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

Yes, there is little point in writing a book telling you how to ride a bike!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I think you've just said something really important to me Patternchaser.

Is knowing the meaning of life like riding a bicycle?
you can only learn hands on and no amount of verbal or written words can help you actually achieve it.
Ok it can ouline the basics, but it's still not going to give you that knowledge like hauling your leg over the bike does.

It's nice to feel useful!



No, knowing the meaning of life *is* riding a bicycle....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

"One death is a tragedy. A million deaths are a statistic." Josef Stalin.

"If you need to ask the meaning of life you've already lost the plot." Ludwig Wittgenstein (paraphrase)

operates on more than one level. It is both a set of rules, or a METHOD, for judging what's real, AND a body of "facts", or a LIST of what is real. Both are subject to revision, and the deliverances of one do not coincide one to one with the deliverances of the other.

Noggin

Hi Jordan .

Your posting reminds me of the WW1 French General who, after a particularly bloody and failed attack, insisted on visiting the troops involved to demand to know why they had not taken the German trenches. He spent several hours viewing the scene of the fighting and then returned to his HQ a broken man. He was retired on full pay and later shot himself.

Unfortunately your theory of 'they are only numbers' works in some situations and not others. How do we explain the actions of thousands of Serbian Militiamen who one day were living in apparent harmony with their muslim neighbours and the next butchering them and burying them in the woods? What turns a good neighbour into a remorseless killer? These were intelligent, educated men, often with responsible jobs in their communities. Many with wives and children, who sang and danced, and lived and loved. How can a whole nation go loco like this?

These were the people who faced their neighbours and looked right into their eyes as they slaughtered them. No game of numbers here. What of the Rwandan Nuns who led the murderous mobs in a huge genocide? Spiritual leaders of their community, committed to peace and love, and 'brides of christ'.

It is endlessly depressing. But we could focus on this and see nothing that is good in man.

Lift up your chin and think instead of our heroes. Men and women who daily put their lives on the line for us. Our firefighters and paramedics, rescue workers and lifeboatmen. People who dedicate all their free time to improving the lot of others, and in many cases their whole lives. These too number in their millions. People to whom peace is desperately important and who will fight War and not wars.

This is what society is about, giving without the thought of receiving, that all might benefit.

Think on that.

Blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

Hi Pattern-Chaser .

"And yet one could also see 'sanity' (and its definition) as a way of society safeguarding itself (i.e. the (vast?) majority of its citizens) from those few whose doings could cause real and significant harm to themselves or others"

**Rant Waning**

Really? Is this why until very recently many unmarried mothers both in the UK , Europe and the USA were put in mental institutions? 'Society' considered them to be morally irresponsible and thus sick. Well at least we don't stone them I suppose, for the terrible crime of being daft enough to love a man.

Is it why the WHO has discovered that all but a handful of countries still imprison people of 'low' intellect, what we euphemistically call 'educationally sub-normal', in mental institutions.

'Sanity' is all a matter of perception. Our Victorian predecessors in their zeal to humanise and modernise society, and nail it quivering to a judaeo-christian model, created a monster out of it that we suffer to this day. If you are insane you are a danger to society and must be isolated and treated. In the humane 21st Century of course, we feel it is better to care for these unfortunates in the community through a progressive treatment regime. This translates, in reality, into dumping them in bedsits and drugging them insensible.

In all the history of sanity only a tiny handful of the supposedly insane have harmed anybody other than themselves. The real monsters have been all the sane and kindly pillars of the community that have sent millions to terrible deaths. The world leaders, military commanders, amoral politicians, directors of social services and greedy corporate executives. For instance that political leader, solid born-again Christian and oil billionaire George W.Bush has already killed more innocent civilians, and often in more interesting ways, than all the convicted serial killers in American history. Where is our sacred cow called 'sanity' now?

We would perhaps do ourselves a service if we were to lock up and treat anyone proclaiming to represent the 'greater good'. Anyone who proposed that war was a solution for absolutely anything, or who supported the production of armaments. Add to that anyone who proposed that we make a profit out of the misery of others because 'free trade' is seldom free and almost never fair.

Blessings,
Matholwch the Goat-gotten /|\.

<...until very recently many unmarried mothers ... were put in mental institutions>

Yes, I believe the most recent was in 1959 in Britain. She was tragically 'lost' in the system, and released around 1990, a broken woman unable to care for herself.

And yet the existence of paedophilia does not make sex a bad thing. All that you say is true, but it does not detract at all from what I said. Sanity, as you say, is a matter of (collective) opinion. And yet I believe society does have a right to protect itself from those whose behaviour is sufficiently anti-social. But not against those whose views or actions are merely inconvenient!

I think we're in agreement really. I'm posting stuff that balances (not contradicts) what you say, and vice versa, wouldn't you say?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I'm chewing...

- Jordan

Hi Pattern-Chaser.

Yes.

Blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.