Life.. bleh
I'm down, emotionally drained, physically tired and It's bloody COLD... no I\'m not a big fan of Winter anymore, not this winter. It doesn't even bring seasonal snow anymore, It's just cold and wet.
I'm trying to work out whats broken... with me
Broken is a strong word, I'm far from dysfunctional, I'm in no serious dilemma, but there are numerous things id like to be different in my life, things that are not where id like them to be.
Take the concept of a fat person trying to diet to loose weight, or someone fixing a boat with a hole in it by inventing a better bucket, both are equally stupid if the cause isn't cured first. Emptying the boat of water is lots of hard work that goes on forever and requires constant attention, plug the hole is more difficult but ultimately solves the problem and then emptying the boat of water is extremely easy. Still with my boat analogy?
1 or 2 problems can cause a multitude of problems further down the line in any complex system
Most people spend time trying to plug the holes or bandaid a wound. They expect the bandaid to heal the wound, when all the bandaid is meant to do It's protect the wound while your own body heals itself.
You have 2 basic choices if your not happy with the way things / you are. Fix the underling dysfunction and be succesfull/happy and all the rest as a result or, find a way to be happy with what you have now, the old happiness is wanting what you have not having what you want.
And the keyword as always is BALANCE, nothing is black or white, least of all when dealing with people.
The biggest thing that's eating away at me lately is the lack of energy, physical, motivational... any kind of energy.
So I need energy, so for that I need good sleep pattern, for that I need reason to live and get up in the morning, an exercise routine, good diet...
If I can't get those basics pegged i'll be stuck going round in circles.
Energy is a strange thing, say I feel the need to tinker with something that's not important, I can spend hours on that late into night past hunger and tiredness
But if instead It's some work I need to do... all of a sudden.... no energy!
The ability to work on things you don't want to do, a good work ethic, self discipline.. all that jazz. But It's far more complex than that, you cannot strong-arm yourself into enjoying what your doing and feeling truly motivated, making yourself a good self slave isn't a solution either. Not if you want to be happy and successful at the same time.
Fitness you want to be fit, genuinely motivated to change, anxious to improve yourself whether it be for fitness/longetivity/energy levels or physical appearance sake. But when it comes down to actually exercising you can't hold that motivation for the actual workout. You just see lots of work for 30 minutes in order to loose a gram of fat.. to gain a microscopic granule of fitness.
Thinking of it like that, thinking of anything like that in the immediate future, makes it very un-inspirational. Work for small gain is dull even if the work is little.
I think people who can see the big picture ALL the time, are the succesful ones.
It's rather contradicting, meditation/bhuddism etc is all about being in the moment
happyness = being in the moment
success = being future minded
oh no! It's back to BALANCE!
*ties things together*
You cannot get motivated to do something okay or well, you can only get motivational energy to do things amazing and beyond hard (at least for me)
Things that will bring great benefits, they can motivate you as they require all your resources to attack and your mind knows that and releases this motivation to attack the task.
However if that big wonderful task is made up of 100's of smaller tasks, and you break it down as such, you won't get the motivation when attempting each of the smaller tasks. The gain will seem to small on It's own.
Lets work out for 30 min to loose 1 gram of fat.... doesn't work, doesn't motivate.
So you have to find a way to keep the big picture in mind at all times and then feed off that. get motivation from working towards something great, knowing you'll get there if you do these small tasks, no question, you WILL get there, you can't go backwards and stay still if your doing SOMETHING, it adds up. But It's hard to conceptualize that and keep it a reality.
So to tie it all up, instead of bailing water out of your boat by improving your bucket, find what's the real source of the problem, what everything stems from.
You can't do things you don't want to do, even slaves are not doing things they don't want to do strictly, they do it because they'd rather not die or rather not be punished. Unless your some kind of robot there always a reason for doing something, the more compelling the reason, the more motivated you're going to be. If It's to avoid pain and suffering, to make other people happy, It's not going to be particularly motivational or healthy.
