Public Transportation = Freedom

In the American culture (and many others, but more noticeably in the American) there is an association with the ability to drive a private vehicle (mostly being a car or a motorcycle) and the feeling of freedom. In the U.S. this can be very true, but it is precisely because of the lack of public transportation available in the country with only a few exceptions (being the very large cities such as New York and Chicago where public transportation is necessary because of the density of the city). However, with a well developed public transportation system it is quite the opposite.

In the U.S. the city layout is designed for commodity (while in countries where there is a longer history cities grew organically and chaotically), and therefore tend to be divided into residential areas and business areas (while in other countries they are mixed). Apartments are also lacking in the U.S. and are often frowned upon by many (even though it is the most efficient form of housing to conserve surface area). This means that there is now a larger distance between you and the closest grocery store in the U.S. due to the fact that it is in another neighborhood and the lack of density from compact residency structures. Because of these long distances and lack of public transportation the only way to get from point A to point B is to take a form of private transportation, therefore its connection to freedom. Many adolescents rely on their parents to get from one place to another until they are 16 and can get their driver’s license. However, this is not to say that public transportation would not provide the same freedom, or even more.

In countries such as Spain where there is a decent public transportation system available people of all ages have the ability to move quickly to any location in the city (and many towns) for a small price and without having to worry about insurance, gas prices, or parking. This means that youths (who cannot drive because they are not old enough) and the elderly (who cannot drive because of many debilitations that happen as one ages) can use the public transportation and be independent instead of dependent, and although it is true that you would be dependent on the state, the reliance on the state would be much more stable and much more affordable. People who cannot afford a car can still get to their job without taking out a loan for a new car that they might not be able to pay off. This also means that people have to walk/bike from the stops to their destination which helps in multiple aspects: health (the more they walk the less obesity), business (when people walk they are calmer and more willing to stop by any business they see that they find interesting), and psychological health (people would meet each other on the streets and be able to socialize, something that is good for us psychologically).

If taken with the right mindset, public transportation can also relieve stress. When one takes their car somewhere they need to pay attention to the road causing a bit of stress, but not only that, but if you need to be somewhere on time you feel relieved that you have no control over what time you get somewhere on public transportation, and if you get there late it is not your fault. This stress reliever is very useful in a society where people are constantly stressed to have a pause/break between activities to stop and reflect, read a book, listen to music, anything as long as you are calm doing it.

However, creating this sort of infrastructure is expensive, and even more so in a country with a city structure such as that of the U.S. which are more spread out. However, it must also be noted that the U.S. also has a lot more money than most countries, and can afford such a form of public transportation. So the more public transportation you have the more freedom you will have. Yet it must also be said that countries such as the U.S. will have no choice but to move towards public transportation because of population density. As population grows so will density and the need for public transportation (since not everyone in a large city can drive a car, it would cause too much traffic), and there will be no choice but to implement more and more public transportation and little by little getting rid of the private vehicles.

Dear Americans: Vote Blank!

In the U.S. there is an ever growing lack of voter participation in elections, which has driven many Americans to worry and fund campaigns to motivate people to vote on election days by saying things such as “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain” or “If you don’t vote, it means that you don’t care”. Apart from the fact that this is far from the truth, there is one reason I can see to vote, which is to make clear that you are in favor of democracy and the right to vote. However, how does one do this without helping the same parties as always? without giving your vote to a lesser evil once again? Many people feel discouraged to vote for that reason, they are discontent with both major parties and do not with to vote for a lesser evil.

A simple way to protest the unfair electoral system that exists is to do something that in Europe has been common for a while now, which is to vote blank. This simply implies turning in an empty valet. You have proven that you care by going and voting, but you have voted for nobody, therefore stressing that you disagree with the parties presented and wish for a change.

Of course, the media will not notice people voting blank unless there is a large number who do so, but considering there were only 58.2% of Americans present in the previous election, imagine if at least 20% of those that did not participate voted blank instead. This would catch the eye of many and perhaps change the discourse of the political debate to the electoral process that could possibly result in a change for the better.

So I would like to ask that in 2016 and all other elections in which you feel like you are not completely represented by the parties on the valet that you vote blank.

