Things that are actually pretty weird when you think about them?

Clapping- just banging our hands together as a sign of approval. Absolutely absurd. See also; waving, dancing.

*made up stuff

Acting. Whole films/programmes about people pretending to be other people doing completely made us stuff. Then they get awards for doing it which is basically a lump of metal on a bit of wood

Oysters - who decided to eat them? They look disgusting

Human babies are so weak and defenceless in comparison

They are, and for a long time I considered this to be a human failing. But dogs, cats, birds and lots of other creatures are the same. Utterly useless to start with, unless you count 'cute' as a useful function...

Babies are weird. Don't get me wrong I love them but when you see on tv horses and sheep giving birth, the babies are born then just get up and walk - just like that! Human babies are so weak and defenceless in comparison.

@Bettina500

I started compiling a list of things we don't have a word for in English.

So far, I only have: Those things you blow at parties, that unfurl lengthways and whistle; the thing you put between your shopping and the next person's shopping on the conveyor belt at the supermarket till; another one I can't remember.

Can anybody think of any others?

I find disposable nappies weird. 8 million little tiny packages thrown away every day in this country. Completely normalised and accepted whereas I just can't get my head around it. Where do they all go? What happens when the landfill sites get too full? Why is it normal yet to make a pair of socks out of paper then throw them away after one wear weird? So many questions!

How what I think is so different and that my version of events is the only version because everyone sees things differently.

The fact that despite us all being so connected these days , different places still have their own languages.
That if you are born and grow up anywhere you will speak the language perfectly, no matter how incomprehensible it may seem to others. I'm white British but would speak and write Chinese fluently had I grown up in China. Mind boggling.
another language one. As baby our brains are a totally blank canvas. People are impressed by bilingualism but there would be nothing stopping a child becoming completely proficient in 4,5,6 diverse languages if they learnt them equally from birth.

Someone mentioned factories. This is also completely mindblowing yes. Not only that everything is made in a factory, but the engineering skill that has gone into designing everything in the factory to make that one particular thing quickly, on a mass scale. the program Inside The Factory really opened my eyes. There must even be factories that make factory parts!

This comment isn't supposed to upset anyone so I apologise if it offends ..

.. But, organised religion baffles me sometimes.

I was brought up to believe in God, but didn't go to church regularly. We sang hymns and said a few prayers at school but it wasn't necessarily rammed down our throats. My dad liked going to church at Christmas.

The older I got, the more amazed I was that people genuinely believed in what I would suggest is the adult version of Santa. He knows if you're good or bad, and your behaviour decides your fate.

I used to sit in church on Christmas Day and look at the people in front of me, all chanting the same lines in prayers like a bunch of robots, sitting there while some guy tells them that they must be good and not 'sin' or they'll burn in hell.

I also hate the term 'god fearing'. I hate that people go through their lives being 'good people' to avoid hell rather than because it's just nice to be kind to other people.

I think the general premise of religion at its most basic level is okay - be good people, don't hurt other people etc. But enforcing it through fear is wrong.

And then there's the issue of how people can believe in a god that there is no evidence for. Why is our god right, yet all the gods from the other religions are wrong?

The idea of 'God' comes from a time going back millennia when things happened - like thunder, famine, illness - that we couldn't explain, and the thought of some big man in the sky making it happen seemed plausible, because it was the best explanation they had. Now, we have science to explain more and more things every day, yet somehow the idea of God lives on.

And there is SO MUCH money in the church. And so much war fought in the name of religion.

And yet still people attend church week after week - sometimes more often than that - to sit and chant with others about how they promise to be Good People so they don't piss off the big guy and end up burning in hell.

It is so so so fucking wrong.

Nail polish

My dog uses paw signals.

I often wonder who made the world and planets, and if there is a God, who made them? And who made that person? If God just......came to be, from what form? From a big bang maybe? Or jelly or some substance? And what made the stuff that caused the big bang or lifeform to appear? And what created the thing that made that, that caused and created God and the world? And who created that who created that who created that who created God? And etc on and on.

And if heaven is real, is there ever a time that it can become over-crowded? Can the planet become over-crowded with the ghosts/spirits of deceased people so they are all bumping into each other's apparition form? Is there somewhere in heaven you can go where you can be alone and get some peace, and not see, like 50 or so other spirits?