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Don't do things to avoid the bad, do things to go after the good.
When people are faced with a car accident scenario, where they suddenly have to avoid a tree, a person, another car in order to get to safety, most people fixate on the thing they must at all costs avoid.
You know what happens?
They plough straight into whatever they wanted to avoid.
All that's in your head is the object your fixating on, If you think 'I must avoid this or failure will happen' your mind will go hard to work at informing you about all the possible ways you could fail, It's doing It's job.
If you ask your mind how to avoid failure, it will tell you all the ways you can fail... and you will fail, you will fail because your brain will have been so busy on how to avoid failure, imagining ways in which you could fail in order to avoid such situations, it won't have spent any time on how to succeed.. so you won't know, you won't have an idea how to.
So Instead, ask how can I succeed. Where do I want to go. Fixate not on the car ahead you want to avoid, but the open space you want to target, and your mind will steer you correctly. It will feed you all the possible ways you could succeed, all the paths that will take you to safety.
END RANT
Be warned the following contains ranting's and ramblings during what I can only sum up as a winter depression, it is by no means the end of the world
;-)
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Blogs are interesting things, not that I'd call this a blog, and I do hate the word 'blog'
This started out as a Diary of sorts, a way of dumping my thoughts, a scrapbook. The more interesting personal parts of this are not online and are kept in an encrypted box for my eyes only.
This became a quick and easy way to show friends what I'm upto, to document and record all the many interesting yet unfinished things I do.
I have no care for an audience, Writing as if talking to someone seems more natural and perhaps therapeutic.
So on I shall rant, to all who would care to listen, even if it only reaches one person and that person is myself, it shall be worth it.
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Welcome to club consciousness, population you
I don't know when it happened exactly if it was a single moment or a gradual change? I don't even know what to call it. A moment of expanded consciousness, observing ego, an epiphany or a moment of clarity.
Something is different, that much I know.
When you're a kid the world is so big and unknown, you don't even know it exists so the vastness doesn't even occur to you. All that exists is you and your small area of experience. Time is infinite and days stretch out lasting forever. Then you get older, time speeds up, days disappear faster and faster and you may not even notice them pass at all.
Slowly you begin to realize the tonnage of things you DONT know, all the possible paths you could go in and how time is slipping thru your fingers, that time isn't infinite and what you do with it is of increasing importance... at least that's what I realized.
Most people appear to be stuck in that initial child like state. Where only they exist along with there immediate vicinity. They don't think big, they go from day to day doing what they do; mindlessly. Living someone else's life and getting on with it. They live thru films and books only.
Ignorance is bliss. I was happy as a child, I think. The less you're aware of things, the easier that seems to be. At least that's my experience, if you had bad parents then perhaps the opposite is true, I don't know.
But I don't have that luxury any more, the luxury of not being aware of the finiteness of everything.
Saying 'everything going to be all right' doesn't cut it anymore. Desires and needs become more complex, to the point we might not even know or understand what they are.
As you become your own individual you have to discover what you want, what it is that makes you happy.
As a child you want what appears to be wanted, sweets! games! things you don't have, etc etc, you want them automatically, that's the done thing, you happily chew through sweets and are happy; even though you haven't stopped to think for a second, are these sweets even nice? do I actually enjoy them or am I the product of conditioning. Am I just a Sheep, our my desires my own? and are they healthy, obtainable and sustainable?
As a child that's much simpler, you want things; you don't care or even consider why you want them, and if you don't get them you have a fit.
Life as an adult is and should be much more complicated than good vs evil, no black and white, just grey. Sometimes when you finally get what you want, you no longer want it, and realize perhaps you never wanted it to begin with.
So what good is this expanded awareness? would ignorance; forever like a child, be overall more pleasant?
Probably
But I don't think you can go back once you are aware, only if you have some serious powers of delusion could you crawl back into the metaphorical womb.
