why hippies drive me crazy
this morning i woke up and set out on an epic quest: do. homework.
i obviously failed. but where your brain isn't concerned with one thing, it finds itself involved in another.
three analogies for the way my soul/mind works (er, the way things sort out in my brain):
1. quilting: patching together all the threads of things that are input into it through day-to-day life. snippets of conversations, school readings, internet news reports, bumper sticker slogans, pre-instilled cliche adages, biblical truths, song lyrics, simple observations, etc, etc, etc, eighteen trillion factors of input from all five sensory organs. these things are sewn, some are used as threads, others as fabrics, others as bunting, others tossed aside as scraps... but all used to patch together my understanding of all that i know. that's really huge and general ("understanding of all that i know")... but... what else do i say there? i like the word "patch" partially because it reminds me of pirates, but also because it has a collage-y sort of feel to it, and a worn-down one. this is not perfect material we are dealing with, but we will make something new and functioning and strong and lovely out of the pieces we have.
2. cleaning: i'm a neat freak, i cannot begin to do my homework until my clothes are laundered, folded, and put away. i freak out when there's trash on the ground. etc. analogical for my mind because i have all this STUFF to deal with that i've put in there (see: the comma-studded list above), and now it has to find a way to all fit in there. some you can put together, some has it's own special place, it's all part of what i value else it gets tossed.
3. LOST: i don't even watch this show anymore but... when you put a bunch of totally different people on a desert island with monsters and crazy things on it, you get really good television drama, and you get a fitting analogy for my thought process. these things eat each other or they learn to get along throughout their differences. again, refer to the items above. everything i learn has to deal with everything else i learn, and it's stuck there. you do not forget things and so you must reconcile them with everything else you know.
this are incessant and unceasing; these things are inextricably bound (to quote a recent reading from my Drawing 1 class) inside my mind. and i'm okay with that, but this is why, instead of doing homework this morning, i sorted out why hippies drive me crazy.
hippies drive me crazy because:
1. drug abuse and the claim that living naturally allows for it. yes, you can smoke a truckload of marijuana and feel connected with nature because the stuff is from plants. that's true. plants also kill you (think Into the Wild and Emile Hirsch diarrheaing his guts out because he ate the wrong berries). and i know weed doesn't kill you, i'm just pointing this out. oleanders also are lethal. actually: here's an officially-certified list of plants that will lead you to your death.
theologically, there is a created order inherent in nature; there is a natural way that nature is to be used. it might be natural to use a stick to stab a fish, it might be natural to gnaw the bark off of one, it might be natural to use it as a step when you are climbing a tree, but it is not natural to stab your eyes out with it. likewise, it might be natural to smoke something (i'm sort of inclined to say it's not, but i don't have enough knowlege or experience to really make them claim), but i don't think it's natural to smoke something frequently. getting high is a natural effect of the created plant, but getting high a lot and not functioning as you were naturally meant to (you are a person, you have ration and reason, you are here to make something of your life and help maintain order in nature) is not natural. it is not natural to have a society full of stoners, is what i'm saying; nothing would ever get done, and it is natural for things to get done, because progression and creation and production is natural (think of all the little processes that take place in a single plant. the marijuana plant, for example. think of all the progress and process that has to occur inside it in order for it to be smokable).
Peter Abelard has this to say on demons, actually, and, if you can bear with the demon-stuff (if you're not used to thinking/talking/considering that sort of thing just consider it anyways for a second, that's another conversation entirely), it might be relevant:
"Now suggestions come not only from people but also from demons. For they too sometimes urge us to sin, not so much by their words as by their deeds. They are skilled in the nature of things, both by the subtlety of their abilities and by long experience. For this reason they are called "demons" - that is, knowers. They know the natural forces of things whereby human frailty can be easily aroused to lewdness or to other impulses. Thus sometimes, with God's permission, they put people into a state of lethargy, and afterwards bring cures to those who beg them to. Often when they stop injuring them, they are believed to cure them. In the end, they were permitted to work many amazing tricks against Moses in Egypt by means of magicians, but the natural force of the tings they knew. They aren't to be called "creators" of what they made so much as "arrangers." For example if someone, following the lesson of Vergil and pounding bull-meat, brought it about thereby that bees were produced by his labor, he shouldn't be called the "creator" of the bees so much as a "preparer" of nature. So by this skill they have with the natures of things, demons arouse us to lust or other mental passions and bring them to us, by whatever art, while we don't realize it, putting them either in our sense of taste or in our bed, or stationing them somehow or other inside us or outside. For in herbs or seeds, or in the natures of both trees and stone, there are many forces apt to arouse or pacify our minds. Those who would come to know them closely could do this with ease."
