Final Draft

and not just any novelty, a novelty that disguises itself as normal - the kind of strangeness that hides in being perfectly normal -  is the kind that lures and intrigues because it does not freely disclose what that discrepancy is. and thus not knowing, people are bound to get sucked in even more, because they are curious beings and want to catalogue all the knowledge that can possibly exist.  

did you know? the thing that one does not know, once it is known that one does not know it, is extremely unbearable.

wandering teacher

or teaching wanderer

whatever it happens to be, this should suit me just fine... right?

sometimes it helps to teach a child simple changes of life:

like she has to use more shampoo as her hair grows

it's obviously not to the point of racial discrimination where one is treated unfairly because of one's cultural or national background since that's illegal, but in some parts of Canada there definitely is much racial, national and cultural differentiation, separation and a whole slew of stereotypes according to one's cultural roots. And that kind of practice seems to be acceptable in many people's minds, both cultural majorities and minorities, and especially more prominent as you go further into the suburbs or among the uneducated. I don't buy that. I find most of it at best silly, if not annoying and ignorant. They are cheap jokes that are not funny. They are words and thoughts of people who do not know better, especially more unfortunate because it's happening in a supposedly multicultural, global and accepting country. People do not realize the danger of mental separation - non-identification - because they do not see immediate harm in such behaviour. but these arbitrary dividers that are taken for granted, the thought that some are more similar and that some are more dissimilar, is the first step to a lack of understanding that easily leads to discrimination and in- & out-group psychology. The first form of mental training that soldiers have drilled to their heads during wartime is the concept that 'they (the enemy) are different from us'. once that concept sinks in solidly, it's very easy to convince them that 'we' are better and 'they' are inferior. of course, our ego won't allow it otherwise.

just for the some that will argue that there are some things that 'we' really differ from 'them' and thus are justified in classifying people as such, I'll repeat the words 'arbitrary dividers' again. Of course, there is some general term on which we are classified and differentiated, but these terms are arbitrary, precisely because they are general standards. Our terms entail some vague idea, but these ideas are never specifically defined, and internally contradictory in many cases; in other words, these terms work with our impressions, not facts. and the fact is, we are not dolls out of factories; we are as different from one another as we are similar. If we start to pick away at general differences among people, there is no end to the number of classifications we can come up with that does not seem reasonable enough to us on some general and vague level. it's a very popular argument but also one whose logic is severely flawed, and one that people can't seem to shake away easily because of the powers of their own impressions.