Unsatisfying Writing

“What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music…Lo, therefore, I would rather be a swineherd from Amager and be understood by the swine, than be a poet and be misunderstood by men.” -Either/Or, Soren Kierkegaard

It’s amusing to think that when it comes down to it, Christ wasn’t off the mark when he compared humans to various different farm animals (sheep, goats, etc.). If one hasn’t noticed, humans tend to lean towards a group of people they can feel safe around, whether they are born into it or come upon it by chance, just as a pack of wolves or a herd of cattle would. This is exactly how people can drift into a comfortable state of being, relying on the other herd members to take care of each other and ripping away all responsibility from the individual and placing it on the group as a whole.

Then there are the people who fool themselves into thinking that since they are a part of this greater group, they are somehow specially individual. For instance, the teenagers who call themselves independent and originally creative, but in all actuality are just following a greater fad. It is that kind of wishful, idiotic dreaming that has turned the American culture into what it is today. If one’s identity is formed by that of a single group, that person is no longer an individual. They become just another replaceable cog in the clockwork system.

Why say all this and why does it pertain to the quote? Well, it is no wonder modern writing and poetry (by modern I mean in the last 25-30 years) cannot reach the levels of Homer, Dickinson and Whitman when the entire country is ideologically bound to a certain group, whether it be political or religious. Americans will eat up anything spewed out of the mouths of CNN and Fox News without ever consulting different resources to verify whether or not the facts are facts at all, or if they are just opinion pieces cleverly disguised as to confuse. So, why should writers up their game and try to appeal to a small crowd when they can dumb down their work so that the majority can understand it?

I’ll leave that up to whoever reads this to answer.

You can blame any number of outlets for this problem. I choose to blame the horrid system of education our great country has been blessed with. With programs like No Child Left Behind, the miracle is how the country hasn’t collapsed in on itself when its head is shoved so far up its butt it can’t even see the light of day.

That, unfortunately, is a post for a later date.

The Wisdom of Old Men…

Do not let me hear of the wisdom of old men, but rather their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
-T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

I cannot help but to be drawn to this quote. As a teenager, the most helpful advice I could hope to receive from one older than myself is what that person did wrong, not what they did right. If actions speak louder than words, it is the wrong actions that are the outgoing, naysayers and the right actions that are the reserved and humble accepters.

I am not so sure about anyone else, but if I screw up that is the first thing someone is going to notice. If I do something right, I might get rewarded or get a pat on the back, but it is the wrong actions that are always noticed. For instance, nobody remembers that Bill Clinton worked hard to balance the budget of the United States, and was mostly successful. What people do remember is that he had sexual relations outside of marriage.

So, would it not be accurate to say that you should intentionally do things wrong if you want to get noticed? Then the reverse, to not be noticed you should do things that are right? There are obviously extremes to these issues. The man who runs into a burning building to save an old lady is going to get noticed, but isn’t that because no one else has the balls to do things like that on a regular basis?

We see acts such as that as heroism when it is simply ignoring selfishness, whether it be pragmatic or not to do so. The world would be a wholly different place if people decided to drop their self-serving attitudes and help one another once in awhile. That is a naive view though, is it not? It is silly to even entertain the thought of people doing such things.

What does any of that heroism junk have to do with the above quote? I think a valuable lesson is to be learned about education. We are being taught what not to do by people who have never done the things we are being told not to do. Experience is a much greater teacher than tradition. If we saw simple acts of heroism on a daily basis, we wouldn’t need to be taught what not to do through words, because we’ve been taught what to do through action.

