Lately I have been fairly introspective. I don’t know what is causing it really, but it’s caused me to reanalyze the way I think about things. During this rethink I have discovered something that should have been apparent far before now. I have been in disgust with humanity for the past year. It is a deep disgust that seeps into everything I do and the way I act. It has caused me to be bitter and cynical. I just kept thinking about the ignorance all around me and how people could possibly survive like that. I was letting other people’s actions and choices affect my mood and basically my day. That sentence is where the discovery was made. “I was letting…” I always try to maintain control over my life. That is the one thing no one else can control no matter how very much they might want to…unless you let them. You see the breakthrough was that every single person has control over his or her own life. We may not like the consequences given but we can certainly control which way the choice will go. People are very wrapped up in being the victims of today’s society. I will not be happy until X happens. I can’t because X won’t let me. None of that is true. The old adage, “Only you can make you happy” is more true than anything I can tell you. The only way someone can make you happy or unhappy or anything else for that matter is if you allow them. You have the power to not let even one individual affect you. I don’t think people like having that power solely because it holds themselves accountable. It’s always easier to blame something else. I was so wrapped up in how ignorant everyone else that I allowed them the power to make me feel awful. That is over, from now on I am going to use that power. If I allow them to affect me than it is entirely my fault. This is just a small subset of the fact that everyone has a choice. Fate is complete garbage and a fallacy designed by weak minds. Every possible thing you do is a choice you decide. The one exception I can think of is death. If someone else decisions end up killing you, for example, getting shot by a criminal, nuclear holocaust, etc. There is really not much you can do about that, but for everything else, it’s all on you. You ALWAY have a choice, and the consequences might be tough, but it’s there. Not one individual on the planet can take it away. And I mean no one. If someone has a gun to your head and tells you to do something, you can always choose to get shot. The consequence would suck, but the decision is yours. I can see how some of this article might offend and be construed as egotistical. I apologize for none of it. It’s absolutely true and it’s your choice whether you believe it or not.
Category: Philosophy
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Immaturity throughout the ages.
As I stumble through life I find myself wondering if people ever truly mature? I realize it more and more as I age. You think that instinctively that if a person is older that they should indeed be more mature, but this is not the case. I can say that when situations get tough I see more people regress to petty childishness than actually own up and try to fix the problem. It begs the question, how many people like that are there in high-powered positions? Government offices, or even something as important as the American presidency. I honestly think there is something like a light bulb that goes off or a switch that gets flipped for people to gain a sense of maturity, but sadly many people never have such a revelation and circuits are left wide open. Above all, it is insanely maddening. It makes me want to interact with people less and less as time goes on.
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Never again.
This past weekend I had the amazing opportunity to hear a recount from an actual hibakushya or atomic bomb survivor. Sachiko Masuoka was only 18 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It was such a weird way in how she told her story. She didn’t show much emotion or anything. There was no tears or being choked up. I can’t say, but I speculate when something like that happens coupled with the amount of time that has passed between then and now you kind of just block it out. You can’t possibly go on unless you deal with it and I feel she dealt with it long ago. It was just horrific some of the stuff she told. It’s something you imagine seeing in a movie, but can’t possible comprehend it happening in real life. I am still in awe of how a nation, a group of humans, could possibly make a decision like that, and not just once, but twice. You can spout wartime jargon at me until you are blue in the face, but the truth is there is no justification for using such a weapon. None. It is such an important issue and it’s almost never talked about. Even in our history books all we see is a 1 page blurb about it. How can you skip over something so very significant? It’s so SO very pertinent to what is going on today. The world is at a tipping point right now with nuclear weapons. If one, JUST ONE nation agrees that it is better to wipe another off the face of the earth instead of live, the human race is gone. The bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima were ridiculously powerful, but they were on the scale of kilotons or a number 1×10^3. The bombs we have now are measured in MEGATONS or 1×10^6. I know numbers are not everyone’s best way of representing something, but just thing about it. 2^3 = 8 and 2^6 = 64 that’s 8 times more. That’s just using 2 since it’s an exponent is can’t be represented linearly without logging the bases. I’m getting off track with math. If you have ever seen pictures of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima just think of that times 8. It’s almost impossible to imagine the damage that did happened let alone times a factor of 8. The important thing take away from this is we must as a nation, as a world, erase nuclear weapons. Erase it from all nations. Destroy all of them. Immediately. I have never felt as much shame as I did this weekend. I can’t believe I am a citizen of a nation that is capable of such absolute destruction. It makes me sick to think that a collection of people could OK that. I am going to include a collection of art I have found around the internet from hibakushya. I think that drawings and paintings more than any other medium can convey the feeling of this event. Pictures are just caps of real life. Drawings and paintings contain emotions and feelings that photography is incapable of capturing. Tears actually came to my eyes when looking at some of these. Please take them time to examine them and to look into the entire event. It’s part of human history and it’s something that needs to be prevented from happening again. I am leaving names and titles of the pieces off so you can get what you will from it without external influence.
