Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Things I Shall Ask God (*)
* The names of every girl that was ever interested in me. Just for giggles.
* Whether or not Abraham Lincoln was gay. Not that I have any personal interest, I just want to solve a mystery.
* What was it that actually killed the Roman Empire?
* Would capitalism/communism/Christianity ever have worked if practiced 'properly', whatever God decides to call proper practice? (CINCGREEN's Law of Philosophical Practice: The faults of any abstract philosophical system will sooner or later be blamed on malpractice.)
* The mathematical correlation between hard work/intellectual effort and success in life. (**) I suspect that the correlation is definitely not high, and might be low...but if it's negative, I'll truly be astonished. (***)
* Did we really get Hitler in World War II, or did he run away and escape under an assumed name?
* What my 'perfect job' would have been.
* What one particular decision I made changed my life for the best - and which one for the worst.
* The various outcomes of certain branching decisions. ("What would have happened if I had chosen to do 'X' instead of 'Y'?")
Note that none of these questions deal with theological questions, like 'how can God allow suffering in the world?' I'm not interested in the answers to stuff like that; I want to swat fungoes with Babe Ruth.
_____
(*) - Assuming that he/she exists.
(**) - This reminds me of something I recently read in Sports Illustrated about a coach asking his players what it took to make it in the NFL.
Talent? No, unrecognized talent is almost a cliche.
Hard work? Ditto.
Luck? Luck is usually a function of opportunity and preparation, which basically means that luck correlates to time.
So what do you need to make it in the NFL? "The willingness to take another man's job away from him."
(***) - I can name several people who are successful in life and who don't seem to work very hard. Likewise, I can name several people who turned out poor but who work quite hard.
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2 comments:
I think God would consult his very own Magic 8 ball and reply:
• "Damn, son—eternity is a long time, but I don't think we want to use up that much of it me giving you a list of sure thing booty calls."(NB: In "Paradise Lost," Milton has one of the major angels report to Adam that, yes, they can have sex as we know it, although there are incorporeal ways of getting it on that are even better.)
• "Hey! Use that brain I done give you. Think I can violate confidentiality any more than a lawyer can?"
• "Before I can tell you that, I have to give you the full and correct theory of the dynamics of the rise and fall of human communities, and there's a lot of derivations based on results in partial differential equations and that y'all haven't
Great. Didn't finish my comment. Oh well....might as well trash it (and this one) But you know I was looking forward to putting words in the Almighty's mouth on the subject of communism.
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