Thought, and it's implications.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

When I saw this quote, I immediately though of the books I've been reading, which are the Dune series by Frank Herbert. If you have not read these, you might want to give them a look, because they are very very good. But on topic, in the series the idea of thought and change comes up multiple times.

One of the things was, that to a government, thought is dangerous. Thought, invention and change are all dangerous to the survival of a government. Personally, I think this is ironic. One of our greatest assets is the ability to have such organization as government and be able to co-exist like this, and work towards a common goal.

Kind of.

Often, we see our government applied for many other reasons than making our collective life better, but to make their own and their selective friends better off. And how better to do this been by using one of the most powerful resources available? An unthinking mass of people. One of the interesting takes that the Dune series gives is that the leader did not want the people to become this way. But they turned him in to a religious symbol, and deifyed him. And so, made way for themselves to be controlled.

And, at the risk of offending someone, which is not my goal, what better way to take control of a population then convincing them that you have religious or holy power? There have been many cases of abuses of this trust that is placed in religious figures, because that is almost the ultimate power. You are speaking with the word of God. And to question this, as we as a species are want to do, question, is heresy or blasphemy. Obviously, some people take religious figures and symbols with a grain of salt, and focus more on the connection with a higher power. But what of those who don't, always? What happens if this is taken advantage of, even if only by one person?

I apologize if this sounds like I'm speaking too much about my opinion on religion, but I'm more using it as an example than anything, as hopefully an easy way to explain what I'm about to try and say.

As a whole, thought creates change and inventions, which also create change. Thought is change. This creates a problem for governments, because often you see governments stagnate after a certain period of time, unless a radical, and very often, a bloody change occurs. Most likely, this is a complete upheaval of the government, and a replacement is put in place. This can cause a huge loss of life, very very unnecessary loss. How many countless millions have been killed because of this basic concept, of all that is created will eventually be destroyed. All forms of life, even artifical ones like government.

So, would it be better to have a benevolent despot who controls all change, thought, and invention, at the plus side of having much much loss of life. Or is it worth all those countless lives that have been wasted, all for something as immaterial as change and free thought? It's a strange...thought. Often we determine human life as the ultimate object, with no price on it worth paying.

But what happens when that price becomes something that even if you don't always use, but that MEANS something to you as much as being able to think what you want?

Again, I apologize if this is slightly rambling. My thoughts aren't always coherent, but I do my best.

Not so much sexism as....

I can't, and wouldn't anyway, speak for the rest of the male population. But here's my personal input on what I deem to be a fairly serious issue. And this issue is the fact that it appears that most women, or atleast girls, have a huge misconception about guys. Again, I can't speak for most guys, and these misconceptions obviously have enough root in them so that they're repeated. But seriously.

Why is it okay to assume that all guys are sex sex sex penis sex. I mean, really. I know guys act like it sometimes, but girls can act like it too. But it's amplified for guys. Sure, hormones can make guys horny, but what the hell, girls get horny too. And then it's every guy is the same. Every guy would cheat on his wife if he wasn't going to be caught, and every guy would have sex with any pretty girl. And guys don't have girls as friends just to be friends with them, they want sex. I have one thing to say to that.

Bull. Shit. That is so ridiculous, that really, it angers me. I have girl friends, and you know what? They're friends. Imagine. Really. It's that easy. Hey, they're all cute too. But I LIKE them as friends. I wouldn't change that. I know when someone will be a friend or if there's a chance to be something more almost immediately, and if it's the former, it's like, bam, kay, we're good. I'm lucky to have this skill, but to some degree everyone has this. And even those who don't, they don't want to have sex with everything that moves. God, even if it WAS all about sex, there's so many different things to say about it. Maybe they're thinking about sex like intimacy. Maybe THEY think they need to have sex because if they don't, they're gay, or a pussy. And it sure isn't just the guys who'll tell him that.

