Ignorance: missing the bigger picture

'Lo there, I have something to say. Quite a lot, really. It seems that many people think they know everything. Well, let me correct you: you know everything that you know... at the time. Perhaps there's lost memories, but in that case, technically you don't know ("Argh! I knew it!", "I used to know that...", "I don't know where I put it / where it is..." and so on - I think we can agree on that).

A case for me is music. I don't know everything about it; in fact, I don't listen to the radio on a regular basis, and I haven't for at the very least a year now, because I hate ads. Even Life FM's "2 minute promise" is still torture... and you never know when that King's Cars ad is going to pop up (hint: it has a jingle, and I thought it was Cage Cars originally), or that particular one about farming where there's lots of pauses and it's trying to teach you something. They usually fit about 4 ads in the gap. One time I actually counted on More FM or something like that, and I counted at least 7 ads in the gap.

So that explains why I don't listen to the radio very often at all these days. The side-effect of that is that I'm unaware of a lot of music; in fact, I completely missed Nelly Furtardo's "Do It", which was stolen by Timbaland from a Commodore 64 remix of an Amiga MOD track made in 2000 by a Finn. I support the demoscene in preference to the music industry, and I have a message to those of you in the industry: I binned my CD music collection recently.

So what music do I listen to? Free stuff. Most of the tracks were written with a 1 hour deadline; this stuff, for instance, and here's a link to the current archive (WARNING: some track names / content may be highly inappropriate - you can weed them out by deleting the tracks in question). I have a few tracks in there (my nickname is "GreaseMonkey", although some may be using my laptop handle, "gm|lap").

Note: as of writing, the archive appears to be down. ToastyX appears to be offline so I can't poke him right now. If you want to listen to some of my music, there's my modarchive profile.

Now, here's some ignorance in action. Context: xiagan at the current time has an issue with his hand, and he needs to see a specialist as the generalists can't seem to work it out. So, I thought I'd try having some fun, and then...

from what i gather, doctors can't solve == TIME FOR DIVINE INTERVENTION :D :D :D
<@daidalos> ~~
<@daidalos> What doctors cannot solve they will be able to in the future.

...the yawn material comes out. This is a very general statement. It's also rather disconcerting, as for a lot of the people in question (cancer, anybody?), by the time the answer is found, they'd be dead. It's a bit excessive to say that about a hand, though. The best thing to do is to just keep plodding along and not get too wound up about it, taking a little bit of care at a time. I say this knowing that horrors such as gangrene and nervous system issues are possible, but it's best not to be worried about it. After all, a huge rock from outer space could crash into our house and kill everyone, but it's not what's important.

It almost seems that ignorance is necessary in some situations. But there's a difference between ignorance and unknowledge, as I don't actually know whether or when a rock will crash into our house (God forbid, of course; I'm just expressing an idea), and some ignorance is due to ignoring your unknowledge. There is also a difference between ignorance and suspension. Suspension is when you put something on hold, usually because you're focusing on something else.

I am aware that the RFID chip could be "the mark of the beast", but I look back at the bigger picture, and am aware of several different theories as to what it is, some which are considerably less "blatant". If you just jump out and say "a load of [blank] and lies", then that's not suspension. I believe it's willful ignorance (*tongue* I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU!!!) because it's related to some topic which you have instilled into you as something which is really really bad and they're out to get you and stuff.

On that note, if the UPC/EAN-13 barcode system is the mark of the beast, it's not due to the allegation that each divisor is a 6; the only one which can be a 6 is the one at the end, as the pattern for 6 is 1,1,1,4, and not just 1,1,1. Nevertheless, it's still a possibility; consumerism is rampant in first-world countries. Hence my announcement to the music industry.

Most consumerist "industries" depend on ignorance and unknowledge to stay alive and kicking. The software industry, for instance. Let me burst that bubble for you, dear/sir: I. RUN. LINUX. (Technically it's GNU/Linux; it's just easier to refer to it as Linux, as any other Linux-based software which doesn't use GNU is either very rare or called something else, e.g. Maemo 5. But yeah, Linux is the name of the "kernel", and GNU is the name of the "userland".) It's like free, except... Oh wait, it is free, and you can learn from it and even change it if you want, too; the source code is available. Here, have a screenshot:



It even has solitaire. What more could you want‽* Unfortunately I suck at Klondike solitaire, so I only managed to get 3 cards out. Also, that track has been looping for 20 minutes now; I should stop it... done.

*Of course, you'd also want to spend time with friends and/or family. That's something I should probably do more often. Except for me, it's not always people I know. Which actually makes it quite fun... but make sure you know how to tell whether someone is trying to do something dodgy or screw you over. TIP: if you can't do that, you shouldn't be surfing the internet.

Nevertheless, socialisation is one of the reasons I go to university. And church, for that matter; however, that is not the main reason (NO it's NOT "because your parents do it", that is merely why I got there in the first place; I go there to be inspired and primarily to keep my faith going).

But you can see that it's not Windows (it's running on my laptop which is not a macbook), yet it still looks quite usable. Down the bottom you can see a couple of terminal windows. You most likely won't need to use these; I just find them quite useful. Up the top, there's 3 menus, and then 3 icons (Firefox, a terminal, and VLC respectively). After the gap, you can see the X-Chat and Pidgin icons. Pidgin is the IM client I use, and currently it's connected to MSN, AIM, and GTalk. There's a networking icon which shows the wireless strength, an icon for setting my display settings, and a charge meter (I have the battery taken out as it's starting to get screwy and I don't want to continue to overcharge it).