Civil Disobedience

I heartily accept the motto,–’That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly, and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,–’That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient…This American government,–what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?
-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Before I say anything else, let me just say that I am not an anarchist or a Transcendentalist. This quote by Thoreau, one of my favorites, is highly relevant to the political situation today here in America. No matter how much anyone wants to deny it, the American government is at best broken. Two political parties control, and have controlled, the ballots since John Adams was elected President. Their moral compasses have changed direction, as well as their names, but there have always been two political parties controlling what laws are made, what laws are overturned, etc.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like that will be changing any time soon. Millions of dollars go into ad campaigns for each respective candidate, and although only two will win, each of them fight like ravenous dogs to tear each other apart, whether or not they are in the same party. Some people would argue that this has to be the way of things. I would have to disagree with them. This two party government is full of crap. The Civil War was started over a disagreement on a political, ethical, ethnical, and moral issue. There were only two sides to that coin, and each side decided the only way to settle the debate was through war. Is that kind of thing possible now? Yes, but HIGHLY unlikely. By highly unlikely, I mean a 0.5% chance that it could happen. Nonetheless, it is possible.

You then have the rabid fanatics of each party, whose sole purpose on the planet is to make the other party look like a bunch of bumbling idiots who know nothing about anything. If you go on any social network, you will see literal hate speech towards people of opposing philosophies. I’m not talking about sarcasm or poking fun, but hate speech. Republicans calling Democrats murdering heathens who care only for themselves, and Democrats calling Republicans Neo-conservative Christian extremists who care only about forcing religion down people’s throats. It’s absolutely appalling!

I guess that kind of stuff should be expected from the human race, though. We are in a sorry state of affairs. In a time when politicians care only for themselves and their parties, neglecting half of America is seen as the right and moral thing to do. Instead of enacting change in the hearts of the American people, they’ve put rules and regulations in place to punish them. What do rules and regulations create? They create boundaries and fences between the government and the general populace. What does that mean when that happens? It means that the government becomes the old man on the porch telling the young’ns to go away, while all the kids want to do is hear what the old man has to say.

Don’t get me wrong, laws are needed when it comes to talking about humans. Without laws, the world would be little more than a harvested, decrepit husk of what it is today. The punishment that is enacted by those laws? It’s crazy to think that someone who smokes weed serves as much time as someone who molests a child. That’s ludicrous. Reformation is needed.

My final thoughts on the American government are essentially summed up in this single quote:

“In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy.”
-David Korten

Quite the thought, isn’t it?

Christian Guy Owns Two Mormons

Great video.

More Christians need to be educated to this degree.

Churches spend too much time preaching and not enough time teaching, nowadays.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November…

“Civil disobedience, that’s not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”
~ Howard Zinn, political activist, socialist, social critic, playwright, Professor of Political Science at Boston University

The above quote is one of the most truthful things I’ve read. Let’s analyze our culture for a second. Take a step back and really look at who we are in America.

1) We are a culture ruled by technology. The definition of technology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science. Most of these technologies have only made us more sophisticated in our evil. Don’t misunderstand, not ALL technologies. I am not against technological advancement, but without moderation all it does is serve to make our sin easier to grab a hold of.

2) Communication in Northern America has become little more than lines of text. Compare how much time you spend instant messaging, texting, emailing, messaging on social networks, and you may be surprised that you spend more time talking to people electronically than you do physically. With the development of Myspace and other social networks, people say things over the Internet that they would never say to people in person. Boldness is not necessarily a good thing.

3) Money has become EVERYTHING. In the words of J.P. Moreland, “We have traded heroes for celebrities.” We have come to respect the Pussycat Dolls over Firefighters. We’ve listed bands, movie stars, and God knows what else as our heroes, but we always seem to leave out the people who protect us and provide for us everyday. We have taken for granted our parents, teachers, doctors, police officers, pastors and many others.

4) Music, no matter how much it is liked, has created more cultural segregation than one could ever imagine. Let’s take a look at rock vs. rap for example. How often do rockers call gangsters stuck-up tough guys, while rappers call rockers whiny, little, hippies. One may be under the impression that since America is the “Great Melting Pot” that means that America is just a bunch of sub-cultures that make up a greater “hive”. Well, that’s a horrible misconception. We are supposed to build upon each other. There should be hybridization in our music, no segregation. All the idiots who keep saying their music is superior (including myself), get it through your hard heads that everyone’s music is art. Polka, Ska, Rap, Rock, Hip-Hop, Techno and four hundred thousand other denominations. IT’S ALL ART. Has no one ever heard the saying “To each man his own”?

