Some of us are clinophiles, people who love reclining and lying in bed. A person who is obsessed with tattoos is a stigmatophile. I just found out that I might be a quodophile, one who is overly enthusiastic about “quotes.”
Another person’s words can often express an idea better than my own and can center my own thoughts. Another person speaking on an issue can bring me a different perspective.
Over the weekend, I found this quote from an unnamed source: “The raindrop never thinks it is responsible for the flood.” When you read that sentence, you receive an incredible image that clearly shows the idea that the speaker is trying to communicate. Almost immediately the negative perception of a flood of water can twist to a “flood” of charity and other positive experiences that a person can bring to the world. The phrase can help us realize the collective impact that many individuals can have.
It also makes us understand that while we may not take responsibility for our “one” action, we never know how that action might fit into the bigger picture and how it might influence others.
Social media is both depressing and enraging. Expressing opinions, no matter how absurd, is a human right, according to the United Nations. St. Paul in the biblical book of 2 Corinthians said, “Because you think you are so smart, you happily listen to other people’s stupidity.” Not an exact translation but that is the idea. On one hand we complain about social media and the “fake news,” slandering, and other intellectual abominations. But we keep using it “as a dog returns to his vomit.” The authors of the book of Proverbs were much more blunt and much less politically correct.
Criticism of a nation, its people and government is truly a God-given right. But sensible, accurate, and even constructive disapproval is becoming rare. We are in the center of a global typhoon, but the Philippines is not The Center. How bad is it in the rest of the world?
Depending on the area, 25 to 60 percent of all restaurants in the US that were closed for quarantine will never reopen. The Philippines is not out of the business-closure woods yet. But in no way are we ever going to be near that point of destruction. We keep being told that we are the “Covid worst” in Southeast Asia. In fact, that is like saying you live in the smallest, ugliest house in Forbes Park.
Every country in South America, except for Venezuela and Uruguay, has a higher deaths and cases per million population than the Philippines. Conspiracy theory time. Every nation in South America—and Covid hot spot Mexico—was a Spanish or Portuguese colony at one time. Which Asian nation has 500 years of Spanish blood running through its veins?
Karl Marx was only interested in remaking the world and pushed so hard on that ideal that many of his smarter economic observations are lost. He wrote, “Nothing can be of value without being an object of utility. If it be useless, the labor contained in it is useless, cannot be reckoned as labor, and cannot therefore create value.”
I will not accept that Marx was talking about cryptocurrencies. Or maybe he was. But useless and nothing of value might be a good way to describe much of the social media bandwidth at times.
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.