Morning Coffee #25: “Behave yourself”: a social engineering statement
When the children of Israel were doing battle and Joshua told the Lord to give them extra sunlight to finish off their enemies, I wonder what other parts of the world thought about having an extra day of light or darkness.
A child does something that is generally frowned upon and the parent says something along the lines of “behave yourself”. I now think about that statement. Behave yourself. To behave means to act a certain way. And if the idea of being yourself is not in line with the general consensus, I would like to think that the statement is a form of social engineering. Which can be either good or bad, depending on how one views it. For one, if someone is throwing tantrums, that person should indeed behave himself because I don’t think that is an original behaviour, unless there are stressful triggers in his immediate environment. But if someone is singing in public, telling him to behave himself is basically saying “sing well”. In my humble opinion, that is.
A land flowing with milk and honey is going to be a sticky one, still.
On abstract ideas. These are always open to interpretation. On concrete ideas. These are always open to stress testing. The validity of an idea solely depends on how well it stands in the midst of opposition.
Give an American an orange farm and in a year, you might get orange juice manufacturer and any other possible product from oranges. Give a Nigerian an orange farm and in a year, you might get an orange seller. That is if he doesn’t sell off the farm anyway.
To be critical of the world means to be indirectly critical of one’s self. Whatever one sees of the world is how he sees himself. In which case, I can say I see myself as one who is capable of goodness and cruelty.
A funny question I pose to men. If you had a choice between having a dick and being extremely poor with no hopes of ever becoming wealthy or not having one and being extremely wealthy until you die, which would you pick?
The general answer I get is always in form of another question: why the hell would I need money if I don’t have a dick?
I am sure it must have crossed a lot of people’s minds that when they speak in tongues sometimes, they are indeed saying absolute rubbish.