5) 9 conglomerates control every media outlet in the United States. Disney, AOL Time Warner, Viacom, News Corporation, Bertelsmann, General Electric, Sony, AT&T- Liberty media, and Vivendi Universal control everything you watch. If you divide how many channels there are on the Comcast digital package by nine, then each company controls 55 different channels. We haven’t even gone into movies, radio, Cd’s and many other outlets. To these corporations, we are nothing but numbers yet we consistently give our time over to them and we get mind-numbing entertainment as a reward for being good lap dogs.

6) Corruption is rampant in EVERY, single facet of the American society. Name a social organization, religious organization, governmental administration or party, or any number of other organizations, and somebody will be able to show you the skeleton’s in their closets. It is a shame to know that many of our representatives have been bought by lobbyists. This goes back to point three. Whether you want to admit it or not, our president has most likely accepted an…how should I say it, “influence-enhancing gift”. That is probably true for every major politician in the United States. American Gangster brought forth some pretty large accusations against our government, even though the movie takes place decades ago. The most revelatory statement was made by Detective Richie Roberts, “Judges, lawyers, cops, politicians. They stop bringing dope into this country, about a hundred thousand people are gonna be out of a job.” Want to know why our government isn’t cracking down so hard on illegal immigrants, drug lords, prostitution rings and many other less than productive jobs? Because if they did, hundreds of thousands of people would be out of work, and they would just be parasites sucking away money that America can’t give. Go figure…

So, let’s ask ourselves this: Do we want to be numbers, petty thieves, grand thieves, robots, or a difference?

If you want to be the latter of those choices, then get the frick off my space. Forget these social networks and start having some real world connections. Yes, I know you have friends outside of Myspace, but instead of spending time on here finish your homework then spend time with your family. In the face of war, poverty, starvation, and stupidity will we be the people who blindly obey the authorities of this country, or will we use our God given rights to forge for ourselves and this country a new future that sets this country back on track with what the Founding Fathers always intended? You may think that as youth, your decisions don’t matter. You may think that in the face of adversity, you will give in to your weaknesses and let the “adults” handle all the important matters. But do we really want to adults to handle the important issues. Look at this quote by Paul Graham, the essayist and venture capitalist:

“Your teachers are always telling you to behave like adults. I wonder if they’d like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you’re very docile compared to adults. If you actually started acting like adults, it would be just as if a bunch of adults had been transposed into your bodies. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you’re taught. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they’d do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration.”

Once again, it’s hard to find truer words spoken in this day and age. We need to realize that our words hold power. “Words offer the means to meaning, and on occasion, the enunciation of truth, and the truth is there is something terribly wrong with this country isn’t there?”(V, V for Vendetta). So, as the youth of America, let’s wield truth in one hand and culture in the other. Let’s make our words relevant and powerful. Instead of backing down when teachers force a specific ideology down our throats, question them and actually stand up for what you believe in. As many times as that cliché has been used, it needs to be taken seriously by us. Our generation needs to tell the adults who we really are. We need to tell them that our words are worth something,

Your words are not worthless. Your life is not worthless. You are not worthless. Why can’t we get it through our heads that the world is more than high school and middle school drama? What is holding our minds back? What has caused the hate of writing and reading, and the embracing of drugs and sedatives? This culture is pitiful. We are pitiful. It’s no wonder why we are never taken seriously.

Long Time, No Talk.

