July 18th 2007
I was thinking....I posted a bulletin yesterday about being excited for the next election. Now I'm kind of thinking we should take a different approach. Loosely based of genius and this one time I got really stoned and wrote a story with the mentality of an 8 year old... here is my plan...
First, we overthrow the government, remove everyone from office, burn the pentagon and the white house to the ground, because we're starting over, and we build a castle.
Now that we have a fresh canvas to work with and democracy no longer exists in America, it is time to rebuild. We're going back to the old way, bringing back Monarchy.
Not just any Monarchy, not an absolute Monarchy or anything and definetly not hereditary. So just like the president, we elect a King. I almost said (or Queen) but then I remembered that that is what is so cool about monarchy. It's the King and Queen. Not the President and the first lady. King and Queen are like equals, unless of course we're talking about cards or chess. But I mean, the King dies, the Queen is the leader, or basically they just rule together. But I digress. So we elect a King or Queen just like the President. The difference is, that person serves as King or Queen for as long as they are alive, there are no term limits.
Now the really cool part about this, is you're probably thinking...Great, so say we had elected Bush as King, he could potentially fuck things up and drive us into the ground for as long as he is alive. But rest assured, because the catch is if you're doing a bad job, and America takes a vote and the majority decides you're fucking up, then we kill you.
This may seem harsh, but think about how effective it would be. Now that I really put it into perspective, my idea is a lot like England. They have the Queen, but they also have Parliment. We would have Parliment as well, it would be a diverse group of individuals who represent every race, socioeconmic status, gender, sexual orientation, religion, you name it, kind of like the United Nations only within America. It would also be mandatory that during sessions of Parliment everyone smokes Parliments, because this is America, and we love irony.
Now speaking of irony, the best part about this plan is that it would be the most ironic thing in America's history. If you think about it, eliminating Democracy and replacing it with Monarchy, would be going against everything America is founded on. It would make fools out of the founding fathers. It would be an admittance of failure. It would invalidate the longest standing legal document in history. We would make confetti out of the constitution and let it rain in the streets as our new King and Queen floated by during their inauguration parade.
The only difference between our new government and that of England is that rather than the King and Queen only existing for traditional and iconic reasons, we wouldn't have a "Prime Minister" running the country. Our King and Queen would be legit. Our president is King of the castle. He will say "you do this you do this" and people will do it.
Did I mention that the Castle is in Wyoming? Because why not?
Another great thing about the King is that during the campaigning process there is no campaigning. There will be no traveling from state to state, in fact states will no longer exist, they will just be territories. And no governors, we will replace them with Dukes and Dutchesses. Anyway, there is no wasting millions of dollars on bullshit propoganda and lies because from here on out we will respect Americas as intelligent and intuitive individuals, not the fools we authoritive figures make of us.
Instead, campaigning will be held on national television. It will be a reality show, in fact the castle will be its own reality show. It will be like C-Span only not boring. And that way, so much can't be kept from us any longer. There will first be a gameshow, like Jeopardy, and an IQ test. Everyone must pass the IQ test to even be allowed to campaign, and they must test higher than 135. They will be given rigorus tasks in which all of America will watch and observe how each individual reacts to situations and solvs problems. All canidates must also perform stand up comedy at the end of each airing episode, just so it always ends on a light note and I think it is very important to have a King with a sense of humor. The King of America needs to be satirical and witty.
Every week, America will be required to vote, they will go out and instead of voting FOR a candiate, they will vote a canidate off. Through this process of elimination we will eventually get our new King. It's very Darwin, very survival of the fittest, and of course natural.
There will be no republicans, no democracts. We will all be independents. We will all be either smart, or we will be idiots. There is no inbetween.
Also, it is important for you to know that at the Castle, the Beatles are always playing. And every morning everyone plays a round of Kings, once again for the sake of irony. Daytripper is the song I have in mind for the theme. Since this will be a reality show.
It's a muligan, lets start over!
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Shades of Gray
July 2nd 2007
The unhappiness I feel now possibly transcends any feeling of sadness I've had in years.
I can't figure this out. I've woken up feeling gradually more depressed everyday for months. The only reason I haven't done anything about it yet is because no specific event has caused this.
Sadness may not be the most applicable word to describe how I feel. Defining how I feel is what I've been trying to accomplish all day. Usually it would come down to indifference, but its not that at all. I'm not indifferent, in fact I'm very concerned.
I think the best way to describe how I feel is faithless. That's so hard for me to comprehend, me having lack of faith.
This is from a copy of a letter I wrote someone exactly one year ago, "Someone mentioned tonight that I have a lot of hope, and I do, which is why I told him I am trying so hard not to fight. When we feel like we have nothing else, we have to have hope." That's all I had then. I lost someone I cared about and all I had was the hope that things would get better. Because I am here now, feeling hopeless and dismayed without any specific event as a source, I'm feeling very confused.
I guess I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly that I'm running on. I had said before that when we feel like we have nothing else we have to have hope. Well I feel that I don't have much, and this time I don't have any expectations that things will get better.
I went on a walk earlier and really tried to clear my mind and put into perspective what has been bothering me. I came down to this...
Every person has a set of beliefs. Instilled in us when we are children is this sort of, make shift default system of beliefs. The belief of what is right versus what is wrong for example. Our religious beliefs often stem from whatever it is we were brought up with growing up. As we get older we may adapt new beliefs and our old ones may change. Nonetheless, this system of beliefs we make applicable to any given situation. Whats unfortunate is that everyday life challenges our set of beliefs.
I brought up systems of beliefs because I realized that these beliefs are the reason faith exists in the first place. We live in a world that is indifferent to our beliefs. Things will happen as they are meant to play out, despite how we feel that they should.
Because of this realization, I've abandoned a lot of my own beliefs. I realized to really truly believe in anything, meant inevitable hypocrisy on my part. My beliefs cannot account for every situation that I have not experienced, and they cannot account for what I will experience. It comes down to things not being black or white. I watched Donnie Darko tonight and the part where they are doing the lifeline exercise reiterates the same fact. Where the assignment is to place a situation into two categories, love or fear. Donnie gets angry because you can't lump all human experience into two simple categories while disregarding the entire spectrum of human emotion. It's the same thing.
I have all ready abandoned my belief in Christianity. I've written about it so much that most people would all ready know why. But to put it in the most simple way possible, I have had many experiences where suddenly I realized that doctrine of Christianity was no longer applicable, and continuing to have faith in something that was empty to me would be a lie. And politics, I've always tried to stay away from labels in politics. I've always thought that for a person to call themselves anything other than an independent or moderate was nonsensical and ignorant. So you're avidly for or against the death penalty? How many of you have both had someone close to you murdered and also had someone close to you murder someone else? I haven't, and until I've experienced both sides of the spectrum how can I form any kind of justifiable belief on whether or not the death penalty is right?
These beliefs are more complex, and I've all ready worked myself through dismantling them. What has had me in disarray lately is something far more simple but a little more meaningful, and that is my relationships with other people. A lot of girls my age have a boyfriend, and if they don't, they are looking for one. I have detatched myself from this because I feel like the concept of love clouds my vision, especially during a time when I am trying to come to terms with my identity. I've realized that the problem with me is that I have such trouble finding anyone who I feel is truely compatible for me. I have had plenty of flings, or encounters, or whatever with all different kinds of males. All of these guys complimented me in some way, whether it me physically, emotionally, mentally, or socially, but none of them have been complatible enough to transcend all four. I don't feel that any of these casual relationships have taken away from me, but I don't feel like they've really benefited me either. None of this would usually be a big deal because after thinking about this I still couldn't figure out why I feel the way I do.
I guess what it comes down to is that these beliefs we have our used as aides to discovering happiness. I feel like I've been conditioned to think that a certain set of goals once achieved, are going to make me happy. Success should make me happy, love should make me happy, whatever.
I have disregarded forming permanent beliefs on anything. Faith only exists because as I said earlier, the world is indifferent to our beliefs. Everyday events challenge or prove them wrong on a regular basis. But we don't want to stop believing. It's hard to disregard an idea you've put so much time and energy and emotion into. It's hard to disregard something you've used as the basis for all of your arguments and all of your actions and reactions. When the world challenges our beliefs we develop faith. We have faith that despite opposition our beliefs are still right. Because my beliefs are gone, so is their defendant so is all of my faith.
So I have no expectations, and no specific faith or hope that things will change, or will get better, or will work out. I'm positive because its all that I can be. But the reason I'm so confused and upset is because now I don't know what to feel, and its feelings that keep us alive.