This is cool for a lot of reasons. Before people knew that meat attracts bees, someone who did know that could use his knowledge as power over those with lesser knowledge and say that he magically made the bees appear. This goes to reinforce the cliche that "knowledge is power." For me, who is usually skeptical of demon/angel sort of talk, this is a good passage, because normally, we who know less of that sort of realm will think of them as having weird powers of doing things to us for no really apparent reason except that angels do good to you and demons do bad. But for me to think of a demonic force as something that has more knowledge of creation than me, I can understand that, because it just means that I am victim until I have greater knowledge. A "demon" can't "act" on me; a demon (however you want to think of that at this point; don't jump all over me if your view differs) can't deliberately strike me. I'm thinking of this example: Maybe a demon wanted a tree to fall on me. Cool/bummer. A demon isn't this weird thing that can pick up a tree and drop it on me (i.e. cartoons), but demonic arrangement of nature can have a really really rotting tree fall on me while I am standing under it. That's natural, for a tree to die, it would just be crafty of a demon to have me standing under it when it did. Now, since I am a somewhat reasonable being, I can make it a point not to stand for long periods of time under trees that I know are rotting. If I didn't know that sort of thing (that trees rot and fall over), then I would be at greater risk of being subject to that injury (call it a demon attack, but the point is, it isn't; it's just a demon arranging nature unfortunately so that you get attacked by nature's laws. likewise, it is natural for an idiot to stand under a tree and listen to it creak creak creak and fall over and flatten him). God arranges it so that we are reasonable enough to not stand under rotting trees. God also arranges it so that rotting trees happen as part of all the world's ecological cycles. God created it all this way.
okay that went on longer than expected. the point is, hippies who do nothing but smoke all day long are just as hypocritical as Christians. hippies who claim to abide by nature by really don't are equally hypocritical as Christians who claim to abide by Jesus and God but don't.
2. bisexual free-love hippie lifestyle. (disclaimer: i'm not claiming this for all hippies, this is not a blanket statement, chill out chill out). some hippie-sort-of-folk have a lot of sex with a lot of different genders (two) and that, according to the reasons this article claims (actually click the link, please, don't just keep reading), is not natural. natural meaning biological. having desires is natural, and i think that this is a true statement that most people in their beginning-hippie stages get tripped up on. so having desires is natural, but having reason is natural, also. using reason to determine that one sexual decision is not biologically beneficient is natural. wow, i didn't mean to have a defend-same-sex-marriage discussion, but it just sort of came up after looking at that news article. two really great websites that i discovered this morning (please please peruse them, they are really well thought out) are:
Liberal Democrat argues same-sex marriage makes society less 'pro-child'
and
Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage
i think the main point here is that: nobody intelligent believes in discriminating anybody. what we can learn from that is to let the intelligent people make decisions for us, since those who are most intelligent are out for everyone's best interest. the other point is to let your desires (homosexual or just simple pride from arguing otherwise) succumb to the natural fact that intelligence/better reason is naturally the standard for making decisions, especially since discrimination is not natural and by letting this happen you are guaranteed not to be discriminated against. i'm kind of going in circles. i'm on my second cup of coffee. i'm moving on.
