The anonymity of the url has bolstered some people’s egos to the point where they believe that if their url is known, and they’re not deliberately anonymous, then it makes them sincere. Tumblr has effectively redefined the minimum requirements for sincerity and integrity.
Tag: random thoughts
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Random thoughts about creation and manipulation
I believe that this earth is a closed system. Nothing can be depleted or destroyed to the point where it is not recoverable. Everything alters their state subject to the manipulation that it is subjected to, but that altered state either makes it usable or unusable. If unusable, appropriate manipulation can be brought to bear on it that will recover it into a usable state once again.
Therefore, our ability to deplete natural resources is in fact only limited to our inability to recover what we’ve altered. I disagree with the premise that the earth will be incapable of sustaining life in years to come because it will be over populated. It can never be over populated but it can be, and is abused. It’s our abuse of the resources at our disposal that leads to the massive disparity in quality of life between nations and geographical locations.
The greater our ability to responsibly balance how we consume, the greater will be our ability to restore and sustain the availability of resources that we have at our disposal. Even the conception and birth of a baby is a result of resources in some form or another being consumed. The mother, through the nourishment that she provides her body, influences the quality of foetal life, as well as the subsequent birth. Just because it is all a result of extremely complex chemical reactions does not imply that something is being created out of nothing.
What exists, exists. How we manipulate that will determine how many beautiful or disgusting permutations of the combination of our resources can yield subject to our limited intellectual and physical abilities. The more we grow to understand this world and everything it contains, the greater our ability to influence its form and function. But we must never forget that we are nothing but manipulators of what already exists, and therefore we should not delude ourselves about our capabilities.
This realisation, for me, further establishes my views about the atheist philosophies compared to that of the theists, who are now more fashionably called creationists. Man has never, and will never create something out of nothing. Nor are we able to truly grasp what nothing is, because it will always be thought of in the context of the absence of something. And as we know, the absence of one thing creates a condition in which something else is manifested. Think about it. All we do all day is alter the state of things. Things that already exist.
The search for the beginning of creation will never end, because every single time we think we arrived at the smallest particle known to man, we fail to conclusively answer a simple question. What causes that particle to assume the characteristics and properties that it does? There is always more, and the only thing that limits how much we understand of how much more there is, is our limited knowledge and our limited abilities to delve deeper than we already have.
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I think we use people that are inconsequential in our lives, but abuse people that are important to us. It’s easier to take for granted someone that’s close to us, than it is to take a stranger or an acquaintance for granted because there has to be an expectation of consistency and reliability before you can take someone for granted. Hence abusing those close to us.
However, I’ve often thought that taking someone for granted can be construed as a compliment. But such a compliment is wasted and justifiably unappreciated if it is never balanced with due care and consideration as well.
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A few random thoughts
The ‘anything goes’ mentality is far more extremist than those that stand by moderation. It requires an extremist to allow anything to pass as acceptable without restraint, whereas it requires conscious thought, conviction, and balance to apply one’s mind to moderation. Yet the duplicity of society would incline you to believe that those that seek moderation are extremists, whilst the liberals are the free thinkers. Free thinking is often a phrase brandished about by those that seek affirmation and acceptance rather than those that are willing to stand for what they believe in without fear of ridicule or earning the ire of those they admire.
What’s worse is when this same thinking of supposed extremism is passed down to each following generation, resulting in ever more wayward teenagers with misguided passions. At some point, a generation dropped the baton. What should have been passed down as ageless wisdom was abandoned in the name of liberalism and social freedom, and none of the subsequent generations have been willing to stop the rot. For this reason, we find ourselves amongst teenage sages and pubescent gurus, neither of which have had sufficient life experiences to become the authorities they pretend to be on life, love, and philosophy. Such misguidance cannot be blamed on the students, but rather on the absence of teachers.
In the absence of role models and leaders, the youth are left to fend for themselves under the delusion of guidance from adults who are often too self-absorbed to realise that they are failing in their duty to raise adults, not children. Adults are often so insecure about their own worth, that they’re more focused on earning the social acceptance of their children by trying to be ‘cool’ parents, while the kids are distracted by their ‘cool-ness’ only to realise that they are ill prepared for life.
The inevitable result is the proliferation of labels that abdicate responsibility for our state of mind, and result in people living out the expectations of society based on the label attached to the specific permutation of their insecurity, rather than just realising that it is nothing more than an insecurity due to lack of knowledge or guidance that leaves us with so many troubled souls. Before we try to label the mindset of others that act out their insecurities in cryptic ways, we should make a simple but sincere effort to understand the source of insecurity that pretends to be bipolar, borderline, or any other contemporary term used to appease the conscience of absent parents.
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I just deleted about 30 posts from my blog. Many of them left me feeling self-indulgent and some were associated with a plagiarist that I was once again naive enough to trust. I loved some of the content, but I couldn’t in good conscience keep it published on my blog knowing that it was part of an elaborate scheme of deception, regardless of the motivation.
Betrayal is my weakness. More accurately, being betrayed is what deflates me more than any other experience in the world. I sometimes despise my old school values. It places a burden on me akin to juggling hot coals in my hands. It forces me to accept the wickedness in others, and constantly challenges me to suppress my ego in my efforts to accept and forgive, so that I can gather my strength to move on again.