I've really taken this quote seriously in recent weeks, "When there is no desire, all things are at peace." I've tried to let go of desire, and maybe I've accomplished that. I guess in the end I'm just dismayed because I never thought peace would feel so empty.
The unhappiness I feel now possibly transcends any feeling of sadness I've had in years.
I can't figure this out. I've woken up feeling gradually more depressed everyday for months. The only reason I haven't done anything about it yet is because no specific event has caused this.
Sadness may not be the most applicable word to describe how I feel. Defining how I feel is what I've been trying to accomplish all day. Usually it would come down to indifference, but its not that at all. I'm not indifferent, in fact I'm very concerned.
I think the best way to describe how I feel is faithless. That's so hard for me to comprehend, me having lack of faith.
This is from a copy of a letter I wrote someone exactly one year ago, "Someone mentioned tonight that I have a lot of hope, and I do, which is why I told him I am trying so hard not to fight. When we feel like we have nothing else, we have to have hope." That's all I had then. I lost someone I cared about and all I had was the hope that things would get better. Because I am here now, feeling hopeless and dismayed without any specific event as a source, I'm feeling very confused.
I guess I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly that I'm running on. I had said before that when we feel like we have nothing else we have to have hope. Well I feel that I don't have much, and this time I don't have any expectations that things will get better.
I went on a walk earlier and really tried to clear my mind and put into perspective what has been bothering me. I came down to this...
Every person has a set of beliefs. Instilled in us when we are children is this sort of, make shift default system of beliefs. The belief of what is right versus what is wrong for example. Our religious beliefs often stem from whatever it is we were brought up with growing up. As we get older we may adapt new beliefs and our old ones may change. Nonetheless, this system of beliefs we make applicable to any given situation. Whats unfortunate is that everyday life challenges our set of beliefs.
I brought up systems of beliefs because I realized that these beliefs are the reason faith exists in the first place. We live in a world that is indifferent to our beliefs. Things will happen as they are meant to play out, despite how we feel that they should.
Because of this realization, I've abandoned a lot of my own beliefs. I realized to really truly believe in anything, meant inevitable hypocrisy on my part. My beliefs cannot account for every situation that I have not experienced, and they cannot account for what I will experience. It comes down to things not being black or white. I watched Donnie Darko tonight and the part where they are doing the lifeline exercise reiterates the same fact. Where the assignment is to place a situation into two categories, love or fear. Donnie gets angry because you can't lump all human experience into two simple categories while disregarding the entire spectrum of human emotion. It's the same thing.
I have all ready abandoned my belief in Christianity. I've written about it so much that most people would all ready know why. But to put it in the most simple way possible, I have had many experiences where suddenly I realized that doctrine of Christianity was no longer applicable, and continuing to have faith in something that was empty to me would be a lie. And politics, I've always tried to stay away from labels in politics. I've always thought that for a person to call themselves anything other than an independent or moderate was nonsensical and ignorant. So you're avidly for or against the death penalty? How many of you have both had someone close to you murdered and also had someone close to you murder someone else? I haven't, and until I've experienced both sides of the spectrum how can I form any kind of justifiable belief on whether or not the death penalty is right?
These beliefs are more complex, and I've all ready worked myself through dismantling them. What has had me in disarray lately is something far more simple but a little more meaningful, and that is my relationships with other people. A lot of girls my age have a boyfriend, and if they don't, they are looking for one. I have detatched myself from this because I feel like the concept of love clouds my vision, especially during a time when I am trying to come to terms with my identity. I've realized that the problem with me is that I have such trouble finding anyone who I feel is truely compatible for me. I have had plenty of flings, or encounters, or whatever with all different kinds of males. All of these guys complimented me in some way, whether it me physically, emotionally, mentally, or socially, but none of them have been complatible enough to transcend all four. I don't feel that any of these casual relationships have taken away from me, but I don't feel like they've really benefited me either. None of this would usually be a big deal because after thinking about this I still couldn't figure out why I feel the way I do.
I guess what it comes down to is that these beliefs we have our used as aides to discovering happiness. I feel like I've been conditioned to think that a certain set of goals once achieved, are going to make me happy. Success should make me happy, love should make me happy, whatever.
I have disregarded forming permanent beliefs on anything. Faith only exists because as I said earlier, the world is indifferent to our beliefs. Everyday events challenge or prove them wrong on a regular basis. But we don't want to stop believing. It's hard to disregard an idea you've put so much time and energy and emotion into. It's hard to disregard something you've used as the basis for all of your arguments and all of your actions and reactions. When the world challenges our beliefs we develop faith. We have faith that despite opposition our beliefs are still right. Because my beliefs are gone, so is their defendant so is all of my faith.
So I have no expectations, and no specific faith or hope that things will change, or will get better, or will work out. I'm positive because its all that I can be. But the reason I'm so confused and upset is because now I don't know what to feel, and its feelings that keep us alive.
I've really taken this quote seriously in recent weeks, "When there is no desire, all things are at peace." I've tried to let go of desire, and maybe I've accomplished that. I guess in the end I'm just dismayed because I never thought peace would feel so empty.
Disequilibrium
May 15th 2007
Here I am again...
My recent boredom has caused me to stumble upon four old blogs I used to have, dating back to even my high school days.
It's interesting to see where my mind was at that time, sometimes I forget. At the same time it's also somewhat discerning, when evaluating the subject matter of any given post. The oldest blog I found was a Xanga page...filled mostly with details of superficial and mindless activities. Not that I am debating the value of mindless activities, writing about seemlingly nothing is one of my favorite past times. But I feel like my approach has changed. Whereas now I have notebooks filled with details of common, brief encounters, which would appear meaningless to most- but I write about them and keep them to myself because I enjoy evaluating the subtle interactions in my life...doing philosophically what Einstein spent his life trying to do scientifically- tying together the miscroscopic and meaningless with the large scale and profound. But these early writings of mundane activity didn't seem to serve the same purpose they do now, rather than recording what is often overlooked as common for the sake of evaluation, I had conformed to the common teenage need to 'sell myself'.
Eventually I abandoned my Xanga page in exchange for blogspot, which I had two over a period of two years. Reading back on these blogs I find that they center around a quintessential sadness, anxiety, and overall sense of despair. A large part of this may have been a reflection of a mixture of just common teenage anxiety but also freedom from superficiality and a return to my pre-teen manic state.
The last page I found was from two years ago...and the aura of it had changed from sorrowful to peaceful, headlined with the Edgar Allen Poe quote "Convinced myself, I seek not to convince." Finally attaining exactly what it was I needed all along, which was a sense of balance. It seems that I thought I had finally had myself figured out, and was in control of my emotions and direction. I turned my focus outward and began to write about mostly politics and pop culture. During this time I was involved in an unconventional long distance relationship. A relationship that did a lot of justice for me personally, but looking back on it I see it as more of an idea, that manifested itself in my mind. Whether it is fair to say that I began to crave a trivial enviroment of bars, strangers, alcohol, and drugs- and this is the reason for the end of my relationship- or if it were vice versa, I'll never know. But either way, over the course of last summer I wrote barely anything, I quit drawing, painting, reading, practicing music, and spent most of my days and nights out and usually intoxicated. This continued beyond the summer and over the course of the entire school year. I began to resuscitate my sense of creativity not because I began to feel it again, but only because of the people and lifestyle I had surrounded myself with. I knew that the old me could identify with them, and through their influence I tried to reclaim myself. This worked to an extent, but my progression was lackluster.
Recently I have been left with little influence, my once thriving enviroment has dried up. This is the cause of my recent boredom but also the spark of passion I've began to regain. Finally, I find myself interested again in more than the common activities of a 21 year old college student. I'm somewhat dismayed at the time I've wasted, now that I wish that I had even more to read and write and draw and just generally observe. But at the same time there is a lot of learning that has come from my reckless lifestyle of the past year. The sense of indifference I have embraced has finally brought back my passion.
So I'm happy that I reclaimed all the qualities that have always made me me. But I'm wonder...how difficult will it be to go back to my old days when I used to abandon everyone and everything for what Liz refered to as "artistic seclusion". A lot of my current and recent friends I've made really don't know what the core of me is. That isn't their fault, it's mine, but now I feel like I'm going to have to completely dismantle their current view of me if I want to survive. But changing ones view and breaking through stereotypes has never been traditionally easy for people. S
omeone refered to me as a nihilist the other day. I didnt know whether I wanted to be angry or laugh. I find it comical, people who enjoy analyzing others, that they begin to do it unintentionally, almost automatically. But we as human beings- with the combination of the human mind, soul, and spirit are complex, we contain multitudes within ourseles. We are far from one dimensional. The essense of a person can be analyzed for maybe a brief moment before it has all ready begun to change. We, like all things, are in a constant state of evolution.