i don't actually think hippies are all bad, especially since non-hippies do this stuff too; it's just really easy to use cutesy words to make a point. actually, i'm going to apologize for that now, for abusing the name "hippie" for my own self-building. i'm thinking, "well, i could go back and change the blog title and change the structure of this completely so that i don't use the word 'hippie,'" but i actually think that it is better for you, the reader, to see how i have come to this understanding. i made a mistake! sorry! i learned from it! do the same in everything you do!
so here's where i think hippies get it right:
when they understand natural rightly and use natural products (hemp stuff, etc). i'm going to say this right here and now, that i think it is stupid to sell natural, organic, and environmental products at designer levels and high prices, because that is taking what you are claiming to be better for the world as a whole and then privatizing it so that you can make a product. "hey check out this new great thing that is going to save all of civilization! but you have to pay $$$$ (that only 5% of the world's population can afford) to get it." cool. real cool.
anyhow, using things truly naturally is good. i had a lengthier-than-usual chat with david today about the use of natural products (stemming from my defense of Arbonne cosmetics, which are made with natural ingredients as opposed to chemical ones). using natural goods is better because
a) they do not have preservative chemical compounds in them (the example being waterproof mascara over regular mascara: waterproof washes away with lots of scrubbing and makeup remover [which is just more chemicals], whereas regular [Arbonne!] mascara requires minimal rubbing and only water) and so they react with natural substances (water) to function efficiently.
b) production of them requires ingredients that are already found in nature, so there is less energy wasted making synthetic ingredients, and there is less waste product from the synthesizing of these synthetic ingredients.
examples besides cosmetics:
1. my dentist, last summer, in a lecture regarding why no one ever should ever drink soda, explained that coffee and tea (beverages that come directly from plants) are not dentist's enemies because natural dies will come off your teeth. the artificial colors used in sodas and other manufactured drinks, however, permanently stain and ruin your smile. natural > artificial.
2. i love maraschino cherries. so much so, that i ate a whole jar of them the other day. i looked up all the preservatives in them (potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, and sulfur dioxide, click on those links and scroll down to "Health Effects" if you want to know how quickly you can expect me to die and from what causes), and realized that eating a whole jar of maraschino cherries is not something i should probably do ever again. now, regular cherries, ones straight off a tree, are just as tasteful. and they are chemical-free. it is cool that we have the technology to preserve the shelf-life of cherries, but, preservation is not natural. some is (think beef jerky, the old-school kind, not those nasty weiner-shaped sticks of it they sell at 7-11), but most is definitely not (i.e. botoxed-up old ladies. oops, that's a cosmetic example. um, i.e. twinkies, which have a shelf life of about 10000 years - and we can all agree that they are not good for your health). eating cherries from a jar is tasty, but it is essentially drinking formaldehyde. eating cherries from a tree is tasty, and there's no abnormal side effects (too many cherries, of course, equals unfortunately profuse bowel movements, but, again, that's your body's natural way of dealing with itself). natural > artificial.
3. this isn't really anything long or thought out; it's more of a threat. why should we be wary and cautious of chemicals? they ruin our fun and take over our sky. it's a news story about a toxic cloud covering, in case you were too lazy to click the link. i'd like to point out, here, that i'm not anti-chemical and i think that chemicals and chemical technology do a lot of really great, working-with-not-against-nature sort of things that i don't have the time to provide you with examples of right now, but i think that again, we should leave this to the intelligent folk. let the chemist handle clean-up of a chemical spill, not the janitor. also, in a complaint parallel to that of my earlier one regarding natural products: we shouldn't sell chemical products (nowadays: over 70% of the grocery store) excessively just so that we can make $$$$ money $$$$. it is better to not unleash carcinogenic (cancer-causing) chemicals in mass production on society. this is why natural, organic food should be sold at a decent price: so that people won't go buying the chemically-altered stuff (everything else). natural > artificial (with toxic cloud coverings!).
i really should go. but. a final example:
4. we always like naturally nice and happy people over artifically nice and happy people. we loathe people with fake smiles, fake laughs, fake niceness towards us. we value people who really seem to appreciate things/us. so again: natural > artificial. (*implied encouragment to be a genuinely nice and happy person).
wow. whattaday.
