...people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Can someone help me figure this out? Does it mean that doing the right thing will keep you mired in obscurity? Opinions? ____________________________ Life is like a box of kitty litter... as you go through it you get your lumps.
NORM MACDONALD wrote:
#### from my understanding of that episode, God told Bender he wouldn't help people anymore etc, and when Bender went back to earth, Leela remembered those poor monks were still locked in the laundry, and Fry opted not to release them since God will help them, but Bender said God won't and went back to release those monk.
so the intention of the God is to encourage people to help each other, which he has achieved (do things right) that when Bender went to back to help those monks, but they'll never realise that's God's intention and will always think that God never do anything (people won't be sure you've done anything at all.).
of course please correc me if i'm wrong.
will.
NORM MACDONALD wrote:
I think it's more along the lines of "there's no need for (choose one: God, a god) to show itself (e.g. the "burning bush" bit) - just "run things from behind the curtain". For example, it probably wasn't a complete coincidence that when Fry spun the monk's telescope, it "accidentally" pointed right to where Bender was.
=v= A Nibblonian wizard did it. <_Jym_>
Dont you dare start this here! It's done to death on alt.tv.simpsons. I curse that episode. Curse it!!
[email] (NORM MACDONALD) wrote in message news:...
It's about subtlety.
If a giant hand reaches down to pluck people off a boat that's about to sink, it's obvious that at the very least there is a giant hand that descends from the sky to save people. There is no other explanation. Once people know there'd be such a rescue, why bother trying to save yourself? The giant hand will save you.
The complete opposite would be to just let the boat sink, and the people drown. "How can bad things happen to good people?" Therefore, there can't be any giant hand, or whatever, to save people. They may make more effort to save themselves, but people will still die.
But what happens if the intervention is far less obvious, and far more plausible? Someone homeless, starving and on their way to jumping off a bridge. What could save them? It can't be a giant hand, because then people won't take initiative. But this guy is going to kill himself, so something has to be done. So instead of someone coming up to them and miraculously giving them a million dollars, the behind the scenes manipulation leaves a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk. The guy goes and buys a meal, feels a lot better, and doesn't kill himself. Someone dropping a twenty dollar bill as they walk along is in the realm of possibilities; I found one once, I've found smaller amounts, and once I even found a monthly bus pass with two weeks still useable on it. The twenty dollars is the right amount of intervention, and the right time, so "bad things don't happen to good people". But it's not out of the ordinary, so the guy will not become reliant on that giant hand.
The guy is saved, but he doesn't know that anything was done for him.
That's what the line was about.
Michael
This almost matches my opinion of the line.
Michael Black wrote:
it means that good things that people do go mostly unnoticed. It is a (bad) quality of people to mind the bad things much more than the good things.
After a while you start taking life for granted, but when something shitty happens, like a rainy day or something, you start getting pissed. You start saying that it rains all the time, and there is never any sun, and blablabla.
We are used to things going good all the time, so we think it's normal we have food every day, and stuff like that. But if we lose that for just a small period of time, we get angry.
That's how i see this message by the God-galaxy, and i am not religious at all...
Zevy