Excuse the interruption.

My absence over the last few months is an inexcusable failure to apply myself, and for that I apologize.  However you might sentence the crime less harshly if I were to say that during these months I have moved out of my parents' house and that I am now living (and fending for) myself.  No? Ok.

Many people ask me the same question; occasionally finding the creativity to try a different sentence structure from the interviewer prior yet never wandering from the same gist.  And that gist is as follows: "Why did you move out?"

My reply- equally lacking in sentence structure variety - marches along the same lines as the following paragaph.

At some point in life one needs to learn how to fend for oneself, not only in the sense of physical needs such as how to cook and clean etc. but also how to organize one's time and energy in such a way as to live as efficiently as possible.  Furthermore, how can one feel any measure of self-worth when all the basic needs such as cleaning and eating and washing clothes and so on are handled by another person?  Being nurtured past the point when one can take care of oneself is an act of egotism and is certainly detrimental to the development of one's character.  Some people might press on and say that I could fend for myself whilst still living with my parents, but that would just complicate matters as the family has only one cooker, fridge, washing machine and so forth - plus (speaking from experience) it's not the same experience at all.

That's the answer when I'm feeling up to it.  Sometimes I just shrug.

I will try to be consistent in my blogging pattern from now on, I promise.

Stop! You're doing it wrong!

We've all heard it - the whole "life is shit" speech which always sounds so much like the last time you heard it that you could swear pessimists had an underground club somewhere in a warehouse where they drone the same words over and over until they can say them all by themselves. Then they're back next Sunday for some brushing up.

Yes that is some light humour over there. I figure that the best way to start a blog which argues against the view that life is a tragedy is with a bit of comedy. Anyway, now on to why life isn't shit.

Well you see the thing is...life cannot be horrible. Because that feeling of life being horrible doesn't come from life per se. It comes from the way you're handling life. It's very easy to say life is horrible when you keep looking for things like "fairness" , "sanctity", "forever after"'s etc. etc. Well obviously life is horrible then. You're looking for a bunch of things which just don't exist. We made them up to make life less scary.

Think about the universe for a second. Where in the universe is anything fair? Do planets which get obliterated due to getting a tad too close to a black hole get a second chance? Nope. What about sanctity? Well where have you ever seen anything spared in the universe? I assure you, a meteor collision will spare nothing and no one. And forever? What lasts forever in the universe? Just in case you don't get the picture yet: Zilch.

Life is none of these things. Life is ever-changing, uncaring, unbalanced and restless.

So it's definitely horrible when you're looking for fair treatment, kept promises, a love ever after, unchanging happiness, total respect and all the other leprechauns at the end of the rainbow.

And why did we come up with these fairy tales? Well for one things it all makes life less scary. It's much easier to believe that you're going to achieve your goals when life is fair. You don't need to worry too much about the future if it's possible to just settle down and live happily ever after. It's just so much easier.

But that's the shame of it too though. Why go for these dreams? That's no kind of living if you're not fighting for something you believe in. You ever go to the theatre and watch just the last scene of a play? No. You go for the whole play, the whole plot. It's not about the ending it's about getting to the ending. And of course, nothing ever ends, so once you're done you can catch your breathe for a while but soon after you're off again.

So in short; Life doesn't suck. You suck at life. Now get your ass in gear and start living with a fighting mentality.

P.S. For the record, the "should"'s and "shouldn't"'s of our dear little norms....also dreams. So in the spirit of unpredictability.....fuck' em, they can kiss my ass.

Writing for everyone.

I am writing this for everybody to understand - and hopefully appreciate-why I do what I do. I will try to use a vocabulary which everyone can understand and to show the steps behind my reasoning as clearly as possible.

Today I shall be writing about ethics- the general rules which tell us about what we should and should not do in life.