Debt is Enslavement

Slavery in the modern world (for the most part) is illegal and highly frowned upon, as it drastically limits the rights of the individuals. However, leaving slavery behind also created a gap in productivity, a workforce that previously could be paid simply by the initial purchase and sustained with a minimum of food, water, and shelter, now requires a salary for a more decent lifestyle. So the economy required another way to produce so much in the long term (such as the slaves did), and with this we ended up with the most common form of slavery in our day (especially in the U.S. where it is almost impossible to live decently without it), debt.

The issue is not so much small debts, such as when you use a credit card to buy your groceries at the store, but rather larger debts, such as a house and car mortgage, and most of all student loans (the student loans being the most sinister for a reason that will be explained later). These are large debts that take many years for normal people to pay off (especially in a society where consumption is promoted, making it harder for the average person to budget their salary in the most efficient manner) and create a relation between the person and the bank similar to that of an indentured servant. It is even more akin to slavery when the person is allowed to only pay the interests, damning themselves to a lifetime of debt with the bank.

Although it is true that the exploitation is not the same, it does exist. Where before slavery was typically limited to a certain peoples (usually based on race) and were forced to do physical work for the direct benefit of the slave’s owner (whether that work be field work or nannying their children, such as could be seen in Ancient Rome), in this case the slavery is not restricted by population, but rather by income, and the lower the income, the worse the consequences of this debt. When you are indebted your options are limited, you need to earn enough to pay living expenses and at the very least the interests on your loan, while if you were not indebted your job options are not restricted by a necessity to pay of a large loan lingering over you.

The worst part of this slavery is not only that you are stressed and that your options are limited, but the consequences for not paying the bill. If you fail to pay the mortgage on your house they take it away from you along with everything else you have in order to pay off what you owed. However, this is not the case of student loans, which is why in the U.S. they are the most sinister of all the debts. As many U.S. university students will know, university in the U.S. is extremely expensive, the the point that in many cases people view no other option but to join the military which will pay it off for them (another exploitation that begs for its own analysis another day), a tuition that (with scholarships) can cost $20,000 a year (not including room & board, cafeteria, or textbooks) just for a four year major (the prices go up for masters, PHDs, and doctorates). This is a lot of money that the banks have invested in young people with little to no work experience in the real world and who are in a stage and environment where they will most likely spend more on their credit cards (as many do because the banks promote it, giving students a free pizza if they get a credit card with the bank). But what makes this debt the most terrifying (at least in the U.S.) is the fact that you cannot get rid of it. If you can’t pay your house mortgage they will take away your house, but they will also take away your debt, but in the case of student loans they cannot take away your education, meaning that even if you declare bankruptcy you are stuck you your student loan until you pay it off, or until you die.

These debts are tools to impoverish the middle class and keep the working class where they are while the rich (those who can pay off these debts much faster than everyone else) are able to keep more of their income and (once they have payed of their loans) maintain a much larger income while the lower classes continue their suffering and enslavement to the banks.

New Articles

I am currently working on five new articles to publish on the blog. I will be publishing the first this Friday and another next Friday. The final three may take longer, so I have not decided yet when I will post them, but they are all currently in progress.

The Future in Open-Source

This is not a revelation at this point in time, especially to those who have been following the progress of open-source, or have been studying its economic advantages to proprietary software. Our societies have been moving towards open-source for a long time now, to the point where it is not a matter of opinion, it is simply a fact.

Out of all the open-source code there is out there, the one that is expanding the most is Linux, a free as in freedom kernel, which is being used on multiple OS’s in all areas of computing. The most common of which are Ubuntu, Red Hat, Cent OS, and Debian. All these have their specific areas in the economy. Ubuntu does a great job at providing an alternative to Windows and Apple on PC’s, while Debian is mainly used as either a PC OS for programmers, or a server OS, seeing that the Debian community has a version of Debian for servers. Red Hat and Cent OS are often used for super-computers and clusters. Finally, the newest member to the big league Linux OS’s is Android, which has dominated the mobile and tablet markets.

Again, this is not a matter of opinion, these are facts. In the following link, you can see how Android is dominating the mobile market. If you look at the following Wikipedia article (yes, I know Wikipedia isn’t meant to be a valid source, but you can look up the information yourself and you’ll find about the same thing), it shows how Linux has dominated the mobile market, the server market, it’s rising in the tablet market, and it has taken over the supercomputer market (the supercomputer market is no surprise though).

However, open-source is also dominating the gaming mark. The new PlayStation 4 that has recently come out is using FreeBSD underneath as an OS. Recently Steam (a game distribution platform owned by the Valve corporation) is creating their new SteamOS which is based on Debian GNU/Linux, therefore, it must be open-source by law.

