Apparently I Don't Understand

[Tommy]

I had the following conversation tonight. Now normally I wouldn't post it, but I'm fairly certain this person took a trip down to Crazyville. Although you get to see how nerdy I am in that I quote Alan Moore at him.

Me: Welcome back.
Friend: hi you
Friend: how are you doing
Me: Project Runway finnaly came on.
Me: So I'm good.
Friend: oh ok
Friend: i guess your happy then
Friend: i'm sorry i don't like shallow things
Friend: and i find a lot of people in those feilds to be shallow
Friend: i see shallow people as a waste of space
Me: Fashion?
Friend: yep
Me: It depends upon the individuals in question.
Friend: i dont know
Friend: you can't say that that feild is not selfish
Friend: how does fashion help the world
Friend: it causes pain for those who aren't fasionable and for the poor
Friend: which is rediculous
Friend: it sets unfair standards
Friend: its upsetting to me
Me: Fashion is the reason we can live in the Temperate Zones.
Me: 99.9% of fashion is about making clothes.
Friend: sorry.. pete guess you don't understand
Me: If you think I am unsympathetic to the distorted world of modeling then you're wrong.
Friend: then help me fight it
Friend: lets kill them
Me: But fashion is just anouther artform, and one of the more important ones.
Me: I think America's next top model is allready killing it.
Friend: i dont know
Friend: i think the important artforms are dead
Friend: plays
Friend: books
Me: All artforms attract a fair share of crap. Brilliance is extreamly rare and crapextreamly common.
Friend: ..
Me: After all how many McDonalds are there compaired to LeCirque's?
Friend: perhaps that todays world is full of shit and it needs to be fixed
Friend: through a great war
Me: Improvement through war is the idiology of elitism. There are very very few cicumstances that nessitate the loss of life war brings.
Friend: loss of life is brilliant
Friend: people are over crowded
Friend: and because of thise
Friend: this
Friend: inosent die
Friend: people starve
Friend: people have to be poor
Friend: less people= closer incomes in population
Friend: more people= more variation
Friend: and more differences in income
Friend: which makes more people have to die
Friend: which makes the world spread apart more
Friend: if we start over from scratch
Friend: we can begin from the begining
Friend: and then start a new wolrd
Friend: new money system
Friend: new ways of saving the world
Friend: the envioronment continues to die
Friend: polution in creases with the demand increased caused by the population increase
Friend: that last one was messed up
Friend: haha
Friend: i'm watching fresh prince
Friend: which is terrible
Friend: but its an interesting episode
Friend: but anyways
Friend: as more people live
Friend: more materials are needed
Friend: more production
Friend: more polution
Friend: which is more death
Friend: animals that should not be extint are
Friend: humans interfeared with all of evolution
Friend: its no longer the survival of the fittest
Friend: its survival of the most unintelligent
Friend: though pete
Friend: about the fasion thing
Friend: do people deserve to be over weight
Friend: do children deserve to be 200lbs
Friend: is that child abuse
Friend: these are all things that are important
Me: Have you ever heard of the term "Intrinsic Miracle?"
Friend: no
Friend: but hold that thought
Me: It is a term for something so mathmaticly improbible that it is the equivilant of air spontainiously turning to gold.
Friend: well
Friend: my ideas are not improbible
Friend: or impossible
Friend: they are just ahead of a lot of ways of thinking
Friend: i don't expect you to understand
Friend: most people who i know hare geniuses have trouble understanding
Friend: i've only met like four people who get it
Me: The combanation of events leading to the creation of this universe, the formation of this planet, life being created on it, leading all the way to this conversation is so wildly small that it is an intrinsic Miricle. Every human life quite litteraly is a miracle.
Me: The Black Death produced a lot of good, but no ammount of good could compenstate for the loss of those people.
Friend: the black death happend before there was almost 7 billion people
Friend: and half of our animals species having prolbems
Friend: we haddn't hutted out animals for fun
Me: The European Lion was hunted out long before the black death. No matter how many or how few people there are animals will be put in danger because of us. However in the last few centuries movements were started to preserve endangered animals.
Friend: well they wont work
Friend: chinese don't care about laws
Friend: pandas and tigers are still eaten
Friend: these people don't deserve to live
Me: It is not for anyone to say who deserves to live or not.
