The myths of society

[Spy]

The many myths of society:

1: Success, you can be whatever you want to be. This sadly is not true. Everyone is limited by their genetic shortcomings, both physical and intellectual, and their surroundings. You have a much of a chance to be a CEO from the ghettos as you do of winning the lotery. Success is also an opinion. What does it mean to be successful? To have a lot of money, a loving family, and two SUV's in your driveway, or maybe to be a bum, live on your own time and by your own standards. As long as their is no set definition for success, you cannot be succesful.

2: Love, there is one person out there for you, and until you find that person you are complete. This is laughable. All those couples out there are really the right matches for each other? The divorce rate, abuse, neglect, and Jerry Springer type shows all point to the opposite. The only reason love is touted about is because it is a multi-billion dollar industry. The corporations try to make you believe that you need make-up, fancy wine, sexy designer clothing, jewelry, crappy hallmark cards, and ultimately a significant other because they want your money. Cavemen didn't have corporations, and they didn't have life-mates either.

3ne person can change the world. I myself can name maybe 200 significant people in the course of history, and if you look at how many people there have been, thats less than .01% of the entire human population. People make no difference, we are ants.

I can't think of anymore because I'm feeling so cynical I feel like I'm going to puke.

[Pollo_loco]

That's not cynicism, that's nihilism. Anyway, concerning your points:

1) Success - the achievement of a goal. If you're too lazy to get to where you want... tough luck, bub. I am still happily pursuing my goal of slack... and am still successful in it (slacking off every day rules).

2) Love - any two people could be right for each other... it's just that some are too lazy to work in order that keep the love going. The reason love is touted is because people that do seem to be in love are happy. All the material/superficial wealth you mentioned only mean something because people have been brainwashed into thinking that they mean anything. Having a siginificant other, however, does help pass the time - as well as engendering you with a sense of belonging, completeness, importance, &c. Have you never been happy in a relationship? Cripes, I sound like a hypocrite now, 'cause I used to define love as a trumped up excuse for a wannabe casanova to get women in the sack. Since we're assuming we know stuff about cavemen... i don't think cavemen had higher order reasoning, either. And i'm pretty sure they fucked like animals. Maybe they were animals - they were'nt that far up the evolutionary scale, were they?

3) A butterfly flapping its wings in the amazon rainforest can cause an earthquake in Kyoto, Japan (or something to that effect). I shoot myself in the head... my brother's work at the hospital suffers due to his grief... unfortunately, he was a part of a lab team trying to develop the cure for cancer and, because he wasn't paying attention to his results, the numbers got screwed... killing little timmy a couple months later because that cure would have saved his life... unfortunately, he was the kid that cracked the secret code that would have stopped some nuclear power country from destroying the world with their rockets... &c.

Do I know that anything exists? My experiences are my own, yours are not mine. How do I know you exist?

[Spy]

Hehe, man... I thought my shit was tough to digest

[RedVento]

I'm not going to bother talking about points 1 & 2.. the've been covered.. but #3 is very interesting because of the implications that Pollo Loco introduced.. Chaos theory.. Getting the big picture by examining one small portion.. his example of the butterfly is perfect, how its beating wings effect the air around it, and that air affecting the air surround it, and so on and so on, until we have a noticable effect. The implications of that are tremendous, and mean that EVERYONE changes the world in some manner.. all the small actions we make have a profound affect on world after time. The effects may not be noticable to an individual immediatly, just as a butterfly's beating wings are not noticable immediatly, but after time for the effects to spread and interact with other variables, effect is very noticable. Think about that for a while and your head can explode...

[Samuel-Vimes]

"That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully
comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh.
Which is it, I wonder?"
-(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

Terry Prachett wrote a good humour/fantasy novel called ?Interesting Times? that had the very same ideas about the effects of something that seems so insignificant as a butterfly flapping its wings. If you haven?t read it, try it.

[Pollo_loco]

I'm afraid to even breathe now... I'll just keep going through life thinking that nothing is my fault

[Sciler]

<font face=times new roman color=red>Call me a hopeless romantic if you want, but I know love does exist, tehres just different levels. I have been in love 2 times before, each time growing more intense than the first. The one I have now is by far more mind blowing than the previous 2. This one is beyond just friendship and intimate love, there is a deeper love as well. Its hard to explain if you've never experienced it, but Love is not a myth...and if you believe so, then I am sorry, but someday you will hopefully come to know the fact of love <center>

[Pollo_loco]

Hopeless romanticism seems to have a negative connotation attached to it. I hate being called hopelessly romantic.

[Sciler]

<font color=red>Its all a matter of perspective is all. Yes it can be negative but theres always a good and bad side to pretty much everything.<center>