However, the reason why Linux and open-source are becoming such an important part of the technological world, is because they allow flexibility and stability. Flexibility because it allows, not only companies and governments, but also every day people, to change the source-code to their own needs, apart from knowing exactly what is in there. This is why the U.S. military uses Linux (specifically Red Hat, which is U.S. owned), because they can modify it and change it to their needs, and know exactly what is in there. So the flexibility makes it very attractive to companies, governments, and individuals alike. And Stability because open-source will always be open-source (especially if it is under a GNU Public License). Even if Linus Torvalds (the creator of the Linux kernel) decided to close the source-code to his kernel, all the people that previously worked on the Linux kernel would then just use the previous source-code and create a new kernel based on Linux, and there will always be an open-source kernel, and there will always be an open-source OS. And because it is open-source, for the most part it is also free. Therefore, companies, governments, organizations, communities, and individuals alike, have a guarantee for life that they will always have a free, and free as in freedom OS.

How Entities Control Our Lives

We many times like to think that even if we are been spied on, and we have a government which is letting major corporations getting away with poisoning our food and water, that we are still free as individuals, and that we individuals do not willingly give in to our own incarceration. However, the truth is that we do, and not only that, but we think it makes us special, we think it makes us more important.

Most will not be wondering what I am talking about, but the problem is, we see incarceration and a dystopian society in a way similar to George Orwell’s book 1984 where there was a totalitarian government that controlled every aspect of our lives, and we hated it. However, what if instead of a government, the ones that are truly controlling our lives are multinational corporations, who play puppet theater with our government, and us.

Now, to what this has to do with you as a consumer, it has everything to do with you. Corporations have found ways to turn every part of our lives into a transaction, a business, something where they can make a profit. The most obvious example is the gym (in the U.S. cultural sense of the term, which is more like a club where people go to do exercise), where people take their cars to go to the gym to be there for an exact amount of time doing exercise that they could have done just walking around.

However, this applies to much more than just people wanting to do exercise. You have dating websites, which are taking an extremely personal part of your life and making it a business. They are taking something that should be personal between two people, a decision that they make by themselves out previous knowledge of each other, and turning relationships into a market where they can make a profit.

Then, there is also the fact that nowadays people are hiring mentors for their children. The process of which is basically that you give one of these associations a request, and they give you a well rounded person to mentor your child. Something that should be done by either the parents, or someone that the family, and most of all the child, actually knows.

Then, there are these friend associations which are where they designate your child a friend to play with, that is considered socially acceptable. Which means they are taking you friendships and turning them into a business as well.

However, what do these have to do with your personal freedom? The fact is that these are all central parts of ones life where associations and businesses are giving you and your family people to socialize with that are specifically socially acceptable, and therefore act like the majority of people. Where these organizations can make sure you never encounter other people who are interested (as I would suppose the readers of this blog are) in alternative ways of living, in going against the norm, in rebelling against the current system. These people can stop you from meeting anyone else like you, and therefore turn you into a mindless zombie that can only talk about yesterdays football match, and how drunk your going to get this Friday, and if you’re a girl, who is going out with who, and what clothes you plan on buying this weekend.

But not only that, but then we end up with a society where everyone is booked from dawn to dusk (and later) with activities. I know kids who from 7:30 to 14:00 they are at school, then they have after school activities that last until 17:00, then they go to work until 22:00, and finally come home to eat some crap food and do homework while watching the latest TV show. And as I said in my post on Free-Time, most of these kids don’t even need these jobs, they just want to be able to consume more and more. But then, on weekends, they go shopping, they have more activities, they go to the gym, etc. People have their whole life on an agenda, and the only way to organize a time to meet with these people is to organize it weeks in advance.

So be careful what you do in your spare time, and how many activities you sign up for (and more importantly, what activities you sign up for). And always try to have at least an hour of free-time a day where you can sit down and just think about things. Think whether you really need to be doing something, or even more importantly, whether you really want to at all. Because life is short, and if you’re going to spend it by letting it go by so you can live a life as the majority, it’s not a life worth spending. Live your life, don’t waste time on these useless activities that you don’t need.

La Diferencia Entre Trabajo Y Persona

“Todos como yo: usurpando un honor que no merecíamos con un oficio que no sabíamos hacer. Algunos persiguen sólo el poder, pero la mayoría busca todavía menos: el empleo.”