Me: That is the ultimate problem with the world.
Me: Elitism and Entitlement.
Friend: no
Friend: the ultimate prolbem is stupidity
Friend: who gets to deside
Friend: descide
Friend: the intelligent
Friend: why
Friend: why you ask
Friend: dumb people kill animals
Friend: so smart people should be allowed to fix dumb people
Friend: it sounds sick
Friend: but i trust in a future with hope
Friend: one without all of this pain
Me: It sounds like it has been done before. It was called "Social Darwinism."
Friend: well unfortuantely pete
Friend: there are too many people to wait around for a disaster
Friend: the only hope i have is when yellowstone errupts and crops die out more people will die out of starvation around the world
Friend: then with less people
Friend: we can move for a promissing future
Friend: it does sound sick to you
Friend: but i see 7 biillin
Friend: thats enough that a few can be tossed aside
Friend: if we save every life
Friend: we would have no food
Friend: you can say what you want
Me: We grow enough food to feed the planet.
Friend: but i know the mathematics
Friend: perhaps
Me: We just don't because of eccnomics.
Friend: but without those who consume way too much
Friend: pete
Friend: i can shape economics
Me: The only way to shape ecconomics is with science.
Friend: or math
Me: Eventualy we will move past ecconmics.
Friend: i prefer math
Friend: pft
Friend: not likely
Friend: not unless something drastic happens
Friend: and i give it a few years
Me: Nano technology will change the world.
Friend: until water runs out
Friend: nano technology will wipe us out
Me: It might.
Me: But I doubt it.
Friend: well we'll see
Friend: we'll see at the end of the world
Friend: who is right
Friend: you or me
Me: The grey goo scenario isn't likely.
Friend: i'm sorry if i appear harsh
Friend: most people will never be able to see life as i see it
Friend: a mathametical equation
Friend: but i'll do what i have to in order to get my desired result
Me: It doesn't appear harsh, it appears stupid.
Friend: pete
Me: It is just a remix of social darwinism.
Friend: perhaps
Me: And a few other discredited theories.
Friend: who says i don't have a lot brilliance?
Friend: pete
Friend: i'm the mad scientist
Me: No, you're not. You simply are rehashing theories that have been around for centuries.
Friend: pete
Friend: i haven't told you the half of it
Friend: but i dont plan to
Me: Theories that have played out and been found to be pretty worthless in their minor froms, and outright dangerous and deadly when fully applied.
Friend: perhaps
Friend: we'll see
Friend: judge me when its overt
Friend: until then
Me: When it overt you will go down in history as anouther tyrent sending his people to death.
Friend: if i can save the world for the greater good
Friend: pete i am not blinded by religion, race, or anything
Friend: i see the world for its sickness
Friend: the media
Me: You seem to be blinded by yourself.
Friend: the world is so easily controlled
Friend: we'll see pete
Me: Rarely do people with messiah complexs turn out well.
Friend: messiah complexes?
Friend: me
Friend: not likely
Friend: i'm no savior
Friend: i'm just a man who wishes to see the world a better place
Friend: less pain
Friend: pete
Friend: immagine a world
Me: "Friend: if i can save the world for the greater good"
Friend: where people don't have to hide who they are
Me: Opression can't be solved by furthor opression.
Friend: opression
Friend: the people deserve to be free
Friend: your media is what opresses people
Friend: it tells everyone what to think and do
Friend: it is what needs to vanish
Friend: if you dont agree
Friend: thats fine
Friend: but do not ever
Friend: ever
Friend: try to portray me as stupid
Friend: or foolish
Me: I've never portrayed you as stupid or foolish.
Friend: you make it appear so
Friend: way up there
Friend: but pete
Friend: i am done speaking about this to you
Friend: if you don't understand
Friend: then its fine
Me: I am merely commenting on your idiology which is flawed. And I understand it perfectly well.
Friend: perhaps
Friend: we'll see
Friend: because everyone sees things differently
Me: I'm just deeply worried about you.
Friend: why
Me: Because of everything you just said.
Friend: haha pete

[beetlebum]

I don't understand it either, but I'm tired. :p :D

[Jack Zodiac]

I stopped reading at "the ultimate prolbem is stupidity," especially after a nonsensical, faux-nihilist rant from some unintelligible schmuck enjoying his "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" on Nick at Nite. Y'know the problems with nihilists? They exist. A true nihilist would end his existence as soon as he discovered he were a nihilist, and the world wouldn't have to put up with people who think like that for more than a minute.

