Emblematic Gods

[Toe Cutter]

Who would you pick to be your representatives of pure good & evil / God & Satan

Good = Gary Busey

Evil = Phil Spector (I actually like him though)

[Amelia G]

Off the top of my head . . .

Righteousness: John Cusack

Banal Evil: Sasha Baron Cohen

I know I'm going to wake up in the night thinking of other options. Good question.

[Raza]

Me, of course; they are concepts that exist only in my mind, so nobody else could reasonably represent them. Nor do they; most injustice inflicted by people is due to stupidity more than malevolence, and most focused attempts at good are hindered by that very same thing. All in all, humanity at large seems condemned to perpetual neutrality by its underlying psychologial mechanics.

[OliX]

God - Satan

Satan - God

???

BTW, Raza, you say stupidity, but isn't it lack of education and awareness that is a more often problem than stupidity?

[Amelia G]

God - Satan

Satan - God

???

BTW, Raza, you say stupidity, but isn't it lack of education and awareness that is a more often problem than stupidity?

I agree that ignorance is a problem more than stupidity exactly, although I think a lot of people are willfully ignorant because it is easier and more comfortable.

Kind of like a lot of Americans probably have trouble wrapping their minds around the way you have had to go from country to country, not because they are too stupid to get the concept, but it is emotionally difficult so they are willfully ignorant and their brains shy away from the information.

[OliX]

Their loss. Thing about ignorant behavior and me is that I'm sort of allergic to it. I might shy away from conversation that I see are pointless to continue but as long there's little chance of intellectual benefit to either side, it will keep me going.

Anyway...

God - David Bowie

Satan - David Bowie

[Mr Karl]

hmmm.............I'm not sure

[Morning Glory]

God: George Burns

Devil: George Carlin

[Clockwork Jello]

Good= James Dean

Evil = Ann Coulter

[Cafe_Post_Mortem]

For good - Angelina Jolie
She gives like a third of her money to charitable organizations, but even more importantly she does not expect me to. That is a rare bit of sensibility you do not see a lot in the wealthy. Plus she is so dang cute.

Paul Newman was up there, but you know... tits make me think of good.

For evil - Donald Trump
I have never seen someone make the seven deadly sins, even my favorites, so unattractive. Except sloth. He doesn't do sloth but it is hard to get in the other six and sloth.

[Morning Glory]

just so you know, my choices are just who I picture as those characters, not that those people were the embodiment of those roles.

[mystoo]

Good = Pierre Trudeau
Evil = Green Day

[Velvet-Tongue]

Good = Ghandi

Evil = Dahmer?

[Mr Karl]

Good = Pierre Trudeau
Evil = Green Day

true canadian

[Raza]

God: George Burns

Devil: George Carlin

Your country has too many fucking people named George.


Anyway, I don't think ignorance and a lack of education are the main problem, no. I think most of the ideas that can improve the world are yet to be discovered, and that 'education', in which large groups of people are force-fed the ideas of a central authority, does at least as much harm by reinforcing that model of learning over the spontaneous indulging of individual curiosity as it does good by accidentally teaching something that turns out correct now and then. Education's 'usefulness' lies mostly in teaching people how to get along in our society, often at the cost of their ability to imagine getting along in any other context.

The main problem is that people are for the most part rather bad at thinking, because the desire to adapt our belief to things like ego and immediate practical convenience and our susceptibility to suggestion from people doing the same interferes at every turn; an obstacle that I'd label 'stupidity' sooner than 'ignorance'.

[OliX]

You forgot that 100 in IQ represents intelligence of the average person on planet. Now, of course that you with your 125+ in IQ would see upon average person as a stupid, just because you get better grasp of the society we live in. Average person actually isn't stupid, you're just smarter.

BTW, we have enough ideas for improvement of the world to actually do it. For example WW III

[Raza]

Naw, IQ is grossly inadequate for measuring that kind of stuff; a measure of raw processing power at best, but measured in an environment isolated from the things I named as our major limiting factors. So long as there's factors that make us want to believe incorrect things, big IQs will only help us construct more sophisticated rationalizations.

Anyway I'm not comparing people's intelligence to mine; I suffer in varying degrees from every one of the things I listed, although being aware of it helps avoid their pitfalls. I'm human, and although I'm a big step ahead of most people I make no illusions about how many more there are left to take. For every thing that I think I've got some shallow understanding of in this world, there's a million I'll never even get to wonder about.


And people need to start coming up with ideas and acting on them as individuals. World wars are the result of people trying to get everybody else to do their thing, which are the result of our tendency to validate ideas socially rather than logically.

[OliX]

Well, what do you suggest instead of WW III? What can kill more than 80% of population. I just got an awesome idea for a t-shirt. I dislike t-shirts with slogans generally, but I guess there's a t-shirt out there for everyone. It goes like this: "Save the world, kill yourself".

On the other hand, professional IQ test are pretty much accurate. It's not just going in and writing things on paper, it involves at least week of talking to a psychologist, doing various tests and so on. Reason is because you can't scale normal persons with persons that classify as one of the wide autistic spectrum.

I wonder what you class as smart or stupid? Is it street smarts that count, your orientation and wild life skills, logic, something else?

[Ajax Knucklebones]

A high I.Q. just represents a higher ability to learn quicker and retain better information from what a person of say 100 I.Q. would be able to do. Other than that, if you do not learn anything because you do not try to seek out knowledge, it really doesn't matter how high of an I.Q. you have. You will still be ignorant. It's not like a person with an I.Q. of 140 or better is just born with knowledge. You have to somehow experience it through media, books, or just life experiences them self, to become educated about the world in which you live.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

Who would you pick to be your representatives of pure good & evil / God & Satan

Good = Gary Busey

Evil = Phil Spector (I actually like him though)

Why Gary Busey?