Although this is going to possibly be the laziest post ever (being that I didn’t actually write the content), it could also be the most intelligent and well-informed body of text to ever appear on this website. Unless Neil tells me more stories, in which case, get ready for more fun and existential crises! (I had an existential crisis yesterday walking home from the train. Then I felt happy for no reason, and it was good enough for me to be able to learn these things, deal with them, and just get on with life and be myself and exist.) I like existing.
Me: Something I don’t understand, and which you may be able to explain(…)– murdering is a sin, right? One of the big ones… however, in the Bible, God killed thousands and thousands of people, whereas Satan only killed maybe 10 or so. How does the concept of good vs. evil explain away that little oddity?
Neil: See it all depends on who is making the good vs evil claim. See GWB – he reckons the Iranians are “evil” and that “god” (as in the American notion of god) is about to return. 120 million Americans believe in the apocalypse (GWB is one of them). The book of revelation says that the “lakes will boil dry and fire will reign from the sky). Then “god” will turn up and save the believers. Ironically, those people who believe in this actually want climate change to continue because they see it as the first sign that the apocalypse is nigh!….
However, 7000 miles away in sunny Tehran, you’ve got a wee boy called Mahmud Ahmadinejad. He’s the president of Iran and GWB’s no 1 enemy. Iran is a theocratic state who believe in sharia law. They believe in their own version of the apocalypse. They also believe that America is the “great satan”. They believe that the 13th prophet – the hidden ummah – is destined to make a return soon (note they are also building a nuclear programme..not without coincidence – fire from the sky and all that!) and their enemies (no 1 is the US) will be defeated and the Iranian people will be triumphant.
All of this is fact, check it out on the web. Bush believes his god will help America prevail over the evil Iranians and Mahmud believes his ummah will help his boys prevail over the nasty US. So “good vs evil” statements are dependant on which side of the fence you are on.
Another US/Iran tension that has helped stoked the flames. Oil. The price of oil is indexed to US$. The Iranians (3rd? Largest oilfields in the world – Iraq is No 2 surprise, surprise) know this and threatened two-three years ago to switch the sale of their oil to Euros. Needless to say, the US was enraged. That switch has a destabilising effect on the US$ and the yanks know it. I think the Iranians switched to EU’s in March. Needless to say, the EU love it as it helps stabilise the Euro. And just to make it intriguing, the US – whose national debt is owned by????? The chinese !! – have been told in no uncertain terms by the chinese that an attack on Iran will force them to dump US debt which would destroy the States economically. Very smart those Chinese guys. In effect, they own the US through debt.
About GWB (Everything below taken from emails from Neil, with permission.)
Do you know that his “good ol texan drawl” is deliberate?. It makes him appeal to the uneducated/lesser well educated masses of which there are plenty in the States. Consider the following picture.
Society is a hierarchy, yes?. The top triangle represents the elite, middle the middle classes/affluent etc and the bottom everyone else (lower classes/poor). If you wanted to win an election, which demographic do you need to pander to the most?. You certainly would like the elite because they have the finance and the clout and you need that to become president. More on the elite later. As you can see from the area under what I have called lower/poor, that represents the biggest area and one that is absolutely essential to win in order to get elected.
The best way to get the vote of the unquestioning, uneducated is through a campaign of fear. Nazi Germany went one better in convincing every tier of society that the Jews were the devil and need eliminated. I have an excellent book on this subject if you require further info. The best way to garner public support from the lower echelons of society is to galvanise them through fear so that they blame their ills on an ill-defined bogeyman. This trick has been played throughout time and it is a con. This is what is currently happening in the States. People who were dumbfounded when Bush got re-elected in 2004 have no reason to be. I saw the demographic figures for who voted where and GWB managed to convince exactly those people at the bottom of the pyramid to vote for him. He was never going to win a fight with the intelligentsia so he didn’t even pander to them – they typically vote democrat anyway. As for the bottom tier, they have been conned by the biggest Orwellian trick of all. Do you know that 40% of American’s don’t have a passport and have never even left their state, never mind their country. How can they possibly make informed decisions?
As for the elite. Dick Cheyney used to be the CEO of…..any guesses….Halliburton. Guess who now has just about every contract for the rebuilding of Iraq? – Got it in one. GWB used to be an oilman – well looks like US oil companies will do very well in terms of reaping the benefits of Iraqi oil. And the bigs arms companies in the US – some of which I have worked for – have done very very very well. War is good for business. I have seen presentations given where people stand up and make no bones that the Iraq war has been great for them and long may it continue. I tell people that GWB has done a brilliant job as president and if you hear me out, you may just accept I have a point. He has done an excellent job of paying back the elite who backed him – The Halliburtons, the oil companies etc. While he may go on record as saying “we can’t rely on the middle east for oil”, he is not being sincere. Look what has happened to oil prices as a result of the war – rocketed up to unprecedented highs. Well his friends in the oil industry are not unhappy about that, are they?. Bush knows that he won’t have to tackle the diminishing oil problem – someone else will get that problem once he’s out of office. But he has paid back those who backed him – and handsomely.
So that leads me to my existential crisis. If I keep thinking about everything I might just go crazy. There are things that are wrong in the world, but I’m not cut out to be an activist – unless I am 100% sure of something, believe in it 100%, I find it difficult not to be swayed by those who have a different perspective, and offer a reasonable argument and back it up with facts. Still, even then I will do my own research. If something catches my attention and interest, then it’s worth my time to investigate further.
How do we decide what’s good or bad? Is there any other way to categorise things than by comparing it to something else and seeing if it matches up? Good is only good because bad exists. We only know happiness from experiencing sadness, or ambivalence, so that we have something to compare the feeling to. I don’t think that the Garden of Eden would be paradise… not feeling pain or sadness might be a positive, until you look at the flipside of not knowing joy, and happiness.
An example – after Christian and I broke up, I was devastated. I was so down, I couldn’t imagine ever feeling happy again. Everything was difficult. It was hard just getting through a day of work, or being at home by myself. After I started to come back out of the grief, as my mood slowly elevated and the sun started shining again, the feeling of well-being was so strong that I literally felt like someone had injected me with a happiness drug. I couldn’t think of any reason that I should be happy. But it was there. It was one of the best feelings ever – like one of those flying dreams where you soar above everything, only I was awake (and obviously not literally flying). So anyway, I think that the acceptance that follows grief, when you’ve come to terms with a situation, and can feel good about life again, is one of the most amazing feelings. And if you hadn’t felt the sadness, how could you appreciate the good, when it eventually came along?
Reading over everything, things I didn’t know about the world and the way things work, the way people bask in their own ignorance and prefer it to stay that way, there’s no reason that in the aftermath of this awareness I should be happy at all. How can you feel happy when you are one step closer to the truth about the state of the world, and it sucks? So the pessimists were right? Why should optimism exist at all? Maybe optimism is just another word for naivete.
That said, I’m more aware of some things, come to terms with others, and I’m not angry at anyone. I still feel happy. I still like being alive. There’s nothing more perfect than just being.
I am such a geek.