– Señor Presidente, del libro Buen Viaje, Señor Presidente de Gabriel García Márquez.

Esta cita de Gabriel García Márquez de su cuento “Buen Viaje, Señor Presidente” habla sobre un tema que nos olvidamos siempre. Cuando pensamos en nuestros políticos, pensamos en ellos como personas; o mejor dicho, no distinguimos entre el político como persona, y el polítoco como cargo político. Pensamos que aplicarían los mismos valores que aplican en su vida diaria que aplican en su oficio. Y por tanto, si un político have algo malo pensamos que es porque ese tipo es mala persona.

Como bien indica el Señor Presidente del cuento en esta cita, hay políticos como eso, gente a quienes solo les importa el poder. Pero, también es verdad que la amplia mayoría de los políticos no son así, y por lo tanto, haran una cosa en el trabajo, y otra en su vida cotidiana. No son los políticos como persona que están mal, es el oficio, y harán cualquier cosa en su oficio para ganar las siguientes elecciones.

La consequencia de esto es que la gente normal (osea, la mayoría de nosotros en cualquier país) lo vé de una manera tan simplísta, que cambiamos los políticos año tras año sin darnos cuenta que lo que falla es el oficio, no uno, sino todos, el sistema entero. Y hasta que no se cambia el problema de fondo, no se solucionará nada.

Stress

Ever since I have gotten back to the United States I’ve been noticing things that I didn’t see before, aspects of the American culture that I had always seen as normal and unquestionable until I returned from living in Spain. But one of the things that stood out to me is that here people actively look for stress. Even though it sounds crazy, people do it here, and it makes my life stressful as well.

Now, if you’re living here, and you most likely will not know what I’m talking about, because it’s what you’ve seen all your life. As I said, I never noticed until I came back here from the calmer life there is in Spain. However, I suppose that I should probably set examples.

One of the biggest things is that everyone needs to be in some sort of activity, whether it be yoga, a martial arts class, the gym, or some after-school club or sport. I know kids who have a job during the school year, and are also in school sports (mind you, here they take school sports rather seriously, with a few hours every day for practice, and a few matches every week). People here are stressed to the point that they put their need for stress over their own physical health. To give you an example, I have a friend who works until 10:00 PM and has to be at school at 8:30 AM the following morning, and this friend isn’t working to support himself, this friend is working for his own unnecessary consumption. Yet, he sees this as completely normal, because sadly, it is.

But even ignoring his case, there are many people who (as I said before) join several different groups/clubs/activities, and end up with no time on their hands to do something as simple as cook dinner. I can’t exactly tell you why they do it here, but I often times see that it somehow makes them feel important, the fact that they’re always busy. I, on the other hand, find it extremely unnecessary.

However, where the factor of stress matters most is among the working class, because those are the people that have stress, not because they make it, but because they need to work three jobs and taking night shifts. So what happens is that these people get stress from all the work they’re doing, and they have to go to the doctor/psychiatrist to talk about it. Apart from having to pay the psychiatrist, the psychiatrist will likely also prescribe them with some “happy pills” which they need to pay. Now you end up with a worker who needs to work even more just to pay for his pills and psychiatric treatment. Meanwhile, the big problem isn’t being solved, the fact that s/he’s still in the ghetto, which is causing all this stress.

Now, people will often misunderstand what I mean here and think I believe that psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies are all out to get you. That’s not exactly true. It’s not that they’re out to get you, it’s that that’s their job. People will do one thing normally in life, and another in their job life. A policeman might have sympathies for protesters in his/her daily life, but is obligated to arrest them in their job life.

Finally, one thing that most people don’t understand is the concept of “going with the flow”. The flow doesn’t always mean the majority, it means the path that comes easier, the path that is easier to take. A life without stress is an easy one to take, but most people don’t like it because it’s not the norm (again, I am referring to the U.S.).

All in all, stress in the U.S. is something fairly common, and something that people look for to be within the norm of people that have a job in high school, or who participate in a school sport, or who go to yoga classes or the gym. People will often do anything to be within the norm. But you have the ability to change yourself, regardless of what other people think. I will say, it’s not easy being the weird guy at times, but it’s less stressful than having to worry about every little thing you do to see if you are within the norm.

