h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The "be" or the "is", certainly, which was the point I was trying to make.
Az, certainly I recognise that they are in all these awkard positions and yadda yadda. I'm sure you sympathise, teaching English, and I realise it's different. But I, even if I do say so myself, am very good at empathy. Some teachers are deserving of sympathy and recognition of their suffering, some, frankly, are not. And in my view, anyone who tries to order me around whilst being rude to me and disrespecting my rights as a human, especially those of free speech and property, whilst demanding that I call them "sir" or "miss", who then take exception when I try to point out all those points to them, anyone who does all of those is just asking for it.
Wanting and needing are sometimes the same thing. That's what the brain is for, making sure the two fit. They *both* give satisfaction. Now let's cover some new ground.
Az for your final comment (hahah), I'd say that at least 40% of those online and possible 10% of the overall population realise the inbred culturism of conformity, and the legal act of escapism to the free market of information on the Net often shocks people who've led most their lives conforming.

Fnord,

I teach private classes and get to choose my students (who are all adult professionals except for one twelve-year-old).

Still think we should move this 'school talk' over to the Lies thread. Don't you?

az

First things first, I don't like quoting from the bible because of the quoting part, not because of the thing being quoted is the bible. I have read, not all, but most of the bible, and think it teaches us good lessons in how to behave. Thing is, so do all major religions.
If people choose to be athaists, it's their choice, but the least they can do is to admit that religions have moral lessons to teach.

Second part: wanting or needing. A few days ago, people posted things about food and stuff. We eat because we are hungry (needing food) or because we want to taste Chinese, Indian, Pizza, whatever you like (wanting specific food). This is not the only difference between needing and wanting. If your body needs water, it will tell you that. If you drink a glass of plain water, it will taste like the best thing you have ever tasted (if you REALLY are thirsty...).
If you are, however, saturated with water, you would still like to drink something special, just for the taste of it. You have no physical need for it, but you do want it. You can even crave it. Enjoyment is a second factor in the difference between wanting and needing.
But the body tells us stuff that is not always as easy to point out as being thirsty. Ever had a sudden taste for something you haven't had in a while? For instance salty things? Could be that, even if you normally don't like salty things, need salt to keep healthy. Summertime does things to bodies...
Second: we are born in an environment where fat things are not abundant in the natural world. It's easier to go out, pick some berries, fruit and stuff, drink a bit of water and go back to the cave to sleep, play, whatever. Our bodies need fat and protein however. As getting that would take effort, it must be made appealing to make that effort to get to eat a deer or a rabbit. This has been bred into us, if you believe what Darwin once said.
Taste can be a symptom of need.

Rant over...

Az
first question my counsellor asked me a year ago was "If you could have any life you wished to make you happy, what would it be."
and all I could say was "I don't know! "
I had forgotten what I wanted! .

Moth - I'm quite happy not knowing what I want... my life somehow derives meaning from unknowns.
Goyahkla - I admit that religions have moral lessons. What I don't admit is that they're the right ones. To do something you despise, I'm going to mention the "Bible" in a referential context.
Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, and many more shave, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. Am I morally obliged to kill them myself, as is the punishment laid down? The reason given for this is "I am the LORD". So. You claim that this is a rightful moral lesson? One that is just and suitable? A good example of how to behave?
How on earth you can claim that a religion is a good moral example whilst disliking people disproving it by logical arguments is beyond me. I will await your reply.
Taste is a symptom of need? Picture the following situation. I am dying of hunger in a desert. I fortuitiously and fortunately come across a lump of Briosh in the sands. I hate Briosh, yet if I do not eat it I will die. I await your reply.
The effort to kill is bred into us as enjoyable for sustenance, as according to Darwin? So you claim that only those who enjoy the laborious task will survive? Only those who derive pleasure from unnecessary work will evolve into higher life? Hmm. So those who do not enjoy the hunt will die? Doubtful. Gathering fruits is much less tiresom than the hunt. It occurs to me as I write that I may have misunderstood, and that your second part of your second part may have been criticism of Darwin. If so, I await your reply. Yours sincerely,
-m3.

