Why do people always say that?

It's always unnerving to open a newspaper, they tend to contain stuff that disturbs me a great deal. The stuff that disturbs me most is usually stuff that the writer never meant to be disturbing – it's disturbing because everybody's expected to ignore it as something completely normal and alright, possibly even cute or inspiring.

Of course, there's a lot of stuff like this, everywhere, all the time. Why do people always say that? is a question I'm asking on a daily basis. Usually the right thing to do is to move on and contemplate quietly, but today I find that hard because I'm really tired, my right leg's going to be operated on in a couple of days, my dog's farting a lot and I'm afraid there's something wrong with her, etc.

So there's no rational reason why I'm writing this blog post, and I feel like doing it is compulsive and unnecessary and, all in all, the wrong thing to do.

Enjoy!

One of the things that really bothered me today:

An article in Helsingin Sanomat. Actor Riku Nieminen talks about parenting. Quote:

"It's terrible to liken children to animals, but kids are constantly watching their parents and sensing how to behave."

Obviously, this is taken out of context, but the context doesn't change the content/meaning of this quote, so here it is.

I mean... Why is it terrible to liken children to animals? Why is it somehow insulting to even suggest that young humans 'sense' things?

That's as absurd as saying that it's terrible to liken pines to trees. Pines are trees. Children are animals.

If children aren't animals, then what the hell are they? Why is it terrible – instead of wonderful, for example, or just neutral – to be an animal? Why is it important for people to see 'humans' and 'animals' as two totally separate categories, and what kinds of behaviour do people justify by such thinking?

By the way, this is not a comment on Riku Nieminen. He seems quite thoughtful and sincere. No hard feelings. It's impossible to know if he even said that quote, maybe it was just the journalist interpretating things. Also, we cannot hear the tone of the quote; in this form, it looks like a serious statement, which it isn't necessarily. Also, it's hard to think and speak simultaneously, so when people speak, they say all kinds of nonsensical things that they don't really mean. I know that if any of the conversations I've had with people today was printed verbatim in a newspaper, I would seem like a moron.

"It's terrible to liken children to animals" bothers me because it's one of those things that somebody says and gets away with, even though it doesn't really make sense, and then it's repeated a thousand times until disagreeing with it starts seeming like the extreme thing to do. Of course, whenever I write about stuff like this, I know that it sounds like



but I don't think that people are stupid. I think that most people don't think very well, including most "intelligent" people. Actually, as far as I know, "intelligence" doesn't make people more truth-oriented. If anything, it makes them better at rationalizing and aestheticizing their weird nonsense. I should go to bed now.