I also have 5 different graphs running: CPU time, memory usage (the lightest green is also available; it's just disk cache), network usage, swap space usage (that's what you use if/when you run out of memory), and system load (it's related to CPU usage). After the graphs, there's the virtual desktop selector/indicator. I use these all the time (although I usually use the Ctrl-Alt-(arrow) shortcuts) - this is why I can't use Windows anymore for anything serious. Then there's some icon which gives indicators of stuff. And then of course, we have the time... and the date! Finally, there's another menu with all of the shutdown things and stuff.

Of course, this is just one particular distribution, or distro, called Ubuntu. There are many others, and I am using only one of many window managers, this one being called GNOME.

This is where it goes outside the realms of unknowledge, and you really have two choices: ignorance or suspension (sometimes both happen). Sometimes neglect happens due to rather long suspension. Here's something else you should be aware of: Windows isn't free. When it comes with your computer, you pay for it with the computer. Same deal with MS Office. There goes that excuse. I should probably cover this in further detail in a blog about consumerism and stuff like that.

I am fully aware that I rant a lot, although sometimes I forget and then I reach a point where I just realise that I've started dribbling on, and then get a little apologetic. It's nice when you say that and you find out that they're actually interested. Now, this is where I need to focus and actually get a message out there.

In case you haven't noticed, I have held origins theories in suspension (actually more specifically the theory of evolution, but I generally don't try to dive too deep into the whole mess). Why? They are a distraction from my goal. For those of you who say that there's absolutely no evidence for God, you're looking in the wrong place. I'm not sure if there's a modern "best example", but testomonies like this are where the proof comes. And comments like this are ignorance in action:

This isn't proof, I'm afraid. This is a story about your mother with no evidence. There are many other possible reasons why that tattoo appeared to disappear.
'GOD IS REAL' is not evidence.

The subtitle of this blog post is "missing the bigger picture", and that's what you just did, VALENTINEBEAMS.

Or how about this one?

Proof?
Nope!
Try again.

My answerphone can do better than that, deathfortea.

It's not the "science" that leads to the proof. The Great Commission wasn't to find (or fabricate, as the case may sadly be - some "Christians" are actually hypocrites) evidence for God's existance, because then it would be like a MacGuffin (warning: link goes to tvtropes; don't get carried away!). Did Jesus walk around telling people, "I am telling you this scientific proof"? No! He performed miracles and drove out demons! Proof of God does not come from mere study, it comes from action!

I am identifying the truth so that you may understand. Please don't be put off if you have never seen a miracle happen to you or anyone around you, or any messages (I tend to get the latter, mostly from "co-incidences" such as finding Hebrews 13:17 on a whiteboard in the place I was sleeping in the day we climbed a mountain with the trig number 1317). Not all miracles are "KA-BOOM!" miracles; in fact, most aren't. Some can take an awfully long time. I read somewhere that, in order to drive out demons, you have to be more persistent than they are.

Somehow I have to tie this in with ignorance but I haven't got a clue.

Hehe, only joking.

What I see is a double attack where one cloaks the other operation. Currently there's a user on YouTube who is suffering from demon contamination. So, we've got a battle between God and demons. And then the naturalists walk onto the scene and say that neither exist.

What you might see is two mental disorders: multiple-personality disorder, and "OH NOES A CHRISTIAN HURRRRR MUST BE IRRARATIONAL" disorder or, as you might apply, "thing I don't like which I can insert a snarky comment about" disorder (or "disease", or "virus", or anything else demeaning), and you think that it's only natural (and you think that's nothing to do with you).

After watching this demon-contaminated girl being abused to attempt to attack someone, I now realise that you can get much, much more irrational than a naturalist. I have never encountered such disgusting filth in my life, something which acts like a lowly coward who's grabbing as tightly as they can to the little they have left.

There are at least two ways of ignoring with at least slight knowledge of the big picture; I call them "cutting up the picture" and "picture of a picture".

• Cutting up the picture: where you have the big picture and you attempt to separate the relationship, perhaps cutting something out of it. Although you usually don't end up using the big picture or really looking into it. deathfortea says something like this, and it is incredibly irrational. (Naturalists can be irrational, too!) In effect, what is being said is
  
• Picture of a picture: where you fabricate stuff to devalue it, even fabricating that something is there. VALENTINEBEAMS says something like this. But this user also forgot about the big picture. The story is the evidence we are given. "There's no evidence" is a complete fallacy. On top of that, you are not going to convince the woman in question.
  

You might end up suspending this idea, but please don't just outright ignore it. What I'm about to express may sound incredibly absurd.

Suppose that the theory of evolution is a conspiracy run by demons.

I'm serious. Suppose that's the case. Suppose that scientists are being shown all this fabricated evidence. Suppose that demons are tinkering with the results. This might sound completely bogus to you, but I'm pretty sure there's more than enough demons to pull it off. Which totally sucks.

I am not asking you to believe this. I am asking you to ponder. It would be ignorant to just say that this is 100% true and that anything contrary to it is false, no exceptions; it's not scriptural (but not antiscriptural, either), and when we get to these sorts of topics, generally, what is scriptural is the way to go.

Now, ignorance is a huge topic, and I could go on. I believe that there is a lot more that can be said. If you have any questions or anything to explore, please prod me and I'll try to get something blogged up to continue this. Right now, it's a good time to get some sleep. Good night and God bless.