Fnord
I don't know if you're confusing me with someone else.
I'm not a biblical believer.
Oh just noticed Goyahkla...sorrry
I haven't read it from beginning to end, but note it contains some poetry within it's contradictions.
I love the mystery of the unknown too, but I'd rather I wasn't a mystery to myself. Enough so that i can't actually identify what would make me happy.

Hmm. Sorry, what're you referring to with "I haven't read it from beginning to end, but note it contains some poetry within it's contradictions"?

Fnord
The bible.

Moth - Oh, fair enough. It defined our world with its poetry, but now its time is up.

poetry?

Az
A bit of the song of songs

The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's

Kiss me, make me drunk with your kisses!
Your sweet loving is better than wine.

I must rise and go about the city,
the narrow streets and squares,
till I find my only love.
I sought him everywhere but I could not find him.

Hurry my love! Run away,
my gazelle, my wild stag
on the hills of cinnamon.

Az
sorry this is the biblical text

The Song of songs, which is Solomon's. 1 Kgs. 4.32

2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:
for thy love is better than wine.


3 Because of the savor of thy good ointments
thy name is as ointment poured forth,
therefore do the virgins love thee.


4 Draw me, we will run after thee:
the King hath brought me into his chambers:
we will be glad and rejoice in thee,
we will remember thy love more than wine:
the upright love thee.


5 I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
as the tents of Kedar,
as the curtains of Solomon.


6 Look not upon me, because I am black,
because the sun hath looked upon me:
my mother's children were angry with me;
they made me the keeper of the vineyards;
but mine own vineyard have I not kept.


7 Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest,
where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon:
for why should I be as one that turneth aside
by the flocks of thy companions?


8 If thou know not, O thou fairest among women,
go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock,
and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.

poetry.

az

Reading those words makes me feel that perhaps the idea in "VALIS" by Philip K. Dick, of there being two aspects of God, Jehovah and Yahweh, good and bad, is true, and that those words were inspired by the good. Oh, for the days of innocence.

In reply of your observations the following:

When I say that every major religion teaches moral lessons, it is necessary to edit a bit. As the text is in some religions thousands of years old, in others at least centuries, the views must at certain points be placed in the context of that time. Stoning is a punishment for a lot of infractions of the Bible, Thora and Khoran. Some of these infractions are still (to put it lightly) frowned upon. Others are just plainly outdated. One thing that is different in our society from other societies today and in the times the texts were written down is that there are no longer religious courts. In some countries today (Nigeria, Israel but also for instance Ireland) there still are courts that use these laws. What is different for, say, Ireland, is that is not an exclusive court, nor is the Canonic Law exclusive. Canonic Law does not allow divorce. Irish law however does. This is because in the late 1980s, the court in Strassburg has decreed that divorce should be possible for all countries in the European Community.
Lessons howwever, are not the same as laws. We should not bblindly follow the letter of the bible in our time. We can however read the bible and conclude that honouring your mother and father would be a good thing. We also know that the Spanish Inquisition was a bad thing.
In the US, kids at school have to recite the pledge. The lines "one nation under God" is a bit odd... People who are atheists have to say this as well... Segregation is not present in the US...

I am not saying that you were made to like brioche. I don't know what bbrioche is, but I can make a guess. I like certain foods, and dislike others. What I do know, is that we need salt. We need fat. Salt, to avoid dehydration, fat (especially in colder climates) to keep warm and to get vitamins in wintertime. Seals and whales are a source of vitamin C for people like the Inuit. Our minds tell us that we like the taste of something. Because of that, our ancestors were able to survive in prehistoric times. Thing is, the stuff we like most are, if you are a person in prehistoric times (say 10,000 or more years ago), the stuff that is the hardest to come by. It might not be a thing of evolution, but, if not, a proof of survival of the fittest.
People who live in semi-arctic conditions and decide to become vegetarians, simply die. People who are bad hunters, because of physical shortcomings, will die. Those who are dead, cannot procreate. Only the strongest survive. The people who liked salty things and fat things, made the effort of hunting, and therefore were able to survive. Taste for hamburgers is, more or less, bred into us. The fact that these vital substances are not that hard to come by, is the reason that obesity is more and more 'normal'.
We do not go hunting with spears anymore. Hunting with spears means exercise. Buying a hamburger (or better yet, ordering in a pizza) is not.
Taste no longer is a symptom of need. But it used to be, and we are here because of it.