As was brought up to me today, America is a culture of extremes. It's SEX SEX SEX, or you're a nun, or frigid. The ironic thing is, neither of those extremes is comfortable with sex, in my opinion. You can brag about it, but you're not talking about it. And they're two different things. Why so uncomfortable with sex? Possibly because we're uncomfortable with intimacy, and guess what the most intimate act is? Bingo. Girls aren't the only ones uncomfortable about sex, the only ones who think about it more than "I want to do it." Some of us care more about love then sex.

And for the guys, if this is your mindset, grow up. You're not 9 years old, and giggling at the word penis anymore. It is, possibly, THE most annoying thing to me. The whole shallow thing.

My point, if there is one, is this. There is no guy to show you that we're not all the same. Because there's not one exclusion to the rule. There's many many many more.

And if there isn't, and it's just me and a handful of others, well fuck. I still stand by my statements for myself.

Making A Promise To Be Broken.

Hey look, I can be contradictory too. Who would make a promise to be broken? That they don't really mean to keep? Well, we all do, for one, but at least for some of us, we mean to keep it, but we subconsciously know that we never will. For others, they never even mean to keep it.

It's kind of like that latter one. I am absolutely, positively sure that I will not keep this promise. But I'm as equally sure that I will continue to make this promise every time I break it. So, in a way, I am keeping the promise. But I'm going to have to be re-affirming it a lot. Annoying, but sacrifices must be made, I suppose.

We all do that third option too, the one I just described. "I'm going to be nicer to people." Um, sure, for the 30 minutes you remember that you made that promise, and then you're only doing it so you don't seem like an asshole to yourself. You're not being nicer just to be nicer. So, I pose this question. Are you really being nice if you're not doing it out of the kindness of your soul? I guess, you might be. Being nice is just being nice, and if you force yourself to do it, against your own will, maybe that's being nicer then if you enjoy it.

But this was supposed to be about me. The promise I'm making, that I am sure will be broken and then re-affirmed, then broken, and so on until I die, hopefully making at least some progress. Progress is all we can ask for...Again, I digress. Can't help it. And I don't have the heart to hit the backspace button on such a little life gem like that.

I decided, yesterday, that I would try to be a little more like Morrie. Not completely like him, of course, because hey, I disagreed with some of his things. But I think it's reasonable that we should all be more forgiving, and less ashamed. And maybe, one day this week, I'll wake up, pretend there's a little bird on my shoulder, ask it if I'm going to die, and feel like I'm a great big fool. But then maybe I'll do it two times a week next month. Maybe it'll help.

But I'll probably forget about that promise too. Until I remember, and make the promise again, do it for a little awhile, and maybe, learn to be a touch more forgiving, a touch less ashamed, over the period of however many years until I die. Inch by inch and foot by foot. I'm reading Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome To The Monkeyhouse and in one of the stories, a character asks "How did we get here?" the other one replies "One foot in front of the other, through the leaves and over the bridges." Nobody thinks about that, how every journey is composed of thousands of little steps. That's all a journey is. A thousand little steps.

Amazing story.

Born without eyes, and his limbs unable to extend, this guy manages to play the piano. Beautifully too. I saw him on the end of the Ellen Degeneres show, as I got home. I was dumbfounded as he played Georgia On My Mind, by Ray Charles. So I looked him up, and found that link. I wanted to know more about him. He played at University of Lousville, he had Extreme Makeover: House Edition come to his house, and he's been all around, and on ESPN news.

I was moved to tears by this guy. In his interview with Ellen Degeneres, he said that "He thought his blindness was an ability, because all he saw was what was inside the person. Alot of people with sight are judged people by their hair color, clothes, whether white, black, red, or yellow. And those are just adjectives with no meaning whatsoever." He has reached a sociological ability far beyond what I know I've, and many people I've met, achieved.

This 'disabled' person was given the gift to play music with great skill. It's one of the first times that I've been moved to tears, and I don't cry easily. But him playing Georgia on My Mind touched me for some reason. He goes around, and gives inspiration and hope to countless people. And he does this as someone who, while we may not think less of, we think of with less 'ability' than us. And not only with his music, but with his words.

