495: Fighting the Bad Fight?
In retroactively tagging [in increasingly more cases, retagging] older posts, I've had to reflect upon stances I've proposed in the past, in largest part generated from a certain post I haven't yet located but if I find it will be tagged here. The gist of it is that I'm likely TOO Zen [in the traditional sense, not the Five Rings sense] and generally don't "fight the good fight" because I don't have a particular approach about it or even much of a principled stance, even if I had anyone immediate to fight.
Most of it comes from principle--stamping out bigotry, for instance. Is that really possible, though? Six-odd billion people alive in the world right now, 106 billion historically, and it's impossible to police all of their thoughts. The best we can do is try to keep everyone from killing each other and hoping we'll eventually learn that leaving each other alone and minding our own business is as beneficial to ourselves as to others. It's taken until relatively recent history just to abolish slavery, yet there are still those who believe it's a good idea.
I generally feel, largely from Parasyte*, that the world is fine and will survive with or without our interference. The world will collapse into the Sun someday, and it will be fine, because that's just what it's going to do, with or without us. It doesn't matter to the world what we do with ourselves in the meantime. This is, no doubt, my standing in the Garden of Eden and looking out at the world and saying, "Well, things don't look so bad, do they?" [as I've mentioned before somewhere in my billions of posts still left to tag] What would I do instead, though? As I said, fighting principles is an impossible task.
*which you will have to read to truly appreciate, though that's difficult to do with it being out of print
Furthermore, I see the trend of humanity as generally leaning in a favourable direction, despite a few steps backward here and there. Certainly fewer people are physically oppressed for being what they are--black, Muslim, vegetarian, Mac user, Canadian... whatever. There are inconveniences imposed, of course, but inconvenience is certainly preferable to death.
My fault in believing things are overall a favourable trend may be from using Dear Abby and Marilyn vos Savant as the publically-approved voices of reason rather than Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh or whoever--I mistakenly assume they reflect the majority, but they may have a more liberal bias than I've been given reason to question. [I even work for a company that has a specific policy to sell gay-friendly material, among other progressive trends.] The truth is, there's no perfect way to gauge the actual bias of the general populace, though I--naively?--am inclined to believe the majority thinks that leaving people alone is not only the best way, but the easiest. After all, it takes a lot of work to oppress other people!
Regardless, you can't entirely look at the world from a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, or even ten years ago and really think we're THAT much worse off now than we were. Technology in particular has advanced, even if stupidity has seemed to advance with it. It may simply be a perceived level of oppression has to persist from generation to generation--"There's no WAY my parents had things worse off than me! I mean, they won't buy me all the newest video games and let me stay up as late as I want and not do my homework, LIFE IS SO UNFAIR!!!"
I suppose I simply believe too much in the historical evidence of the inevitable failure of trying to take away something from someone else--freedom, alcohol, marriage, promiscuity, etc., eventually any imposition of such an act comes crashing down, because there are some things you just can't keep from others.
...well, I suppose drugs are still pretty banned, and there's still problems trying to abolish smoking, but of the somewhat more harmless sins, if you really want to call them that.
Most of it comes from principle--stamping out bigotry, for instance. Is that really possible, though? Six-odd billion people alive in the world right now, 106 billion historically, and it's impossible to police all of their thoughts. The best we can do is try to keep everyone from killing each other and hoping we'll eventually learn that leaving each other alone and minding our own business is as beneficial to ourselves as to others. It's taken until relatively recent history just to abolish slavery, yet there are still those who believe it's a good idea.
I generally feel, largely from Parasyte*, that the world is fine and will survive with or without our interference. The world will collapse into the Sun someday, and it will be fine, because that's just what it's going to do, with or without us. It doesn't matter to the world what we do with ourselves in the meantime. This is, no doubt, my standing in the Garden of Eden and looking out at the world and saying, "Well, things don't look so bad, do they?" [as I've mentioned before somewhere in my billions of posts still left to tag] What would I do instead, though? As I said, fighting principles is an impossible task.
*which you will have to read to truly appreciate, though that's difficult to do with it being out of print
Furthermore, I see the trend of humanity as generally leaning in a favourable direction, despite a few steps backward here and there. Certainly fewer people are physically oppressed for being what they are--black, Muslim, vegetarian, Mac user, Canadian... whatever. There are inconveniences imposed, of course, but inconvenience is certainly preferable to death.
My fault in believing things are overall a favourable trend may be from using Dear Abby and Marilyn vos Savant as the publically-approved voices of reason rather than Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh or whoever--I mistakenly assume they reflect the majority, but they may have a more liberal bias than I've been given reason to question. [I even work for a company that has a specific policy to sell gay-friendly material, among other progressive trends.] The truth is, there's no perfect way to gauge the actual bias of the general populace, though I--naively?--am inclined to believe the majority thinks that leaving people alone is not only the best way, but the easiest. After all, it takes a lot of work to oppress other people!
Regardless, you can't entirely look at the world from a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, or even ten years ago and really think we're THAT much worse off now than we were. Technology in particular has advanced, even if stupidity has seemed to advance with it. It may simply be a perceived level of oppression has to persist from generation to generation--"There's no WAY my parents had things worse off than me! I mean, they won't buy me all the newest video games and let me stay up as late as I want and not do my homework, LIFE IS SO UNFAIR!!!"
I suppose I simply believe too much in the historical evidence of the inevitable failure of trying to take away something from someone else--freedom, alcohol, marriage, promiscuity, etc., eventually any imposition of such an act comes crashing down, because there are some things you just can't keep from others.
...well, I suppose drugs are still pretty banned, and there's still problems trying to abolish smoking, but of the somewhat more harmless sins, if you really want to call them that.