Western Culture

I wrote an essay for my Social Studies class on Google Drive, and I thought it would be a good idea to share on my blog. Click here to read the document, and you can ask me questions or reply to it here on my blog.

Thanks!

Free-Time

On my previous post I said “free-time”, and I might have mentioned it before, but I don’t know if what I call “free-time” is the same thing you call “free-time”. The reason why I’m bringing this up is because the concept of “free-time” has been changing over the years, and not in a good way.

Most people today, especially in our modern societies, think of free-time as an organized time where you do stuff you like hanging out with friends, going shopping, playing the guitar, writing a story, scheduled activities, etc. (whatever you like to do). However, this is not exactly “free-time”, note how I said organized, that’s going to be important.

For me, free-time is an unscheduled time where you just happen to have nothing happening. Then, once you get to this free-time, you decide to do something, whether it be writing, playing the guitar, meeting with friends, etc. The main difference between this and what I said before is that what people usually do is that they have an agenda, and when they actually have free-time, they fill it up with something, such as classes, activities, scheduling to hang out with a friend, etc. The thing that does not make this free-time is that it is planned, free-time by definition means that there is nothing planned. Therefore, when you plan to hang out with a friend, it is not free-time. Free-time is when you have time to improvise what you’re  going to do.

Now, what problems has this caused. The scheduling of everything in every-day life has caused an extreme amount of stress in peoples lives, because everyone is so concerned about doing things according to the schedule, and they don’t take the time to sit down and relax. This is why children don’t know what to do these days when they’re not on the computer, doing scheduled activities, or at school. It’s because they are used to being told what to do, not being able to decide for themselves, it’s because they have an agenda they have to follow. That’s why the television is such a problem, why it consumes so much of the average person’s daily life. I solved this problem by just not watching television, period.

Now, we may think that people were always so busy as we are (with scheduled “free-time” and such), but our definition of free-time, being a scheduled time to do things we want, is actually fairly recent. Not only that, but we have had less and less free time as we advance in civilization. People 200 years ago had more free-time than we do now, and 200 years before that the same. All the way back to the agricultural revolution, which was when we began to reduce our free-time. Before then, people had a lot of free-time, to the point that they only had to go gathering food for about 3 hours a day. Hunting took longer, but the meat lasts way longer, and it’s what everyone in the tribe loved the most. So they didn’t have to go hunting every day.

All in all, we have been losing our free-time because we schedule everything. Whenever we have free-time we fill it up with something. So the best way to avoid the stress is to have a life with more time where you don’t have anything planned, where you are essentially bored. Then, when you are bored, find something to do that does not involve the television or the computer or anything that is just passive consumption. Learn to play an instrument, start to write a novel, learn to dance, do something that isn’t just sitting and not doing anything. However, don’t schedule what you’ll do in this time, just do it when the time comes.

Software Wars

As you all know, I am a very big fan of the open-source movement, of how software and hardware should be open to the public so anyone can fix things, improve things, or adapt it to their needs. Here is a video I came across that talks about the “war” between open-source software, and proprietary software:

The Deterioration of Education

These days, education has lost much of it’s meaning. As capitalism has been expanding, schools have been focusing more on the entertainment of the students than expanding their knowledge. I will give the example of the U.S. since that is where I am currently studying, but this does not mean that it doesn’t happen elsewhere in the world, and if it’s not there, it will be. Here in the U.S. there are a few new philosophies of teaching that are going around, one of them is that teachers try to make the subject “fun” by adding useless things like videos, raps, or The Simpsons and using them as teaching methods.

The reasons people give for this kind of education is that they say one of two things: “everyone learns differently” or “we want children to love learning”. Now, here are my arguments for these. First of all, people do not learn chemistry through a Simpsons video, that is absurd. I did a little experiment with my brother, I made him watch one of these “Bill Nye The Science Guy” videos and after I asked him questions. He barely remembered things then, and when I asked him the same question a few months later, he couldn’t answer a single one. Meanwhile, try the same experiment with a book, and you’ll see that people will remember much more about the book than the documentary; especially if the documentary was made to entertain the students, not teach them.

The next thing about the “everyone learns differently” is that it gives even more reason to show you other ways to learn. The main method of learning they should teach in schools is by reading and writing, because those are vital parts of out society. For instance, if your a programmer and someone wants you to fix a bug, and they send you a word document on how to fix it; if you say “Could you put it into a rap for me? I can’t understand it if it’s not in a rap”, they will at first think you are joking, and if you aren’t, you will be fired on the spot.

