LIFE AND DEATH – My take (2)
(My two cents, for what it’s worth)

The Grim Reaper strikes
when the time is ripe
"Your turn,'' says he
"has just arrived"

Not all your prayers
nor all your tears
Can make him change
half of his mind

No place to run to
nowhere to hide
No one to challenge
His indomitable might

Life's a merry-go-round
of joy and sorrow
Happy today
and sad tomorrow

So enjoy the pleasure
and suffer the pain
That’s life my friend
it’s all in the game

And when death raises
its ugly head
And shows you the door
it’s time to go
...time to go

LIFE AND DEATH – My take (1)
(My two cents, for what it’s worth)

We’ve had our day
and we’re on the way
Oblivion, here we come
when the day is done

Born today and
gone tomorrow
That’s the way
the story goes

No restore points
and no reboots
No reinstalls
and no more oops

Good times, bad times
the medicine and the wine
They come and go
like a revolving door

Carnivals and funerals
heaven and 'ell
Victories and defeats
life’s bittersweet

Just keep breathing till
the heart stops beating
When your number's up
it's lights out, you're history

So wail no more and
rail no more
Hark! The next generation
is knocking on the door!

LIFE by Arthur Kyi

Life is just a bridge that spans
‘Twixt cradle and the grave
First ‘tis the child’s then ‘tis the man’s
Turn to become its slave

‘Tis but a person’s certain measure
Of a certain length of time
Containing happiness, sorrows, pleasures,
With each self-centred “mine”

For each of us with tears and a cry
We leave our mother’s womb
To live, to experience sorrow and joy
Till with tears we enter our tomb

Alas! Life is, to the enlightened
So likened much to trash
Thus does it matter, when dust returneth  to dust
And ash returneth … to ash

SPILLING THE BEANS

Quotations and sayings are said to be encapsulated knowledge, wisdom and wit by "great men," to be  remembered, inspired and even practiced like a good student by lesser mortals -- a condescending attitude typical of the gurus of religion!

In fact, some people look for advice and inspiration on what their leaders, gurus and religions have to preach on certain matters and follow them to the letter with a feeling of righteousness.

Not so to me. To me it's quite a different thing. I like quotations for the opinions and comments put succinctly -- they'd better be short and sweet or I skip them -- and in an interesting, witty, sarcastic and cynical manner on various topics. It's like a brief  and informal exchange of views among friends which may entertain and even enlighten each other without being didactic or dogmatic.

It is with this approach in mind that I wrote this small selection of my own thoughts which I hope will perk up people's interest, entertain them, and also make them think. In short, it's just a comment or a remark -- nothing more.

*

So how do I get my ideas for quotations?  Well ...

I pluck them from thin air
I grab them blowing in the wind
And I read the invisible
writing on the wall

That's how and where I get them. So here goes:

***

LIFE

Life is nature come alive -- fierce, barbaric and ugly! 

Life is a free concert to which nobody came -- or could be invited.

Life to us may seem like a miracle of miracles, but to the rest of the universe it's a much ado about nothing, a storm in a teacup, a flash in the pan, and our "home" just an anthill in the backyard. We are truly the flotsam and jetsam of the universe.

Life is what you make of it. There is no inherent "meaning" or purpose in life. To ask for the "meaning of life" is to ask for the "meaning" or purpose of the Big Bang! Hey man, shit happens!

Life is not a journey, and we're not travelers. "Journey" and "traveler" imply an intended destination,   skipping or briefly touching points in between. Surely, we're not intentionally heading towards the boneyard to keep a date with the worms!

If anything, we're just running around in circles -- for food, sex, money, power and what have you. -- until we gradually and unintentionally find ourselves at death's door from which there's no escape. Life and death are a given. We didn't ask to be born; neither did we ask to die.

There is no life after death -- only death after life.



HUMANS

Mother Nature has put all her eggs in one basket -- we stick together and get fried together.