Nowadays almost everyone has his or her own personal outlook on life- and therefore how one should live it. When one sees the vast amount of different opinions which exist it is very tempting to just jump straight to the conclusion that life- and therefore ethics- are different for everyone. This kind of reasoning is called "relativism" - the denial of there being any absolute and universal truth.

Now while it is true that as of yet there doesn't exist one fully complete proven ethical law- it can be shown how from the vast majority of different views one can quickly narrow it down to only a handful of possible choices.

Let us first begin to do so by proving that some absolute things must exist. This is VERY simple: just think about the phrase "Everything is relative." If you except it as true then you create a paradox because you have excepted an absolute truth while at the same time saying that absolute truths don't exist! Therefore some things must be absolute.

So now we know that some things are absolute and some things are relative. The relative things depended on other relative things which depended on other relative things etc etc etc until eventually the relative things will have to depend on the absolute things.

Therefore we can see that we do not have an infinite number of possible situations- only a limited number. Situation A differs from Situation B because of how they relate to an absolute thing- but since there is a limited number of absolute things and a limited number of how they relate to other things then there is a limited number of situations.

WAIT DON'T CLOSE YOUR WINDOW. OK, I admit that it isn't as simplistic as I promised- but things get simpler from here on. The summary of what we said till now is simple: There is a limited number of possible situations which all have something to do with an absolute truth. Now that is important because it means that if we can define what these absolute things are we can come up with a general rule for every possible situation- since they ALL relate to the same absolute things. See? Simple.


Now then. These situations all have something in common: a person is making a choice. So for our purposes we can forget for now about all the irrelevant pieces of a person- bones, organs, skin etc. I'm not saying you can live without them- but when considering the case of making a choice the important piece of a person is the choice-making bit. Now we have to understand how this bit works.

Well, overall, people make choices depending on their list of priorities. They weigh out what is important to them and make their choice based on that. This is were the relative piece comes in: because different things are important to different people.

BUT- importance is also a relative thing. The leftover lasagna is MUCH more important to a starving man than it is to a rich, well-fed man. So is there one specific thing we should give importance to?

On a personal level- not really. We all have our likes and dislikes- there isn't a general rule for that. But when you think about ethics things change. Because relative to ethics- things do have a different importance- and this time in general, not on a personal level.

For example: people are the very very very most important things in ethics- because they are the only conscious beings which can make an ethical choice. It doesn't take much brainpower to figure out that if people are the only things which have ethics- then they're the most important things in ethics.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT ALL OTHER LIFE IS USELESS. I am simply saying that people have more importance than other living things when it comes to ethics. Therefore helping other people should be at the top of everybody's priority-list, and animals/nature/God/religion/money /etc. in second-place.

So now we have a rough sketch of what everybody's priority list should look like. But still some people might say that "helping other people" is relative too. Well, on a non-ethical level yes. But like I said before- in ethics we have to give number one importance to the choice-making ability of people. So helping other people essentially means making them more in control of their lives.

A quick summary of helping other people is promoting:

Peace
Freedom
Health
Morality

Therefore- we can see that even though we cannot (yet) come up with a full law for ALL ethics- we at least have these four guideline: peace, freedom, health, morality. And anything which goes against any one of these can be called utterly wrong without the need of going into relativism.

Therefore ANYONE, ANYWHERE, at ANY TIME can prove that racism, violence, abortion, imprisonment, torture, sexism and many other vices are all wrong. Nobody can ever say " Well it depends"

Hopefully I have managed to keep this clear and easy to follow for the everyday man-on-the-street. If not I sincerely apologise. I do hope, however, that those who understood my reasoning can see why I insist on philosophizing about ethics- with general laws about ethics we can be sure and determined when it comes to fighting against injustices all over the world.

Heart-felt.

You can only know the shape of a labyrinth when you view it from above. Once you're inside, you can't tell what shape it has.

Some people say that love is the most powerful emotion. They're wrong. It is the most powerful pair of emotions.

When you love a person there are two sides to that love. Wanting them to be happy and wanting them to be with you.