"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death." I love this quote, especially the end. I try to remember it not only as applicable to myself, but more so as applicable to human attempts to rationalize the behavior of others and categorize people as one dimensional beings. I hate to be analyzed, I hate it because the presumption that I am only one way not only alludes from my mystery, but it has essentially killed me off, to that person I am now dead.
But here I am analyzing me anyway, but not for the purpose of electing a permanent state, and not because I will come to any conclusions about myself. I enjoy being a spectator of the process of becoming. I'm not a nihilist...I'm more existential than most would think, sometimes to the point of my own annoyance.
So I guess what began as a random journey through old virtual memories has brought me more in touch with myself. I still don't know who I am, what I want, or where I'm going. But I do know a few things from my little life experiences.
"We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are"
Jean-Paul Sartre
Here I am again...
My recent boredom has caused me to stumble upon four old blogs I used to have, dating back to even my high school days.
It's interesting to see where my mind was at that time, sometimes I forget. At the same time it's also somewhat discerning, when evaluating the subject matter of any given post. The oldest blog I found was a Xanga page...filled mostly with details of superficial and mindless activities. Not that I am debating the value of mindless activities, writing about seemlingly nothing is one of my favorite past times. But I feel like my approach has changed. Whereas now I have notebooks filled with details of common, brief encounters, which would appear meaningless to most- but I write about them and keep them to myself because I enjoy evaluating the subtle interactions in my life...doing philosophically what Einstein spent his life trying to do scientifically- tying together the miscroscopic and meaningless with the large scale and profound. But these early writings of mundane activity didn't seem to serve the same purpose they do now, rather than recording what is often overlooked as common for the sake of evaluation, I had conformed to the common teenage need to 'sell myself'.
Eventually I abandoned my Xanga page in exchange for blogspot, which I had two over a period of two years. Reading back on these blogs I find that they center around a quintessential sadness, anxiety, and overall sense of despair. A large part of this may have been a reflection of a mixture of just common teenage anxiety but also freedom from superficiality and a return to my pre-teen manic state.
The last page I found was from two years ago...and the aura of it had changed from sorrowful to peaceful, headlined with the Edgar Allen Poe quote "Convinced myself, I seek not to convince." Finally attaining exactly what it was I needed all along, which was a sense of balance. It seems that I thought I had finally had myself figured out, and was in control of my emotions and direction. I turned my focus outward and began to write about mostly politics and pop culture. During this time I was involved in an unconventional long distance relationship. A relationship that did a lot of justice for me personally, but looking back on it I see it as more of an idea, that manifested itself in my mind. Whether it is fair to say that I began to crave a trivial enviroment of bars, strangers, alcohol, and drugs- and this is the reason for the end of my relationship- or if it were vice versa, I'll never know. But either way, over the course of last summer I wrote barely anything, I quit drawing, painting, reading, practicing music, and spent most of my days and nights out and usually intoxicated. This continued beyond the summer and over the course of the entire school year. I began to resuscitate my sense of creativity not because I began to feel it again, but only because of the people and lifestyle I had surrounded myself with. I knew that the old me could identify with them, and through their influence I tried to reclaim myself. This worked to an extent, but my progression was lackluster.
Recently I have been left with little influence, my once thriving enviroment has dried up. This is the cause of my recent boredom but also the spark of passion I've began to regain. Finally, I find myself interested again in more than the common activities of a 21 year old college student. I'm somewhat dismayed at the time I've wasted, now that I wish that I had even more to read and write and draw and just generally observe. But at the same time there is a lot of learning that has come from my reckless lifestyle of the past year. The sense of indifference I have embraced has finally brought back my passion.
So I'm happy that I reclaimed all the qualities that have always made me me. But I'm wonder...how difficult will it be to go back to my old days when I used to abandon everyone and everything for what Liz refered to as "artistic seclusion". A lot of my current and recent friends I've made really don't know what the core of me is. That isn't their fault, it's mine, but now I feel like I'm going to have to completely dismantle their current view of me if I want to survive. But changing ones view and breaking through stereotypes has never been traditionally easy for people. S
omeone refered to me as a nihilist the other day. I didnt know whether I wanted to be angry or laugh. I find it comical, people who enjoy analyzing others, that they begin to do it unintentionally, almost automatically. But we as human beings- with the combination of the human mind, soul, and spirit are complex, we contain multitudes within ourseles. We are far from one dimensional. The essense of a person can be analyzed for maybe a brief moment before it has all ready begun to change. We, like all things, are in a constant state of evolution.
"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death." I love this quote, especially the end. I try to remember it not only as applicable to myself, but more so as applicable to human attempts to rationalize the behavior of others and categorize people as one dimensional beings. I hate to be analyzed, I hate it because the presumption that I am only one way not only alludes from my mystery, but it has essentially killed me off, to that person I am now dead.
But here I am analyzing me anyway, but not for the purpose of electing a permanent state, and not because I will come to any conclusions about myself. I enjoy being a spectator of the process of becoming. I'm not a nihilist...I'm more existential than most would think, sometimes to the point of my own annoyance.
So I guess what began as a random journey through old virtual memories has brought me more in touch with myself. I still don't know who I am, what I want, or where I'm going. But I do know a few things from my little life experiences.
"We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are"
Jean-Paul Sartre
Yep.
May 14th 2007
I couldn't sleep.
Everytime I try I just lie in bed and think. About nothing in particular, but mostly about how bored I am. I try not to be bored often. Whenever I start feeling bored the Harvey Danger lyrics "...but if you're bored than you're boring..." always come to mind. But my boredom transcends the moment.
I'm bored. With this moment. With my life. With my generation.
I just got done reading the 40th anniversary addition of Rolling Stone in which they had many interviews of people like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe...et cetera...they all have so many interesting things to say. The 50's, 60's, 70's... the entire 'baby boomer' generation...that was such an interesting era...so much was happening at once. Not that things aren't happening now. Things are totally happening now. But it just seems like...we are disinterested. Maybe not even that, maybe it doesn't even extend to disinterest, maybe it's worse, maybe it's just laziness. We are living in times of schism and war and paying with both blood and money for causes which have little to no justification. I don't understand. I don't understand how I can possess such a feeling of patriotism and pride in America. Patriotism that would be disregarded by those who anyone else would consider "patriotic" with their Bush '04 stickers on the back of their SUV's, with their "Support Our Troops" ribbon clinging near by. Or maybe the patriotism demonstarted by those in their rustic old trucks, with the gun rack hidden by the giant confederate flag decal on the back window. But me? I'm just a young girl, a hippy, a writer, an artist. But my patriotism shouldn't be disregarded. I have just as much pride as any other American.
But my patriotism isn't blind. I have to stop and question, what is America? What are we doing? Where are we going? Who and what do we represent? I don't think America is just a country, America is an idea.
I'm bored. America is bored. I feel like we should be doing something. We are only a few years into a new century and I feel like these next few years are going to have such an impact on the rest of it, that just letting it blindly pass by without taking more of an interest is going to serve of no benefit to us at all. Are we letting our parents continue to lead us? Aren't we approaching the age at which we decide to lead ourselves? Are we just willingly sacrificing our time? I feel like we are scared, like we are placing our generation into the hands of our elders, and endangering that of the next. If we don't have the courage to care about ourselves and eachother, how will we raise our children to do so? Where is our passion, and our will power, and our desire for a so blatantly needed change? Afterall it isn't those in charge of a country who lead a revolution, it is it's children. Are we all asleep?
It is no doubt to me that our generation is a product of fear. We were raised on it, we were spoon fed it from birth. We have been nourished with cowardice, and/or a false sense of what is right. I remember sitting in front of the T.V. and watching CNN news coverage of bombs going off over Baghdad. It seemed surreal to me, pretty all most. But naturally during the time of the first Gulf War I was only 5 or 6! I was a child, I was naive, I thought that what was really war appeared beautiful. But I even then I knew that I was wrong. There was a sense radiating from the television that I picked up on. Talk of tyranny, of infidels, I didn't know what these words meant but they generated a sense of urgency, a sense of fear inside of me. What I was watching looked like fireworks, and at first I thought the city below them must be outside enjoying them, but I eventually realized that that wasn't right, but I wasn't sure why.