I sometimes feel a strong desire to lash out and discard decorum in my efforts to expose the bullshit of the callous players that toy with the emotions and compassion of others. I never do, because I’m painfully aware of the reality that this world celebrates aggressors and tyrants and humiliates victims.
I needed to recalibrate my blog so that it is a reflection of me, and not of what I would like others to see in me. This is my ventlet to criticise the world for its bullshit and double standards. I smile sadly at the thought of those that find reason to lie about losing a loved one in order to gain attention, juxtaposed with the news that six family members died in a car crash under excessively tragic circumstances.
Society has a low self-esteem, and it’s reflected in the actions of the weakest amongst us. The attention-seekers, of which there is no scarcity, often succumb to self-pity and self-loathing, then express such emotions to a public audience, who inevitably pour out their affections in the hope of raising the spirits of one they identify with so easily, all the while dismissing the nagging realisation that they feel a sense of purpose only when they’re extending a hand to one they see as lesser than themselves. It’s easier to earn significance in that manner rather than to establish your worth through selfless fulfilment of your duty to society.
We have more consumers than we have contributors to the collective wholesomeness of society. The contributors are fighting the debilitating symptoms of compassion fatigue, while the consumers do nothing but cry foul and wait impatiently for their lot to be improved by someone else.
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My life is not a linear process. I live not in a box, nor in a pigeon hole. And I most certainly don’t base my self-worth on how well I appease those around me. I was born rebellious, but resolute. At times my resolve has earned me affection, but most times it has earned me scorn. Nonetheless, it is my resolve and I resolve to always be true to my principles, even though I may have betrayed them in the past. It was an emotionally expensive experience I needed to acquire, because in its absence I was misled to believe that people are worth the sacrifice of principles. They’re not. One sacrifice of such gravity will always beget another. There is no appeasing the egos of others, and only those that are self-obsessed will stand idly by watching you compromise that which you hold dear with their only interest being your fulfilment of their fancies. So I resolve not to succumb to such dictates, because it has only ever left me wanting, and never fulfilled. Standing true to my principles may have left me standing alone, but it has never left me stirring in search of peace.
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Random thoughts about people and me
I’ve often felt like life was a losing battle. No matter how often I would extend myself to those that I accepted as significant in my life, I found myself grovelling rather than being appreciated. Grovelling for attention or reciprocation that is. The more I extended myself, the less I was appreciated, which in some twisted way actually makes sense.
We take for granted that which is most readily available. We only appreciate and nurture things that we realise are precious and hard to come by. Otherwise we kick into consumerism mode and forget about the blessings at hand (I hate the fact that I can’t even use the word ‘blessings’ and similar words without feeling like I’m being a religious zealot simply because of all the scripture-thumpers out there).
Anyway, at the risk of sounding cryptic, I think that focusing on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of ourselves is more important than focusing on external factors that we cannot control. What I mean is the ‘what’ should be our decision about what is or isn’t truly important in the bigger scheme of our own lives, right? While the ‘how’ is our decision regarding how we choose to accept or achieve how the ‘what’ plays out in our lives.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if the focus is on making conscious decisions regarding what affects us, and learning to accept the things we cannot influence about the behaviours and decisions of others, we’ll find ourselves less often in a position to be trampled upon or taken for granted. This approach, whilst it took forever to realise, has worked well for me. At times it threatened to isolate me from people that I wasn’t willing to let go of, but it also made me realise that if I was significant at all to them, they would realise the potential loss and do something about it to avoid the rift from happening.
But the devil in all this is our often low self-esteem. When we assume that we’re not worth the effort, we become victims and martyrs to situations and desires that we believe we will never acquire for ourselves unless we sacrifice ourselves in the process. It’s a self-fulfilled unfulfilling prophecy. And if this is still sounding cryptic, it’s because that’s how life is. It’s the biggest puzzle we’ll ever try to assemble, which reminds me that the best way to build one of those massive 5000 piece puzzles is to start from the outside and work your way in. I think the same is true with life. We need to start by determining what our boundaries are, what we’re willing to compromise and what is non-negotiable. Once we have that nailed, we need to decide how we’re going to go about filling in the pieces that will complete us.
This all reminds me of a simple thought process I often share in my workshops with others regarding brainstorming. It comprises of three simple components, and talks directly to the puzzle analogy. Output, Method, Resource. If we start by defining what the objective (output) is that we desire, we can then understand what methods or actions would be needed to achieve it. And once we know that, it will be that much easier to determine the resources required to make it all happen. That’s the easy part. Once we have that plan drawn up, it takes courage and determination to act on it and make it happen. That’s usually where most of us suck because of that same demon called self-esteem. A healthy self-esteem really is the best gift any parent can give their child, ever!
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The longer I live, the shorter life seems. The more responsibility I adopt, the less time I have to do it in. Perhaps that’s why time seems to go by so much faster as I grow older. It’s like sliding down poles and walking on rails when I was a kid. It seemed so much higher and playgrounds seemed so much larger. Looking at the same now that I’m older, it all seems so puny. Just another shade of jadedness it seems.