The Things They Carried

How is it that I should be able to appreciate life when I have not died? This is the importance of an afterlife: there must be one somehow. But it's like the war stories. They do not focus on death, they focus on life. And truth may or may not have happened.

The seeming is a thick mist that is ingrained in all of us. It sings things that we cannot hear. It is the light through the filter, the before-the-eyes that is ourselves. We are alive. Even if we can't tell.

Making Plasma in the Microwave

Look it up on youtube.

Vegan?

Not quite. Just giving up cows for awhile. That means milk, too.

The Reason?
Cows produce an excess of methane (guess how?) and release it into the atmosphere. With the number of hamburgers America consumes, that equals a lot of cows being raised to add their gas to our greenhouse. So in reality, global warming is still at the base of it all.

Sexism

How sexist is the world today?

Can anyone actually make a judgment? In order to judge things; to analyze them, we must step away from our own perception to look through the sandy viewpoint of our subject. We all try to avoid sexism, but is it still prevalent in the subconscious mind? What caused sexism in the first place, the evolutionary difference between males and females? If this is so, males are actually superior to females: they're bigger, stronger, and faster. Does that make them smarter as well? Why are we so opposed to this viewpoint? Perhaps we're being oppositely sexist: in order to cease discrimination, we are oppositely discriminating. Favoring women to avoid favoring men.

But we can never really know. People don't like to admit their wrongs, even in light of scientific evidence.

Indecision: the curse.

When we can't think of something, we might call that writer's block. We might call that confusion. It jinxes us into those blank reams of uselessness, withdrawing walls away slowly as consciousness melts into fog, and it's annoying.

The New FBI: "Innocent" "Freedom-Loving" Firefighters

You know it’s gone too far when the government employs Firemen as info.-seeking terror-fighters.

We have let the terrorists beat us. This is what they planned. We are limiting our freedoms. They will either kill us, or we will kill ourselves. Let us preserve our honor. We will die in the fight, the fight to PRESERVE OUR VALUES. Preserving our values by limiting our freedom, by contradicting our values, is an oxymoron. Usable in fine literature, but hypocritical in real life. Let us STAND UP FOR WHAT WE BELIEVE IN by setting a good example; we stoop to their level when we use violence, secrecy, and censorship. They are leading us to self-destruction; then they shall laugh: western thought is insincerity in action! Watch them rip themselves apart, not knowing what they’ve done! Then our Chinese friends have the right to look at us sadly; they knew Communism was better. Too much free thought puts us in the likelihood to do THIS!

But we can stop it. Humans are not helpless. Humans have brains, communication, cities! We have flown to the moon! We have built weapons that can destroy the world six times over! All we need is motivation. What is there that motivates us to kill ourselves and yet not seek other options? What is it that motivates us to NOT consider long-term effects when our livelihoods are endangered?

WHY ARE WE STUPID?

People make mistakes. That’s human nature. Only when we learn to FIX our mistakes, and FORGIVE others for theirs, can we make true progress.

Perception

One thing astounds me about colors: I could be seeing completely different shades of colors than you, and they would still have the same relation to each other. Therefore, nobody would be able to tell, which might mean that it has no effect on life.

However, I started thinking about perception in broader terms. Can we relate this difference in sight to the way we react to people? I think yes. Because I see things through a different perspective; that colored by my own life, you cannot comprehend upon sight what my immediate reaction would be. Could we stop wars by considering perception?

It only takes patience.

It is not cool to be perfect

It is not cool to be perfect.

Consider the word "cool," not its overtones, just the definition. (Popular, attractive, fashionable). Now consider perfection. It is what we strive for, right? Of course. But not true perfection, which is generally frowned upon. Why should it be unattractive to the general population to be perfect?

The general opinion goes like this: if a person is spectacularly amazing in a particular area, then good for them. We value skills. Or so it would seem. Unfortunately, not everyone has skills. We are all truly imperfect beings, which hurts those of us with larger-than-life egos. From this assertion comes the idea that society should baby those who do not have skills, money, success, etc.(those who are not perfect): enter the ideals of the politically correct. Since everybody has flaws (some more prominent than others), society has become lazy: we can rely on the politically correct to pity us for our problems if we tout them on our sleeves. In this case, we start to brag our deficiencies more than our proficiencies. Excellence is dropping in rank on the human list of values.

I was going to continue this, but I lost my train of thought. Not sure where to go next.