I asked my mom back then, "Who is Saddam Hussein?" She told me that he was the devil, and that he lived underground. I believed her because I didn't really have a choice. My grandma raised me very religious in those days, and I knew that the devil was something to be feared. I just didn't know he was so close.
People who know me know that I am peaceful, non violent, passive, and often times shy away from controversy. Some may call me a hippy, some call me a liberal, either way the both mean the same thing to the people who deem me with those terms. They don't usually mean it in a positive way. For some reason the idea of peace, or passiveness, those are considered weaknesses to most. It's unfortunate, but what I must say in their defense is that it is human nature. It isn't, nor has it ever been easy for me to be peaceful. On the inside I frequently get angry or hostile and develop this aching desire for revenge, or the simple desire to destroy something or someone else. My beliefs are contradicting. One part of me wants to strive for peace, harmony, balance, and the other half of me is overwhelmed with pride, militance, and justice.
When I was lying in bed being bored earlier, I was staring at this picture on my wall that I drew, of Che Gueverra. I thought it was somewhat ironic that right below that picture is a wall hanging of a buddha. At first these images seem to clash. The buddha is lady buddha, looking down at a lotus flower near a stream, holding a child, and a dove hangs in the air near her. All of these symbols of life, of peace. Then there is Che, staring quite intently into the distance, a look on his face that I can't really think of a word to describe, but it's as if he sees the future on the horizon, and it isn't peaceful at all, it's a revolution.
There is a buddhist quote that says, "From craving arises sorrow, from craving arises fear, but he who is freed from craving has no sorrow and certainly no fear."
These two characters in my room to me represent balance, and proof that all things, though seemlingly different, are always the same. Where the lady buddha is at peace, with the life of a child in her arms, a stream, a lotus flower, a dove, she has no sorrow, only hope for the future. And Che, he is at peace as well, because he's made up his mind, he has hope for the future as well, and in that hope, he has no fear.
Fear again. That generation I spoke of in the beginning, they were a product of fear too, possibly more so than us. The Cold War? A lot of our grandparents went to school where they learned drills that taught them to hide under their desks in the event of nuclear attack. Maybe sometimes during History class, right after reading about the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They saw it. I wonder what was going through their minds when they were under those desks, flimsy desks, with about an inch of wood to protect them from all the destruction they had learned about.The great thing about that generation is they couldn't stomach that fear. Their spirits all seemed to rebel against it. In one way or another that generation, they sang, they wrote, they fought, the protested, they didn't succumb to it. I really hope that we can do the same.
When I have time to think I get distressed thinking about the current state of America. I feel like we are all in limbo, and it is very depressing. I am perfectly aware that there is a lot about the government, about politics, that I don't know. But still I find myself wondering, and in the end getting angry, because I cannot for the life of me come up with any possible answer, as to who voted to give leadership to our current president. I just wish, that someone could give me one good reason why. With that one good reason I could rest a little easier, thinking that they may have made just a slight mistake, because there was something they saw that I didn't. Something that seemed postive, or hopeful. Something that seemed intelligent and justified. What is it? The only answers I ever seem to get are just attacks on who could have been in his place, on liberals, on opponets, on anything that isn't a part of this Bush cult that seems to have no core. George Bush to me is a ventriloquist doll. You can knock on it but there is nothing in there, it's not solid...it's hollow. What I want to know is who is pulling the strings? Special interest groups? Evangelists? Big business? Karl Rove? I mean come on. This presidency has allowed nothing but for us all to be owned. All of us, not just blue collar citizens, but America as a whole. I feel like we are no longer in control of our own destiny. If I really possessed no sense of patriotism, this would not be the thought that hurts.
My interest in politics has fell dormant over the past year, until recently. I realized suddenly, when explaining something political to someone else, how important this next election is. This is when I began to get frustrated, because I don't really sense a fire in many people my age, to make a difference. I don't think we realize that the biggest difference can be in just simply caring.
I took this random political quiz, in which the results I found interesting. People pin point me as a liberal, mostly because it is applicable to my lifestyle. But I disregard this, because those people don't really know me at all. There is no better place to be than the middle, only from the middle can all sides be accuarently scruitinized and measured. So here it is, my political profile.
Your Political Profile:
Overall: 45% Conservative, 55% Liberal
Social Issues: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
A few of these may seem surprisingly conservative for me. But it's obvious that they are nearly all 50/50. With of course the exception of one, "Ethics" which I found to be the most humorously ironic.
The funny thing about people, is that I have such an optimistic judge of character. I often find myself saying, "But their heart is in the right place." The funny thing about Conservatives, is that it seems to be the opposite. Here I would say instead, "But, their mind is in the right place."
Even more ironic still, is what it was that initially won over a great deal of liberal hearted people all over the USA back in '00. I don't remember what exactly the tagline was for Bush's campaign, but apparently my view of conservatives is not limited to just my opinion....his tagline presented him as Conservative, as Republican, but with it they added..."With compassion." It is sad enough that "with compassion" must be added additionally to catch the attention of those who actually have a concern for humanity. What is sadder still is that some actually believed it. George Bush's only compassion lies within his pocket, and in the debts he owes to those who are pulling his strings.
The thing about George Bush and most Conservatives, is that they are stubborn. These people who supported, (and amazingly still support) Bush, the ones I am constantly looking for answers from, are very set in their ways. I thought of this the other day while reading articles about the bills that Bush promises to veto, all most mocking those who dare to oppose him. My grandma always told me that I was stubborn, a trait I got from my grandfather. Most of my life I found great satisfaction in just 'being right'. As I've grown I've realized that there is no satisfaction in this need to be right, because it doesn't actually exist. Now I also remain set in my ways. My way however, is not to become flustered and dismantled at the asking of "why?" but to embrace it. I am stubborn in my efforts to promote truth, justice, equality, and humanity.
I never had any direction with this, I just wanted to get off my mind whatever was occupying it...and I wasn't really sure what that was.
I guess I just felt like I was representing my generation as a whole, as if my boredom resonates throughout it. I want people my age to take interest, I want to take an initiative. I wonder if one day we will realize, and if I myself will accept, that we can't really stand for anything, and that is the great contradiction of politics.
Walt Whitman said it best when he said, " "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" That isn't just applicable to us as individuals, but as a society. All things become outdated. I'm not promoting anarchy, I'm promoting change. America needs to come to the realization that to change is not to sell out, but that the dismantling of what may have once been great is necessary to make the core of it stronger, and that compassion, is not weakness. The Christian Conservatives should know this best. I learned it when I was 8, but just now understand it. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth."- The Beatitudes. I like quotes, I thought God might be a postive name drop for most. According to the Bible God promotes this compassion. And change? "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." Abraham Lincoln.
Now that my thoughts are running thin, I'd still like to think that there is a possibility I was wrong about my generation. One of my favorite quotes from the Tao, "Rather than being one step ahead and asleep towards up and coming possiblities, the sound traveler stays two steps back and remains awake to all that is possible." Maybe we aren't lazy, maybe, just maybe, we're patient. We can only hope.
I couldn't sleep.
Everytime I try I just lie in bed and think. About nothing in particular, but mostly about how bored I am. I try not to be bored often. Whenever I start feeling bored the Harvey Danger lyrics "...but if you're bored than you're boring..." always come to mind. But my boredom transcends the moment.
I'm bored. With this moment. With my life. With my generation.
I just got done reading the 40th anniversary addition of Rolling Stone in which they had many interviews of people like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe...et cetera...they all have so many interesting things to say. The 50's, 60's, 70's... the entire 'baby boomer' generation...that was such an interesting era...so much was happening at once. Not that things aren't happening now. Things are totally happening now. But it just seems like...we are disinterested. Maybe not even that, maybe it doesn't even extend to disinterest, maybe it's worse, maybe it's just laziness. We are living in times of schism and war and paying with both blood and money for causes which have little to no justification. I don't understand. I don't understand how I can possess such a feeling of patriotism and pride in America. Patriotism that would be disregarded by those who anyone else would consider "patriotic" with their Bush '04 stickers on the back of their SUV's, with their "Support Our Troops" ribbon clinging near by. Or maybe the patriotism demonstarted by those in their rustic old trucks, with the gun rack hidden by the giant confederate flag decal on the back window. But me? I'm just a young girl, a hippy, a writer, an artist. But my patriotism shouldn't be disregarded. I have just as much pride as any other American.
