People, generally, don't want to worry about the potentialities the future holds, because they feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are powerless to change anything.

Whatever housemate this was is surely older than you by a little, and I'm betting doesn't worry nearly as much as you do. If he is like most people, he is probably of the belief that there is a right and wrong way for a person to be, with no grey area, no middle ground, and no accountance for differing personalities. Therefore he must conclude (falsely, in my opinion) that it is either right or wrong for a person of his age to behave a certain way. If you start bothering yourself with the matters of the world before he does, the only way it will reconcile in his mind without posing an insult, or a threat to his ego, would be to rationalize it all away by saying that you're the one who's messed up, because he is incapable of seeing the possibility that you're both doing what's right for your respective selves.

In any case, he's obviously wrong, because if it weren't right for you to worry so, you wouldn't do it.

The problem with self-proclaimed "realists" is that they tend to have a very narrow, single-minded view of what reality actually is. They seem to anticipate only those occurrences with which they have personal experience, or which seem to fit well with their existing picture of the world. If no comet, for example, has ever hit the Earth in the lifetime of a Realist, or in what they consider to be recent history, then surely it must be the stuff of legend, impossible or astronomically unlikely in "real" life (read as: "their" life), despite cosmic evidence to the contrary.

Realists have provided us with numerous insights in recent history, though. Why, without the common Realist, we would be unaware that the moon landing was actually faked (no doubt by the same special effects company that created the Nazi holocaust of WWII, or perhaps the entire war). We might not even know that travel to the moon is actually impossible because Newton's laws of mechanics only hold true within the Earth's special gravitational field. We wouldn't know that electricity was the work of the Gods and could never be understood. We wouldn't know that we lived on a flat planet with stars, moon and sun placed in orbit around us for the purpose of nourishing us with light and heat, and giving us night and day. We wouldn't know that a terrorist attack of drastic magnitude perpetrated against the United States is terribly unlikely, or that North Korea and other threatening nations could never in a million years develop a nuclear weapons program. We would still be under the impression that lasers are useful. We would be unaware that chimpanzees are incapable of conceptualizing languages. And of course, we would be oblivious to the plainly obvious fact that creating a worldwide communications network would be an impossible undertaking. Yes, a lot of good these people have done us, a lot of good indeed.

Honestly, if your average proponent of Reality knew anything at all of statistics, or could see a wider slice of existence than the one right before their eyes, they would scoff at their very presence on Earth, and dismiss it as a useless improbability, worthless even to contemplate.

I am definitely a pessimist, and I'm normally right, too. Not that I expect the worst, exactly, but entropy is what I've been shown thus far to be real, and entropy is what I anticipate.

To say that even the brightest of human minds could simultaneously analyze, or even be aware of, all of the various factors down to a sub-molecular level affecting the outcome of a given situation, and therefore have any way whatsoever of knowing what is or is not likely, now THAT is unrealistic.

As for the silly ones who worry about their silly cars and their silly schedules and their silly coffee and their silly little problems, I can see why you would find them so irritating. I suffer from the same problem from time to time. Traffic would be the best example for me. I can't fathom what must go on in the mind of some pathetic little man who sits white knuckled, red faced, screaming, alone, behind the wheel of his car, more viscerally enraged at being slowed by a traffic jam than he would likely be if someone were to rape his daughter. Or the man who swore at me the other day after the car in front of me cut him off, plainly not because he was angry at me, but simply because he needed someone to swear at, and in his measly little fit of childish rage, he didn't care who it was that took the brunt of his outburst.

Perhaps it is the fact that many people believe the bigger problems are being taken care of by a god of some kind that makes them feel justified in acting like whining babies over much smaller issues, but I find it gets to me also, just how blind the little impish bastards can be. Not that I really have time to worry about that either. ;)

As a rule, think of it this way, Yanni. Take a given "it". Whatever "it" may be, most people will not understand it properly. They will be blind to its true ways, they will refuse to learn from it, and if you give it to them, they will break it. That is what people seem to do best. I guess it's up to some of us, if we can, if we ever become rich and powerful enough, to work on cleaning up the mess a little, so maybe we won't all be so much in debt to the planet the spawned us, or even the God that did, if that is what you believe, since I'm sure we are by now in His/Her debt also.

It was Daniel. Martin stayed out of the shouting match and general sarcasm that resulted from my being more than a little annoyed.

...Yet another thing Rhiannon has done to scare the living jebebus out of her housemates...wonder how many things will be added to the list?

Well put. This is a topic that warrants discussion-at-length. Yet, I am overcome by the prescient nature of the subject that I hesitate to comment.

Indeed. Say, Akk1e dude... you use ICQ?

Hot Damn! She's on to using plurals! Sweet! Go Elvish Kitty GO! When I have time (hmm, like that will happen) and when you have time (hmm, same problem) I propose a Tengwar Day !

Yay Twengar! Weeee!

