[b]Douglas Adams
The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees. [/b]
Sequoias if you can.
I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.
Hint: It rhymes with “I”.
[b]It is of course perfectly natural to assume that everyone else is having a far more exciting time than you. Human beings, for instance, have a phrase that describes this phenomenon, ‘The other man’s grass is always greener.’
The Shaltanac race of Broopkidren 13 had a similar phrase, but since their planet is somewhat eccentric, botanically speaking, the best they could manage was, ‘The other Shaltanac’s joopleberry shrub is always a more mauvy shade of pinky-russet.’ And so the expression soon fell into disuse, and the Shaltanacs had little option but to become terribly happy and contented with their lot, much to the surprise of everyone else in the Galaxy who had not realized that the best way not to be unhappy is not to have a word for it.[/b]
Of course they never had to deal with the coronavirus.
I really didn’t foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course–the computer industry didn’t even foresee that the century was going to end.
Remember that “crisis”? Back in the good old days.
So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly? I asked.
He looked at me as if I were stupid.
You die, of course. That’s what deadly means.
Today, of course, you may only wish that you were dead.
Religion has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever… If someone votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says ‘I must not move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say, ‘I respect that’… Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be.
Philosophers have certain ideas here too, don’t they?