But my patriotism isn't blind. I have to stop and question, what is America? What are we doing? Where are we going? Who and what do we represent? I don't think America is just a country, America is an idea.
I'm bored. America is bored. I feel like we should be doing something. We are only a few years into a new century and I feel like these next few years are going to have such an impact on the rest of it, that just letting it blindly pass by without taking more of an interest is going to serve of no benefit to us at all. Are we letting our parents continue to lead us? Aren't we approaching the age at which we decide to lead ourselves? Are we just willingly sacrificing our time? I feel like we are scared, like we are placing our generation into the hands of our elders, and endangering that of the next. If we don't have the courage to care about ourselves and eachother, how will we raise our children to do so? Where is our passion, and our will power, and our desire for a so blatantly needed change? Afterall it isn't those in charge of a country who lead a revolution, it is it's children. Are we all asleep?
It is no doubt to me that our generation is a product of fear. We were raised on it, we were spoon fed it from birth. We have been nourished with cowardice, and/or a false sense of what is right. I remember sitting in front of the T.V. and watching CNN news coverage of bombs going off over Baghdad. It seemed surreal to me, pretty all most. But naturally during the time of the first Gulf War I was only 5 or 6! I was a child, I was naive, I thought that what was really war appeared beautiful. But I even then I knew that I was wrong. There was a sense radiating from the television that I picked up on. Talk of tyranny, of infidels, I didn't know what these words meant but they generated a sense of urgency, a sense of fear inside of me. What I was watching looked like fireworks, and at first I thought the city below them must be outside enjoying them, but I eventually realized that that wasn't right, but I wasn't sure why.
I asked my mom back then, "Who is Saddam Hussein?" She told me that he was the devil, and that he lived underground. I believed her because I didn't really have a choice. My grandma raised me very religious in those days, and I knew that the devil was something to be feared. I just didn't know he was so close.
People who know me know that I am peaceful, non violent, passive, and often times shy away from controversy. Some may call me a hippy, some call me a liberal, either way the both mean the same thing to the people who deem me with those terms. They don't usually mean it in a positive way. For some reason the idea of peace, or passiveness, those are considered weaknesses to most. It's unfortunate, but what I must say in their defense is that it is human nature. It isn't, nor has it ever been easy for me to be peaceful. On the inside I frequently get angry or hostile and develop this aching desire for revenge, or the simple desire to destroy something or someone else. My beliefs are contradicting. One part of me wants to strive for peace, harmony, balance, and the other half of me is overwhelmed with pride, militance, and justice.
When I was lying in bed being bored earlier, I was staring at this picture on my wall that I drew, of Che Gueverra. I thought it was somewhat ironic that right below that picture is a wall hanging of a buddha. At first these images seem to clash. The buddha is lady buddha, looking down at a lotus flower near a stream, holding a child, and a dove hangs in the air near her. All of these symbols of life, of peace. Then there is Che, staring quite intently into the distance, a look on his face that I can't really think of a word to describe, but it's as if he sees the future on the horizon, and it isn't peaceful at all, it's a revolution.
There is a buddhist quote that says, "From craving arises sorrow, from craving arises fear, but he who is freed from craving has no sorrow and certainly no fear."
These two characters in my room to me represent balance, and proof that all things, though seemlingly different, are always the same. Where the lady buddha is at peace, with the life of a child in her arms, a stream, a lotus flower, a dove, she has no sorrow, only hope for the future. And Che, he is at peace as well, because he's made up his mind, he has hope for the future as well, and in that hope, he has no fear.
Fear again. That generation I spoke of in the beginning, they were a product of fear too, possibly more so than us. The Cold War? A lot of our grandparents went to school where they learned drills that taught them to hide under their desks in the event of nuclear attack. Maybe sometimes during History class, right after reading about the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They saw it. I wonder what was going through their minds when they were under those desks, flimsy desks, with about an inch of wood to protect them from all the destruction they had learned about.The great thing about that generation is they couldn't stomach that fear. Their spirits all seemed to rebel against it. In one way or another that generation, they sang, they wrote, they fought, the protested, they didn't succumb to it. I really hope that we can do the same.
When I have time to think I get distressed thinking about the current state of America. I feel like we are all in limbo, and it is very depressing. I am perfectly aware that there is a lot about the government, about politics, that I don't know. But still I find myself wondering, and in the end getting angry, because I cannot for the life of me come up with any possible answer, as to who voted to give leadership to our current president. I just wish, that someone could give me one good reason why. With that one good reason I could rest a little easier, thinking that they may have made just a slight mistake, because there was something they saw that I didn't. Something that seemed postive, or hopeful. Something that seemed intelligent and justified. What is it? The only answers I ever seem to get are just attacks on who could have been in his place, on liberals, on opponets, on anything that isn't a part of this Bush cult that seems to have no core. George Bush to me is a ventriloquist doll. You can knock on it but there is nothing in there, it's not solid...it's hollow. What I want to know is who is pulling the strings? Special interest groups? Evangelists? Big business? Karl Rove? I mean come on. This presidency has allowed nothing but for us all to be owned. All of us, not just blue collar citizens, but America as a whole. I feel like we are no longer in control of our own destiny. If I really possessed no sense of patriotism, this would not be the thought that hurts.
My interest in politics has fell dormant over the past year, until recently. I realized suddenly, when explaining something political to someone else, how important this next election is. This is when I began to get frustrated, because I don't really sense a fire in many people my age, to make a difference. I don't think we realize that the biggest difference can be in just simply caring.
I took this random political quiz, in which the results I found interesting. People pin point me as a liberal, mostly because it is applicable to my lifestyle. But I disregard this, because those people don't really know me at all. There is no better place to be than the middle, only from the middle can all sides be accuarently scruitinized and measured. So here it is, my political profile.
Your Political Profile:
Overall: 45% Conservative, 55% Liberal
Social Issues: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
A few of these may seem surprisingly conservative for me. But it's obvious that they are nearly all 50/50. With of course the exception of one, "Ethics" which I found to be the most humorously ironic.
The funny thing about people, is that I have such an optimistic judge of character. I often find myself saying, "But their heart is in the right place." The funny thing about Conservatives, is that it seems to be the opposite. Here I would say instead, "But, their mind is in the right place."
Even more ironic still, is what it was that initially won over a great deal of liberal hearted people all over the USA back in '00. I don't remember what exactly the tagline was for Bush's campaign, but apparently my view of conservatives is not limited to just my opinion....his tagline presented him as Conservative, as Republican, but with it they added..."With compassion." It is sad enough that "with compassion" must be added additionally to catch the attention of those who actually have a concern for humanity. What is sadder still is that some actually believed it. George Bush's only compassion lies within his pocket, and in the debts he owes to those who are pulling his strings.
The thing about George Bush and most Conservatives, is that they are stubborn. These people who supported, (and amazingly still support) Bush, the ones I am constantly looking for answers from, are very set in their ways. I thought of this the other day while reading articles about the bills that Bush promises to veto, all most mocking those who dare to oppose him. My grandma always told me that I was stubborn, a trait I got from my grandfather. Most of my life I found great satisfaction in just 'being right'. As I've grown I've realized that there is no satisfaction in this need to be right, because it doesn't actually exist. Now I also remain set in my ways. My way however, is not to become flustered and dismantled at the asking of "why?" but to embrace it. I am stubborn in my efforts to promote truth, justice, equality, and humanity.
I never had any direction with this, I just wanted to get off my mind whatever was occupying it...and I wasn't really sure what that was.
I guess I just felt like I was representing my generation as a whole, as if my boredom resonates throughout it. I want people my age to take interest, I want to take an initiative. I wonder if one day we will realize, and if I myself will accept, that we can't really stand for anything, and that is the great contradiction of politics.
Walt Whitman said it best when he said, " "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" That isn't just applicable to us as individuals, but as a society. All things become outdated. I'm not promoting anarchy, I'm promoting change. America needs to come to the realization that to change is not to sell out, but that the dismantling of what may have once been great is necessary to make the core of it stronger, and that compassion, is not weakness. The Christian Conservatives should know this best. I learned it when I was 8, but just now understand it. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth."- The Beatitudes. I like quotes, I thought God might be a postive name drop for most. According to the Bible God promotes this compassion. And change? "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." Abraham Lincoln.
