Tag: contemporary truth

Stuff I Know

When you’ve travelled around the sun as many times as I have, you get a feeling for the universe and how things work.  It’s mostly a series of experiments (successful and otherwise) that lead to experience.  (Which is simply years of watching certain experiments go bust.)  The result, however, is an unfailing intuition – sort of an informed insight.  Basically, you know what’s actually going on — even though it seems as if everybody around you is caught up in something completely different.  Here are a few examples.

The world is always in a mess – The natural state of our planet is agitation.  There’s always somebody trying to be a dick to the rest of us.  (I’m looking at you, Vladimir.)  The problem is we tend to think this is the first and worst time it’s ever happened.  Nope!  It’s been going on since Lucy went for a walk in Ethiopia, 3 million years ago — so get used to it. 

There’s always a group of people who think they have the inside track to Enlightenment – Over the years, we’ve called them Puritans, Victorians, Christians, Communists, The Taliban, Jehovah’s Witnesses and, most recently, “Woke” – but their message is always the same: “We don’t give a shit about the truth: do it our way.”

You can’t legislate an idea – No matter how many times you make it illegal, people are still going to love and hate who they want to.  They’re going to get angry, cry, lie, cheat and probably eat too much when the opportunity presents itself.  Fundamentally, humans are governed by the laws of Mother Nature, not the wet dreams of lawyers.  Elected officials, tyrants and kings need to concentrate on the structure of society — not restructuring its soul.

And speaking of which:

This, too, shall pass – I remember a time when LSD was legal and being gay was a prison sentence.  Go figure!  But every generation (including mine) believes they have finally reached the pinnacle of human understanding and THEIR values will last until the end of – well – the end of everything.  Guess again!  Two hundred years ago, humans had no idea that dinosaurs, vitamins and germs existed.  Take a minute to imagine what we’ll know two hundred years from now!  Now, take another minute to realize what kind of beetle-browed barbarians we really are.

And finally:

Like it or not — the true road to enlightenment is warm socks, good sex and comfortable underwear.  

A Pack Of Lies

Somebody (Hitler? Goebbels? Lenin? Trotsky?) once said, “If you tell a big enough lie loud enough and long enough people will eventually believe it.”  It’s terribly ironic that, in the Age of Information, there are quite a few of those kind of “truths” kicking around, and a lot of what we call common knowledge is just a load of crap.  Here are some glaring examples that just fall apart when you think about them:

1 – Einstein did NOT fail high school math.  Think about this for a minute!  The guy was a genius who E=MC2-ed himself to the top of the intellectual ladder, along with Newton, Copernicus and da Vinci.  What are the chances he had trouble with Grade 10 algebra?  Besides, the records show that he skipped most of what we would call high school, anyway.

2 – You can NOT see the Great Wall of China from space.  Here’s the deal.  Yes, the Great Wall is absolutely huge.  Yes, it’s the largest man-made structure on earth, and yes, it runs for thousands of kilometres, but — surprise — it’s less than 4 metres (12 feet) wide.  Your house is probably wider.  Looking down from space, the Great Wall of China is invisible — just like your house.

3 – You do NOT use “only” 10% of your brain.  The truth is, even with all our advanced technology, we know so little about the brain’s function that nobody knows how much of our brain’s capacity we actually use.  However, given some people I’ve worked with, 10% might be wildly optimistic.

4 – Coca-Cola™ does NOT dissolve teeth.  Folks, they use dental work to identify bodies that have been lying around for centuries.  Every museum on Earth has at least one set of Cro-Magnon chompers.  The corrosive elements that Mother Nature can throw at the human body make Coca-Cola look like a bubble bath.  This is just another Coke™ myth that circles our planet once a generation.

5 – Undercover cops do NOT have to tell you they’re police.  Police, undercover or otherwise, cannot entrap you into committing a crime, but they are under no legal obligation to identify themselves before you commit that crime on your own.  Use your head!  If undercover cops had to tell you they’re cops, it would kinda defeat the whole purpose of “undercover,” now, wouldn’t it?

6 – Jedi is NOT a recognized religion anywhere in the world.  Despite the best efforts of literally millions of Star Wars nerds, no national or international body outside a few fans clubs views Jedi as an organized religion.  The word is you can claim to be a Jedi on your income tax form and reap all the religious benefit and advantages.  You can’t.  Don’t believe me?  Try it!

7 – There are NOT more people alive today than have ever lived in all of history.  Do the math!  Even using the ten millennia of recorded history, fifty generations a millennium and the current reproductive rate of 23 per thousand (for most of history, it was closer to 80) the result is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100 billion people.  Even counting all the lost Australian backpackers, at 7 billion, this generation isn’t even close.

8 – Mr. Rogers was NOT a Navy Seal sniper in Vietnam.  Quit saying that!  There is absolutely no evidence that Fred Rogers served in the military, nor even that he ever left the continental United States — although there’s an e-rumor that he went to Maui once, on vacation.

And finally

9 – You do NOT eat 7, 9, 12 or 16 spiders every night in your sleep.  Spiders prefer dry, still, quiet places where they can spin a web and catch themselves some breakfast.  Occasionally, maybe, a single spider might venture across your bed, but, unless they’re unusually stupid, the inhale/exhale of breathing air would scare them off.  I’m sure this lie gets retold so much because it’s a guaranteed gross out.

The Next Time …

Life is a minefield full of ambushes.  We are constantly getting caught off guard by thoughts, words and circumstances.  However, the mark of a smart person is someone who tries not to make the same mistake twice.  (We all do that, BTW!)  So, as a public service, here’s a quick and dirty guide to making the wise choice the next time something happens.

The next time somebody tells you that someday machines are going to go total Terminator and take over the world, remind them just how effective Autocorrect is. 

The next time somebody talks about how nice it will be when everything gets back to normal, think about how comfortable your pajamas feel.

The next time somebody’s Eagerly Offended by a book, a cartoon character or a dead European, laugh your ass off and get on with your life as if nothing’s changed — because nothing has.

The next time you think you should ask a woman when the baby’s due – don’t!

The next time you think you’ve got the only dysfunctional family on the planet, open a bottle of wine and ask your neighbour about her mother-in-law.

The next time you think you’re smart, remember your old friend algebra and try to solve (x2 + y2) – (x + y) = 3.  That’ll teach you some humble.

The next time you’re having a bad day, take a marker and put comic faces on all the eggs in the fridge.  You’ll be surprised how much better it makes you feel.

The next time you’re walking around and have an uncontrollable itch somewhere below your bellybutton, remember: cellphones!

The next time you’re mind wanders beyond your current relationship, take a good hard think about how you look naked.

The next time someone says, “You can do anything you set your mind to!” keep in mind you still haven’t figured out the difference between Auto Cook and Auto Reheat on the microwave.

And finally:

The next time you think it’s a pain in the ass to wear a mask, just imagine how uncomfortable a ventilator would be.