jueves, 7 de enero de 2016

On the why (young specially) people are inconsistent with their views.

Young people change frequently; it is a common life stage.

It is a time where most changes occur, and it is when the most important changes and opinions are shaped, but recently young people have evermore platforms to communicate their ideas and to form solid ideologies. These ideologies, although somewhat rooted still have not stayed nor have they been applied to their lives *most of the time, therefore it is subject to change in the upper stages of life or simply the next day when the young adult sees that their ideology is not practical.

The point being that young adults form ideologies from the first source of information that they get, and it is pretty rare to double-check their information, or check it at all. Perhaps they are reading on a subject, but the essay is extremely biased therefore passing on the bias and so on. And when they find a new source of plausible, valid information they quickly switch their views.

Life experience and the vicarious view, not of the world, but of those around you mold your identity and ideas, but with the vacuous experience that the young mostly has, filled with laughter and idealism, every opinion is moldable and eventually changed whenever experience tells them otherwise, or not thereof. 

Young people, relative to their older counterparts, the one who writes the books, lack the inherent experience that comes with age. Therefore, they are capable of forming coherent arguments for their views, but when someone with a better rhetoric, for good or bad, challenges them to question their beliefs and to accept theirs, the young man is quick to answer to the impulse that it begets this rhetoric into their ill-formed brain. The young man is moldable up to a point where their life experience is enough to sustain their beliefs, and subsequently this beliefs root in the man and make it harder for anyone to change the subscribed to agenda of a person.

This is why a young man is stubborn, but their questions and rebuttals are vacuous (most of the time), but if the rhetoric is good enough their beliefs get changed, and an old man is stubborn and no matter what you will not change his ways, because the illusion that their life experience supports their beliefs is rooted deeply in their minds.


This is why there are so many ideologies and branches of thought, literally because of stubbornness, but also because of the illusion that somehow their life experiences sustain their beliefs, and they do this by warping to the image of their beliefs whichever stimulus they seem to receive. A poor man is seen as a man in despair and in need of help by the socialist, but is seen as a poor loser and drug addict by the greedy capitalist. Our minds are molded by what our minds want to see.

martes, 22 de septiembre de 2015

Neglected Thoughts #2

How do you measure happiness? Can someone really be happy with his surroundings and his existence for at least 30 full minutes? Why is it that our greatest desire, is to form a part of something? We want to be part of something larger than ourselves (and to an extent we already are), and we put all our efforts into belonging to that few, even if it means leaving our convictions, morals and ideals behind. Why is it that we are so occupied with life, that we are too lazy to think novel thoughts, or even have our own? We succumb to the group mentality fast, we are not firmly convinced even of our own ideas.

Think about, how it might ideally be. We, not succumbing to racial, national or religious chauvinism, thinking for ourselves and solely for ourselves, not imposing any beliefs on anyone. How beautifully rich our world would be, full of rich ideas and novel thoughts by the truck load. Amazing thought, but are we really capable of achieving even a small part of this feat? Only time knows, and time does not tell.

Why are we so stubborn? Why is it that we stick with our delusions, long after they have been proven untrue. Is it really necessary to stick with religion? Even if such a deity existed, it has made it pretty clear that it doesn't give the slightest thought to us. There are hundreds of deaths each day by violence alone. And if you argue that that is just a result of human freedom given to us by the supreme deity which you happen to believe in, well then, why do thousands of people have to succumb to hunger each day, why do we praise a deity who clearly doesn't mind us at all, how strange you are, you people. You want to belong, you want to feel like a part of something, but let it be productive, let it be good, let it not be belonging to some organization which venerates an invisible, imperceptible deity who doesn't give us a thought. 

Religion has hijacked good, perhaps we know what is good, for us... Perhaps what's good for us, isn't good for our neighbor, or our planet. Profiteering is good to some extent to us, but it generally is harmful to the environment. But ultimately, there must be no definite good and evil. There must be no general definition of what's good nor of what's bad. Thus something that is generally considered bad, can be used in particular situations, while others considered good, may not be used in special situations, because of the same reasons of which one may use a bad thing for a good thing. A good thing may turn bad. There is no definite good or bad, I can be good to a homeless person by handing him some money, however to a bystander it may seem bad, because the homeless person, (according to the bystander) may use it for alcohol. Furthermore if you ask the homeless person, alcohol may be the best for him right now, he is already fed and he just wants to disconnect from the world for a few hours, but then another bystander thinks, that that money might as well buy another meal later, and demonizing alcohol, because alcohol is bad, the bystander continues in his mind. But what could be called good or bad, what could be such a situation in which no human being thinks that it is the opposite than what the rest of society thinks? Nothing, nothing in the example I just put forth, nor in any situation you or any one human will face now, then or every time. There is someone inhumane enough to think that losing a human life is good, there are always mentalities that love the oppressing force of money, and will think for the behalf of money rather than for their fellow human beings.

