Ignorance and Justice.

I went to a Farmer's Market the other day. Yum. Bananas were 5/$1.00.

I picked up two hands of them, which just happened to total eight bananas.

Secure in my knowledge of Higher Math, I handed them the the approx. 17-year-old boy behind the counter and said "Eight bananas. $1.60, right?"

He looked at me as if I was from Mars (PA) and carried the bananas over to his mother.

After a whispered conversation, he came back, put the eight bananas on the counter and said staunchly "Bananas are 5 for a dollar."

I sorted out five bananas, put three back, handed the poor kid a dollar, and hit the road.

And then, a bit later, I put my knowledge of Higher Math to work.

I don't know what it is. Maybe bananas just make me philosophical.

By literally not being able to compute that 5 bananas for $1.00 is the same a $0.20 per banana, so eight bananas should cost $1.60, that woman's business suffered a $0.60 loss on the sale they should have made. They made a dollar instead of a dollar-sixty.

They also got stuck with $0.60 worth of bananas that may go bad before being sold. Especially if they insist on selling them only five at a time.

In the course of their business day, if they made ten $0.60 no-sales, they lost $6.00. If they did that every day for a year, their business would fail to make $2,190.00 in sales.

And that's just with the bananas. Add the same kind of ignorance to their sale of potatoes, corn, onions, and twenty-eleven other farm products that they bought wholesale to sell retail, and their business could be doing $12,000.00 a year instead of $80,000.00 a year.

And that's a good way to go out of business entirely, or (worse yet) get stuck barely making a profit for decades--which entails the loss of a large part of a persons (or a whole family's ) best earning years.

So where does Justice come in with all this?

Simple. When a person jumps off a cliff, gravity is Nature's way of giving them justice. Nature's justice is often cold, hard, cruel, and utterly inescapable.

And ignorance, too, carries it's own built-in natural Justice, with a capital J.

Others--less ignorant--will prosper while that family does not.

Others will be far more wealthy in ten years than they.

Others will have more opportunities, and reap more rewards than they.

And so it goes. There is no escape.

The antidote to Nature's inevitable penalty for ignorance is to get educated (at least a little!) and above all, to make sure your children don't grow up ignorant.

I'm sure we've all met people in grocery stores and fast-food joints that literally can't make change without using a cash register to do their thinking for them.

(I've even met one Customer Assistance Technician that didn't know what a 50-cent coin was.)

Those people will not be our brain surgeons and rocket scientists in ten years.

Some will still be saying "D'yuh want fries widdat?" and others will still be calling the Manager over to find out what a $2.00 bill is.

And that's great. That's actually wonderful!

It means that none of those mouth-breathers will ever be competing for good jobs with my grand-children and great-grand-children. (And great-greats!)

Just like Nature has a penalty for ignorance, Nature has a reward for education.

And, both ways, I'd say they're Just.

 

Unfortunately, common sense is not that common anymore.

Yes...my kids will have it good when competing against their peers!

 

And how many times do you get change for a $5 when you give them a $2 dollar bill, and Morgan... you have too much time on your hands to be dreaming all that chit up.

Rancher

 

Uncle Morgan, I can see what you are driving at, and yes...I agree with the general principle that being well educated (in literacy, numeracy), and being proficient in each of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning (Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains: The Cognitive Domain), will confer some advantage over those who are perhaps lesser educated / trained in such matters. However, there are a number of flaws in reasoning with regards to some of the claims embedded in your thesis that undermine it. I'll elaborate at more length anon (in a day or two if I'm lucky). However one thing to be starting off with is the notion of anthropomorphising nature as a dispenser of 'justice'; That 'nature' rewards education, or punishes a lack of it.

The Athropomorphism fallacy
Anthropomorphism ; Fallacies | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy applies to the notion that 'nature' rewards or punishes humans for being well or ill educated. There are human consequences to either state of being (well, or ill educated), but nature is indifferent to the human experience of those consequences....that is pretty much a concern of the humans who experience those consequences...either directly or indirectly.

