signs of intelligent life out there?

anywhere?

One of those moments when pragmatism and common sense make me look anywhere but here for signs of intelligent life. Those moments come more and more frequent as I grow older, it seems. Must be growing life experience and disappearing hopes for mankind, that kicks in.

Nothing out of the ordinary going on that I can bother you with in this post, which may actually be what makes me wonder if it really makes any sense to hang around for much longer. I am literally growing more and more tired of “ordinary” – dead tired of it actually.

Being less mobile with no hope of improvement, and therefore in the position that I to a large degree am depending on others to put certain things in place so I can keep the wheels of life running the right way, doesn't help on my view on “ordinary”.

The quite “ordinary norm” seems to be that what little I really need in order to make a sensible living, can wait till after I am dead or at least am so impaired that I can not make use of it anymore. Thus, spending more time here seems futile.

Wonder how many others who are in similar more or less hopeless positions vs “ordinary”.

out of the ordinary?

In a sea of commercial and administrative “ordinary”, there are tiny pockets of extra‐ordinary progress. Have to look hard to see them, and “ordinary” blocks access and view as well as it can to avoid losing status and control.

No immediate commercial or administrative value in extra‐ordinary anything, so must be just a waste of time and money. Let us flood the world with more “popular­ized ordinary junk” to cover all else to the point where we can say there isn't any.
— Ordinary in charge

If you are not happy with being a piece of the puzzle or a cog in the machinery, and dislike being force‐fed “ordinary nonsense” day in and day out everywhere, then there isn't much left for you in our “ordinary and over‐regulated” societies.

You can either become an “ordinary exploiter” or “ordinary exploited”, or a declared or undeclared outsider in one or another form. Too often the choice isn't even yours, as “ordinary” discriminates all that does not fit into its own pattern – it's in its nature.

regulated and recycled nothingness.

So commercial interests and administrative forces work hard to shape societies the way they want them, and within these societies everybody fights to be “in” with everybody else to the point where you literally can't see where one “ordinary joke” ends and the next one starts.

Oh yes, I almost forgot that most ordinary people so badly want to be something extra‐ordinary, that they jump all over each other to be first to pick up every recycled and repainted trend someone say they must be in on.

A little while later another recycled trend replaces the previous one, and the would‐be extra‐ordinary go through the whole cycle again. Makes them all oh so special to try to be first in being and doing just like everybody else.

Fine, I can understand all that “recycled trends” stuff, but why do ordinary “in” people get so easily upset when you tell them that they all look alike, talk alike, smell alike, and rarely ever make sense? If this is what it means to be “in”, then I don't want to be counted anyway but out.

all too ordinary.

People in general, are too preoccupied with being “mainstream ordinary”, “sideline ordinary”, “exceptionally ordinary” or just plain “couldn't‐care‐less ordinary” to contribute much of value that has the potential to make any real difference and possibly do some good that lasts longer than ordinary memory‐span – a few weeks or months.

A lot of talk everywhere about what should be done and should not be done and what's wrong everywhere and what others should do about it, and very little of substance actually gets done, or undone (as would probably work better in most cases), anywhere. It is a game – with deadly consequences in parts of the world.

Looking for real progress anywhere in all this, is futile…

give me a break.

Simple coordination of all means at hand to reach well‐defined sets of common goals, would solve most problems. Some goals may be defined and most means are at hand, but the intelligent diversification and coordination necessary to solve real issues, is for the most part totally missing.

To exemplify “ordinary singlemind­edness”: if the only tool a person knows how to use is a hammer, then predictably everything looks like just another nail. And if that person is in overall control of anything important in society, the results are predictably disastrous in most cases.

One has to be career community‐demolisher to find anything positive in the general lack of communication and coordination across levels of administrations in charge. All too normal though, just check for yourself, anywhere.

In my very honest opinion: humans are not well suited to administrate anything, especially not themselves and each other. The only somewhat valid excuse is that “we are only human“, which does not help much if you are the one who has to pay dearly for administrative failures.

Too many “I'm having a bad day” decisions being made, in addition to all the usual “I'll show them who's the boss” decisions made all the time by incompetent administrators everywhere. And no-one in charge carry any responsibility for their own actions – it's just an “ordinary messy soup”.

any point in staying?

Honestly don't know. Where I live all good reasons are obscured, removed or replaced by those in control of “ordinary”. Little chance they will do anything but recycle what never worked well before and won't work well in the future. It is like watching a bad old movie again and again in hope of a new and improved ending.