Violence, and it's undertones.

We've talked about the school shootings, and how some of the reasons for such an event could be things like trying to prove you are a man. Sal also talked about how violence is, in our culture, a way of showing that you are a man. I'm bigger, badder, and meaner than you, so I'm more of a man than you are. I just want to put some quotes on here that make me think about violence and 'manhood.'

Was all this bloodshed and deceit - from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro the Puritans - a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization? Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide inside a more important story of human progress? Perhaps a persuasive argument can be made - as it was made by Stalin when he killed pesants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining Hiroshima. But how can the judgement be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly?

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

One does not learn how to die by killing others.

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

My Father taught me how to be a man – and not by instilling in me a sense of machismo or an agenda of dominance. He taught me that a real man doesn’t take, he gives; he doesn’t use force, he uses logic; doesn’t play the role of trouble-maker, but rather, trouble-shooter; and most importantly, a real man is defined by what’s in his heart, not his pants.

All of these quotes seem relevant to me on this topic. I, obviously, can't speak for everyone, nor can I speak for all the guys. But it seems like we, we being the male population, are trying to find other outlets for the violence that...seems to be inherent in us. As if it's coded in to our DNA, or, merely, instilled in to us since birth as a result of the society around us. We watch football, and hockey, and sure we love it when someone scores. But damn, aren't most of us just waiting for someone to get demolished. How many of us secretly cheer when someone gets hit by a 350 pound linebacker, and tears an ACL? I'm sure there's other reasons for this, like jealousy, but we just like violence. If we were born in to a society where the Gladiatorial Arena was legal, I bet most of us would be watching it on TV every Sunday Night, cheering for our favorite team. This connects to my other blog, Fascination With Death, I suppose. But this time, it's a question I end on. Is violence so encoded in us, as a result of whatever, that we'll never be able to break free of it, and it's implications? Or can we, as a society, as a people, move beyond it?

The Web Theory

I used the web metaphor in my earliest blog, when it was just on Facebook. I was talking about choices and how they branch out in a neverending web. I'm using the web metaphor again, and choices too. But not our choices.

I'm talking about the choices made by people that influence us even though we may not like the outcome. This web ensnares us. These choices flow outward and entangle, making the web I'm talking about. It's happened for atleast my entire life so far, and I don't expect it's different for anyone else. Or that it'll stop, ever. People make choices that affect us, good or bad. We're stuck with the consequences, even though we normally don't have a say in these choices.

Here's an example. Given where I live, I'm not exposed to many cultures, except for a select few. So given this, I don't always have the best background and experiences to pull from when I do meet someone from a different culture, any of them. This is something that I'm really hoping to change at some point. But, my point is, I didn't decide this. I didn't decide to live here, or whatever. I just do, and the consequences of it are on me. You can apply this to many different things.

It's like I've got 80,000 spiders constantly building ONE web, and it's around me. I have no doubt that some of these spiders are of my own making, but whether they're mine or not, they're creating a web, or if you like, a wall, that holds me back from connecting with people as much as I could.

We Help You, You Help Them

This is how I see one of Barrack Obama's proposals. I'm not a great expert on it, only heard him speak about it. But it's something like this.

We help you go to college, with payments, so more people get educated. In return, you do community service.

It seems like a good idea, but I'm a bit wary. One, especially with our current economy, it seems a bit far fetched. How much are we going to help? Public colleges only? Community colleges? Do you need a certain GPA?

Everyone isn't as lucky as us, given that we're a wealthy area, but many people have pulled themselves out of poverty by sheer work. It almost seems like just some words. I don't see how it'd work. It'd be a logistical nightmare, keeping track of all that. Did so and so(All 50 million of them) do their 25 hours of community work this year?

I think it's all great and inspiring, and I love learning more than most, so I think it'd be great if more people got educated, but it seems like something that's not really something that can be accomplished in a reasonable way.