Now that my thoughts are running thin, I'd still like to think that there is a possibility I was wrong about my generation. One of my favorite quotes from the Tao, "Rather than being one step ahead and asleep towards up and coming possiblities, the sound traveler stays two steps back and remains awake to all that is possible." Maybe we aren't lazy, maybe, just maybe, we're patient. We can only hope.
Static
April 16th 2007
I'm thinking about what it means to be a human being.
There is this episode of the twilight zone I saw once. There was a guy on a hospital bed who could not see, speak, and had no arms or legs. All the narration in the film was his inner monologue. He laid there, everyday, everynight, hearing everything that was going on around him. All he had were his own thoughts. His life was the epitome of lonliness. He could not express himself because he could not move or speak. But, he was still conscious. All he could do was think....This episode is memorable to me because this represents such an extreme panic. I got anxiety just watching it. That is what it's like to go insane. To have all these thoughts and feelings that you want to express but you have no means of expression. By the end of the episode, he was begging in his mind for someone to kill him. But no one could hear him...and he couldn't even take his own life because he had no appendiges. This is what it means to be a prisoner. This guy had absolutely no freedom. He didn't even have the freedom of death.
I was watching Planet Earth tonight. I watched all the animals do their ritualistic routines, I watched them ruthlessly murder other species, sometimes even their own, for survival. Some of these creatures' entire existence only had one point, and that was to survive through the day. Some other creatures only have a life span of days, sometimes hours, and in that time all they do is mate and reproduce. They live just to reproduce and carry on their pointless existence. I thought about how strange this seemed but then I thought about us. What seperates human beings from all other species of the animal kingdom? What if one creatures short life span, whose only point of life is to create more life than die, what if this sounds strange and pointless to us, but in the larger scale of things, we are just the same. We only have one point in life as well, and that is to maintain our existence. We are born, we live, we reproduce, we die. We just have more time to do it. So does everything in between these events mean anything? Is the rest of what happens in our life only happening because of the simple fact that time exists and something has to happen?
I also noticed how how the predator/prey scene seems ruthless, violent, and incompassionate. So what makes us so different? The only thing that makes us human is the essense of humanity. But humanity isn't natural. Humanity is man made. Humanity was devised as a scheme to create homeostasis. The difference between human beings and animals is intelligence. We are higher lifeforms than all other animals, and that is all there is to it. We are the closest to any potential "God". We have even taken the concept of a divine entity and we have made it in our own image. In the Bible God has been personified so that we can better relate to the idea of him. We don't understand difference. The way I see it is that human beings have weakness, no human being needs to be feared, because every human has a weakness. Our own intelligence is our weakness. The fact that we even possess such a wide array of emotions is our weakness. The humanity we have created is our weakness.
Nature, on the other hand, is ruthless. Nature is volatile and unpredictable. God and nature are the same thing. Just like nature, God is pitiless and unforgiving. This 'merciful' God we have fabricated in the Bible is fiction. Giving God any kind of human emotion or quality is ridiculous and completely counteracts the entire purpose of "God" in the first place. If God had any kind of human emotion, God would have weakness, and would not be the 'divine' entity that has the capability to oversee all of existence.
It's as simple as this; If God were in fact merciful, then good people would not die, horrible things would not happen to those who are righteous. People who are evil would outlive those who are good. But the fact is, if you want to consider God human in any way, God simply points his hypothetical finger at any random person and that person dies. It doesn't matter if that person was good, it doesn't matter if that person was evil...
God. Doesn't. Care.
So why even bother with the constant desire to be civilized and humane?
I did a paper recently on the negative stereotypes that Disney's films portray. I thought the majority of the research I read over was ridiculous. One of the books went as far as to say that the Lion King was sexist. Simply because in the movie the female lionesses are enslaved under the command of the one male lion. The female lionsesses were obedient to their king, despite any outside influences. They were mindless. But this is complete bullshit, because these aren't people, they aren't even animated people, they are animated incarnations of animals. And the fact is, that in the wild, in real life, a pride of lions is led by a male, always. Never in the future will lions undergo a womens sufferage movement. Never will there ever be a female leader. The males are the leaders, and the females are the hunters, they exist to feed the males and reproduce their species. This has never changed, and this will never changed. We are the only member of the animal kingdom who holds any regard to 'civilization'. We are the only ones who long to be politically correct. We are the only ones who try to avoid stereotypes, who strive for equality. That right there is what it comes down to, equality. Equality cannot exist in a hostile and ruthless enviroment. This is what we live in, we live in an enviroment that is completely indifferent to our existence, to our desires, wants, passions, actions, thoughts.
Our planet (nature) and our God, does not need us.
We need them. We need something physical to depend on (nature) and we need something metaphysical to rely on (the incarnation of God). Without the metaphysical to balance with the physical, our existence can only be justified by the fact that we are existing. That's it, there was never, is not, and never will be, anything else.
Remember what I said earlier about human beings being the most intelligent and the closest to God? This is nonsense. Because God is the exact opposite of what we are, everyother animal in on earth is closer to any essense of God. God is only personified as human because God is our own creation. God did not carve us out of his image, we carved him out of our own. In the Bible the importance of admitting that you are a "lesser" being than God is stressed, humility is made a virtue. But in reality, the entire concept of the Christian God is not about comprehending ourselves as lesser beings, but it is the exact opposite, making ourselves equal with "God". It's like the beginning of this blog, we have to justify our existence through expression, and we need someone to express ourselves too, without anyone to understand us we are alone. We don't know how to be alone, we are scared of being alone, we can't comprehend the fact that we may be the most "intelligent" and cognitive being in existence and there is nothing higher than us. We can't except this responsibility, we have to have something to turn too.
My "religious views" say that I do not believe in organized religion, just humanity. This is because humanity is the highest form of religion out there. If we really are the most intelligent beings, than our way of existence, is the highest form of religion. The more intellectual of beings we become, the more we will manifest humanity and the theory of religion to continue to support our reality.
There is no God, just wishful thinking.
I'm thinking about what it means to be a human being.
There is this episode of the twilight zone I saw once. There was a guy on a hospital bed who could not see, speak, and had no arms or legs. All the narration in the film was his inner monologue. He laid there, everyday, everynight, hearing everything that was going on around him. All he had were his own thoughts. His life was the epitome of lonliness. He could not express himself because he could not move or speak. But, he was still conscious. All he could do was think....This episode is memorable to me because this represents such an extreme panic. I got anxiety just watching it. That is what it's like to go insane. To have all these thoughts and feelings that you want to express but you have no means of expression. By the end of the episode, he was begging in his mind for someone to kill him. But no one could hear him...and he couldn't even take his own life because he had no appendiges. This is what it means to be a prisoner. This guy had absolutely no freedom. He didn't even have the freedom of death.
I was watching Planet Earth tonight. I watched all the animals do their ritualistic routines, I watched them ruthlessly murder other species, sometimes even their own, for survival. Some of these creatures' entire existence only had one point, and that was to survive through the day. Some other creatures only have a life span of days, sometimes hours, and in that time all they do is mate and reproduce. They live just to reproduce and carry on their pointless existence. I thought about how strange this seemed but then I thought about us. What seperates human beings from all other species of the animal kingdom? What if one creatures short life span, whose only point of life is to create more life than die, what if this sounds strange and pointless to us, but in the larger scale of things, we are just the same. We only have one point in life as well, and that is to maintain our existence. We are born, we live, we reproduce, we die. We just have more time to do it. So does everything in between these events mean anything? Is the rest of what happens in our life only happening because of the simple fact that time exists and something has to happen?
I also noticed how how the predator/prey scene seems ruthless, violent, and incompassionate. So what makes us so different? The only thing that makes us human is the essense of humanity. But humanity isn't natural. Humanity is man made. Humanity was devised as a scheme to create homeostasis. The difference between human beings and animals is intelligence. We are higher lifeforms than all other animals, and that is all there is to it. We are the closest to any potential "God". We have even taken the concept of a divine entity and we have made it in our own image. In the Bible God has been personified so that we can better relate to the idea of him. We don't understand difference. The way I see it is that human beings have weakness, no human being needs to be feared, because every human has a weakness. Our own intelligence is our weakness. The fact that we even possess such a wide array of emotions is our weakness. The humanity we have created is our weakness.
Nature, on the other hand, is ruthless. Nature is volatile and unpredictable. God and nature are the same thing. Just like nature, God is pitiless and unforgiving. This 'merciful' God we have fabricated in the Bible is fiction. Giving God any kind of human emotion or quality is ridiculous and completely counteracts the entire purpose of "God" in the first place. If God had any kind of human emotion, God would have weakness, and would not be the 'divine' entity that has the capability to oversee all of existence.
