(no subject)

Finally got around to reading Jack's Useless-Knowledge articles today. Was very impressed, as while I have classes with him and have known him forever I rarely talk to him about anything particularly serious. I especially like his commentaries on our generation and morality--it seems worryingly rare to find young people that actually think in terms of right and wrong, and unfortunately also rare to find people that retain a real sense of basic morality once they've gotten rid of the BS false morality that we are constantly bombarded with by hypocritical elders and religion. Unfortunately, when people realize that the people/institutions teaching them things are essentially hypocritical and not particularly credible, they often seem to discredit everything that the hypocrite has told them, even when some of it is obviously correct.

This, I realize, is a sweeping generalization. There are lots of unreligious people who are perfectly decent people. However, they often seem outnumbered by people that are just plain selfish and no longer have any force compelling them to pretend not to be, so it is still somewhat reassuring to find one more atheist who still believes that stealing, cheating and lying are wrong.

It's also just a nice counterweight to the rather worrying discussion I had during physics lab yesterday, in which one of the girls in my physics class was arguing that stealing from people isn't wrong because if they're getting stolen from, they probably deserve it, because of karma. Exhibit A of not believing in anything except your own immediate convenience. She might say she believes in karma; this is BS. If you believe in karma you probably also realize that stealing from other people is BAD BLOODY KARMA.

And people tell me I'm fucking cynical. Can you please explain how I'm supposed to be anything else?