Any friends ? ........Artist vs. celebrity !

Friendship is not just a feeling .. it is much more .. Friendship require thinking .. It is decision .. not just an accident ..
Decision and Accident are different like Art and Entertainment. 

Art is activity that needs tons of training , talent , competitiveness etc.. for nothing  materialistically useful  .. yet it is somehow a necessity..  

Entertainment is another activity, doesn't need much more than luck... nothing useful comes out of it .. and it is not necessary for anything else then wasting time... still it is everywhere .. 

Art and entertainment split through time .. they were once the same (more or less). 
Artist were originally high quality entertainers .. 

Nowadays .. Artists do art .. celebrities do entertainment .. prokofiev music vs. pop music .. Cantata 30 vs Jolene ..  domingo vs. Elvis presley .. etc.... 

Artists work hard .. need all the time they can get for their work.. have no time for large social life. have very few friends, mostly like themselves. this kind of friendship last forever.. If it is broken.. it is usually for good (and good reason).. Artists are thinkers .. appreciated by thinkers .. 

Celebrities have all the time they need to socialize .. they are surrounded by people all the time .. smiling for photographers and living large.. do they have friends ?? 

The answer in general is NO.. they have fans ... fans are quasi recent cultural phenomena. There were no fans before media and pop culture .. 

Fans are reduced (almost to none) quality of an imaginary friend .. they fade away with time and status .. Entertainers try to keep their image of being "young" and "influential" .. Eventually they get old or somebody else takes over the stage  .. Fans move on to the NEXT celebrity ..
The "was" celebrity writes autobiography about childhood abuse, early life , alcoholism and drug use.. too late .. nobody reads .. game over..  

A friend "knows" his/her friend and accept him/her for who he/she is.. and visa versa .. otherwise it  is not a friendship.. 

A fan imagine who his/her celebrity is ..
a celebrity doesn't even try to know anything about the fan..

A Friend is a decision ..
A Fan is an accident .. 
Friendship is important for both friends ..
'fan-ship" is "important" to the fan....means nothing to the celebrity.. until it is too late .. 
friends have ( and provide ) meanings  .. 
Fans are just a count ...  

Do you have friends ? did you ever have one ? can you be a friend ? or just busy counting temporary (soon to disappear) fans !!!

Believe .. Faith .. how much is too much ??

We do pay for what works for us , electricity , phone , internet , gaz etc.. we know what we need and we are always ready to pay. How about belief ? If we need it .. shouldn't we pay for it ? Both ,knowing and believing, are brain activities .. Both are needed .. is one better or more necessary than the other? 

We divide Human history to different iras .. we call them ages. revolutions .. etc.. 

Stone age .. Age of agriculture .. Age of industrial revolution .. etc..
It's practical .. few words will tell the listener what and "when" we are talking about .. 

However .. the different ages are all about economical changes. economy here is not only wealth, it is power and achievements and many other things. 

Here ... and for the sake of using the ONLY organ that makes Human different from animal (AKA Brain) . We have only 2, totally different, periods in history:

Importance of believing vs. Importance of knowing .. 

Believing by definition means : NOT knowing .. once you know something, there is no need to believe in it. 

Knowledge starts with believe, ends with proves... or disprove.. 
Faith ends with believe, nothing else is required.. 

The main issue is not about believing vs. knowing .. it is about how much would a believe costs.

Not knowing (believing) varies between : almost sure AND have no idea .. behaving according to believe varies between successful and disasters  ..  successful only (by luck)..

The most common case of believing is the religious faith.. very clear example.. 

Believers justify their beliefs by counting the hits (success) and ignoring the misses (disasters).. 
They take their beliefs as superior to others (Europe is superior to the islamic world because of its christianity .. ignoring the fact that Europe at 99% is NOT christian and that south america at  99% IS).

We call the time when believing was dominant in Europe : The dark age..  why is that ??