don't be a hippie, be a human. peace.
i obviously failed. but where your brain isn't concerned with one thing, it finds itself involved in another.
three analogies for the way my soul/mind works (er, the way things sort out in my brain):
1. quilting: patching together all the threads of things that are input into it through day-to-day life. snippets of conversations, school readings, internet news reports, bumper sticker slogans, pre-instilled cliche adages, biblical truths, song lyrics, simple observations, etc, etc, etc, eighteen trillion factors of input from all five sensory organs. these things are sewn, some are used as threads, others as fabrics, others as bunting, others tossed aside as scraps... but all used to patch together my understanding of all that i know. that's really huge and general ("understanding of all that i know")... but... what else do i say there? i like the word "patch" partially because it reminds me of pirates, but also because it has a collage-y sort of feel to it, and a worn-down one. this is not perfect material we are dealing with, but we will make something new and functioning and strong and lovely out of the pieces we have.
2. cleaning: i'm a neat freak, i cannot begin to do my homework until my clothes are laundered, folded, and put away. i freak out when there's trash on the ground. etc. analogical for my mind because i have all this STUFF to deal with that i've put in there (see: the comma-studded list above), and now it has to find a way to all fit in there. some you can put together, some has it's own special place, it's all part of what i value else it gets tossed.
3. LOST: i don't even watch this show anymore but... when you put a bunch of totally different people on a desert island with monsters and crazy things on it, you get really good television drama, and you get a fitting analogy for my thought process. these things eat each other or they learn to get along throughout their differences. again, refer to the items above. everything i learn has to deal with everything else i learn, and it's stuck there. you do not forget things and so you must reconcile them with everything else you know.
this are incessant and unceasing; these things are inextricably bound (to quote a recent reading from my Drawing 1 class) inside my mind. and i'm okay with that, but this is why, instead of doing homework this morning, i sorted out why hippies drive me crazy.
hippies drive me crazy because:
1. drug abuse and the claim that living naturally allows for it. yes, you can smoke a truckload of marijuana and feel connected with nature because the stuff is from plants. that's true. plants also kill you (think Into the Wild and Emile Hirsch diarrheaing his guts out because he ate the wrong berries). and i know weed doesn't kill you, i'm just pointing this out. oleanders also are lethal. actually: here's an officially-certified list of plants that will lead you to your death.
theologically, there is a created order inherent in nature; there is a natural way that nature is to be used. it might be natural to use a stick to stab a fish, it might be natural to gnaw the bark off of one, it might be natural to use it as a step when you are climbing a tree, but it is not natural to stab your eyes out with it. likewise, it might be natural to smoke something (i'm sort of inclined to say it's not, but i don't have enough knowlege or experience to really make them claim), but i don't think it's natural to smoke something frequently. getting high is a natural effect of the created plant, but getting high a lot and not functioning as you were naturally meant to (you are a person, you have ration and reason, you are here to make something of your life and help maintain order in nature) is not natural. it is not natural to have a society full of stoners, is what i'm saying; nothing would ever get done, and it is natural for things to get done, because progression and creation and production is natural (think of all the little processes that take place in a single plant. the marijuana plant, for example. think of all the progress and process that has to occur inside it in order for it to be smokable).
Peter Abelard has this to say on demons, actually, and, if you can bear with the demon-stuff (if you're not used to thinking/talking/considering that sort of thing just consider it anyways for a second, that's another conversation entirely), it might be relevant:
"Now suggestions come not only from people but also from demons. For they too sometimes urge us to sin, not so much by their words as by their deeds. They are skilled in the nature of things, both by the subtlety of their abilities and by long experience. For this reason they are called "demons" - that is, knowers. They know the natural forces of things whereby human frailty can be easily aroused to lewdness or to other impulses. Thus sometimes, with God's permission, they put people into a state of lethargy, and afterwards bring cures to those who beg them to. Often when they stop injuring them, they are believed to cure them. In the end, they were permitted to work many amazing tricks against Moses in Egypt by means of magicians, but the natural force of the tings they knew. They aren't to be called "creators" of what they made so much as "arrangers." For example if someone, following the lesson of Vergil and pounding bull-meat, brought it about thereby that bees were produced by his labor, he shouldn't be called the "creator" of the bees so much as a "preparer" of nature. So by this skill they have with the natures of things, demons arouse us to lust or other mental passions and bring them to us, by whatever art, while we don't realize it, putting them either in our sense of taste or in our bed, or stationing them somehow or other inside us or outside. For in herbs or seeds, or in the natures of both trees and stone, there are many forces apt to arouse or pacify our minds. Those who would come to know them closely could do this with ease."
