Don't You Think (Like This)

People be crazy. I submit as evidence the following video in which a person I used to be friends with, before he became a little too nuts even for me, speculates wildly about the origins of homo sapiens. He’s a nice guy who certainly means well, but he is one of those types of people who absolutely refuses to hear arguments against the things he wants to believe. He usually presents us with typical “I’m right and you’re wrong” mentality although he astonishly refrains from doing that in this video rambling, instead choosing to engage in the laziest kind of thinking one could possibly participate in. I encourage you to watch the video above, with an open mind of course, then read my rebuttal. 

1)     You simply have to love it whenever he says, “If you really think about it…” because when he says at 2:40 that the conventional thought for centuries was such that life on Earth was the only life in the universe, he’s really saying that such was the conventional though among Western European countries for the past few centuries, though I guess he thinks such a distinction is a given and that’s why he doesn’t qualify his statement. He also seems to imply that such conventional wisdom is the product of a deliberate deception [you can also draw this conclusion from his other videos] without thinking of a reason why people might assume life on Earth is the only life in the universe – namely, because that’s what the evidence so far indicates.

2)     He says at 3:25 that humans are the only animal that creates clothing, weapons, and transportation to meet some need. That’s a simply false assertion. There are plenty of examples of other animals who use weapons and tools to fight and accomplish tasks. Monkeys have been observed using weapons while monkeys, crows, dolphins, and even octopi have been observed using tools to perform tasks such as opening nut shells or crustaceans. Now, I can’t name any examples of animals building transportation off the top of my head, but even a deer would need a boat to cross an ocean, thus refuting his assertion that “a deer doesn’t need a [vehicle] to get anywhere.” Some sea animals, however, are smart enough to use currents to their advantage, helping them migrate faster than they would otherwise. So, it’s not like animals never have a need or never utilize transportation methods. While we have to grant that the tool use by other animals is rudimentary by comparison to human beings, all that means is that we’re very good at tool making. That’s it.

3)     At 4:10 he talks about the disadvantage a person dropped off in the woods would be if not allowed to cloth themselves without thinking about the disadvantage a polar bear would be at if dropped off near the equator or the disadvantage a tropical bird would be at if dropped off in the Arctic. He seems to believe that the mal-adaptation of humans to some environments means that we cannot be of this planet. Simply lazy thinking. We are certainly not the only species on the planet that needs protection from the elements; most land mammals do not sleep out in the open and instead opt for caves or dens to protect themselves from predators and inclement weather. Geez, birds live in caves and build nests, too, while snails seek the protection of shells which btw they don’t grow themselves. So, I don’t know how he’s coming up with this stuff.

4)     At 5:30 he makes it explicit that because human being are not adapted to some environments that we may not be from Earth and he draws this conclusion without considering the human mind as an adaptation. Sure, unaided, I could not survive without clothing near the Arctic like I could near the Equator, but to reiterate, human beings have been very good at tool making which has allowed us to conquer extreme environments. The ability to make advanced tools is not evidence that we are not native to Earth.

5)     At 6:30 he says that when you break down religion into its most basic element, they all worship a god or god. True most of the time, but hardly an unequivocal statement. But he goes on to say that most of these gods came from the stars, a statement that once again is plainly false.

6)     At 8:45 he asks if we are really supposed to be meat-eaters if we don’t have the teeth and jaw muscles necessary to bring down a wild animal. Again, he completely ignores the evolutionary process and the fact that not all meat-eater have long fangs. Seriously, are we supposed to consider him a thinker if he doesn’t possess the reasoning process necessary to draw believable conclusions?

7)     At 9:54 he asks why no other animal appears to think like we do. Uh, I think it’s safe to assume that if fish could think at all like a human being, they’d be wondering why there are animals above the water. Would the fish think we are gods and that we created them? I’m confident that few animals think like another animal much different than themselves. And this guy, well, he’s a different breed altogether.

8)     He concludes by saying we should think about this with an open mind, meaning, he wants you to speculate as wildly as he does as long as you don’t accept conventional  wisdom on the matter. Okay then, how about he thinks about my points with an open mind. Do you think he will? Do you think he’ll even consider the question I pose to him: What does it matter if we are indeed from another planet? Doesn’t our current situation and where we are headed as a species matter more? Granted, we look towards our origins assuming it will give us direction, but the fact is that doing so has not given us any clue on that account. So, who cares where we came from? I do not consider it a relevant question.