Humans are the misbegotten and orphaned children of Mother Nature. Abandoned at birth and left to fend for ourselves, we made it through sheer luck and by lifting ourselves by the bootstraps. No parents, no teachers, no guardians, no guides -- just us helpless and disowned waifs and strays. It's worse than leaving a newborn at the garbage dump -- at least someone would have noticed or heard the cry and rescued the baby.

There is an obvious lack of quality control when it comes to manufacturing humans. If humans were goods, the warehouses of the world would be bursting with rejected humans.

Man's achievements are monumental. So are his follies and idiocies.

We are the children of virgin birth by Mother Nature, who herself was the result of a virgin birth caused by the Big Bang. Then we split ourselves into two -- and the rest is history.

Zillions of planets; nowhere else to live!


MODERN MAN

   

Scratch a "modern man" and you'll find a wild-eyed savage underneath.

Modern man is like a cannibal wearing a dinner jacket and feasting on human flesh with silver spoon and fork -- in a magnificent dining hall studded with objet d'art and classical music in the background.

Civilizations have not succeeded in adequately reining in the ugly side of human nature.

Modern man is like a new computer with an out-of-date operating system. You cannot fully update modern man and make him change with the times.


DEATH

Death is the ultimate painkiller.

We're on death row ever since a sperm united with an egg inside the womb.

Death does not only work on first-come-first-served basis. It also welcomes the queue jumper and the gate-crasher.

Death does not kill. It only reaps what nature has sown. Thus, the Grim Reaper.

Death is the flip side of the coin of life. You can't have one without the other.

We sow seeds of life; Death reaps the harvest.

Death was meant to phase out the old generation and make way for the new, prevent dangerous overpopulation, and to make do with our limited natural resources. If death swaps places with immortality our fate would be, well, worse than death.

We're multiplying faster than death can get rid of us. We're Hydra's head sprouting new ones even as the Grim Reaper chops away at the old. In the end though, Mother Nature, as always, will have the last word.

The door of death is always wide open -- you can walk in anytime. Trouble is, you can't walk out of it ever.

A farewell to life; an unsubscribing from existence; going underground forever; finally "see you in your dreams."

SUICIDE

  

Suicide is the "escape clause" in the compact of life.

Suicide is an empowerment given us by nature as the final solution to our intractable problems. It also shows that we are masters of our own bodies and have the right to decide whether we live or die.

Nature allows you to be your own judge, jury and executioner. Use your powers wisely. Remember: there's no room for mistakes.

I've been postponing my suicide so often and for so long that I can now simply die of ripe old age.

The trouble with suicide is that it's mostly a highly emotional and impulsive action. If given a cooling off period, you might even change your mind.

Death to suicide: "Psst, we're all going that way, so what's the hurry?"

Suicide is a DIY way to die. We thumb our noses at death and gate-crash, instead of waiting for our turn. We are thus death's uninvited guests.

RELIGION

Religion is organized superstition with bells and whistles.

Religion is the mother of all superstitions and the longest-running scam in the world.

Religion is a firewall against reason and common sense. It is a blind belief which only requires unquestioning obedience by the naive and gullible masses.

Religions are divisive and confrontational -- just like in politics. Also, truth is the first casualty in religions -- just as in war and politics.

Religion is a classic example of how highly intelligent people can become childish and emotionally attached to fairy-tales and irrational behavior when relaxing from their serious work.

Religionists march to the dodgy gurus' drumbeat and end up at each other's throats.

Religionists: the people whom religions made mad
Extremists: They suffer from a bad case of religion overload
Conversions: they trample upon their own religion and suck up to another equally stupid one
Crisis of faith: a kind of religious indigestion
Atheism: the right but bitter medicine to fix 'em all

Religions are default cultures we are born into. It is thus a sexually and culturally-transmitted disease.

Prayers are the next best thing to doing nothing for the poor, the sick and the desperate. All you have to do is say: "I'll pray for you."

Religion is a god-awful lot of superstition
Theism is a load of godswallop
Monotheism is the desert god's empty boast
And polytheism is, well, one god too many ...

