WARNING: This post is
not intended for people who get easily offended.
As you may have noticed by now, I get annoyed with many things
in life but the one thing that works every time is human stupidity. Stupidity
does not capture the full essence of what I mean here but feel free to substitute
with your own preferences. Under stupidity I usually include the following
amongst other:
- Lack of self-awareness
- Selective narrow-mindedness
- Lack of intellectual properties/processes
- Herd-like approaches to opinion
- Lack of knowledge
- Ignorance by choice
- Self-righteousness
- Hypocrisy
One such manifestation of human stupidity (who I have the
good luck of not knowing personally) managed to make my blood boil and the
veins in my forehead stick out. This being, which from now on I’ll refer to as
the thing posted a picture capturing
the various stages of (surgical) abortion. Then underneath that picture there
comes the flock.
Opinions were unified under a general hateful theme:
“shame to those who do it”, “horrendous”, “disgusting”, “how
can people do it”, “murderers”, “crime”, “I would never do such a thing”, “wrong”,
“innocent soul”, “whores those who do it” and my personal favourites “religion
says it’s wrong” & “babies are godsend gifts”!
If you are amongst people who have such opinions, then you
might want to look away and not read any further. The thing that posted that picture claims to be an educated person and
from a discipline where such black and white opinions are not encouraged or promoted. But
anyway I will not focus on the stupidity of just one person, it would be rather
unfair!
First of all, there are two types of people who see the
world in black and white:
- Genuinely narrow-minded: The type of person, who
refuses any alternatives offered to them, despite the provision of good
arguments.Example: “There is a god, and he is watching us. Darwin was just another nutter who sailed around the world and collected birds for a hobby."
- Ignorant: This is the type of person, who refuses to use the few brain cells that kind Nature offered to them and prefers to go along with the flow or the masses.
Example: “Religion and society teaches us that women are inferior to men; shame on those who go out there and follow their dreams.”
To be frank, I don’t know which is worse. But, I am shocked
that 99% of the comments published under the picture that the thing posted came from women and from people that grew up in an era where
issues of morality and ethics are relative. I am not getting into the whole
abortion debate as we all know the arguments for and against, and really, that’s
not the issue here. I will focus more on the stupidity involved in “thinking”
of such sensitive subjects.
As I read through the comments I realised that I was more
pissed off with not what they were writing per se, but the way all of them
agreed with one another like they were members of some sort of secret society
of grand virtue, intelligence, morality, and court-like standards. I wouldn’t
be surprised if these people turned out to be the same ones that argue for the
idea of an Aryan race, exhibit Hitler-like characteristics, believe that the
Earth is only 2,000 years old, or believe that there is a white-bearded white man sitting on a cloud holding a
lighting and waiting to strike someone that did something “wrong”.
On the other hand, these same (hypocritical) people may
engage in morally questionable actions during their everyday lives. But who
cares about all these when you have in front of you a “baby murderer” right? That
is the ultimate sin, they say, because you choose to “kill”, or let a human
being die. Well, I’ve got news for you: people die every day, in Africa 60
babies per day do so.
People, the world is not black and white. If it is, then you
are probably a dog (that’s a myth by the way). As I argued before, we are all
hypocritical in nature. But at least some of us have the ability to keep our
mouths shut when appropriate, or at least try and express our opinion in a
civilised, educated way.
Oh, and just to clarify, babies are not godsend; they come
from a blind date between an eager sperm and a very popular egg.
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