[0391] Sandra’s Truths And Lies In An Extra-Moral Sense
└ posted on Thursday, 5 July 2012, by Novil
- Sandra: Have you ever thought about how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature? There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.
- Sandra: For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it.
- Larisa: Does that mean you’ve destroyed my sand castle to teach me humility in the face of the futility of man’s struggle for self-fulfillment?
- Sandra: No, out of pure envy.
![[0391] Sandra’s Truths And Lies In An Extra-Moral Sense](/comics/2012-07-05-0391-sandras-truths-and-lies-in-an-extra-moral-sense.png "[0391] Sandra’s Truths And Lies In An Extra-Moral Sense")
Pretty deep to notice it also just scratches the surface, i love it
This beach is a lot like Calvin’s wagon. It just seems to generate philosophical conversation.
We human is quite unique. We create different values toward stuff around us and we are quite flexible to change the value as culture and time goes by. Sometimes we have to wonder, what happened to earth if there’s no human being? are there another intelligent creature replacing us or earth is simply going wild forever?
Maybe this is why we have a dream to reach out to space and hoping for someone or something out there intelligent enough to respond to us. It seems like because we feel….. lonely. We rose as humanity (and culture) alone and the humanity probably will fall alone.
Unfortunately the scenario when we try to destroy other civilization/intelligent being because we envy their technology and knowledge is possible, like what happened to that sand castle.
The product of human intellect can outlive the existence of humanity. It mostly depends on what and how we wish to create, and how long we can keep on creating without destroying ourselves in the process.
That was a bit too deep. If she swimming instead of philosophizing, she wouldn’t see the shore anymore.
she was*
What’s wrong with me lately?
Why didn’t anyone mention Sandra’s avant-garde castle is cuter? Larisa may be a good engineer but Sandra’s an artist.
Alan Parsons wrote a song about this strip, What Goes Up, on his 1978 album Pyramid. For some reason he didn’t mention Sandra and Larisa by name, but apart from that, it’s all there. >:=)>
Still, Larisa shouldn’t feel too down: the minute she moved away, leaving the castle outside the range of her physical law distortion field, the normal mechanical properties of wet sand would have reasserted themselves, and the castle would have collapsed on its own.
Next, Sandra whips out a guitar and starts singing “Dust in the Wind.” Larisa grabs the instrument from her and burns it, thus inadvertently proving Sandra’s point.
I just read the entire archive of Sandra and Woo in one day.
WOO!
Love the comic! So glad I followed the link from David Willis’ Shortpacked to here.
Great comic with a lot of fun characters! Comedy, drama and a little romance now and then. Heck, I even saved the comic where Sandra and Cloud finally kiss cause it was a perfect moment both of them deserved!
Thanks for a great comic! I’ll be waiting for every strip!
@ ferromaggie:
Correct if I’m wrong, but isn’t Larisa the artist and Sandra is the one with the mathematical know how to be an Engineer?
@ pip25:
But what is the significance of the man made ideas and products when there’s no one to appreciate it? most of our creations are appreciated by our own kind, not other creatures.
In the end when we no longer around to maintain our ideas and products they will rot away after a couple thousand years. We can carve Einstein theory on the moon surface but a single meteor can erase it. We can send probes to spaces filled with our cultures but will it reach someone/thing else’s hand or stranded in the void forever?
I barely understood any of that, but I got the basic idea, and I also understood the joke, so I’m good! XD
“My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
~ credit to Shelley
Larisa’s castle is like Hogwarts… if Harry Potter were a fiddler crab.
Sandra’s castle is making a face~! lol, i can’t tell if its awed or horrified, though XDD
“humility in the face of the futility of man’s struggle for self-fulfillment” would actually make a pretty good book title
pip25 wrote:
Intellect can also prolong existence of human who has it… given some fantasy we just need to make true… perhaps indefinitely… http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Asgard
Subaru wrote:
Maybe its doing both!
… and it was a pretty epic sand castle too 🙁
Larisa should make her castles out of clay, not sand. Then she’d get to fire them.