Don't be so eager to be remembered, you might end up doing things you will be remembered for, but with cries of hatred rather than with tears of joy, although if you want to be remembered there you go. Although being remembered shouldn't be a crucial part of your life, in half a century, Jesus Christ will be another myth, joining the likes of Zeus and Venus and so on. Who is going to be Stalin in 1000 years? Humans have a tendency of forgetting history, whether we like it or not, we need to at the very least acknowledge it.

Why do being connected makes us feel the way it does, rather than some other way it could be, being connected to something may cause a feel of repulsion, but it does not, why? And why do we crave it so much? Perhaps these are highly personal questions, but for me its crucial to have a shot at these big questions, to ponder in my loneliness, about the fragile human condition and what makes it up. We might as well have developed the other way around, and crave loneliness, and to an extent we sometimes do, but we desire much more to be connected, why is that? That question intrigues me, it feels important and a big part of our condition. At the end, is just a matter of questioning the status quo, and to feel alive.

On Nature

Perpetual rain, showering vast fields of grass, looking relaxed and sorrowless, deep nature never looked so good. The rain goes on, without anything to stop the mighty rain, the trees kneeling before her all wanting a piece of her. Small bushes get crushed by the tall and strong trees, and so life goes on, not rushing, not troubled.

There is much to learn from trees, rain, and Nature in general, but the kind of vast landscapes and gigantic, magnificent fields strike me the most. We, perhaps should stop all at once, to have a glare at the very least, to treasure and cherish our mother Nature. We should, once in a while position ourselves in the perspective of the enormous bits of nature, and for once in our lives stop troubling ourselves for little things. We need to learn to cherish existence, rather than just breathe, move around and continue to exist. Thus, I ask you a very simple thing, not to be a romantic nothing of the sort, but to live, rather than just subsist. Live properly, live like everything is new, everything us refreshing to look at, look at thing through different perspectives, rather than just use your simple human mind, think globally, universally if possible. We have stopped dreaming. We have become complacent and, rather disinterested in the precious side of nature, and that is a pity. We as a society worship new buildings, more everything is more. We get it, it's the future, but shouldn't we sometimes stop and just have a look outside our great walls? Great concrete and steel giants are covering up our eyesight, but is that all we want to see? Rain has turned melancholic, rather than cheerful as rain should be. Rain is the most beautiful thing in the world, it is the one who brings life to Earth.

Shouldn't we take a little time to appreciate our enviroment? We need to preserve and cherish, while there's still time. Otherwise, the land our children inherit, will be just one great big ball of concrete.

sábado, 19 de septiembre de 2015

Are we too early?

Human Civilization has had its ups and downs, we've passed through the dark ages and the Renaissance, we've come close enough to see death and the collapse of our system right into the eyes, and perhaps we are still recovering from the Cold War. If it wasn't for the audacity of some men, we perhaps wouldn't be here to tell this story. Perhaps, one of the best discoveries of our time, was the discovery of the cosmos, and everything the Universe has to teach us. We have set foot on the Moon, and sent robots far and wide in our cosmic neighborhood, but while this achievements were being made, our existence on our planet was being threatened by the close-mindedness of our leaders. How eager were they to kill one another, and we still are. The division lines of our people run along the lines of religion, race and our place of birth. There are still people, of one corner of our planet, who long to kill and torture the inhabitants of some other corner.

Our great achievements, stained by the ugly face of murder and death. All this thought put forth, in the post Cold War era, makes us feel ashamed of ourselves, but we are yet to surpass our judgements, and to leave our prejudices behind. Are we to venture out to try and colonize our cosmic backyard? We can't even put the Earth in order, nor can we agree on how should we behave, on what's moral and what can we do or not with our body and phallic parts. Religions seem to love arguing about this and sometimes killing to make their point through. Are we, to venture out into outer space, sharing our human morals? We have many judgements, we seem to love prejudice, if an alien visited us, we'd probably kill him and then feed him to the dogs. Whenever we stop killing each other, and when we bring back the consciousness of the Earth being a single organism, to make this idea mainstream. Whenever we see our brothers in the Arab world, struggling, fighting for survival, when our first instinct at seeing this is to stop war, to help our dying brothers and to preserve our little planet, a little speck to the Universe, the whole Universe to us. Whenever this mentality of world citizenship and universal caring takes over, then we will be ready to colonize other planets, but until then, our dream of going elsewhere to save us from ourselves, is but a fantasy.

