Big time rant

Stupid people make me angry. Let me rephrase that: deliberately stupid people make me angry. There is a big difference. I have absolutely no problem with someone who honestly makes a mistake, or doesn't know a particular fact, or what have you. Its the people who deliberately cling to their idiocy who get me down.

Here's an example. A friend of mine was constantly mispronouncing a word. The word is "behemoth", which he pronounced "BEE-muth". Now, I know that there are words in my vocabulary that I probably mispronounce, because I only read them, and have never heard them used in conversation. If I were to mispronounce such a word, I would hope that if a friend of mine heard and realized my mistake, he would gently correct me.

When my friend mispronounced that word incorrectly after third time, I told him how to pronounce it properly. His response was, "Whatever, like it makes a difference". Well, yes, it does make a difference. One way is right, the other is wrong.

Or take the massive Millenium celebrations of 1999. As a society, we celebrated the new millenium a full year before the actual new millenium. For those of you who disagree, look at it like this: the first year of the first millenium was 1. That makes the first year of the second Millenium 1001. And the first year of the third millenium is ... that's right, 2001. Not 2000. (If you still disagree, see this great site for an explanation.)

It saddens me that our society is so dim-witted that we got the date of the new millenium wrong by a full year. And its not like no one knew - anyone with any sense made sure that our media and society knew the correct date. But the frustrating thing was - no one cared! Whenever someone was told that they were incorrect, their inevitable response was, "Who cares, like it matters!" Well, it does matter.

One way is right, the other is wrong.

What is it about our society and the people in it that makes them reject common sense? Why don't people own up to their mistakes? Do we blame the government? Do we blame our schools?

Do we blame God, or our genetics, or mother nature?

The sad fact is, that while individuals can be quite intelligent, as a society we are stupid. Our society does stupid things for stupid reasons. We put 95% of our wealth in the hands of 5% of our population. That's pretty fucking dumb. Think about that - if we somehow could wave a magic wand and redistribute our country's wealth evenly, everyone in Canada would make about half a million dollars a year. Everyone.

Sure, pure capitalists then start to scream about inflation, and other objections. I'm not saying that we have a system in place that would work. We're too stupid a society to figure out how to do that. Remember, of course, that pure capitalists are the ones that think its ok for little kids to work 14 hours a day for 35 cents an hour.

And no, I'm not talking about 18th century London, I'm talking about modern day Asia. Every time you buy a pair of Nike shoes, remember you are actively supporting slavery. That's another aspect of our idiotic society. I have actually confronted people with the knowledge that Nike - along with most other major shoe companies - utilize slave labour overseas to make their shoes.

Nike literally spent more in one year paying Jordan to advertise their shoes than the total amount of money paid to every single person who made the shoes. Think about that. Take every single Nike shoe-slave, combine their total yearly wages together, and it does not add up to what Jordan was paid for the year to advertise the shoes.

Our society is addicted to style over substance. We want to wear what our sports stars wear and eat where our movie stars eat. We devote insane amounts of television time and newspaper and magazine space to the stars. Who's dating whom, who wore an ugly dress at the Oscars, etc. We even give our celebreties time to tell us what they think of political issues, without ever once examining said celebrity to figure out if their opinion is based on any real knowledge of the issues.

We elect movie stars and fucking wrestlers to positions of power. A wrestler. God. Help. Us.
So, to sum up: People good. Society stupid. Smarten the fuck up. Here are some positive steps we can take to change:

1. Stop watching negative televsion. Shows that glorify nasty, evil, manipulative bastards. If you feed your brain on a diet of negativity and stupidity, well ... you do the math.
2. Read a book. Seriously. Reading stimulates your brain and exercises your imagination. It improves your vocabulary. Most books challenge us, which in turn causes us to grow and improve as people. Television panders to our lowest common demoninator.
3. If someone proves you wrong, suck it up. Don't keep arguing. Its just plain silly.