Nature really doesn't care about the consequences to a person who jumps off a cliff....it has no capacity to care...nature is not, as far as can be determined, sentient. The human who jumps, from a great height may, or may not care about, (or properly appreciate) the consequences of jumping in terms of their impact at the bottom of the cliff; but nature cares not whether the jumper dies or survives.

 

Sorry, your children and grandchildren will NOT have it good. Sure they will get the GOOD jobs, but then they will pay so much in taxes to support the stupid that they will live just barely above the poverty line (the stupid outnumber the intelligent by HOW MUCH NOW?! I mean look at the last election and how many votes Hitlery got!) as the workless class will vote themselves benefits that will NEARLY bankrupt the working class.

Sure there will be a fine line between the working class and welfare class, just barely enough to keep it worth it to keep working, maybe only getting three extra bananas a week, but as more and more figure out it is not worth it to spend 60 hours a week to get six bananas instead of three bananas a week, the laws will be changed to FORCE the intelligent to work (Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged).

Plus states are passing laws that put businesses out of business for their own communist utopian ideas. Doubt me? Look at what Illinois is doing to gun dealers, passing laws that can put them out of business at any time, like that will cheap Chicongo and Deriot from spreading and turning into law free/law of the jungle zones, worse then they are now I mean.

 

At least twice that I can remember, and both times I sighed and pointed out their error, because it was the right thing to do.

I've lost count of the number of times that I have encountered someone who refused to accept a $2 bill as real with no manager around to push the issue, or didn't believe the Susan B. Anthony or Sacagawea dollar was a $1 coin. Most of the time I'm spending them to get rid of them and use the debit card or other cash to just complete the transaction and get home so I'm not on the road with these "eggplants with legs". 9 times out of 10 I end up going to the bank do dispose of them.

 

And when the moochers outnumber the makers, it's time to ask "Where is John Galt?"

 

The $2 bill is used a lot in overseas Exchanges i.e. our Military PX/BX

Rancher

 

I got stoned one time and had a conversation with Nature.
She said She likes it when I capitalize Her.

 

I had a similar conversation with god. Only i think i was getting the 'silent treatment'....At the time, I thought the silence was because I was hanging around with that trollop known as reason.

 

god had nothing to say to me when I was a devout believer for several years.....de-conversion from the doctrinal elements of Christian beliefs took quite some time after I came to realise that my one way conversations with the Abrahamic god that I was worshiping...was happening entirely within my own head....I suspect that it was the same kind of conversation that others had at that time, except the voice in their heads gave replies.

I started my odyssey into Christianity with a sincere, genuine, and heartfelt belief...as a young teenager, fully immersed in a communion with the deity that I was worshipping. So, no...I hadn't asked to be left alone....in fact....it was quite the opposite. When I read the bible as a believer, it made perfect sense...I certainly read the bible (both testaments....especially the 'old' testament, with Ken Ham style "biblical glasses"https://www.survivalmonkey.com/threads/ken-hams-biblical-glasses.59387/.....the difficulties started when they fell off....and I began to read the bible without them.

 

for me... I never heard voices in my head... I was not answered that way... but I was answered...

was very young and I guess the words faith of child apply...

even so... for most...

you get your answers as you go along in life... something here that you thought was not possible yet there it is...

something there that should or should not have happened yet did...

so many think they can ask for a fancy car or lots of gold or whatever...

NOPE... you will never get anything that will pull or drive you away from... or that will cause you harm...

very often whatever you truly need is already there for you even before you need it...

at least those are the things I've found to be...

 

Chelloveck,God had something to say to you,you just were not listening. I believe God has something to say to everyone but they are too busy to listen or do not like what he has to say. People do not like to be told they are leading a sinful life and need to straighten themselves up. Believe me one of these days you will listen or wish you had,but a lot of people wait too late.

 

Perhaps god needs to turn up the volume on his omnipotent and omnipresent boom box? That would be the omnibenevolent thing to do: Surely?