Nothing turns half-wit into a forward thinking genius like a media frenzy tragedy. There was a fire yesterday, and today every second person and their brother-in-law’s left testicle is going to be talking about fire safety, department response times, automatic detection and sprinklers, regular fire drills, …, the works. Do we really need that harsh a wake up call? If on Monday, Carlton Towers had run a fire drill, I’d bet most people would be pissed half an hour of their work day was wasted, and the companies would take it out of their lunch hour. But hey! Now that people died, suffered immense burns, and property was destroyed, we’re all about the safety planning.
What we need, is to teach people about everything early on. We should have a network of places where parents can send their kids to learn things: language, maths and science, some history maybe… we can call them schools!!!
What are we actually taught in school: stop thinking and asking why, this is how it works and this is what you’ll be asked in the exam, so why are you bothered¿ Get good marks, and you get a well paying job in a fancy building above an ice cream parlour, where you’ll never ask about the fire exits. We’re brought up to think exactly one step at a time. You see it everywhere:
- The Residency Road flyover was so badly planned, it eventually had to have a crossing in the middle
- At the Bombay hotel attack, the news reported the locations of survivors to the waiting terrorists
- Everyday people break traffic laws, yell at other people who do it, and then claim traffic jams are because of the roads
- The metro!
What do we say to this? It’s India vonly. And we move on. Oh joy! An entire country of a billion people, full of idiots, run by idiots teaching new idiots how to be idiotic: By the moron, for the moron, of the moron.
Anytime I say anything to this effect I get told that I’ve been spoiled by Australia, and things don’t work like that here. How long can we use that excuse? Thinking one more step ahead doesn’t cost anything, and doesn’t require more than a couple more milliseconds of decision time: if I stay in my lane, this won’t turn into a traffic jam; if I don’t syphon this money out I’ll actually do something with my time in office and people will re-elect me; if we’re transparent with what we do with tax, people will actually take pride in paying it; if I jump out of the sixth floor, I’ll die; if I don’t use a condom, I’m going to make more stupid people…
I wish I had a nice way to finish this rant, but thinking about stupidity just gets me really pissed off. What’s really terrible, is the quick-fix usually ends up costing more.
Random Lies 
We need more angry people to vent their fury and get authorities to act. Most protests start as celebrity signature campaigns and then die a natural death, a couple of days after whatever the event that sparked the campaign off was. Basically we need more responsible people and implement stuff rather than gas.
Stupidity factor? Geneticists should search for answers, remove the gene which makes us ‘We are like this wonly’.
So true. It becomes THE thing to do once celebrities do it. Like the cancer bands, aids ribbons… need a celeb to endorse logic (seems counter productive though).
I used to work in an office with a girl who was certain that the reason the coffee got stale every day after sitting around was because the grounds in the filter basket were not dumped out. Appearantly, time and heat had nothing to do with it! Who would have known?
Another “manager” once directed me; “First: Take these out of the freezer(we were standing in the freezer), but before you do that go into the bar and make sure they have ice.” I did’nt do the right thing and got in trouble. But then again, either way I was screwed by his lacking knowledge of the sequence of time.