This is cool for a lot of reasons. Before people knew that meat attracts bees, someone who did know that could use his knowledge as power over those with lesser knowledge and say that he magically made the bees appear. This goes to reinforce the cliche that "knowledge is power." For me, who is usually skeptical of demon/angel sort of talk, this is a good passage, because normally, we who know less of that sort of realm will think of them as having weird powers of doing things to us for no really apparent reason except that angels do good to you and demons do bad. But for me to think of a demonic force as something that has more knowledge of creation than me, I can understand that, because it just means that I am victim until I have greater knowledge. A "demon" can't "act" on me; a demon (however you want to think of that at this point; don't jump all over me if your view differs) can't deliberately strike me. I'm thinking of this example: Maybe a demon wanted a tree to fall on me. Cool/bummer. A demon isn't this weird thing that can pick up a tree and drop it on me (i.e. cartoons), but demonic arrangement of nature can have a really really rotting tree fall on me while I am standing under it. That's natural, for a tree to die, it would just be crafty of a demon to have me standing under it when it did. Now, since I am a somewhat reasonable being, I can make it a point not to stand for long periods of time under trees that I know are rotting. If I didn't know that sort of thing (that trees rot and fall over), then I would be at greater risk of being subject to that injury (call it a demon attack, but the point is, it isn't; it's just a demon arranging nature unfortunately so that you get attacked by nature's laws. likewise, it is natural for an idiot to stand under a tree and listen to it creak creak creak and fall over and flatten him). God arranges it so that we are reasonable enough to not stand under rotting trees. God also arranges it so that rotting trees happen as part of all the world's ecological cycles. God created it all this way.
okay that went on longer than expected. the point is, hippies who do nothing but smoke all day long are just as hypocritical as Christians. hippies who claim to abide by nature by really don't are equally hypocritical as Christians who claim to abide by Jesus and God but don't.
2. bisexual free-love hippie lifestyle. (disclaimer: i'm not claiming this for all hippies, this is not a blanket statement, chill out chill out). some hippie-sort-of-folk have a lot of sex with a lot of different genders (two) and that, according to the reasons this article claims (actually click the link, please, don't just keep reading), is not natural. natural meaning biological. having desires is natural, and i think that this is a true statement that most people in their beginning-hippie stages get tripped up on. so having desires is natural, but having reason is natural, also. using reason to determine that one sexual decision is not biologically beneficient is natural. wow, i didn't mean to have a defend-same-sex-marriage discussion, but it just sort of came up after looking at that news article. two really great websites that i discovered this morning (please please peruse them, they are really well thought out) are:
Liberal Democrat argues same-sex marriage makes society less 'pro-child'
and
Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage
i think the main point here is that: nobody intelligent believes in discriminating anybody. what we can learn from that is to let the intelligent people make decisions for us, since those who are most intelligent are out for everyone's best interest. the other point is to let your desires (homosexual or just simple pride from arguing otherwise) succumb to the natural fact that intelligence/better reason is naturally the standard for making decisions, especially since discrimination is not natural and by letting this happen you are guaranteed not to be discriminated against. i'm kind of going in circles. i'm on my second cup of coffee. i'm moving on.
i don't actually think hippies are all bad, especially since non-hippies do this stuff too; it's just really easy to use cutesy words to make a point. actually, i'm going to apologize for that now, for abusing the name "hippie" for my own self-building. i'm thinking, "well, i could go back and change the blog title and change the structure of this completely so that i don't use the word 'hippie,'" but i actually think that it is better for you, the reader, to see how i have come to this understanding. i made a mistake! sorry! i learned from it! do the same in everything you do!