It feels like most other people are in this womb, this deluded state of suspension, living lives that are not there own. I have no idea what if any internal confliction goes on in the minds of the masses. Some appear bitter, wanting to keep everyone at there level of un-success, the misserable ones, some are simply oblivious, those are the happy ones. Maybe they were aware once, failed, never tried, succumb to mediocrity. Maybe most people are just happy to just 'be' to just exist, maybe that's enough for most people, maybe they don't think about it to much, thus is doesn't bother them.
But I do think about it, a lot, and thinking about stuff like that often makes you crazy.
When you become self-aware you may be immediately disappointed, perhaps your not living the life you want, perhaps you are not in control, you work for other peoples goals, you just get by and are bored of that, you want more of something. And with that comes fear and a kind of depression, as you don't know how to get out of it, you don't know how to get those things you want and your worried you'll always be aware of that fact and wish you could go back to being unaware, to make it all just go away.
If you are living your life the way you want, doing the things you like, and every morning you can look in the mirror and honestly believe today is going to be better than the last, then chances are you are already self-aware, and have sailed your ship correctly because of it, that or your very fortunate or possibly naive and deceiving yourself.
There comes a point in everyones life when they realize their long held dream of becoming *insert dream here* is never going to happen. Maybe it was a fanciful dream, a fantastic hope, whatever it was, you secretly hold onto it in the back of your mind as if it was going to happen, one day, perhaps in another life, another you, but it was going to happen, and you've never really faced up to the reality that it really isn't, not if you continue as you are. Your not going to get a second chance. The first run thru life isn't the warm up and you don't get to try again at the end.
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Now if this all sounds negative, It's because it is, and I am not exactly cheery at the moment.
Right now, I am not particularly happy, I have more than most people have, I have a warm safe environment, I have loving and supportive family and I have all my mental faculties and health, so I don't really have anything to be upset about... yet I still am. For the simple reason that I expect so much more of myself, that I know my own potential and yet I haven't been able to evidence it to myself properly, maybe I haven't been trying, the why doesn't matter though.
I'm just not where I want to be right now and it is all my own doing for being complacent, for thinking ill always have more time, for being scared and for being weak. We can all go round blaming it on things, blame it on your upbringing, blame it on lacking enthusiasm, lack of energy, whatever. None of that actually helps though. Not of it fixes the underlying problem.
In any case, I'm itchy and anxious to change how things are right now
I'm trying to figure out what the problem is, what it is inside of me that's not working the way I want.
I've spent so long knowing inside I have potential, It's become a simple expectation that ill get the rewards I deserve, that it will just happen by itself and my internal beliefs are enough. That there's plenty of time to mess about. I started thinking like that back in School and it stuck even though 7 years or more have passed. And while I've learned a ton in 7 years, I'm still going along like everything lasts forever, like I'm not getting any older like there plenty of everything left.
So now I feel rushed, anxious to catch up, like time slipped by while I wasn't paying attention
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"If the human brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldnt"
funny.. high school biology, how was it several years later till I found about a whole new organ I did'nt even know we had..
makes me wonder what other organs they forgot to mention in the curriculm
jeez you leave school thinking people have a heart a brain and lungs
and some miscelanous blobs
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lol to computers that advertise dual core so you can virus check and work at same time
woo! faster computer, more virus checking, who wouldn't buy for that reason!
surely.. faster cpu = more viruses
buy a dual core! 1 core for your viruses/adware/trojans the other for your apps
perfect, what a way to sell a computer
huh... It's alright for some... £1000 for 8 hours...
Link: www.simondanaher.com
He is good though, not that there's much of his work on his site
Funny what difference a bit of makeup can make:
Garr
I am personally tolerant, what other people think and feel is entirely up to them. What I object to is whenever someone pushes something on someone else, the spread of a destructive idea or concept without equal attention to spreading intelligent open debate and healthy questioning. Tell me about anything, any idea, but do not tell me I cannot speak freely about my idea, and do not close your ears to my thoughts just because you are so sure of your own.