This summer has been, summed up in one word, uneventful. I don’t blame it on World of Warcraft. I don’t blame it on my own laziness. I can readily say that I blame it on my inability to enjoy almost everything I do. Has anyone else ever got the feeling that, no matter how hard you try to enjoy something, deep down(or maybe not even that deep) you can’t even begin to embrace what you’ve been forcing on yourself. It’s almost like when a friend you haven’t seen in many years walks up to you and hugs you. You can’t readily return that hug but you do it anyways so your friend doesn’t feel bad. Of course, these activities don’t have feelings, but no analogy is perfect.

School starts in less than a week and I keep laughing at myself for putting off my assignments till the very last minute. I have literally done nothing my entire summer except have 4-5 people over to my house consistently every 2-3 days. I can successfully say I’ve watched 90% of the movies made within the last 5 years. My brain is so filled with idiocy that I can hardly understand how my head is still pumping out impulses to my brain.

Above all of this though, I’ve managed to ignore all the things I’ve said we should do as people, each day, to make the lives of our fellows better, even if that means we have to suffer through awkwardness, uncomfortability or whatever else. I write this to exhort and encourage anyone who reads this to remember that those words, although broken by the writer, still hold true. I write this so you know that if you make one person’s day easier, then the benefits you will reap will outshine what you have sown.

I hope that the one or two people who possibly read this have continued to take their eyes off themselves and focus on the people around us. I can’t stress enough how much that means to the people around you.

Cheers, Readers! And remember:

England Prevails.

The Way I See It…

The Way I See It, my opinion isn’t worth more than a handful of bird seed. Maybe two handfuls. I don’t know, I’m not an economist. What I do know is I am quite tired of seeing people live boring lives. Maybe boring isn’t the right word, because they sure are having a great time. Just because you are having a great time doesn’t mean your life is worth something. That, although, is usually a good indicator if you are actually contributing something back to our society.

I’m in High School. I have seen idiots every second of everyday of the last two years and will most likely continue seeing them for the next 80 or so. I see very talented kids (young adults, whatever) wasting precious skills, on what? Wasting them on…impressing some girl/guy that will most likely forget about them in two minutes or take advantage of them and forget them 2 minutes after being with them for a significant amount of time, for the sole reason of using them for sexual purposes.

The Way I See It, I’m going to make a difference. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to get off my butt and do something. I’m not sure what, but I am. Whether that be going out and spending some quality time with my parents and family, or it be taking my dog for a walk. Maybe I could sit here and send some emails and make some cash. All I know is that I am so tired of not getting anywhere. I refuse to be mediocre and end up like most of the High Schoolers around me.

So, I’m going to post a few things you can do to make a difference in someone’s life today:

1 ) Shake someone’s hand firmly, look them in the eye and tell them good morning/afternoon.

2) Call a friend/family member you haven’t talked to/seen in a long while. Make sure they know just how much you have appreciated them in the past.

3) Make amends with an enemy. Forgot your personal crap, be a little selfless and say it was your fault. See what happens.

4) Meet someone new, remember their name. When you see them on a later date, make sure to refer to them by their first name.

5) If someone asks you for a little bit of money, give them double the amount they asked for.(Don’t go overboard, I don’t want anybody to be poor).

6) Donate old clothes/accessories to a Goodwill Store or thrift shop.

7) Clean your house while your spouse/parents aren’t home. Tidy up a bit or whatever, just do something cleaning related you wouldn’t do normally.

8) Tell someone you love them. Not the crappy, fake kind that everybody overuses. Tell someone you genuinely and deeply love them.

9) Memorize the birthdays of your friends/family members and be the first person to call them on those dates.

10) Be the one who initiates a conversation, no matter how awkward it may seem.

Work

I honestly have been thinking about a few of these questions for an extremely long time and I want to get them off my chest:

Why do people go into jobs they hate, just for money? Why would they sacrifice happiness for false security, or too much security?

How do people survive each and every boring, monotonous day at those same exact jobs they hate, and not kill themselves if only for the simple reason that that would cause a difference in their day?