Took me forever to find somewhere that both listed plurals and told me how to use them...

Yes, I use ICQ. I know that your # is on the site, so the next time I'm home, I'll add you to my contact list.

You know...I was thinking of this (again, still...whatever), and I thought I should add. Students bug me too. And professors. Grrr...

They get so concerned and so competitive about things like ENGLISH. Like English is important. You can almost sense the epiphanies going on behind their brains, their minds waking up when the prof explains this one little concept to them that anyone with half an ounce of grey matter should have picked up earlier. The looks of revaltaion when they realize "yes, I understand! I understand what it was that Romeo was trying to say to Juliet. Oh how beautiful! How sweet!" How about Romeo was a lust-sick twenty year old who bagged himself an equally lust-sick fourteen year old and then they killed themselves? Oh how sweet! Makes me all a-quiver with emotions and overbalanced hormones, doesn't it?

I know seeing the hidden meanings of things is important, in some cases. In many cases. It's the hidden things that lead to explanations - albiet intuitive ones - of how the planet actually seems to maintain its equilibrium (or did...that's changing). Seeing the beauty in cities (it's there...hard to see, but its there) is pretty much the only thing that keeps me sane enough to live in one.

Daniel (gotta love the Sindarin femine ending of his name. Hee hee) told me to join a club, or a protest, or circulate petitions. I attempted to explain that whether or not I was part of some silly little club wouldn't matter, because I don't control the mass media, and am not likely to for some time, and probably without more than a few "accidents" involving those who already do, but he was having none of that, told me to calm down and then went off to his own room.

I suppose this is good, because that way I wouldn't end up killing him in frustration at his single mindedness. Now he's always trying to see if I've gotten over my annoyance yet. And that makes me even more annoyed, because he wants me to revert back to the state of mind that he's in, namely the one where you take everything for granted, that conspiracies are just the workings of sick minds, that the world isn't going to just up and die on us because we're God's greatest creation and He'd never let us down despite multitudes of evidence to the contrary, and that any mess we make can be left to our grandkids to clean up because we don't want to bother. FAT BLOODY CHANCE.

Ignorance can be bliss, and at times I do wish I was ignorant, if only to spare myself the pessimistic thoughts that plague me everywhere I go. But...I would not trade these thoughts, because even if they drive me nuts, it does separate me from the masses, and the masses piss me off royally because they don't understand and never will because they think that the world is their playground...these thoughts make me who I am, and I will not change that, not without a great deal of persuasion from someone other than my housemate who's mind seems smaller than most.

Gah...I've gone and posted in annoyance, despite this being more of a new article than babble. Whatever. Darryl, take it off if you really must. It's only bitchings.

Kitten it's more than bitchings, in my opinion. Of all the lines (beside the Sindarin female ending which I laughed my ass off at) you wrote in the babble it was your last that stayed present in my mind the most.

Look at what you've done in this long babble. Of course you're something of a cynic/realist so let's start by asking that rhetoric again from a slightly different view: look at what this babble has done, and for whom. I'm going to start with you.

You added more to your article, expanding and clarifying aspects along parallel lines. That you posted this babble means you know full well how much this has been on your mind and simply putting it in writing, or hell displaying it to the world: will make discussing these aspects in the future a tad easier, a tad more fluid, a tad more convincing, even a tad more rewarding. Writing the babble was an outlet. I don't mean to tell you how you feel or how you ought to feel. I don't pretend to be able to read minds or even read them well either. I know that my babble here is to both make myself and yourself feel a little better. And not in a happy-go-lucky, thank-god-Morgan-explained-his-divine-views-Now-I-can-go-on-to-do-greater-things way. If a catalyst could be manifest I would yearn to be that thing over my present form, over anything else, even an Elf. I'm hoping, that by babbling here, I do some benefit for you. Not even one that can be defined by our pathetic English language for which there are only a handful of words that describe emotions while the Inuit have HOW MANY words to describe SNOW!? But some benefit.

Not to say your views weren't concrete before, the act of writing out your thoughts in your babble improved you understanding of the things. Your thoughts on these topics are more tangible. You are a little wiser.

Anyway. I think you've also done a good job in conveying your views to fellow Crappers who post, and any passer bys who read your pile of crap ;) I enjoyed reading what you had to say because then I had the opportunity to compare it to my own views and see how they meshed, then look at why they did or didn't. I wouldn't have had that opportunity before your babble. So, I thank you. And I mean that.

You've spoken a lot more about yourself than you have on the topics in discussion by interjecting your personal views, even in the vocabulary you chose. Call me something of a person-freak, or just a freak, but that kind of... exhibition helps me, and others interact with you a little better. I shit you not. Or at least that's what I think.

So Darryl, I'd like to say her babble is more than worthy enough to be called a pile of crap and is perfectly justified in remaining posted even if it was posted in annoyance. We're not a democracy here at PoC (whew, or else there'd be pure chaos at work), but that's my say. Balls.