship, I couldn't help but be reminded of fortunetellers or psychic friends and their generalized predictions - You are going to meet someone named Mike - of course you are, there are a bazillion of them and the fortunetellers are banking on that. It is not, necessarily, that I doubt you saw something there -only that the generalized observation strikes me thusly.

Tom said...

Hence why I recognised that it was not an amazing conclusion :)