Appearances

I have a photocomic (www.antiwisdom.com) and countless people have commented: "Wow, you guys are totally taking pictures in the middle of the city." Why is it so unimaginable to think about someone doing something completely harmless if it is not common and every-day.

Similarly a person I know online was shocked when her father reported that someone had "Frog wedding" played at a funeral.

I understand the need to generalize the world in simple rules and mechanisms which can help us process and understand it faster, but, when such rules become so ingrown that we are shocked when they are proven to be only arbitrary, I believe that it is high-time to get rid of them and start a new.

I quite treasure adaptibility and tolerance, as they not only make others like you more, they also make you enjoy life more, as there are less things to be afraid of and to be angry with, leading to a less stressful life filled with fewer annoyances and conflicts.

I believe religious people are especially guilty of this (alongside mothers and old middle-class stereotypical biddies), as their arbitrary rules are actually given to them by Santa Claus (or God, I always mix the two up), giving them an extra reason to try to conform and to convert others into conforming as well.

Decency in general is such an important issue in large parts of society that numerous books were written on how to properly behave oneself, which fork to use for salad (if you use the fish fork for salad you get angrily stared at by Metatron), who is to say hello first and so on.

These rules were first meant to make lives easier for everyone, but soon they morphed into a complex choreography of moves and countermoves, similar to fencing, but instead of getting stabbed you only get ridiculed by people more superior than you since they know what to do if a lady next to you drops her hankie and it falls into your wineglass (hint: do not eat it).

This is another problem of culture clash, as when Christian missionaries went around the world they mistakenly though that it was polite to try and convert everybody, and regretfully the pagans though it would be polite to roast and eat them, that is why it is important to learn at least the rudimentary good manners of the country you are visiting (wearing a burkha, not looking people in the eye, looking people in the eye ...).

It would be peachy if everyone were just a tad more flexible and tolerant and just not give a shit how other people behave as long as it does not directly influence them.

(In this post I made fun of God a few times probably pissing a few people off. Advice to those people: "Do not get mad because of what some idiot on the Internet writes about your imaginary friends.")