It's as simple as this; If God were in fact merciful, then good people would not die, horrible things would not happen to those who are righteous. People who are evil would outlive those who are good. But the fact is, if you want to consider God human in any way, God simply points his hypothetical finger at any random person and that person dies. It doesn't matter if that person was good, it doesn't matter if that person was evil...
God. Doesn't. Care.
So why even bother with the constant desire to be civilized and humane?
I did a paper recently on the negative stereotypes that Disney's films portray. I thought the majority of the research I read over was ridiculous. One of the books went as far as to say that the Lion King was sexist. Simply because in the movie the female lionesses are enslaved under the command of the one male lion. The female lionsesses were obedient to their king, despite any outside influences. They were mindless. But this is complete bullshit, because these aren't people, they aren't even animated people, they are animated incarnations of animals. And the fact is, that in the wild, in real life, a pride of lions is led by a male, always. Never in the future will lions undergo a womens sufferage movement. Never will there ever be a female leader. The males are the leaders, and the females are the hunters, they exist to feed the males and reproduce their species. This has never changed, and this will never changed. We are the only member of the animal kingdom who holds any regard to 'civilization'. We are the only ones who long to be politically correct. We are the only ones who try to avoid stereotypes, who strive for equality. That right there is what it comes down to, equality. Equality cannot exist in a hostile and ruthless enviroment. This is what we live in, we live in an enviroment that is completely indifferent to our existence, to our desires, wants, passions, actions, thoughts.
Our planet (nature) and our God, does not need us.
We need them. We need something physical to depend on (nature) and we need something metaphysical to rely on (the incarnation of God). Without the metaphysical to balance with the physical, our existence can only be justified by the fact that we are existing. That's it, there was never, is not, and never will be, anything else.
Remember what I said earlier about human beings being the most intelligent and the closest to God? This is nonsense. Because God is the exact opposite of what we are, everyother animal in on earth is closer to any essense of God. God is only personified as human because God is our own creation. God did not carve us out of his image, we carved him out of our own. In the Bible the importance of admitting that you are a "lesser" being than God is stressed, humility is made a virtue. But in reality, the entire concept of the Christian God is not about comprehending ourselves as lesser beings, but it is the exact opposite, making ourselves equal with "God". It's like the beginning of this blog, we have to justify our existence through expression, and we need someone to express ourselves too, without anyone to understand us we are alone. We don't know how to be alone, we are scared of being alone, we can't comprehend the fact that we may be the most "intelligent" and cognitive being in existence and there is nothing higher than us. We can't except this responsibility, we have to have something to turn too.
My "religious views" say that I do not believe in organized religion, just humanity. This is because humanity is the highest form of religion out there. If we really are the most intelligent beings, than our way of existence, is the highest form of religion. The more intellectual of beings we become, the more we will manifest humanity and the theory of religion to continue to support our reality.
There is no God, just wishful thinking.
Theory of Everything
March 7th 2007
"So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else."
Goethe
Here I am lying in bed yet again unable to sleep because my mind refuses to cease to think. I think about philosophy and I think about chaos. I appreciate chaos. I appreciate randomness and spontaneity. My life appears to be chaotic. Take my environment for example, my room is a mess, my car is a mess, my education is a mess, my finances are a mess, and at the center of it all is me. The chaotic mess I call my life revolves around me, constantly, without fail. Like an atom, all aspects of my life are part of it. My room is an electron, my car-a neutron, my education- a proton, my finances- I don’t know, another electron. And at the center of it all, is me, the nucleus. The point is, all these things are scurrying around the nucleus in their own direction, but always orbiting the atom. This is organized chaos.
When thinking about the philosophy of chaos versus that of my own, I embrace much confusion. My philosophy on life, on everything, is based solely on the concept of balance. I find myself asking, “Can balance even exist in chaos?” I tell myself no, naturally, there is no balance in chaos. Then I ask myself, “What exactly is chaos? What exactly is balance?” I look this up, and find that chaos does not originally mean ‘disorder’ as we have come to define it, but in its Greek origination, it meant rather, ‘unpredictable’. Balance is what it is to have opposites that are completely different from each other but that coexist in unison, making the difference of one entity balance that of its counterpart. To have balance is to be alike, even in difference.
Not only do I believe in balance, but I believe in the idea of fate. I believe that every living person, every object, every idea; everything in its existence has a purpose. And what is fate? Fate, or destiny, is the idea that there is a fixed or natural order to the universe. This means that not only does our future have a purpose, but that it is predetermined for us. Not only does this fate affect us, but it affects every other person and thing in this universe. This idea is often referred to as the butterfly effect. Not only has this idea always fascinated me in the theory of quantum mechanics, but also when I apply it to other aspects of life. The term butterfly effect comes from the theory that if a butterfly were to flap its wings, it would make tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately create (or prevent) a tornado. Though the flapping of the butterfly’s wings is just a small change, when taking place in a larger system, it will cause a change that will set the course of events for large scale phenomena. Whereas, in the event the butterfly had not flapped its wings at that precise time and location, the trajectory of the system may have been completely different. This effect also has another name, known as the chaos theory.
As in the movie I Heart Huckabees, there are ultimately two basic theories of philosophy. One is that everything is connected. And the other, is that nothing is connected (chaos). We would think that if nothing is connected, that nothing matters. Our actions would be irrelevant. If both destiny and chaos exist, than what use would we have for morals, ethics, or civility, if the application of them makes no difference in the outcome of things? This is something to think about.
But first, back to the chaos theory…
The interesting thing about the chaos theory is that it is not chaotic at all under our standard definition. In the situation of the butterfly, it would appear to be disorderly because the butterfly operates under free will. The affect of the butterfly’s motion may or may not be relevant, depending on what the butterfly chooses to do.
So now that I know that chaos isn’t really disorder at all, but rather, unpredictability, I bring free will into the equation. The next question is, “Can free will co-exist in a chaotic environment, where the future is all ready predetermined through destiny?”
I have chosen to write this, no one forced me to. Had I not met someone who had gotten me further interested into the idea of philosophy, would I not have asked these questions? In that case I may have not written this. The course of my life thus far has led to the psychological events which has led me to write this. Not only did one event lead to the writing of this, but many events did, many events which could have been affected by other events as well. A system of linear events is orderly, but a non-linear system, though still deterministic, appears to be less orderly as there is a higher probability of differentiation.
For example, each choice that we make is a cause and each cause has an effect. I think of it in terms of dominoes. Whereas the force I apply to the first domino in pushing it forward (cause), sets the course of events that will lead to the falling of each domino thereafter (affects). But the problem with this is that life isn’t linear, life is a network of choices.
The compatibilist definition of free will states that free will is not the ability to choose independent of prior cause, but as an agent who is not forced to make a certain choice. Compatibilists, being determinists, argue that all acts that take place are predetermined by prior causes. This means that all the events of our past, lead us to make a certain choice, we have the ability to choose something else, but that fact is that we won’t, because past causes have led us to make a specific choice. For example, I could have the choice to go camping, but due to my past experiences with camping, though I have the choice, it is inevitable that I choose not to. If you want to look at fate through a cliché lens, hypothetically speaking let’s say that the woods I could have chosen to go camping in caught on fire, and all the campers died a fiery tragic death. You could say that my bad experiences previously in camping, though irrelevant at the time, were a result of fate, because it was not my destiny to die in that specific fiery incident.
Back to the theory of free will in comparison to dominoes…A simple example would be this lame diagram I composed. Though in any given situation there may be multiple even infinite choices.
Simply speaking let’s say that there are two choices, yes or no, you can choose yes or you can choose no, but either way it is inevitable that they always come back to the same conclusion. Everything is networked together, so that no matter what path you choose, in operating your free will, the outcome is deterministic, and will thus be the same.
In the movie The Butterfly Effect the idea is whether or not, if the means to do so were possible, you can change the course of fate. The character is essentially trying to not only cheat death, but cheat destiny. Though he goes back in time again and again and makes a different decision in different situations, fate still realigned itself to manifest its initial path. This is also the same idea in the Final Destination series. Death is the perfect example of deterministic chaos. Though you have free will, and can make any choice you chose, the fact that you are going to die, a certain way at a certain time, is inevitable. There is no choice in death, this is our ultimate fate.
These are the conclusions I’ve come to.