so here's where i think hippies get it right:
when they understand natural rightly and use natural products (hemp stuff, etc). i'm going to say this right here and now, that i think it is stupid to sell natural, organic, and environmental products at designer levels and high prices, because that is taking what you are claiming to be better for the world as a whole and then privatizing it so that you can make a product. "hey check out this new great thing that is going to save all of civilization! but you have to pay $$$$ (that only 5% of the world's population can afford) to get it." cool. real cool.
anyhow, using things truly naturally is good. i had a lengthier-than-usual chat with david today about the use of natural products (stemming from my defense of Arbonne cosmetics, which are made with natural ingredients as opposed to chemical ones). using natural goods is better because
a) they do not have preservative chemical compounds in them (the example being waterproof mascara over regular mascara: waterproof washes away with lots of scrubbing and makeup remover [which is just more chemicals], whereas regular [Arbonne!] mascara requires minimal rubbing and only water) and so they react with natural substances (water) to function efficiently.
b) production of them requires ingredients that are already found in nature, so there is less energy wasted making synthetic ingredients, and there is less waste product from the synthesizing of these synthetic ingredients.
examples besides cosmetics:
1. my dentist, last summer, in a lecture regarding why no one ever should ever drink soda, explained that coffee and tea (beverages that come directly from plants) are not dentist's enemies because natural dies will come off your teeth. the artificial colors used in sodas and other manufactured drinks, however, permanently stain and ruin your smile. natural > artificial.
2. i love maraschino cherries. so much so, that i ate a whole jar of them the other day. i looked up all the preservatives in them (potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, and sulfur dioxide, click on those links and scroll down to "Health Effects" if you want to know how quickly you can expect me to die and from what causes), and realized that eating a whole jar of maraschino cherries is not something i should probably do ever again. now, regular cherries, ones straight off a tree, are just as tasteful. and they are chemical-free. it is cool that we have the technology to preserve the shelf-life of cherries, but, preservation is not natural. some is (think beef jerky, the old-school kind, not those nasty weiner-shaped sticks of it they sell at 7-11), but most is definitely not (i.e. botoxed-up old ladies. oops, that's a cosmetic example. um, i.e. twinkies, which have a shelf life of about 10000 years - and we can all agree that they are not good for your health). eating cherries from a jar is tasty, but it is essentially drinking formaldehyde. eating cherries from a tree is tasty, and there's no abnormal side effects (too many cherries, of course, equals unfortunately profuse bowel movements, but, again, that's your body's natural way of dealing with itself). natural > artificial.
3. this isn't really anything long or thought out; it's more of a threat. why should we be wary and cautious of chemicals? they ruin our fun and take over our sky. it's a news story about a toxic cloud covering, in case you were too lazy to click the link. i'd like to point out, here, that i'm not anti-chemical and i think that chemicals and chemical technology do a lot of really great, working-with-not-against-nature sort of things that i don't have the time to provide you with examples of right now, but i think that again, we should leave this to the intelligent folk. let the chemist handle clean-up of a chemical spill, not the janitor. also, in a complaint parallel to that of my earlier one regarding natural products: we shouldn't sell chemical products (nowadays: over 70% of the grocery store) excessively just so that we can make $$$$ money $$$$. it is better to not unleash carcinogenic (cancer-causing) chemicals in mass production on society. this is why natural, organic food should be sold at a decent price: so that people won't go buying the chemically-altered stuff (everything else). natural > artificial (with toxic cloud coverings!).
i really should go. but. a final example:
4. we always like naturally nice and happy people over artifically nice and happy people. we loathe people with fake smiles, fake laughs, fake niceness towards us. we value people who really seem to appreciate things/us. so again: natural > artificial. (*implied encouragment to be a genuinely nice and happy person).
wow. whattaday.
don't be a hippie, be a human. peace.
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