miércoles, 16 de septiembre de 2015

The Verge of Civilization

I was born in  a strange mixture of nature and human-made structures, I lived right on the verge of civilization, where the vestiges of a declining civilization were left abandoned perhaps by the side of an old road. Unmaintained buildings now on the verge of collapse were absorbed by the surrounding nature and filled with thousands of shades of green, and equal numbers of different colored flowers. There, jumping between madness and civilization, I was conceived. I was to make a normal human life, not minding the nature surrounding me, growing, thinking that man-made things are better. Yet, in a moment of lucidity, I realized the amazing complexity that made life on Earth flourish, the plants grow and everything else seem amazing, and I became convinced that nature was not even comparable to "civilized life". What is going on through our minds! We see the beauty of amazing feats of architecture, which I'm not diminishing, and can't see the beauty of rainforests, of clouds or of dandelions. 

I was up there, a top a mountain, when I realized just how puny Man is, there were the clouds meet the ground, millions of shades of green, becoming darker as the eye roamed freely through the landscape. There, I looked down, and saw a little city, with little maze-like streets, and tiny people the size of ants, moving along with their sorrows and issues, and I laughed. Who am I to judge? Yet at that moment, I came to my senses and realized how tiny our existence is, the wild, stretching out for thousands of kilometers. Our cities of no comparable size. This experience made in me a profound statement, to treat man more kindly and to recognize just how fragile we all are, to be more humble. 

Melancholy

Face up in the sky, tears falling as a shower upon the now gray looking nature. Tears not of joy, nor of sadness, rather of melancholy. Not even the dim sun can penetrate with all its glory through the endless thickness of gray ash, now circumventing our atmosphere. It's not a sad day, but we couldn't argue it was a happy one, it's a day were it's okay to let go of a tear, even if we don't know what we're crying for. It is an important day, today I and maybe some of all the humans on Earth were pondering about the angst that comes by merely existing. 

The faint image of the sun rising above the bad designed buildings, buildings that rise up far above street level. The sun looks almost as a mirage, and the very top of the gray buildings mix in a near homogeneous composition. The occasional sound of a passing plane distracts us from our tedious life, not a soul is seen in the street. The streets are dead, there is no way for us to glimpse our fellow humans, we are alone, prostrated against the mighty concrete giants. Yet, there is no sadness, no emotion, purely mechanized actions, as if we were robots. 

There is nothing to be seen, nor to be felt, nor to be experienced. There is nothing, nothing but our being, which is in turn also nothing.

How insignificant we may feel, it is truly a humbling scene, making us realize our troubles and sorrows, yet it is the perfect opportunity to face them with courage and stoicism. This type of feeling, of scenery is of no less importance than the one we receive gladly, like a sunrise or sunset, the beach, the sun rays melting with the golden brown beaches, the bright of the summer tree leaves, looking like polished emeralds, the path of nature and so on. It is to make us feel the often forgotten emotion of "melancholy" which is deeply important to the human condition.

martes, 15 de septiembre de 2015

Suicide

Suicide is merely a liberation from the utter pain that is existence.

Suicide, we talk so little about suicide, yet it is a high cause of death in the world. What is there to be understood and what is to be done? Why must all the failures of one man fall all unto him, why is it a pain to admit that a man may not be the prime cause of all his misfortunes, and even if he was, he doesn't deserve such a miserable existance, He's a human being after all. Remember, there's no such thing as a fully meritocratic society. Man is always biased and always will be. Either by status, acquaintances or other factors.

There are other causes for it, a love affair gone terribly bad. Why, o why must life be so terribly unfair when it comes to love. It is not the one that loves the hardest that ultimately becomes happy. It is, perhaps rather strinkingly, the one that shows a little distance, and knows how to handle a relationship, according to modern era standards. What a doomed existance for us hopeless romantics don't you think? I'm really really shy, yet when I fall, I fall deep, my mind can't be taken off the person, my language forms involuntarily into beautiful poems to cherish my most precious possesion, at least for a moment or two. I can see the pain of going through that kind of break up, I can see tears, and, if someone's too deep, eventually suicide. What a cruel society has teached us to despise romantics, cruel indeed. Poor souls, doomed by their ideas, martyrs of romanticism.

I suggest you to look refuge in nature, works for me at least. Just look at the magnificent little trees, shining bright like precious emeralds under the imponent sun. The Sun possesses an effect to make nature happier, to make it a little bit more joyful. To feel the energy of the sun in your back and to really feel yourself as one under the sun, as one with the Earth, trees and everything around you. That everything around you wishes you to continue, everything around you loves you. Laugh whenever confronted with the absurdity of daily life, read plenty, and trust me, you will be fine.