I Hate "People"

I hate people when they think as a mob. I hate people when they are led by hype, marketing, and popular opinion. That's when I hate people.

Agent K in Men in Black said, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” Which is why they can't be trusted with the truth.

In a world where Google has made information ubiquitous, people are still to lazy to look up information. One unfounded accusation becomes a rumor and a smear campaign and any defense by the person is judged as a cover up.

One person's inane comment is suddenly thought of as bigotry. Take Pacquiao's comment on same sex marriage (I didn't vote for the guy), he was naive or brave enough to speak his mind about same sex marriage as a sin. While that statement was of course offensive to the LGBT community and Christians applauded him, he was specifically addressing the marriage issue and he was not promoting LGBT hate as big a disconnect as that might seem.

Turns out the report was a bad piece of journalism, it was sensational tabloid reporting made to look credible because it was posted on the web and not some two bit paper. But the Old Testament quotes weren't uttered by Manny.

Risking the anger of the LGBT community, opposing same sex marriage is not equal to LGBT hate. Double standard might be a closer monicker but hate isn't. And besides isn't it true that there are members of the LGBT community NOT clamoring for same sex marriage and some even oppose it. Almost in the same vein as Catholics for RH.

Interpreting Manny's statements are best viewed through the lens of Hanlon's Razor (remember what I said about information and Google...). It does not have to be viewed as malicious.

The next day after Anti-Manny hate speech and clamor for his sponsors to drop him the news article explaining his side was of course received less than half as well. Comments range from, "Of course he'll say that," to, "Whatever, I still think he's a bigot." Who's close minded now?

Manny's case is just the latest example. But time and again when "people" unite in a nationwide/planetwide knee-jerk reaction considering the possibility that they could be wrong is such a hard pill to take.

That goes for Manny or Gaga or Rowling or Dan Brown or who ever dares get spotlighted. Haters will always find a way to get public consensus to legitimize their hate. Send a text brigade invoking God, National pride and primal fears and you've got the seed, ready to replace intelligent thought with a "cause for action", to be spread by "people" who let others do the thinking for them. No one dares be an individual in the face of such popularity.

But don't think that getting lost amongst "people" only applies to the majority, counter culture has it too. You find a people of somewhat like mind but you find that they too can be extreme. Strangely enough people do the same thing, they conform to the thought of the minority group. Hoping not to be seen as part of the majority the, unthinking masses, one becomes unthinking themselves to accommodate the cool minority ideology. In that set up it feels weird to counter the counter culture. But if you see yourself as a rebel, aren't you also free to rebel against the rebellion?

In a world where a concept can be searched and have 10,000,000 hits, why can't people take the effort to view at least five of those? All this information is available but ignorance still abounds. It used to be that people are ignorant because only the elite could access information. Today it's worse, people are stupid because they're too lazy to find the information. And worse still, people are ignorant because of the admission that they don't want to think.

That's why I hate "people" but I love persons.

I Hate How Current Events are Made to Fit Religious Beliefs Out of Context

Well we’ve seen the tsunami hit Japan and how its effects threaten the country with an impending nuclear disaster (at the time of this writing).

Hours later and days later tweets and social networking statuses change to reflect how the disaster has affected them in actuality and vicariously. Many thank God for sparing their own countries from the disaster. That is all and fine as a believer would be the first to admit that every breath is a gift from God. What got me writing in this blog regarding this matter at the risk of sounding callous is the juxtaposition of God sparing people’s lives, to God is good.

First of all, I’m a believer, and God is indeed good. Make no mistake about where my faith stands.

But in putting them together in one sentence, “I thank God for sparing the Philippines God is indeed good. While I believe God is good, and that yes your country was spared. Running them together in the same sentence has serious implications.

If God is god for sparing your country, is God therefore evil in allowing or, in the minds of some people, sending the tsunami? While yes I believe in the principle of Sowing and Reaping, is it correct to generalize the calamity of a country due to a specific wrongdoing? “Oh that country was hit because it has these practices, oh that country was spared because this group has done a lot.”

Making such statements to me does not actually put God on the witness stand or shift the burden of proof on Him, rather it tells me that the person making such statements presume to know the mind of God and his reasons and the exercise of his divine prerogatives.

How do such people answer godly people that were swept away with the calamity of the tsunami? “There’s a reason for everything.” Is that the cop out answer we will give this people? “If you’re good you’re blessed if you’re bad you’re smitten,” is the exact kind of reasoning Job’s three friends had. “Job you must have been a bad boy to have all these things happen to you, c’mon now fess up and say sorry.” And Job’s replies might seem to be so arrogant but he correctly answered, “I did nothing wrong but still I got these things.” And while at the end of the story God put Job in his place for uttering things to which he had no clue, in the end God declared Job’s statements as correct and his friends as the erring ones.

Why? Simply put Job kept asking, “I don’t know what goes in your head God it can’t be as simplistic as rewarding good actions and punishing bad actions, but I wish you’d tell me what’s going on because my suffering doesn’t make sense to me. How I wish we had an arbitrator who can cross examine you because surely I can’t.”

And his “righteous friends” were told to go to Job and have him apologize on their behalf before they get forgiven for assuming to put God in a box, by simplifying God’s mind into simplistic rules made by their finite minds.