So here is a loose collection of unorganised thoughts on the matter, some people will find them offensive, I hate those people I hate how they are offended; I am ironically offended by how they are offended, and I have absolutely no control over how ignorant or angry those people are; and I am ok with this, because while I hate them, I am more concerned and hateful about running out of cheese, or banging my toe, that kind of hate not the sort where I want to turn to physical violence or anything... just that I would personally choose to distance my self and not waste any time talking with such people, but then I am like that with most people
:-P
I am mostly tired of worrying about causing offence. Like words are some kind of terrible weapon of harm, that to be offended is in anyway real and not totally imagined. But I don't want to have interactions with people who cannot tolerate disagreement, who cannot accept that other people think and feel differently. Which again creates another kind of irony that by my very not tolerating intolerant people I am in fact intolerant ;-D
I however would kindly avoid the subject with an individual present whom I know I will disagree with. As there is no worse waste of time than trying to convince someone who already convinced. Normal arguments you can educate and come to some kind of shared understanding, but religion being as absolute as it often is cannot exist in that realm of discussion, it by definition is impossible to argue with. And also because it is incredible mean and hurtful thing to attack someones core belief, they build an entire identity around it, it isn't something you can just convince away or reason with, only they can do that. However in an anonymous fashion I can say that person is to me; an idiot, a special kind of stupid, they might be nice, kind, but they are living in a weird imaginary world of make believe that I want to tear down and shake them awake from... but some people are just not built for reality; so that would be mean... but I still want to do it.
I think the annoyance comes from how I wish I had that luxury, of being able to live in a wonderful imaginary world where everything is secretly going to be ok and if it isn't ok It's because someone very nice and clever and omnipresent made it that way for reasons that are still ok making it still wonderful in some kind of abstract way and well it will all be ok when I die eventually so theres at least that. But more than that it can be an excuse to not think long and hard about things, about yourself, your conduct. It is a way of replacing hard thought with belief. And that to me is very dangerous. That is all very well and good when the beliefs they hold are in line with common sense good to all man kind, in fact it tends to make better citizens than without religion.... but when those beliefs are something else... then you get really dangerous hurtful stuff. So while beliefs can give structure and moral grounding it is a fake structure, it is a cheat, it is like being a good person because you were told
Religion is essentially a collection of ideas or beliefs. Any so what I talk about can equally apply to any collection of ideas and beliefs, whether it be that you have a lucky scarf, believe in reincarnation or think that StarTrek is superior to StarWars, these are all collections of ideas and beliefs that put you into a named cult of others who also share them.
To me Religion as I speak about it is the flaw of giving higher value to belief versus logic and known certainties ( science ) but that is still just an opinion.
Religion along with other beliefs often spread close mindedness. Ideas have a higher rate of infection amongst the young and for those people whom lack the mental equivalent of a mental immune system.
It's an infection of mind that is brought about by fundamental failures in human beings. And I\'m not entirely confident in our ability to out grow this like we have escaped our savage ancestry... but well have we even really done that yet. I have always been a pessimist though. As it is in our very nature, to want to believe in something more, that somehow we exist outside the laws of this physical law abiding reality. That we live on in some form or another, a soul if you must. It's exciting, it sure as hell beats the reality that it all ends in a full stop. Spirituality, souls, love, things we like to believe as magical, mysterious, become more interesting and somehow inherently special when compared to the dull logic and reason abiding consistency of science. However it is a self embellishment, much like day dreaming of sandy beaches, wishing to win the lottery and other flights of fancy.
For a moment believe that in whatever plausible way you can conceive, somehow at some level, perhaps even beyond what we are even capable of ever knowing, that something was behind all of reality. We can't help but love such ideas, the Matrix was such a huge success, in part due to lots of kicking and fighting, but also because it played into this unveiling of reality as something more than it appears.