Lastly, this one puzzles me most but not being religious I wouldn't know who to ask this question of. Say if you were married to your first love and your husband pre-deceased you, and you unexpectedly found love a second time re-married, who would you be reunited with in heaven and be obligated in ghostly form, to be with? Your first husband, or your second husband? Or would it be like a threesome/bigamy in ghost form? If you loved your second husband more than your first, but your first husband wanted you both to be together in heaven, who would God dictate you choose? So many questions.

I haven't thought of hell yet and all it entails. I don't really want to. lol

@rosegoldivy I've often what language a person who is truly bilingual has an their inner voice. Say a polish person living in England and in there dreams if I appear do I speak English or Polish. My children have friends who were born here but parents don't really speak English but their first language would be English as they only really use their parents native language when speaking to them. How ever the first language they learned was their parents. This thread is making my head hurt but it's the best one in ages 😊

Love this thread!

I find the names we have for things odd -who decided that the thing we eat off is a plate, or that a particular animal is called a chicken, or that the thing we sit on is a chair/sofa etc. I often wonder if there were arguments about what the names should be

The order of a meal i.e. starter, main, dessert and who decided what was acceptable for each course? Why is soup acceptable for starters but not dessert. Or steak is fine as a main course but wouldn't be ordered for a starter.

Possibly a bit grim but the dying process when someone comes naturally to the end of their life. I cared for my Nan in her last two weeks and although I didn't really think about it at the time, now I find it remarkable how the body closes down in stages. Like it knows you no longer need food etc. Very bizarre.

The wee running commentary voice that's in your head, it never shuts up, but it's not actually a voice, but in your head it's your own voice.

We all come from people who survived the Black Death.

Sexual attraction. Why do I look at some human beings and think “yeh, this one has the right collection of attributes that makes me want to take my clothes off and touch them on their private places”?!

Language. A word was invented for every being, thing, item, thought, colour. And made it catch on so others learnt it and could use it to communicate. Then the same thing in other countries using different words. Then we learnt to put these words into symbols to write down. And a collection of those symbols spells out words that everyone can read.
Where would you even start with it
Swear words are just a sound but we've made them socially offensive.
Also names. They are a word allocated to a person or animal that the person who chose it liked the sound of.

I ordered a box of seeds once for a large allotment project I was involved with. The box was about the size of a small microwave, and contained seeds for lots of different vegetables.

Somebody said to me that the little box had the potential to feed the world, given a few generations. Blew my mind, just to hold it in my hands.

Then someone else said 'Think of all the genetics that have gone into it, too. You are holding so many millions of years of historical development in your hands...'

I have so enjoyed reading this thread ......

Having random curious thoughts about things and then speculating through them and often not getting an answer is something that takes up way too much of my brain space and time lol.

What fascinates me is how some people seem terrified of thinking too deeply about anything - they either brand it a waste of time and energy or some sort of heresy even when it's something that can have no real world consequence just by discussing thoughts. I'm quite fascinated by the concept of the Mandela effect, and some of the memory things have really made me question my own recollections - I know that it is all most likely because the human brain is fallible / other perfectly scientific explanation, nothing to see here move along - BUT what if it was time travellers tweaking stuff for shits and giggles? Would make a fun film concept (and has pretty much been done) - but I have had conversations with people where they have virtually become apoplectic because they just think it's all ridiculous so no point in talking about it all...... people are sometimes so scared of what seems to be unknown, but I'm fascinated!

And also God versus ghosts - a chap talked to a burning bush and it's God - someone sees someone they didn't even know was dead in some cases and people fall over themselves to say it's impossible. Truth is we can't KNOW 100% either way in either scenario because we have no evidence. And weird stuff does happen - was it Arthur C Clarke who said that magic is just stuff that science hasn't explained yet?

And on that note - wouldn't it be so bland to live in a world without mystery? If we nail everything down then what would be the point of existence at all?

And why are we here?

LOL OP you've got me started again - but thank you - remembering these mysteries exist is one of the things that help me out of my despondency and the feeling of drudgery of each day.

Another one for me is flowers. So basically you can have a small seed and a pot of brown earth, some light and some water. From it will grow a stem of bright green with a beautiful yellow head of golden leaves..... where are those pigments from?