What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, helpless earthworm, depository of truth, sink of uncertainty and error. Glory and scum of the universe.
Blaise Pascal
One of the nice things spending New Year’s Eve in Hawaii was the firework. It was small but well done. The following image does not do it justice (just a quick smartphone photo, did not bring a tripod for my camera).
But it was also clearly an orchestrated firework. It was well planned and that was pretty much the problem, it was planned. Too well-structured, too choreographed, to clean.
Personally, I wonder whether a more chaotic version isn’t more in spirit of things. Having many people send up rockets when they want, leading to a chaotic colorful display.
In the end, it’s a conflict between two views: A centrally planned well-structured show vs. a chaotic mass of people arranging stuff for themselves.
And yeah, I am decidedly on the more chaotic side. After all, we are driving away the evil spirits of the prior year and welcoming the new one, are we not?
P.S.: There are — of course — other sides, including the «food not fireworks» fraction, the «it’s too dangerous, people blow their hands off», the «people misuse fireworks and hurt others», and the «it leads to panic in dogs».
Regarding the money that could be donated to buy food, well, why do we destroy parts of our harvest or limit our agricultural area if we want to give out more food? We would not even need to buy it. Also, how much of the money actually arrives in the area as food?
As for blowing your hands off, well, sucks, but that was literally in your hand … until it wasn’t. We do not need to protect people from everything.
Regarding the misuse — how about catching and punishing those who misuse fireworks, e.g., throw them into groups of people? Pretty sure that mostly likely, they also do other stuff that is criminal.
As for the dogs, yeah, for some that is a problem and I feel compassion as I really like dogs. But there is also something to this meme:
😉
In this sense, happy fireworks.