The very fact we want to believe in such things so much and so inherently, should largely on that basis red flag it much like I keep snack food at a distance, I know I want it and for that reason it is dangerous to allow it in an uncontrolled way into my life. Anything we are compelled to do should be kept at safe distance for scrutiny, the problem with most people the scrutiny comes later, after it is already too late.
That is our nature though, you cannot expect everything to be studied, evaluated and risk assessed before It's entered into your mind. You would progress very slowly if this was the case, and especially in the case of children, they have evolved to learn fast ask questions later and in fact rely mostly on looking to others to see what is right and wrong, to take whatever others say as truth, a good survival quality for early life. It is this same trait in adult life which becomes a problem.
the more I look at it, the more the definition of an evolved virus fits
though in this case, It's born in oneself out of natural inbuilt fears and superstitions and then spread, and so cannot be wiped out for good, it is in all our DNA
much like our tendency to rape and plunder at the first opportunity, not that I'm connecting the two, the point is we carry a lot of behavioural baggage.
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things, but for good people to do evil things it takes religion" -- Nobel prize winning physicist
I have concluded you cannot ban of block Religious Education even though it exploits and takes advantage of A child's nature to trust authority without question ( an evolved trait to speed essential early learning ). You must counter or balance Religious Education by equally informing not outlawing. Maybe having FreeThought lessons much in the manner they are required to attend traditional schooling, along with moral lessons and stories like the ancients greeks told, aeysops fables, or hell even watching episodes of StarTrek. We should learn how to have argument in a positive way, to discuss and tolerate, to be patient and to understand and listen. We would teach in the past with stories of heroes, who struggled and overcome adversity with patience and strength, honour and so on. Now we are taught by Tv personalities that teach us success is luck, taking what you want for yourself as an opportunist thief, being popular and getting attention.
Religion moves from generation to generation, it has became such an effective brain washing tool, much like any parasite becomes effective, by evolving alongside us.
Not only does the logic of evolutionary theory remove the need for a God from the equation, but it provides the explanation of the existence of religion itself.
I have yet to hear of a pioneering intellect have beliefs so strong as to a legitimatise immoral actions, and so I think we are safe in the hands of such great people, for they are inherently smart enough to not let religion encroach on our innate moral ideals. Religion has for a time been slipping under the radar, something to politely disagree with but stay quiet to avoid offence, however it is slowly presenting itself as a threat to the intellectual community, and I feel a general consensus growing that it should be fought outright and ignored no longer.
My problem isn't with religion though, though it makes a nice big obvious target. The problem is with stupid people, and not dumb stupid, but crazy illogically stupid which can be far harder to spot. Stupid people breading more stupid people. We are social creatures, more than any other animal we learn out behaviour, our morals from those around us. And we are now taught largely by the idols and role models on Tv, of celebrity and sports people. The worst kinds of people. At our most impressionable ages we are presented a demented exaggerated distorted view of the world. We are socially pushed into going to clubs, pubs, drinking heavily. The Music tells us what is right and wrong, the tv tells us.
What was out greatest trait, our evolved ability to learn from others around us. Is now our biggest weakness as we take on behaviours without even thinking about it. Our behaviour will become a product of whatever spreads the most, whatever is the most contagious of idea. And what is the most contagious of thoughts in a human mind?, greed and luck based fortune it would seem. But then it has always been that way, and maybe things are not so bad because of a good few people with the critical sense to question the status quo.
So in an ironic fashion, religion was the best antidote to unruly destructive behaviour. A more organised way of teaching us important lessons albeit in fairy tale form. So I think what is far worse than religion is if we removed it entirely and failed to replace it with other teachings. And that is exactly what has happened. People have struck religion from their lives and replaced it with nothing, other than watching reality Tv.