Why don’t teachers get paid as much as movie stars? Why doesn’t our government tax the media more heavily to pay for our teachers’ salaries?

Why have we replaced our everyday heroes with celebrities on the big screen?

Why do minorities get chosen over the white man when they send their resume into a job, even if they have the exact same qualifications? What happened to <i>real</i> equality?

Why is it that we no longer have goals? Why is it that all we have are fantasies that delude us and lead us away from what we were really meant to do?

Why do people say they believe everything the Bible says, but don’t believe in God?

Why am I not learning anything of any importance in High School?

Could someone explain the String Theory?

Why do the corporations keep giving Jack Thompson air time? Why can’t anyone other than the gaming community see that the guy is a biased pig?

All these and more sit inside me. Please, answer whichever ones you see fit.

Purpose

You have to wonder what goes through people’s heads. What are they thinking during their daily activities?  You really have to wonder why people do the things they do during their life, what drives them. Their lifestyles echo their blank thoughts. Are they thinking at all, or is every day just a monotonous blur.
I for one do not want to live my life the same as I lived it the day before. I should not have to endure monotony. Every day is a new day. Every dawn brings about this sense of rebirth. That may seem alienating or weird, but think about it. Every time you wake up you realize that today is new. That today you can start over. Now in some cases your mistakes may follow over, but what I am talking about here does not mean your mistakes will float away. When you wake up, you realize you have a new chance to start something. To reconcile a friendship, to forgive a friend. There are so many promising turn outs for that day.
We have such a negative outlook on each new day. A lot of times we get this mindset, this complex, of uniformity and repetitiveness. We were not created to live monotonous days. We were created so that each new day can be filled with new situations, with new opportunities and new chances. Why have we adopted this philosophy that life should not be fun? That is exactly opposite to what was intended for us!
Now, do not take either point to the extreme. Life is not all fun. You have to work. It takes blood, sweat and tears to get places in this life. Life takes sacrifice. Life is also not all work. Life was not created to be your corporate boss breathing down your neck making sure everything gets done for that day. That is monotony. Life is equilibrium.
The point here is that we have to balance out fun and work for life to   make sense, for it to, well, work. Work and fun coexist. The more fun you are having with a job the more you will want to put effort into it. The more work you put into fun the more that fun means to you. One cannot coexist efficiently without the other. Work and fun are closely tied into a symbiotic relationship.
Once you find that balance, make sure nothing disturbs it. Because in that balance you will find purpose to what you do. In that balance, you will find why you were put here.

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If you were wondering, I did come up with that all by myself. Seriously impressive. Not many people could even attempt to do that, let alone succeed. That is not the point of this little blog post though. The reason that http://Title is the title is that I was not creative enough to come up with something to go with what I am going to talk about.
Not a lot of things rival friendships you make in High School. It is not just the relationships though, it is what you make of those relationships. At school I find myself being more than just a normal teenager. I am not trying to brag but people look up to me and look to me for leadership. A discussion in one of my classes made me begin to realize this one sole fact about my life:

Many of the people I call friends are either people trying to A) Take advantage of me to get to my possessions or B) Just acquaintances.

This fact alone has made me reconsider a ton of the “friends” I have and makes me want to tell the people who fit into the two above categories to go away. High School has become more of a hindrance to my career than a guideline to pick it. The obstacles I have been having to overcome this school year have been absolutely ridiculous. I am so tired of fake friends. Friends that talk about you behind your back and other things like that. Just screw off and stay away from me. I hate it when people ask me how my day was and don’t really mean it. I hate it when people don’t actually listen to what I say, but instead are just waiting for their turn to talk. But most of all, I am sick and tired of always being torn down by a person I am attracted to. Every time I try to get into an innocent relationship with a girl, another guy has to come in and shoot my dreams in the head and curb-stomp them.

I don’t know about you, but I just want to live a life that isn’t completely infested with back stabbers and fakes. I don’t know about you, but I just want to sleep the day away.