The future is predetermined but still chaotic because to the unknowing human mind it is still unpredictable. We cannot predict our future, and therefore it will remain random and chaotic until it unfolds
The universe is a network of organized chaos. In it every thing, every particle, creature, thing, every noun that you can thing of is connected. As Dustin Hoffman explains in I Heart Huckabees, everything is connected. He uses a blanket to represent all the matter and energy in the universe, everything in existence is part of it.
Me
You
The challenger explosion
Scented crayons
Bowling balls
Spam
Old Richard Simmons workout videos
The 3rd amendment
All these things, though different, are essentially the same.
“There is no remainder in the mathematics of infinity.”
For now I think I’ve solved the majority of questions that have been puzzling my mind. Even though this all may seem pointless, there is no greater question in existence than simply, “Why?”
"So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else."
Goethe
Here I am lying in bed yet again unable to sleep because my mind refuses to cease to think. I think about philosophy and I think about chaos. I appreciate chaos. I appreciate randomness and spontaneity. My life appears to be chaotic. Take my environment for example, my room is a mess, my car is a mess, my education is a mess, my finances are a mess, and at the center of it all is me. The chaotic mess I call my life revolves around me, constantly, without fail. Like an atom, all aspects of my life are part of it. My room is an electron, my car-a neutron, my education- a proton, my finances- I don’t know, another electron. And at the center of it all, is me, the nucleus. The point is, all these things are scurrying around the nucleus in their own direction, but always orbiting the atom. This is organized chaos.
When thinking about the philosophy of chaos versus that of my own, I embrace much confusion. My philosophy on life, on everything, is based solely on the concept of balance. I find myself asking, “Can balance even exist in chaos?” I tell myself no, naturally, there is no balance in chaos. Then I ask myself, “What exactly is chaos? What exactly is balance?” I look this up, and find that chaos does not originally mean ‘disorder’ as we have come to define it, but in its Greek origination, it meant rather, ‘unpredictable’. Balance is what it is to have opposites that are completely different from each other but that coexist in unison, making the difference of one entity balance that of its counterpart. To have balance is to be alike, even in difference.
Not only do I believe in balance, but I believe in the idea of fate. I believe that every living person, every object, every idea; everything in its existence has a purpose. And what is fate? Fate, or destiny, is the idea that there is a fixed or natural order to the universe. This means that not only does our future have a purpose, but that it is predetermined for us. Not only does this fate affect us, but it affects every other person and thing in this universe. This idea is often referred to as the butterfly effect. Not only has this idea always fascinated me in the theory of quantum mechanics, but also when I apply it to other aspects of life. The term butterfly effect comes from the theory that if a butterfly were to flap its wings, it would make tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately create (or prevent) a tornado. Though the flapping of the butterfly’s wings is just a small change, when taking place in a larger system, it will cause a change that will set the course of events for large scale phenomena. Whereas, in the event the butterfly had not flapped its wings at that precise time and location, the trajectory of the system may have been completely different. This effect also has another name, known as the chaos theory.
As in the movie I Heart Huckabees, there are ultimately two basic theories of philosophy. One is that everything is connected. And the other, is that nothing is connected (chaos). We would think that if nothing is connected, that nothing matters. Our actions would be irrelevant. If both destiny and chaos exist, than what use would we have for morals, ethics, or civility, if the application of them makes no difference in the outcome of things? This is something to think about.
But first, back to the chaos theory…
The interesting thing about the chaos theory is that it is not chaotic at all under our standard definition. In the situation of the butterfly, it would appear to be disorderly because the butterfly operates under free will. The affect of the butterfly’s motion may or may not be relevant, depending on what the butterfly chooses to do.
So now that I know that chaos isn’t really disorder at all, but rather, unpredictability, I bring free will into the equation. The next question is, “Can free will co-exist in a chaotic environment, where the future is all ready predetermined through destiny?”
I have chosen to write this, no one forced me to. Had I not met someone who had gotten me further interested into the idea of philosophy, would I not have asked these questions? In that case I may have not written this. The course of my life thus far has led to the psychological events which has led me to write this. Not only did one event lead to the writing of this, but many events did, many events which could have been affected by other events as well. A system of linear events is orderly, but a non-linear system, though still deterministic, appears to be less orderly as there is a higher probability of differentiation.
For example, each choice that we make is a cause and each cause has an effect. I think of it in terms of dominoes. Whereas the force I apply to the first domino in pushing it forward (cause), sets the course of events that will lead to the falling of each domino thereafter (affects). But the problem with this is that life isn’t linear, life is a network of choices.
The compatibilist definition of free will states that free will is not the ability to choose independent of prior cause, but as an agent who is not forced to make a certain choice. Compatibilists, being determinists, argue that all acts that take place are predetermined by prior causes. This means that all the events of our past, lead us to make a certain choice, we have the ability to choose something else, but that fact is that we won’t, because past causes have led us to make a specific choice. For example, I could have the choice to go camping, but due to my past experiences with camping, though I have the choice, it is inevitable that I choose not to. If you want to look at fate through a cliché lens, hypothetically speaking let’s say that the woods I could have chosen to go camping in caught on fire, and all the campers died a fiery tragic death. You could say that my bad experiences previously in camping, though irrelevant at the time, were a result of fate, because it was not my destiny to die in that specific fiery incident.
Back to the theory of free will in comparison to dominoes…A simple example would be this lame diagram I composed. Though in any given situation there may be multiple even infinite choices.
Simply speaking let’s say that there are two choices, yes or no, you can choose yes or you can choose no, but either way it is inevitable that they always come back to the same conclusion. Everything is networked together, so that no matter what path you choose, in operating your free will, the outcome is deterministic, and will thus be the same.
In the movie The Butterfly Effect the idea is whether or not, if the means to do so were possible, you can change the course of fate. The character is essentially trying to not only cheat death, but cheat destiny. Though he goes back in time again and again and makes a different decision in different situations, fate still realigned itself to manifest its initial path. This is also the same idea in the Final Destination series. Death is the perfect example of deterministic chaos. Though you have free will, and can make any choice you chose, the fact that you are going to die, a certain way at a certain time, is inevitable. There is no choice in death, this is our ultimate fate.
These are the conclusions I’ve come to.
The future is predetermined but still chaotic because to the unknowing human mind it is still unpredictable. We cannot predict our future, and therefore it will remain random and chaotic until it unfolds
The universe is a network of organized chaos. In it every thing, every particle, creature, thing, every noun that you can thing of is connected. As Dustin Hoffman explains in I Heart Huckabees, everything is connected. He uses a blanket to represent all the matter and energy in the universe, everything in existence is part of it.
Me
You
The challenger explosion
Scented crayons
Bowling balls
Spam
Old Richard Simmons workout videos
The 3rd amendment
All these things, though different, are essentially the same.
“There is no remainder in the mathematics of infinity.”
For now I think I’ve solved the majority of questions that have been puzzling my mind. Even though this all may seem pointless, there is no greater question in existence than simply, “Why?”
Figuratively speaking
February 10th 2007
There is nothing better than late night realizations when you're walking home in 9 degree weather about the fact that you're essentially alone and you are completely fine with it, and not only that but you like it that way. Better yet, there is the realization that all the second guessing you've been doing lately was nonsense because you're not that complex and you're not that transparent but you're exactly who you say you are and though they can debate it they can never prove otherwise. For awhile you've been to scared to care about anything deeper than drugs, sex, or alcohol. But now you suddenly find yourself afraid that you no longer possess even the simple capability to care. Why is this? You don't know, all you know is that to much of anything makes you panic and it's so much easier to run away and they can call you what they want but they can never make you stay. In the end all that matters is that feeling you get when you push the world away and can look at it from a distance not with admiration or regret but with complete and utter indifference. You're not drowning this time, you're treading on the surface.
There is nothing better than late night realizations when you're walking home in 9 degree weather about the fact that you're essentially alone and you are completely fine with it, and not only that but you like it that way. Better yet, there is the realization that all the second guessing you've been doing lately was nonsense because you're not that complex and you're not that transparent but you're exactly who you say you are and though they can debate it they can never prove otherwise. For awhile you've been to scared to care about anything deeper than drugs, sex, or alcohol. But now you suddenly find yourself afraid that you no longer possess even the simple capability to care. Why is this? You don't know, all you know is that to much of anything makes you panic and it's so much easier to run away and they can call you what they want but they can never make you stay. In the end all that matters is that feeling you get when you push the world away and can look at it from a distance not with admiration or regret but with complete and utter indifference. You're not drowning this time, you're treading on the surface.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