[Jack Zodiac]

Against my better judgment, I finished reading it, and man... what a naive, stupid asshole. No one who types like that and rants inanely on the Internet is going to change the world for better or worse. He's a mad scientist like I'm a Rhodes Scholar. He isn't nihilistic because he believes his insignificant, stupid life matters to the world, but he isn't messianic because he doesn't realize that he won't save the world, and he has no expectations of self-sacrifice. All that kid is is a verbose asshole who needs a spellchecker.

[Reverend Smooth]

Your friend has serious issues. Sorry you had to be on the receiving end of it. Being into fashion has nothing to do with being shallow or not, it just means you take pride in how you present yourself.

[Dark Galaxy]

That was bizarre. And a little scary.

[Astonishing X-Fan]

Is your friend a comic book supervillain, by any chance?

[PatrickG]

I think you omitted the end.

Friend: Do it? I'm not a republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome?

Me: ;O_O

Friend: I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

Me: ...

Friend: What? This is too big to be hard-assed about! You have to compromise!

Me: No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.

** Connection to host failed. Retry? **

[Spike-X]

If your friend thinks there are too many people in the world, maybe he can get the ball rolling by throwing himself in front of a bus.

[Solaris]

This guy reminds me of a Spider Robinson villain:

*SPOILERS***

Basically, the group at Lady Sally's discover that there's a secret terrorist group bent on setting off nuclear mines in strategic cities around the globe.

Guess who the group is?

Highbrow genius-level protestors for PEACE.

Yeah, see, their idea is that the only way to get the US/USSR and other countries (this story is dated a while back) to disarm all their nuclear weapons is... to set off a bunch of their OWN nuclear bombs, and make it look like it was system messups, etc., by the major powers.

These guys were so enamored of their own thinking and their own ideology about peace, they were willing to kill hundreds of millions of people with the very weapons they claimed to despise.

Now, THAT is just a piece of fiction from Spider's head... but y'know, writers tend to get their ideas from real life, in one way or another. There have been plenty of examples of people using terror tactics in a cause that, by its very definition, is totally opposite of terror tactics.

So your friend wants to play God? He wants to be the one to decide who lives, who dies, whose life is worthy and whose isn't?

Fine. Let him start with his own life. End of problem.

Yes, Tommy---that guy has some serious mental complexes.

Another thing it reminds me of is Magneto in the first X-men movie. Note how he never answers the question, "Well if it's so important for you to change everyone to mutants, and someone's got to die using your powers for it to happen---why don't YOU be the one to die?" So much for his high-blown rhetoric to Rogue, when he's about to kill her "in the name of the cause.":rolleyes:

People like your friend send cold chills down my spine---how anyone can be so cold-blooded, and have the gall to present themselves as "lofty idealists"... *shudder*

[Tobias March]

I'm reading some Lester Bangs at the moment (Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung) - fantastic, gonzo-esque writing on music. But currently he's ranting about the Stooges and their stage presented nihilism. It's hysterical, he's dismantling Iggy Pop by portraying him as a middle class American boy selling misery to bored teenagers.

Hey I like the Stooges and I found it hilarious. Reminded me a little of the above. The denial of pleasure in order to make one feel superior. Although he also manages to claim Tommy is talking down to him, despite tarring whole swathes of society with the same brush.

[KPhoebe]

What a disturbing, frightening person. I agree that the world would be better for almost every other lifeform without people in it, but the way to fix this mess isn't to *kill a lot of people*.

[Alan Lynch]

I don't understand it either, but I'm tired. :p :D

Beetlebum's back!

And wow. That's scary strange.

[Cam63]

Tommo, your friend is a serious fuckwit.

[the4thpip]

Get your friend some Prozac.