You’ve heard them all.
Your father spewed them constantly, every opportunity he got. Your mother had lots of these gems, too. Yes, you’ve heard them all. Over and over.
And 'they' are profoundly wrong. No, I'm not talking about your mom and dad, although I'm sure they are not always right all the time: I'm talking about those infallible yet intangible sources from whom your mom and dad among many others quote: the elusive nebulous yet ubiquitous 'THEY.' You know what 'they' say...' Yes, 'THEM.' Those guys. ' THEY' ARE WRONG. All the time.
They all usually start with, ‘you know what THEY say, …’ and
then the idiocy is repeated by whomever.
‘You know what they say, a penny saved is a penny earned.’ Or some other such nonsense. The reality is that stupid saying is simply
outdated, and needs revision. If you go
out of your way to save a measly penny, you will have wasted more time and
money in your endeavors to pick that penny up, think about how best to save it,
and then take action on putting it into a secure position than that scrawny
penny will ever be worth.
But I pick nits on that example. My point is that all of these insipid
‘truisms’ don’t make any sense whatsoever if put into practice.
The worst of these offensive sayings is this one: ‘you know what they say, one should NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING.’
How stupid is that, anyway?
Pretty darn stupid, if you stop and think about it. Everybody makes countless assumptions on a
daily, hourly and secondly basis. If you
never assumed anything, you would be paralyzed from taking any action
whatsoever. We all assume that the sun
will come up again in the east, and set in the west. If you don’t assume that, then you will wake
up waiting to see if indeed the sun will come up in the east. Oh, there it is, whew, for a second there I
thought it might not rise today. Or, perhaps you would spend your time craning
your neck in all directions to see where the sun will rise, maybe the north,
maybe the northwest, who knows? Never
assume anything, right? Wrong.
You have to assume that you will not get hit by a meteorite,
or falling space debris. If you don’t
make that assumption, your life will be consumed by this remote possibility and you will spend every waking hour staring into the heavens to see if something lethal is
hurtling your way.
If you are to be a functional human being, you have to
assume that your home will not be overrun by a rampaging hoard of invading
Cubans. You have to assume that the
chances of that are slim at best. But if
you are to believe what THEY say (' never assume anything'), then be prepared
to stand your post in perpetuity watching the horizon for the invading Cubans.
I could go on ad infinitum with assumptions that are made by
everybody every second of the day, but I won’t.
Just know that from this point on, the assumptions you make will not
doom you to the horrible consequences that THEY say you will suffer if you dare
to make assumptions.
And this one drives me crazy: ‘THEY say that you should NEVER draw conclusions until all the facts are
at hand.’ AARRGGH!! What garbage that one is.
That oldie but goodie is the basis for every scoundrel under
the sun to muddy the waters as to their malfeasance, skullduggery and evil
ways. All the facts will NEVER be at
hand, regardless of the situation. If
one simply refuses to come to a reasonable conclusion as to any observation
until they have absolutely every fact on the occurrence, they will dither until
the cows come home as to forming an opinion as to what they just saw, and what
to make of it.
Every reasonable, rational person draws conclusions on a
multitude of events that occur in spite of the irrefutable fact that there are
missing facts not considered. Take the
recent events in Syria: 3,000 people experienced what was in all likelihood a
Sarin gas attack, and the conclusion most every civilized nation made is that
the rotten, no-chin son of a bitch Basher al Assad and his God awful regime was
responsible for it. There were plenty of
tidbits of information that points to the Assad regime as responsible, but all
of the facts on this event are not at hand, far from it. Nobody saw the regime launch any chemical
missiles, no film or video proves that they did it, and these are facts that
will probably never be at hand. And yet
we all know that this scumbag dictator indeed gave the thumbs up to launch
these weapons despite the lack of hard, proven facts.
But if you listen to THEM, you can’t draw this conclusion, because
all the facts are clearly not at hand.
See what I mean? All of the facts
on anything will never be at hand. If
you wait for all the facts to be on hand, you will wait forever before drawing
any conclusion on anything.
And THEY say all kinds of idiocy, such as “judge not, lest
ye be judged.” This one is just a collorary
of the stupid axiom above, in that we make judgments all the time based on your
collective experience and morals we hold dear in our lives. To let things slide from judgment simply
because you don’t want to be judged yourself, all sorts of evil can flourish.
Just take it as a bit of good advice: don’t listen to what
THEY say. THEY are full of it.
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