It happens to me regularly: I indulge prolonged thought on ideas that most people take for granted as established truth or tradition and so beyond critique or questioning. As the Apostle Paul says in the Bible “bear with me in a little folly”. Two such have attracted my thinking yet again.
You must have heard it “you can walk and chew gum at the same time” usually suggesting a resolution to an otherwise implied difficult dilemma. I don’t get it though! How could anyone see those two activities as not able to be done easily at the same time? It’s such a no-brainer in my mind that I wonder why any sensible person would employ the expression.
Akin to this one is “you can’t have your cake and eat it.” Of course you can since you can’t eat what you don’t have! Even if what is meant is ‘at the same time’ you jolly well can. It may be a miswording of “you can’t eat your cake and have it [around still] but duh?
The more serious one that irks me is the economics principle of supply and demand, meaning when supply is limited and demand is great there is seemingly an unquestioned/understandable price increase. For me, not ever having taken an elective in economics or business studies I keep asking why that should be so and be unquestioned or understandable. What justifies the price increase of the demanded product minus increase in the production cost of said product? Especially too if the previous price before the increased demand was a fair market price for the product! I just don’t get it.
Two aspects of life in the USA continue to puzzle me. The frequent mass murders using military type ‘weapons of war’ and the seeming difficulty of implementing the common-sense solution of banning such weapons from being sold to other than the military. The objection based on the US constitutional amendment allowing citizens the right to bear arms, befuddles me. Does the average citizen register a real dread of being attacked by a group of armed persons? Unless that is the case why would any citizen need to be armed with a military type of weapon?
Last USA puzzle. I thought the major branches of government were separate and independent in terms of operation so that none could unduly influence or affect the legitimate functions of any other. Understand my horror then when, after Roe v. Wade was overturned by SCOTUS (the Judiciary) President Biden of the Executive did not simply express regrets but publicly chastised the ruling by the Supreme Court!
This I don’t get at all and the seemingly entrenched USA tradition of seeing a Supreme Court justice as necessarily aligned to the party of the President that nominated that justice ought to be denounced as a disgraceful tradition and a gross insult to the justices who serve at the highest level of the Judiciary.Just thinking aloud and logically.