It seems some women hate religion not for its falsehood but for its misogynist content.

Phony atheists hate religion because their prayers went "unanswered" -- not because it's out and out bullshit.


ATHEISM

Atheism is not an option. It's a fact of life, it's in your face, it's self-evident, and it's unavoidable.

You're an atheist if you can say "nuts!" to religion.

Atheism in its widest sense is the rubbishing of all falsehoods, including superstitions such as religion. That is the essence of atheism.

Atheism is a truth serum which does not require a six-inch needle to administer.

Agnostics are reluctant atheists. They ignore the fact that there is no middle ground between atheism and religion -- just a yawning gap.

New Atheists are falsely accused of carrying out a crusade against religion. The atheists in turn reply that they are only religiously avoiding and countering a superstition. Amen!

Atheism is reason unchained. Atheism is thinking outside the box. Atheism is freedom from superstition.

The genie of atheism is out of the bottle; there's no going back in.

NATURE, REALITY

Reality brooks no nonsense. It demands respect and strict observance, and woe betide those who dare to play the fool with reality.

Mother Nature doesn't know what she's doing. Mother Nature doesn't know what she has done. Mother Nature is blind, deaf, dumb and mechanical. Her "religion" is the laws of nature.


GOD

Man never really feared God; man only feared man.

God is the child of man. In fact, all gods are the children of man. Without man there are no gods -- only Mother Nature, an atheist. So grow up, get real, and get a life!

If gods have DNA it would show they are the children of man.

Gods can't even ruffle a baby's downy hair. That's how "all-powerful" they are.

Gods are conspicuous by their absence from the real world.

God is the guru when the guru's high on hashish. The Devil is the guru when the guru's drunk. Such is the Jekyll and Hyde personality of the desert god.

God: the fantastic powers attributed to me by the gurus seem highly exaggerated. But I love them all, so keep them coming.

God is the coolest cat this side of the universe. His imaginary nature makes him innocent of all the lies the gurus and their sycophants tell about him.

Conversion is embracing a new god while the old god bites the dust.

Truth be told, the guru is the god of God, and the guru's raves and rants God's religion.

It's a plain and obvious fact that the guru is the maker, mentor, minder and mouthpiece of God. Any sane and thinking person can see it.

Catastrophes happen when God gets up from the wrong side of the bed and goes on a killing spree which his own devotees call the "Act of God."

Gods and religions are the bread and butter of gurus and godfellas everywhere. God brings the bacon home to the godfellas, courtesy of the hard-earned money of the gullible theosaurs.

Godfellas are abandoning the "house of God" in droves and taking up an honest living for a change. At last conscience has caught up with them. No more peddling fairy-tales and other nonsense and shake down the clueless masses for a living.


MORALITY

Conscience is probably the best keeper of morality --- especially with a bit of help from law and order.

Conscience acts on the feedback we get from our actions. Conscience is persistent and not easy to shake it off. And conscience relies on morality to make it work. The best way to respond to it is to listen to it and make things right.


How many millions of our own kind have we killed and maimed since antiquity?
How many billions of helpless and terrified fellow creatures have we slaughtered and eaten -- apart from other uses -- so far?
How many humans and their hearth and home are still at risk of death and destruction because of our unpredictable whimsies and passions for violence and war?
And we call ourselves moral creatures?


SEX

Save your blow jobs for your birthdays, the candles need it!

Virginity is a juicy fruit waiting to be plucked.

Marriage takes the romance out of love.

Copulation was apparently meant for population. Not any more. Now it's copulation all the way and population is just a by-product, wanted or unwanted.

A roll in the haystack and nature does the rest. How nice!

Some people would think a nation is technologically-advanced if its prostitutes and massage girls start wearing ISO badges on their breasts.

RETIREMENT

Old is gold that has lost much of its glitter.

Retirees face a "your money or your life" problem. No, it's not about meeting highwaymen by any chance. It's about whether their nest egg or their lives that will last longer.