Don't Be Yourself

People say many stupid things, but “be yourself” has to be near the top of the list. Why would anyone say something so ridiculous and trite? Is it for some desire for authenticity in relationships, where authenticity is somehow regarded as noble? I’ll accept that answer as soon as someone nails down the meta-ethics that argues for the value of truth-telling. Or is it that the desire for authentic relationships supposedly allows us to discuss things deeply with one another, as if I couldn’t discuss the ramifications of assisted-suicide with a terminally ill patient I didn’t know well. Obviously then, the desire for authentic relationships is not the goal of anyone being themselves. I can have an authentic relationship with my employer without them ever knowing my deepest, darkest secrets (e.g. picking my nose and wiping it on other people). In actuality, when we tell someone to “be yourself,” usually we’re really telling them to calm down and STFU. Now, how that morphed into the phrase, “be yourself,” I do not know. But that’s not our point today. Anyone who in all sincerity tells someone else to “be yourself” probably hasn’t considered the ramifications.

While it may be all well and good to be ourselves when no one else is around, if there is any desire among people to live among others, then society as such needs some rules. Without such rules, whether they are written or unwritten, being ourselves has consequences. For example, if I am in a job interview and the potential employer asks me how I would handle a rude customer, I wouldn’t tell the potential employer how I would handle the rude customer in a manner fitting to who I really am if I would like to land the job. Moreover, if who I really am includes watching costumed midget porn, it would probably be in everyone’s best interest not to engage in that particular activity at work. There is the more obvious example in which I may be going on a first date, in which case I wouldn’t reveal parts of myself – lying by omission – if I would like to build a relationship with the other person since building a relationship can often only be built by easing the other person into your quirks. How many times how the following statement been uttered? “So I just found out he has a large collection of Princess Leia action figures. But, since I’ve already invested so much time in him, I’ll see if I can live with it.”

Probably the worst time to tell someone to be themselves is if the other person has homicidal tendencies. And since that is most people, it’s probably never a good idea to tell someone else to “be yourself.” Imagine this scenario: Two Muslims are in a cave talking and one say to the other, “Akeem, I’m thinking about bombing the maternity ward they just added to the local hospital. Only, I’m not sure the Koran says killing babies is acceptable.” Naturally, Akeem replies. “You shouldn’t worry so much, Omar. Just be yourself.”

You may have also noticed just how cranky people get when they reach a certain age and basically have said, “Fuck it.” Those senior citizens operating without a filter because they figure they’ve been around long enough to stop playing the game? They’re not exactly surrounded by friends and family, are they? In the words of Joss Whedon, “Always be yourself…unless you suck.” Well, we all suck a little bit. We’re human after all. But that doesn’t mean we have to be so damn human all the time. One good, long glance back upon history will show you the consequences of us being ourselves. Ain’t too pretty, now is it? 

Blue Is The Wrongest Color

[ I generally do not write movie reviews unless a movie was so bad that I need to do something to wash the taste of it out of my mouth. Thus, Blue is the Warmest Color warranted a review.]

This movie brought to mind one of those old Alka-Seltzer commercials in which a woozy-looking guy is sitting on the edge of his bed, about to hurl, and says of his predicament, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” Clocking-in at three hours, I can’t believe I watched this entire movie, in no small part to my own determination to finish something once I’ve crossed the half-way mark, which I regard as the ‘point of no return.’ This is to say I obviously hate myself because why else would I watch a movie that is one of those supposedly high-minded art pieces in which everything is supposed to a metaphor for something else? For example, the color blue is a metaphor for the things about the world that confuse the main character Adele, the gratuitous shots of Adele sleeping is a metaphor for her unconscious desire to ‘wake up,’ dinner conversation with her family a metaphor for her existential angst, even the bloody spaghetti her parents make and she later prepares for Emma’s friends is a metaphor! I don’t usually mind symbolism, but I do mind being bludgeoned to death with it. Of course, the symbolism is a pretense and is not why any of us are watching this movie. Let’s all stop pretending that we’re here for the ‘art’ and acknowledge that we’re here for lesbian ‘love’ scenes that are so graphic you know that somewhere a 13 year old teenage boy was unable to call or text his friends and tell him what he’s just discovered on [your choice of streaming video service]. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy these unnecessarily long scenes, but these scenes are the only time our heroine (?), Adele, comes alive; the character otherwise spends the entire movie being wishy-washy when she’s not staring off into space with her vacant doe eyes (which of course is also somehow metaphorical). Ultimately, the movie preys upon the viewer’s own existential angst, leaving us with no resolution to the story and unable to reach through the screen to strangle the director for making this movie twice as long as it should have been. Whatever good will French movies may have garnered from “Amelie” over a decade ago has now been completely erased, leaving us at the point where everyone remembers why we hate the French – they make movies like this.