And when their happiness can't exist when they're with you, you just have to ask - are you in love for that somebody else, or are you in love for you?

Then it's all down to selfishness.

The "Do" 's and "Don't" 's and why.

The whole "follow your heart" concept and the right/wrong question are (perhaps unfortunately) deeply linked.

The first thing one needs to realize is simple; nobody ever does anything they don't want to on purpose. Ever. It's literally impossible. The only reason somebody goes through the trouble of doing something is because they want it achieved. What you're doing may cause you a great amount of pain, but the fact that you're doing it shows that you want it done more than you want not to do it. Even if you eventually regret doing it and want it undone, still at that point in time you were doing it because you wanted it.

So the sad truth is, nobody does anything good for the sake of it being good. People will only do a good deed if they want to do it. You could hold a person at gunpoint and tell them to do something. They're still doing it because they want to do it- they want to do it not to get shot.

So that's the crux of the matter, the only way for a person to be a good person is if they want to be a good person.

And why would you want to be a good person? Being a good person gives you worth. Being a bad person makes you only a nuisance- and being an undecided crowd-follower (*cough* 99% of club-goers and DJ's *cough*) who is content with being 'nice' but not actually 'good', who fails to see the difference between cruelty and evil- well then you're not much of a person and more of a mammal.

Of course every human being has the potential of being a person. But unfortuantely most people never stop to take a good hard look at themselves and end up always wanting to "live" without knowing what life is.

Now the question is simple; do you want to be a person or a mammal?

P.S. To all those who view philosophy as irrelevant; know that philosophy is quite possibly the most useful tool in life- real life, not mammalian life- and is a priceless attribute I wish for all those who mean the most to me.

Challenges

The only real challenges which count come from ourselves.

Sometimes other people place challenges, but those challenges are nothing but questions which need actions as answers. And if the question is unimportant, there's no real need to answer.

But the challenges which come from ourselves; those are important. Even though these challenges come from within us we have no say in what they are - because these challenges are made by the life around us.

They're made by the people we know, the things we need, the things we know, the people we love, the people we need, the things we love and the ways all these things interact with each other and change and twist and turn.

We have no say in the matter; sometimes our lives will present us with a challenge. And we may try to hide from it, but as long as we live the lives we do the challenges will remain.

And that leaves one question: face it or run away from it. And if the time to decide comes and you run from it or deny it then your life's been wasted on you.

But if you decide to take it on, then you've got to be ready to challenge your life back - before it overruns you and leaves you with the things you least desire.

Or worse: without the things you most desire.

Beneath the sea; seashells. Above the land; the shell of a world.

So many listen to their sense; yet so many are senseless.

The world's become a place where almost everyone relies on nothing but their senses. People's minds have become so fixated upon the physical world that they have contracted its disease; limits. Virtually nobody can think in any form of depth anymore.

Barely anyone thinks of consequences, and self-discipline (NOT self-limitation, real self discipline as in having proper control of oneself) is a long-dead concept. Even those who are meant to teach "discipline" have no idea what they're talking about. Their minds too(for the most part) have been trapped in little boxes. They mistake discipline for "following rules". How many times have I wanted to just blurt out at them "It was NOT a lack of self-discipline, I full-heartedly and willingly broke the rules and did so while in complete control of myself." But they wouldn't understand. Even if they could, their insistence on themselves getting their way- of them not being corrected whilst correcting-wouldn't allow them to understand.

And even when we look upon the world we don't look in depth. How many people do you see everyday? How many do you speak to? Have you ever realised that all those people have a past like you do; that they too have their lives and interests which might potentially be yours too? And the people who anger you - they have places in other people's lives too, places which might be much more important to the ones they have in yours.

No we don't think. We are like grains of sand, all of them similair unless you look at them in great detail- and all of them shift with the wind and rest in the calm unless they're big enough to hold their ground.

But thankfully, some people (although rare) can truly sense the world, in all its depth.