Love the insert panel!
at least she’s honest…O_O”
@ Leomon:
Good for you. It wasn’t too long ago (maybe a few months) that I did the same thing.
Bah, I smell the rotting corpse of Nietzsche. There are so many problems with the unstated premises of that chain of reasoning that you can tell how entirely he was losing his mind just from contemplating them. For example, why even bother philosophizing about it if human intellect doesn’t matter? Also, not sure where the painted picture of human intellect is coming from; all I see is the systematic domination of every ecosystem on Earth and the anthropogenically altered course of evolution. That’s why Nietzsche’s corpse stinks soooo bad — all the pungent internal contradictions, stinky scientific ignorance, and retch inducing bias :-p.
@ pikadusk:
Both
@ AckAckAck:
How do you define significance? If something has to be appreciated to have significance, then unless other intelligent life exists, the universe itself would lose all significance once humanity is gone.
If I had to define significance on a cosmic scale, I would define it based on how much of a change (whether good or bad) a certain force can create. Currently, humanity has changed the planet Earth in a way that would need a few million years to become undetectable. (The depletion of oil reserves, for instance.) In a thousand years, I would imagine that humanity could cause at least as much of a change in several other planets. (The possible terraforming of Mars is a good example.) As long as we continue existing, we can leave our mark on the universe at an ever greater scale, both in terms of distance and regarding how long our changes will have an effect, thus becoming increasingly more significant in the universe.
Took me 14 hours across 2 days to archive binge.
This is the new Calvin and Hobbes.
The ephemeral nature of Sandra’s envy takes the theme of the contrast of futility and the perception of timelessness to a whole new level of postmodern.
@ pip25:
Leaving our mark and leaving behind a significance are quite different, however. Naturally, once humankind’s run is done and our species through, we will have left a mark upon the world that will take much time to heal, and may yet scar. To anyone beyond ourselves, however, the things that humanity has brought to the world is insignificant in meaning to any other species on this world. They’ll not benefit from any of the cars left behind when we’re gone, the guns, the nuclear technology; it has no meaning at all. Human intelligence, and humanity itself, is meaningless to those species that existed long before us, and will, long after.
@ Umbrae Calamitas:
I’m not sure I grasp what you’re trying to say by “no meaning” in this case. If you are referring to animals/plants as the species that existed before us and will exist after, to me the very definition of “meaning” seems to be something that cannot be applied to them, as they are lacking in intelligence to understand such an abstract concept in the first place.
“Meaning”, I think is also certainly not “benefit” – but if you really want to go in that direction, some animal species certainly adapted to and benefit from our existence, and from the (by)products of our intelligence, even now. (Just ask the cockroaches. XD) Humanity is still part of the biosphere, after all; everything it does benefits or hinders certain forms of life, only on a larger scale compared to other species; how would such a mark we leave in the world not be significant?
Basketball needs a troll face on it. Or a ‘Problem?’ Also adds to the metaphysical analysis ^^
Ok this is a thinker what is a basketball doing at the beach. vollyballs and soccer balls i could see but why did the colorist decide to turn what in all likely hood was a vollyball into a basket ball. can you anwser me that? other why it could have been funny but my mind is just to stuck on the Basket ball
@ HalfLifeZim:
You know, some of us consider it rather waste of resources to buy different balls when, on totaly unproffesional level, it really does not matter how it is used. (wheather kicked, tossed…)
Hi all.
Question unrelated to this strip.
In ‘The Kiss’ it was mentioned in the comments about Sandra’s dad comment “two down two to go” but for the life of me I can’t figure out what he means.
Can anyone help a newbie out?
Thanks!
just as I expected.
Sandra is completely flat.
Now see… if THIS was in someone’s top 10 Sandra & Woo strips, I’d understand it.
The underlying principle is simple, but the execution is what makes it entertaining.
Flatty McBoardrump wrote:
It’s odd, in the first two panels she looks completely un-developed, then in panels 3 and 4 she suddenly has a chest. I don’t normally pay much attention to their figures (they’re a few years too young, and a few more before one thinks of doing more than looking) but the contrast is rather strong in this one.