Young people live on their actions, the old on their reputation.

MISCELLANEOUS

Familiarity also breeds tolerance, acceptance, and even love and marriage between different races and cultures.

How Civilized Are We? -- Religion

Man the self-deceiver

It may truly be amazing to some that in these days and age modern man still seems to believe in such imaginary beings as God, gods, angels, devils, demons, ghosts, souls, etc. -- all conjured up by primitive man during the infancy of the human race.

The truth, however, is that no one who is sane and sensible really believes in his heart of hearts such abject nonsense. It is just a hypocrisy or at worst a self-deception. Their behavior in the serious matters of life and death shows they are just paying lip service and acting it out while sticking to the dictates of reality in practice.

Religions are mostly primitive cultures and a way of life based on the belief in the existence and involvement of so-called supernatural beings -- spooks in common parlance -- in our everyday life. Religions are cultural, emotional, social and psychological affairs, generally cobbled together by lying and deceiving gurus who claim familiarity with these spooks. 

The most important thing to note about religions is that they have nothing whatsoever to do with reality, facts, truth and reason. Also, the common denominator of all religions is the virtual worship of a guru who is really the maker, mentor, minder and "spokesman" of spooks in the first place.

The so-called believers are living a lie. Besides the three international pop religions, there are thousands of other religions out there keeping a low profile. Each religion considers itself to be the "one true religion" and sometimes goes to war against other religions to prove their superiority. 

Now, how can one consider a society or a nation based on a culture of lies, make-believe, myths, self-deception and primitive customs as being civilized -- even if it's all pretended?

If truth, knowledge, worldly wisdom, maturity and sophistication of thought are some of the principal components of true civilization then we have failed miserably since truth implies conformity with reality and facts while religions are notorious for their emphasis on blind faith and unquestioning beliefs.

So can we abolish religion? Yes, if we can abolish human nature and superstition!

*

Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.
-- Mark Twain.

There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.
― Niccolò Machiavelli

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
-- Walter Bagehot

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
-- H.L. Mencken, as quoted in James A. Haught's 2000 Years of Disbelief

Religion is all bunk.
-- Thomas Edison

"The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men
 without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
-- Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri (Syrian poet, 973-1057)

Religion is a weapon of mass delusion. (Me)

The origin and purpose of religion arose from mankind's attempt to understand himself and the mysterious and terrifying world around him.-- (Me)

Religion is the spiritual grog of the masses. (Me)

How Civilized Are We? -- Animal Slaughter

The slaughter of the innocents

Animals are born losers.They are willing to do almost anything for us in exchange for whatever (cheap stuff) we give them to eat. But we are hardly content with using them for labor. We want to kill them and eat their dead bodies also. So much for human gratitude! 

Dogs, cats, rats, horses, snakes, tigers, insects -- you name it, we eat them all. Some of them for health, some for human ailments, and some for rip-roaring sex. We even used to eat fellow humans in our cannibal past, and still do -- as in war, famine or as a cultic practice -- in some places around the world.

We make animals carry us around, go to war with us, plow our field and do menial work for us. We put them in cages in zoos, rob them of their milk meant for their young, eggs to hatch their babies, and finally slaughter them and feast on their flesh.

We rob them of their habitat in order to make golf courses, hotels and resorts. We even decorate our drawing rooms with animal heads and tusks.

Some religions add salt to the wound by claiming their boogeymen created animals for us to use and eat. Other religions say it's a sin to kill any kind of life but then nonchalantly look the other way to the slaughter of animals in their own backyards. Doctors chime in with the pronouncement that we need animal protein to be healthy, never mind the millions of vegetarians who get on well without meat. .

Whatever the feelings, there's certainly no way to justify the slaughter and slavery of helpless fellow beings. It's just that we are hooked on meat since we were raised that way from childhood -- an addiction just like getting hooked on a particular kind of food, language, music, race, country -- in addition to alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and religion. For all we care, meat grows on trees! As a kid, ever been told to shut up and finish your pork chop?

