Surviving Idiots

by Terry 15 Replies latest jw friends

  • Terry
    Terry
    SURVIVING IDIOTS

    There is in every species a "best" at surviving.

    99.99 % of every species which has ever existed has perished.

    ONE PER CENT of all who every lived = is us right now.
    ___
    Is that fair?

    If you have just $4,210 to your name, you’re better off than half of people around the globe right now.

    Among our 1% there is another 1% in a continuous
    filtering process from weak to strongest, poor to richest.
    Each 1% produces yet another 1% because
    everything is always sorted from least to most.

    Sorting this out is maddening.

    Societies which have experimented with equality, fairness, and altruism have been surprised at their own downfall when inevitably it arrives.

    (The Golden Age of Pericles : 495 to 429 B.C.E. Pericles transformed his city’s alliances into an empire and graced its Acropolis with the famous Parthenon. His policies and strategies also set the stage for the devastating Peloponnesian War, which would embroil all Greece in the decades following his death.)

    ___
    Are there reasons for no EQUALITY?
    Yes.

    We all want the BEST and that instantly creates a hierarchy
    form "least" to "best" from which we choose.

    Colleges, Employers, the Military, Sport teams, Businesses, all want
    the BEST among the field and that automatically means
    Winners and Losers.

    The famous Bell Curve

    In the bell curve, the highest point is the one that has the highest probability of occurring, and the probability of occurrences goes down on either side of the curve.

    Call the Left hand side: LOSERS
    Call the Right Hand side: WINNERS
    Call the Middle : Struggling to move to the Winner side.

    Human differences are REAL.
    None of us gets to start even.
    The game is IN PROGRESS when we arrive.

    Everyone and every thing can be subdivided into BEST to WORST. Everything collapses otherwise into a chaos of incompetency and idiocracy.
    Sound familiar?
    Idiocracy is rule by elite idiots who cheat the system by pretending to be the best of the best.

    We ignore this at our own peril.

    POLITICS is two wolves and a sheep voting on "What's for lunch?"
    Who will cry "Unfair?"
    ___

    The bulge in the Bell Curve is the voter pool. It thinks it is selecting
    from among the right hand side and not the left hand side.
    Wrong.

    Developed countries have politicians at local levels all the way up to ruling executive levels.
    Should we be surprised at the (lack of) quality of these elected officials?
    Developed countries are in chaotic turmoil even with carefully selected leaders who are "the best of an extracted group of exceptional people."
    But voters exist on a scale of competence / incompetence as well.
    Switching from Republican to Democrat and Democrat to Republican over and over solves nothing because
    we have NO COMPETENCY.

    Our incompetent leaders have produced escalating chaos
    through an ILLUSION that we are voting between a field of highly competent people.
    We are not.
    We are shooting in the dark and hitting each other.

    Mortal wounds abound.

    _____
  • iwantoutnow
    iwantoutnow

    How ever you slice it - the species is doomed.

    We are a cancer to the planets lifeforms:

    Everywhere early man colonized, within years most large animals went extinct, and many many others.

    There are 7 times as many Cows, Chickens, Pigs, Sheep, than ALL other mammals on earth.

    •In Australia—earliest humans: 64,000 years ago; extinction of major mammals--30,000-60,000 years ago

    •In the Americas—80% of large animals became extinct around the same time as first human presence there
  • I believe in overlapping
    I believe in overlapping

    That's why it's appealing to be a Jehovah Witness, because Jehovah is going to solve the whole problem by getting rid of incompetency and appointing a competent fellow that will rule the earth from heaven.

    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/StI2n-Tg2vw/maxresdefault.jpg

  • Terry
    Terry

    I don't know the we, as a species, are doomed.
    I do think our ways of governing, our stability, our economies are heading toward total disruption.
    Historically, opportunists rush to fill the void.
    Latter day carpetbaggers.
    That bulge in the middle will quickly sort into Big Losers and not so lucky winners.
    The super-wealthy apparently already know this. I've watched YouTube tours of underground living spaces which look like shopping centers where our present day elite are ready to scale down their above ground freedom and confine themselves in secure subterranean shelters.

    T.S.Eliot The Hollow Men

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar

    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom
    Remember us - if at all - not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

    Picture

    II

    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
    In death's dream kingdom
    These do not appear:
    There, the eyes are
    Sunlight on a broken column
    There, is a tree swinging
    And voices are
    In the wind's singing
    More distant and more solemn
    Than a fading star.

    Let me be no nearer
    In death's dream kingdom
    Let me also wear
    Such deliberate disguises
    Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
    In a field
    Behaving as the wind behaves
    No nearer -

    Not that final meeting
    In the twilight kingdom

    Picture


    III

    This is the dead land
    This is cactus land
    Here the stone images
    Are raised, here they receive
    The supplication of a dead man's hand
    Under the twinkle of a fading star.

    Is it like this
    In death's other kingdom
    Waking alone
    At the hour when we are
    Trembling with tenderness
    Lips that would kiss
    Form prayers to broken stone.

    Picture


    IV

    The eyes are not here
    There are no eyes here
    In this valley of dying stars
    In this hollow valley
    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

    In this last of meeting places
    We grope together
    And avoid speech
    Gathered on this beach of this tumid river

    Sightless, unless
    The eyes reappear
    As the perpetual star
    Multifoliate rose
    Of death's twilight kingdom
    The hope only
    Of empty men.


    Picture


    V

    Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o'clock in the morning.

    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow

    For Thine is the Kingdom

    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow

    Life is very long

    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow

    For Thine is the Kingdom

    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the

    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but with a whimper.

  • blondie
    blondie

    Thanks, Terry. I remember the last line, nice to read the rest of the story.

  • smiddy3
    smiddy3

    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but with a whimper.

    I seem to remember this is a line out of Neville Shutes book ,"On The Beach"

    which was made into a film starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner in which she unceremoniously said that Melbourne where the film was made "was the arsehole end the world.or words to that effect.

  • blondie
    blondie

    smiddy3, that's where I heard it. Loved the movie, too bad no one sees it much nowadays, maybe a little less nuclear missile rattling.

  • Tater-T
    Tater-T

    I was thinking the exact same thing just a bit ago

    You also see an interesting hyperbolic curve in there

  • Terry
    Terry

    Nevil Shute's book ON THE BEACH is a stunning film and wonderful book.
    I'd like to direct you to another film (with Jimmy Stewart) made from Nevil Shute's books.
    NO HIGHWAY (IN THE SKY)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiuuCnYlc1M

  • tiki
    tiki

    Thans for this Terry. Your bell curve analysis relative to the political conundrum..spot on.

    I remember as a teenager reading Neville Shute....and probably not really getting the real impact. Will return and re-read.

    Excellent thought provoking post.

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