opinionated or wise: the curse of being right all the time
disclaimer: i mean absolutely no offense to those of you who disagree with me. unless you deny facts and call the opposite "religion", proclaiming that things we, as humans, have proved true are false, and you merely need "faith" to believe things that are completely illogical given the knowledge we have (or should have) now. but really, i mean no offense.
i've been opinionated for quite some time. my mom always joked about how opinionated i am, with a subtle stab of cautionary weariness. i've been in enough discussions arguments to learn the value of phrases like "it seems" or "i believe", and have long since tried to incorporate them into my language. perhaps "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" isn't the best film ever, but it might be. i don't understand how anyone could like pepsi, but i'll accept that other people's taste buds just might be tainted enough that that crap tastes good. neil young, however, is still the man. and microsoft hasn't made a good product since bill gates made his first bowl of honey nut cherios (all by himself!) when he first dropped out of college.
being as opinionated as i am can be exhausting. i've gotten pretty used to smiling and nodding, gently putting my arm on my friend's shoulder and saying, "okay, i dig. i just disagree. let's talk about baseball." and i understand how it can be difficult for people to deal with me in the same regard.
but, being opinionated, i've gotten a pretty good view about how people have different ideas, feelings, and, well, opinions. in china, it's often easy for people to hear my opinions and pass them off as american ideas. likewise, i won't argue about a lot of things in china because it's easier to pass it off as a cultural difference.
some things, though, i just cannot understand. with all the knowledge we have about nutrition, health, and variety of food options, why is it that a meal's not considered a meal unless there's a hunk of pig, cow, or chicken on the plate? what? you're just in the mood for a salad tonight? then why do you need an additional five pounds of chicken flesh to justify ordering it? and why are there thirty chunks of pig on my pineapple-only pizza? and "small meat" is still meat! and why do i need to call 48 hours in advance, wait on hold forever, just to request that my meal on a plane doesn't have chunks of animals from all over the country, splattered in a strange poop-colored sauce of undetermined origin? tofu is cheaper. and better (okay, that's my opinion). and healthier (also, probably my opinion). but can't people understand that a lot of people out there are perfectly satisfied with meatless meals? in this case, i'm not saying i'm right, i'm just asking that people meet me halfway and admit that maybe their diets' completeness isn't fact either?
and if you deny or doubt evolution, you may as well say that gravity is as much of a rule as windows is a high quality operating system. and if any teacher EVER tells wackmo that "theory", in the case of gravity, means "idea", i will go to no end to make sure that teacher loses his/her job and never teaches again.
comments:
hear hear peter!
If there is one thing that makes people feel the need to correct other people's behavior it is food!
And don't get me started on evolution. That crap makes my blood boil. I refuse to let my kid go to a school that teaches evolution as an option on level with creationism. Oh my god!
Benji! | August 7 @ 4:51pm
I don't believe in evolution. So there.
Like, I believe that evolution happens, that's undeniable. I simply don't believe that _humans_ came to our present state through such a process. I am an old-school Biblical Creationist in that respect.
But it's difficult for me to care at all about the debate of how the process of evolution should be taught in school science classes though, since it never even came up in any of mine -- in either elementary school or high school -- and I turned out to have a perfectly reasonable amount of general scientific knowledge. (It's like how I don't care about the quality of elementary education, because mine sucked bricks. So, you know, how important can it be?) I guess I'm pretty strongly in favor of leaving decisions about curriculum in the hands of individual teachers and, when necessary, the school board.
But here's what really, really, REALLY annoys me. When people attribute the phrase "survival of the fittest" to Darwin, because he never friggin' said it!
(Oh, and responding to the body of the post: I'm with you, Peter. Eating so much meat is ridiculous!)
Poppy | August 8 @ 7:08pm
As a teacher, i have to respond to this. in my opinion, my job as a teacher is to educate my students of ALL possibilities. Besides teaching content, my responsibility as a teacher, especially a high school teacher, is to teach my students responsibility and how to function in society. More than ANYTHING, i hope to teach my students how to think for themselves, how to become their own person. In order to do this I think it is absolutely 100% necessary to expose them to ALL sides. Yeah, I suppose it would be nice to breed a bunch of little kids to believe what I do.. and trust me it would be easy (they are so easily influenced), but I'd like to think I have morals. My goal in life isn't to convince everyone else to believe what I do and to agree with me. My goal is to make sure that we are bringing up children to think for themselves. Thankfully we live in a place where this can be appreciated.
Now I don't teach science, but I think that what I've expressed applies to any content. While some may think that the physical, scientific facts can be the ONLY basis to anything in this world, there are others that absolutely don't need those facts to understand what makes sense to them. They have proof as well, unfortunately for them it just doesn't come wrapped up in nice little "logical" scientific box (that they can hurl at someone in a debate.)
Bottom line- I wholly believe that it is extremely important for our teachers to teach all possibilities and let our students decide for themselves.. let them make decisions based upon what has been presented to them. I don't think an evolutionist should teach evolution as 100% truth, and I don't think that a creationist should teach creationism as 100% truth either. Rather, they should present what we know about either side and let it be.
Even less than one hundred years ago we didn't have scientific proof for many things that are considered "logical" now.. we didn't know how harmful cigarettes are for example.. that doesn't mean that they were good for you. To think that just because we don't have scientific proof for things now means that it's illogical or impossible is ignorant and closed-minded. Another important part of being a teacher- teaching open-mindedness.
For people who have such a hard time believing in things that aren't scientifically proven, you (a general term) sure do believe or have "faith" in a lot of illogical things.. or at least spend time coming up with or supporting conspiracy theories that don't have any sort of scientific proof behind them . I know quite a few of you support (or at least did in the past when we had discussions) the Loose Change theories (or ideas should i say??) Not only did these guys have absolutely no science behind what they said but backed up most of what they said with very poorly researched "facts".. see below) watch the history channel's two hour special: 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction.. where the Popular Mechanics study (including experts in several fields) disproves pretty much everything that was said in Loose Change... and then tell me 9/11 was an inside job (I think you can see it on youtube.) Is "scientific proof" only real when it is convenient for one's political agenda?
Sorry I'm digressing now.. so I'll stop.
(ps- peter, to follow your first sentence of the post with your second, in my opinion, is more offensive than if you hadn't have said it at all. but i suppose that was kind of your point.. which seems to make your initial and final "i mean no offense" pretty insincere.)
some of the poorly researched things from loose change (the point is if the reporting is that sloppy, how can you put faith in the rest of what they say, i.e. how do I know that things they claim, but I'm not familiar with, are true).
Examples are when they say that after the attack, the FAA instituted the order to stop all takeoffs and landings nation-wide, and that the last time that order was used was in 1903. I have no clue where that came from, since the Wright Brothers first flight was Dec 1903. They also mentioned that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon flew over I-395 before it hit the building -- actually 395 is on the other side of the building. There was a reference they made to a B-52 crashing into the Empire State Building in 1945. But the first flight of the B-52 was in 1954. There was, however, a B-25 that crashed into the ESB in 1945. Its easy to see how the two could be confused (B-52 versus B-25), and there are lots of references on the internet that incorrectly state it was a B-52. The point is that it appears the people that produced the movie did some investigating on the internet, and didnt check out their facts. Yet there are so many people out there that believe what these guys have to say as truth... or at least plausible. These are just the silly little things that stick out as very poorly researched..without even going in depth. If you really are interested in the truth, you should check out the special I was talking about earlier.. like i said i think you can find it on youtube.
holly | August 11 @ 5:26pm