The meat industry is a multi-billion dollar business and a country's cash cow -- just like prostitution which attracts sex tours. And it's not just the meat but also animal products -- shoes and handbags for instance -- that rakes in millions.

Even if we stop slaughtering them for food, where do we set them free? In an ever-decreasing habitat full of predators? And we still have to control their numbers by culling. A lose-lose situation for them.

It is encouraging that meat substitutes are on the horizon, but they are expensive and made in insufficient amounts for mass consumption. In fact, they were created to supplement the meat industry. So animal slaughter is here to stay no matter what. No pious lip service to civilized or humane behavior will ever likely put an end to it.

Sure, we get occasional pangs of conscience but we get used to brushing them off each time.

An old colleague once said he only ate chicken from outside his home -- not from his own garden since he regards them as something like family members.
(Nice way to still your conscience!)

A cook at a night market sea-food eatery once told me: "I beg forgiveness from the crabs for doing my job."
(Nothing personal, eh?)

Nice excuses, but a blot on our civilization nevertheless.

***

Most people would probably go without meat if they have to kill their prospective meals with their own hands.
 -- (Exact words and author forgotten.)

Any animal friendly to man usually ends up on his dinner plate.
-- (Exact words and author forgotten.)

 Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
-- Thomas Edison

Most people see a documentary about the meat industry and then they become a vegetarian for a week.
-- Jason Reitman, Canadian-American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Man takes pretty good care of his animal charges -- until it's dinner time.
-- (Me)

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarian.
— Paul McCartney

How Civilized Are We? -- War

War -- the bane of civilization

Man can neither live with nor without each other. We are our best friends and worst enemies. And we can never live together in peace and harmony for long. It's got to be cycles of war and peace, peace and war. Always. It's in our blood, our DNA, in our animal instincts and in our savage impulses. And we can hardly do much about it.

We learn to be two-faced. We engage in wars while at the same time praising peace. We sing hosannas on the incalculable value of life and then march off our youth to war. We set aside big war chests with tax-payers' money, denying much-needed funds for the welfare of the people.

We keep thousands -- and even over a million -- of men and women under arms and teach them how to kill people. We make bigger, better and deadlier weapons, especially those of mass destruction, to kill and maim the greatest number of our enemies and lay waste to their lands.

We show off our spanking new and shiny weapons to impress our friends and intimidate our prospective foes, and even make a money-spinning business out of it. And we talk of using robot armies in the not too distant future.

We drop bombs from thousands of feet up in the sky, we launch missiles from distant seas, and we send killer drones from the safety and comfort of our war rooms hundreds or thousands of miles away from ground zero.

Like unconscionable vandals, we turn cities and homes -- even schools and hospitals -- into rubble and skeletons, rain bombs and bullets not only on armed enemies but also on innocent civilians. Most shocking and heartrending of all, we kill, maim, inflict pain and suffering upon innocent little children.  

Overnight, wives turn into widows, children become orphans, and families join lines of  homeless refugees. People get so used to burying the mangled bodies of the dead almost every day that they suffer from dry eyes and numbness even to the loss of their loved ones. Even peace comes at a price -- the peace of a cemetery.

Amidst all the lightning and thunder of war, a cool, silent and impersonal spectator with an insatiable appetite for dead bodies keeps busy, doing its dirty job as the toll mounts higher and higher. Finally, it's peace again -- the peace of the cemetery.

So can we stop wars? Dream on!

*

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once.
-- Albert Einstein

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.
-- John F. Kennedy

One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.
-- Joseph Stalin

One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic. Joseph Stalin
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_stalin.html

One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic. Joseph Stalin
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_stalin.html

You can nuke people, but you can't nuke wars! (Me)

Is war an interrupted peace, or is peace an interrupted war? (Me)

The path to peace is often lined with dead bodies. (Me)

Truth is the first casualty in war -- just as in politics and religion.