So, here we are; wasting time on increasing amounts of the same we did years, decades and centuries ago, with the prospect of even more of the same and nothing but the same, until we die. Not much to look forward to.

Maybe if I ignore all “ordinary”, I may find something of value. May even find intelligent life around somewhere…

Always a risk that ordinary people deem me insane for not wanting to be like them and share their “ordinary values”, but that can't be helped and can be seen as more of a positive sign than anything.
After all: my own sanity is more important than what others might think of me.

sincerely  georg; sign

Hageland 07.aug.2012
08-10.aug.2012 - minor revisions.
last rev: 10.aug.2012


side notes.

the meaning of life?

Seriously, are you still looking for meaning of and in anything related to mankind, or is it just another “ordinary joke” tailored to mislead weak people?

We can find many million variations over ordinary “meaning of life” oriented themes, religions and what‐not, and if that's not enough each of us can compose our own mix. Apart from the obviously too extreme variants and mixes, they cause little harm and may actually do some good to the human mind.

Relax, and believe, or not, in whatever. It is only relevant to you and those you regard to be in your group.

we're so much in control.

The human race is here because way back in time over million of years, some beings developed better ability to control and modify their environment to their own benefit than others. A slight edge was all we as race needed.

Now we use our abilities mainly to exploit and destroy our environment rather than to care for and improve it. Nothing to worry about, it is all part of ordinary evolution.

Our ability to dominate, modify, exploit and destroy without really having to know what we're doing, may lead to some nasty surprises at times. But so what – we can always blame someone else and hide our own lack of knowledge and common sense when something has gone terribly wrong.

Good to know that the environment we try to dominate and control, can strike back with force. May in the end be the only defence against senseless exploitation.

written history is fun.

Apart from that written history for a large part is written/dictated by the wrong people and therefore not all that trustworthy, it may make for some fun reading.
I started by reading through Heimskringla a few times at the very young age of 6 – could read fairly well at the age of 5, and have kept history reading going ever since. Puts present and future history in perspective.

I have never liked memorizing “long lists of royals” for history exams or other uses, and think the reason is that they are mainly long lists of who exploited and/or killed off who during each time‐period. Deploring stuff.

What interests me most is what really took place in an area of the world in a given time‐period. Life and work of real people – the exploited if you like.

Of course: we find lots more written in favor of the exploiters than the exploited, which is natural since nearly everything has been censored to suit one side of every story. Few truly independent and well informed history writers have been around, so to get to the real story we have to dig deep.

Maybe some of that censorship‐tradition is broken these days because of improved communication channels with space and capacity to allow for diverging views and deeper insight. Still plenty of censorship though, as exploiters in any field continue to suppress truth and rewrite history to favor themselves, as soon as most people have forgotten what really took place.

involved in politics?

Nah, not important.

In our western democracies it does for the most part not make much of a difference who are occupying what political positions anywhere. But, to paraphrase a well know and long gone politician: “democracy is the worst form of governing, once all alternatives are taken off the table”.

We should know a bit about the alternatives by now, after 2 world wars and lots of more limited but just as deadly ones. Don't think any somewhat sane people really want to try those again if they can avoid it.

Regardless of how bad the alternatives are, no-one can claim that democracy is working well anywhere. Democracy is just the least bad of many bad forms of governing, and should be improved upon to at least get it up to a good/bad balance point.

The overwhelming majority of voters have no real idea what candidates stand for. Even if they do and vote accordingly, more often than not the elected do not live up to many, if any, of their pre‐election promises, often because they simply can't the way democracy works – or doesn't.

Vote, or not, as you see fit on the day, and then forget about the whole issue till the next time. Day to day politics is shaped elsewhere everywhere anyway, and politicians are mainly running around like headless geese trying to catch up with reality and claim credit for their own benefit while avoiding the blame.

intelligent coordination body.

As regional and local administrations are just more layers of personality stuffed inefficiency and failing coordination, we may as well “terminate” these administrations everywhere and link those few left in charge of getting anything done in our local societies up to national and global coordinators in the form of artificial brains – no humans in charge.

Even worst case scenario consequences of relying on artificial intelligence, can't be worse than with what we have now, and at least the damage will tend to be somewhat more evenly spread when they have a “hick‑up”.

Such a move will also save enormous areas now mainly used as office space, for more productive use…
…bridge or chess tournaments maybe?

I don't play games in any form, so what do I know.


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