I've been doing a good job lately with trying to get into arguments or confrontations. It's good practice. Most people don't like to have a confrontation, so if you get used to it, you're ahead of the curve there. So at work I like to volunteer to be a bit of an "Enforcer" and going to people who haven't turned something in on time or summat and just be like "Why haven't you turned this in yet?"
Since I've reinvigorated my desire to learn, that goes hand in hand with my internal desire to question. Asking questions is the best way to learn. I'm a bit lucky because there are a wide variety of different people from different cultures at work to
interrogate learn from.
Yesterday I had this task of watching this hole at the work golf tournament in case of a hole-in-one, which would net the golfer $15,000. Of course it never happened.
Side note: The reason I didn't / never will play in a golf tournament is ostensibly my lack of skill, but more specifically my inability to practice because of my debilitating shoulder problem, where any strange swinging motion causes it to pop out of socket.
So, anyway, my partner in watching for 4 hours is this cool chick I work with who is from India and likes to give speeches and whatnot. So, I was trying my best to get her to understand my twisted views on the world.
I found out that in India, they learn English first, but then you learn your Hindi language or whatever.
So I tell my idea that we should stop teaching these other languages and make English the only language in the world. It would help world-wide communication, simplify everything, and English has the most words and is most expressive so it wins. I also told her it was good that the number of people knowing Sanskrit was going down.
She said that it's bad because there are a lot of old Sanskrit texts that showed a lot of technological progress evident even in the early centuries of Indian civilization. Even things like plans for airplanes.
I countered saying that we already have airplanes now, and anything else in those books is probably obsolete anyway, so just get a few guys to translate them and stick them in a library somewhere.
She said it's important to the culture. But then I countered that we should work towards a unified world culture. Leave some of the old cultures behind. Translate them all into some books, but don't waste time trying to keep them going. Pick a few good points from each culture, and make a better one for everyone. This should be easy with the internet.
It was a fun four hours watching the hole. I learned a load of good things about India, and I always got to tell my life story including my somewhat out-of-the-ordinary childhood.
She said I should give a speech for the
Toastmaster's Club at our work. But I warned her that my speech subjects would probably be too controversial. Also, rather than giving a speech, I like to bring up a topic and debate it from there.
I guess I could give a speech about my view on things. Like how I think religion has served its purpose for humanity in the past, but now it's really just holding back human progress. That would go over real well.
Post a Comment