the unhypocrites part deux

the unhyprocrites, part deux, written 2-3months ago:

its so easy to point fingers isnt it? when  i was 7 my chinese teacher said something in class about how pointing your finger at someone also meant having three of your own pointed at yourself. it seemed like a pretty cool discovery at the time, and i think i got the message. and then i forgot about it because i kept receiving the same visualisation from so-called wise people that i met along the next decade or so.

we people like to point our fingers at things unknown to us, things that make us uncomfortable. and if theres one thing ive observed in humans, its our aggressive requirement for security and reliability in our perceived reality. anything or anyone who threatened our bubble world would be pointed at and struck down by words, if not sticks and stones.

discrimination is a powerful tool--it is powerful not because of its efficacy but for its accessibility and widespread use. when two different groups are put together, their first impressions of each other are formed from firstly the gathering of similarities in appearance, behaviour, ideology. if none is found, then the notion of imminent mutual threat is quickly reconciled. i note that this threat is merely perceived at this point--not that it is cannot exist, rather that it is believed to be at this moment; whether the threat is real or not is inconsequential because a perceived threat is no more unreal  than a truly existent one to a mind that is easily threatened. and people do all sorts of things when they are afraid. granted, in the civilised societies that earthlings have made for themselves, they no longer murder each other out of mass fear and hysteria. think kkk, nazi, salem, etc. how embarrassing it would be for all of them if i were an alien who came to this world and observed them and told them that they are just as barbaric as they were a century or two ago. if not in action, then in words, if not in words then in thought.

discrimination is a powerful tool, but its use is flooded by abuse. this tool is but a defense mechanism to increase the sense of security of life and limb of its user, who never knows the ugly side of it: this tool is a selfish tool. it increases our quality of life at the expense of another party. if my theory is right, then such use of this tool would lead to null progress for all mankind in general. i suspect if people were mature and selfcongnitive enough, they should realise this on their own eventually, that low-level defense mechanisms are animal in nature (kill or be killed). whosoever debases a person to increase his security does inadvertently makes himself into an animal which will always be lower than the lowest person.

people they think thoughts, say words, and do actions and they do all of it for self-preservation. they dont know this, so i cant really blame them anyway. but some really try and go out of their way to push people down and make them stay down. those i cannot forgive; those who take this terrible tool and use it, and claim divine instruction from religion--my religion, and so taint it with their human imperfections: who are they, with their own lacking human wisdom, to take from some 700 listed sins a few chosen ones and place them prominently against the rest, as if some sins are worse than others. who are they to then proceed to condemn their neighbours who are guilty of one of their chosen sins, when they themselves, the pointer of fingers, are guility of the other 699? is not the divine wage of any of those 700 the same? i know the punishment is the same, and that the penance for forgiveness is also the same for any and all of them.

like i said in part one, it takes one to know one, and until we find similarity with discomfort, we can never accept it as part of life, and by unfortunate virtue of our humanity, we will blindly try to eliminate that discomfort at the cost of our neighbours comfort, and because we are blind, also at the cost of our very humanity.


if by pointing a finger at someone makes all of us realise that we dont really like strange people, then i hope we also realise the second truth--that we are only doing it to regain lost security. and the third truth if possible, that both the danger and gained security are likely false, and that the discrimination was a result of personal hypocrisy. hopefully some will grasp the fourth, that as sentient beings we are capable of transcending animal instinct and so resist them just because we can--because there should be more meaning to life; to discover and exercise the reason for our sentience--raison d'etre.

if only mr loh told me this instead of his selfpointing idea, i would have believed him. but i was 7. and that age, anyone is likely to stop pointing if someone said to them that they were also pointing at themselves--after all, nobody likes to point at themselves. they only stop doing it because they realise they are also hurting themselves. seven year olds cant achieve a level three clarity. hey, cant blame them. but most forty seven year olds still dont. what gives?

there is happiness outside of the bubble world too.