IMO Life is an experience, I am so grateful that I am a human being and not say, a goldfish! I want to experience life.

Editing a bit should be unnecessary in a cult as widespread and popular with such a literally understood bible as Christianity. But say we edit a little. You're talking about leaving behind the words of the law and getting into the spirit of it. In that case we get to spiritual truths that are so general that they are no longer specific to religion at all, and rest upon our instincts (dislike for homosexuality, bestiality, paedophilia etc as dangerous for the gene pool) and culture. So religion is defunct in that example.

"One thing that is different in our society ...is that there are no longer religious courts." WHAT? No longer religious courts? Examine every single one of our laws and find that all of them are based on permutations of the Commandments and Leviticus. When the law was being formed, over 98% of the country was or pretended to be Christian.
To save time, I'm going to ask you to imagine me giving countless examples of where honouring your parents could be wrong, and the Spanish Inquisition are right, but I'm just going to give one. I'll bet you didn't expect that. Anyway. Say your mother is an abusive junkie, and your father beats and rapes you every day when he's not on the bottle in some pub. You aren't allowed to speak out because of social conventions honouring your parents right to do so.

Brioche, unless I've spelt it wrong, is some kind of saffrony French bread. If you're getting down to the basic molecules we need, we need all of them, and so we should like everything. Survival has nothing to do with what you like, it's what you need and what you have to do, as I though I pointed out in my Brioche-desert scenario.
Not to offend to badly, but never in many of my days since Justin the Preacher left H2G2 have I heard such an obviously laughable and incorrect idea as "liking certain foods is an example of survival of the fittest". It has nothing to do with survival - remember, SOTF only works by the unsuitable dieing, and nothing else, so if a characteristic doesn't end in death, then SOTF doesn't apply. Disliking a food would have made no difference to a prehistoric tribal, so he wouldn't have died.
Taste was *never* a symptom of need - or else, explain the way that everyone in the human race has different preferences.
As to your last : You said that the effort of the hunt was made appealing to aid survival. I said that was not true. Now you say that ordering fast food is not necessary for survival. Are you merely confused, or trying to point out that once again basic instincts have become useless? Because that's my point entirely.

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!!

Now that I cleared that up. Liking a food can be survival of the fittest. Some foods are inedible to individuals, or species, not because they would be unhealthy, but because they taste so bad they will not be eaten. If all other food were to become extremely scarce, only those that were even capable of eating this food and keeping it down would survive, and the few that liked it would thrive because they were happier than all of the rest. They would survive everyone else would die. Happiness is a key to survival, at least in our current situation.

Yes we did survive because we developed a *taste* for meat.
not only did this mean we had a bigger selection of food but this increased the size of our brain.
As vegetarians we would have remained apes or the died out bonoho (spelling wrong here)
Taste is also about letting us know not only that something is unpleasant but could also be poisonous.
Taste is an evolved survival tactic.
Unfortunately we have outgrown it to some extent and the desire for fat, sugar and salt has become a burden rather thn a life saver.
And Macdonals KFC etc aren't helping .
for some people the meaning of life has become to eat their way through the world.
Haven't you heard of 'comfort' eating?
Fat was natures way of storing up for hard times.
in the West these hard times nearly never happen so now we have obesity as a killer.
To hunt for food is to stay fit, using calories up to gain more food. To order out a pizza is too easy perhaps for a healthy life.
We've 'evolved' as a society to the point where we CAN order the Pizza, unfortunately our tastes haven't caught up with that.
The brain has forgotten the 'stop hoarding calories' message of our primitive ancestors.

Wow somebody actually agrees with me

Mabye I finally made some sense