Yellow skin, green lights and suicidal robots

         (Originally posted on Oct 29, 2007 - 19:52)

         A few months ago I had a very surreal online conversation with a lady. She is 27 years old from Bucharest and she has been in Japan for a year or so and we have been talking online for some time by the time we had this conversation.   

         She asked me what color am I.
         I know what she meant. But I also know that this is a totally, completely, absolutely, utterly pointless concept invented by people with an inordinate amount of free time and astronomically huge propensity for prejudice. 

         No, really, tell me what is the point in classifying people by color? Give me one good point to it. Give me one example in which classifying people by color is necessary or even useful. I can’t think of any besides being useful for promoting racism, prejudice and segregation. Can you? 

         And I thought that this lady, having lived abroad for some time, would know that this concept is totally ridiculous. And she knows that I can’t stand prejudice, so I tried to give her a hint that she’s annoying me with this pointless, ridiculous question by asking her if she wants the values of my color in RGB or in CMYK, to give her the chance to realise how silly this question is and give me a feeble excuse like saying it was just a joke and laugh her way out. 

         Well, after a long explanation on the meaning of “RGB” and “CMYK” and color interaction, she declared that she is indeed serious about that question. I tried to explain to her the pointlessness of this racist classification method I even extracted RGB values from her and from my own photographs to prove that we are not “white” and “yellow” as she believes us to be. 

         Then she told me why she asked me this. She told me that a friend of hers is married to a Japanese man and he was in Romania in that day and she had met him. And she asked him what color is his skin. He didn’t understand the point of the question and confused, he said it’s probably light brown. And she was amazed to see that he didn’t know how to answer it. How come they don’t know that they are yellow??? And how come intelligent people as the Japanese do not know how to classify people by color???
          Well, she touched the answer and yet she missed it completely.

           I tried to explain to her that this is a racist concept. And she denied it categorically because she learned it in school! And I asked her if she really believes in everything she learned at school and she affirmed “Yes! Of course I do!! The school NEVER teaches anything wrong!! 

          They also don’t teach the difference between education and indoctrination, do they?

         Some of you may say "yeah, well, you have to understand, in the period when she was in school it was in the communist times….”
Stai.

         Let me tell you another story.
         A few weeks ago I was walking down Stefan Cel Mare. In front of me were a father and his son. The kid was around 7 I think. We stopped at the intersection with Barbu Vacarescu because the traffic light was red. A few seconds later it turned green but a silver german car (you know, the owners of german cars believe that either the traffic laws do not apply to them or that their precious german car is somehow transdimensional and it doesn’t interact with ordinary matter in this dimension) crossed the red light and was coming at high speed. And the kid almost jumped in front of it. His father grabbed him by the arm and yanked him from the path of the transdimensional german car. He (the father) was furious. He yelled at the kid: “What were you thinking???” And the kid answers quite matter-of-factedly: “But… but… but… my teacher at school said that if the light is green I can cross the street!!”

         Is it only me or does someone else believe that the future looks bleak for the next generation?
         Is it only me or does someone else see the next generation as a horde of suicidal robots jumping lemming-like in front of cars or off cliffs just because some “higher authority” said it’s safe?

         What’s going on with the fathers and teachers, with those to whom we trust the education of the next generation? Do they really believe that it’s better to indoctrinate kids rather than teach them how to think for themselves, how to use their brains, how to use skepticism? Are they just plain lazy and taking the easiest path? Or are they part of a bigger, more sinister conspiracy plan of world domination? 

         Am I the only one who is seeing this? 

         Doesn’t anybody else see how easy it will be for the next Hitler, the next Kim Jong Il to raise to power?  We are breeding a horde of robots, of blind slaves to serve the next dictator! We are not breeding people, we are breeding SHEEPLE!!! Soon enough the next dictator will raise and find a flock of sheeple on their knees, ready to obey their orders just because their teachers told them so. 

         Power to the sheeple…