It seems that every post on social these days rapidly descends into people arguing or name-calling in the comments. As a supposedly intelligent species, we might expect that at least one person on Earth has the right answer for at least one question… but they don’t.
Image from bryanridgely.com
Because there is no answer.
There’s some fresh debate on social recently about whether eating is a basic human right. As they tend to these days, the arguments rapidly drift from the point. In this case they become about money, variations on whether billionaires are ‘good hard working people creating jobs’, or ‘greedy exploiters killing us all with slave wages’.
For myself at least, all sides are a bit right and a bit wrong… The real problem is that capitalism is just a collection of human ideas and systems. It isn’t transparent, logically consistent or ‘reasoned’. Thus any argument about it can go on forever – because there is no ‘truth’ to capitalism, only perspectives born of the experience of it.
Get rich and capitalism is good.
Die poor and it’s bad.
Similarly, whether billionaires are deserving of wealth or exploiting and starving the workers, whether we should care for the poor or decide it’s all their own fault, whether we should have a health service for all or only cure those who can afford it – all these questions are subjective – with no final truth to be arrived at. Just like ‘Human Rights’.
Image © Adam Zyglis
People endlessly whine on about how it’s a basic human right to have health-care or housing or food or whatever – as if human rights were real. ‘Rights’ are, just like capitalism, politics, economics, religion and the rest – just ideas. They have no physical reality – they do not exists outside of the human mind.
One morality would say we should be kind and feed the poor. It certainly sounds nice and most people at least signal that this is the way they think, even if it’s not how they act.
Another might justifiably say that ‘kindness’ has led to massive overpopulation, and societies that burn astonishing amounts of resources keeping total morons alive just so they can argue about face masks, flat-earths and vaccines.
Until we know where we’re going – it’s impossible to know if we’re travelling in the right direction. This is where we are in terms of ‘rights’ and ‘the truth of capitalism’ or politics etc. Humanity has no idea why it’s here, or where it’s going, and so circles endlessly up its own self-important sphincter, arguing all the way.
© Nina Paley
I have no idea what the truth is. I know only two things.
1. When I try and ask what I need, want, should do, deserve etc. it always gets complicated and I can waste days thinking and resolving nothing.
2. When I ask when my son needs it always seems obvious. I want him fed and warm and healthy.
It is so much easier to get the right answer when you think of someone else. This is where we’ve truly gone wrong – because we are taught cradle-to-grave to think of ourselves. Trying to solve your own mind is like trying to describe a painting in the dark.
Delightfully, there’s a great big huge lovely thing we can all think about instead of ourselves – in order to find clarity.
We’d all be a lot happier if we stopped trying to be right, or prove others wrong, and started asking what the planet needs – since its life is a damn sight more important than any one of ours.
source https://unquiet.world/2020/08/23/why-its-almost-impossible-to-be-right/
Rule of Stupid 
You can tell me anything (yes, even that!)