But any system of belief is more or less the same and can go from mild to extreme .. 
Knowledge is what it is .. no argument can be made once we know.. Did you see people still arguing about gravity? Electromagnetism or the distance between moon and earth? 

True that knowledge is not complete and will never be .. some believe is still needed .. it is the force behind all discoveries .. That's how it goes :
Believe (guess) .. try to prove your believe is correct .. put it to test .. if it passes all tests .. it is true that's knowledge.. if it fails .. it is not true. That in itself is knowledge too. 

Proving something is not always easy .. not always cheep.. the more advanced the knowledge , the more expensive and hard to expand it.. 

That's equal to say : the less you need to know (more believe) the easier you live.. ignorance is blessing.

To make it clear :
It is expensive to dig for oil in land. So unless you are sure there is oil, you shouldn't start the digging .. machineries are costly and work is not easy and might be dangerous..  

Did the Saudi king order the digging in his land for oil according to believe? Geologists discovered that there is oil in there that can make him rich.. He believed geologists because he knew they did the research and have the prove. BTW .. he believed in (non-believer)..

His faith didn't matter much.. He wouldn't have ordered the digging, even when all his preachers , muftis, and higher religious authorities told him that this digging is an order of god..  At the end ,however,  he did give the credit of oil existence to... GOD.

Pop Jean Paul the second after the assassination attempt gave the credit to Notre Dame de Fatima because she (moved) the bullet few inches to miss his heart  and was operable (6 hours operation and no credit to surgeons.. go figure ).
WELL .. using his own logic . Why didn't Fatima move the bullet to miss him all together? 

Believing is easy when it brings something or at least cost nothing .. Will there be believers if governments impose taxes on believes?

Justified mistakes .. How to feel bad while doing the right thing

Is it possible to feel bad by doing the right thing? 
Is it possible to feel good doing what's wrong?  

We know that Alcohol and drugs change feelings to (happier) .. changes characters, from worried, to (it is alright ..  it is good ... it is  OK).

We know Happiness is just a feeling that can change by a pill .. a smoke .. an injection .. etc... we call that fake happiness .. and it is temporary .. 

What about happiness that comes out of changing situations ?? winning lottery .. finding love .. getting PHD .. 
According to studies .. that's the same thing .. it just take longer to wind down.. you are for the most part of your lifetime as happy as you can.. ups and downs are temporary facts.. 

Last weekend (Sep 26th)..O. S..  A very dear person , who disappeared for a while, wanted a video call.. We talked for about 30 min.. then chatted further for the rest of the day .. 

We had little history .. yet .. to me it was very important .. much more than I expected or wanted it to be. 

I didn't want to feel bad .. but I did .. I said what I had to say .. counting odds and numbers made everything I said right .. why do I feel bad .. ? 

The  fact is that she is doing a mistake .. taking big risk on herself and others, feeling good about what's going on .. not knowing the risk or, at least thinking, if it is worth taking .. 

The main problem is : All what is she doing is justified .. very much .. it is what she needs .. what's wrong in getting what you really need (food .. medication .. relationship .. etc.. ) ... 

Well.. as long as you are not hurting anybody .. you should get whatever you need.. and lead your own private life the way to want .. again.. not hurting anybody is the main issue here.. 

But what if there is a chance that you hurt somebody .. or you are going to .. ?
What if this (somebody) is you ?? or somebody you care about ,  even more than yourself (like your child) .. 

Should we consider justified mistakes as non-mistakes ?  I guess not .. here is why.. 

Anything that can go wrong , will eventually go wrong.. said Murphy .. It is just a matter of time.

Wrongdoing (no matter how justified it is) will lead to wrong outcomes ..luck can intervene .. but luck eventually will run out ..just hoping that luck doesn't run out before you die is NOT justified. numbers don't lie .. everybody and everything else does .. 

Feeling good about something doesn't make it right, not all the time at least....

Still ...despite the fact that I didn't feel any wrong .. I didn't feel any good .. at all .. 

Once fucked up there is no way back . there is no "un-fuck", no "fuck-down"..