Raps are good for nothing when it comes to education, and videos are only good for more physical things, like chemistry labs. However, this does not mean humor videos either, only serious videos about things like replacing bike parts or computer parts or something like that.

Now, as for the “we want children to love learning”, if you want children to “love learning”, you’re doing it the wrong way. You don’t teach someone how to play a sport by changing the rules of the sport, you make the child learn and adapt to the rules of the sport. Same in education, you don’t change education to make it fun, you make the kids think that education is fun, that learning is fun.

To make children love learning, you need to start early, and they need to be surrounded by an environment where learning is the most important thing. However, what people (especially parents) don’t like about this is that they have to make an effort to raise their child well; and for those who already have children, it means that they haven’t done their job as a parent. I know that if you’re a parent with a kid that doesn’t like learning I have basically insulted you by saying this, however, the best thing you can do in this case is to help your grandchildren.

Teacher’s also don’t like the idea that the learning aspect mostly happens at home, because most teachers like to think that they are a vital part of their students’ lives. Truth is, the teachers are as important as the child’s distant cousin that they barely see. This is not to say that teachers have not influence on the child or that they are not important, but don’t think that teachers are the key to everything in a child’s life.

The reason we like to think that teachers are the most important thing is because of Hollywood, which constantly makes movies of how a teacher changes a class full of delinquents to a hard studying class. Truth is, this never happens, and even if you ask the people that were actually involved in this event (since a lot of those movies will say “based on a true story”), you will see that they say that it wasn’t like that at all, that the teacher didn’t change the whole class, just the lives of a few people.

The best example would be this: you go to school with a group of other people, you are in the same classes and same teachers with all these people throughout high school. Why is it that you all end up very different, and some more successful than others? The reason is because the teacher isn’t the key.

So, in general, the key to how the child ends up is at home. So to make sure that the child grows up to be an educated woman/man, you would have to make sure that at home he is taught that education is important.

Now, when I say that you have to teach them that education is important, I don’t mean that you have to be persistent about their grades, only 100% on everything. What I mean is that at home, instead of watching CSI: Miami or the latest season of Supernatural, you should watch a serious documentary about science, or math, or something like that. Or instead of playing games on a computer, find a way to teach them how to program one (you could enroll them in a class, which I would be happy to help you find one, because I personally have a hard time finding good computer programming classes).

Now, this is not to say that this is all they should do, I am the first one who would tell you that the most important thing for a child is to have some free-time (which gives me an idea for my next post, because free-time doesn’t mean the same thing everywhere), and socialization with friends and family (by family I mean extended family) every day (I don’t mean you have to see your grandmother every day, I mean you have to socialize every day). All I’m saying is that when it comes to teaching you child, you should show them to learn, instead of passively consuming what others have already done. You must teach your child to be productive, not just a consumer.

In conclusion, I think that schools are going to wrong way trying to educate children, that they are wasting time with things that don’t matter. We can’t do anything about this to help others, all we can do is to help the people we know, and hope for the best.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it,

Gun Control

Recently there has been a shooting in a school in Connecticut, and we are again debating about guns and gun control here in the US. Well, before I get to the part where I tell you my opinion and reasons, let’s go through why people want guns here in the US.

First of all, people will say that we need guns to defend ourselves against whoever else might have a gun. Then, conservatives especially will say, that we need guns to defend ourselves against the government. Well, what I can say here is that we’re fucked either way. If you have a gun, and someone wants to rob you, if you take it out they will be scared and most likely prone to shoot you. If the government decides to create some fascist Fourth Reich, then we’re fucked because there’s not enough community here in the US for people to communicate and create a resistance group. There is no one man revolution, a revolution needs to be carried out by a large mass of people.

Another reason why people say we need guns is to defend ourselves against the “terrorists”. Well, let me just say that the only reason why the “terrorists” want to kill people here in the US is because we go over there with guns and demand cheap oil from them, when it is fully their right to sell their oil at whatever price they want. So I’m sure that they would be happier if there were less guns around.

So my opinion (if you haven’t already guessed) is that of a pacifist, get rid of the guns. It’s simple, get rid of all the guns, even military guns, and there will be no reason for people to die of gunfire. Now, I know that if there are no guns than people will find something else, like knifes. However, knifes aren’t as efficient at killing people as guns are, otherwise we would use knifes as a primary weapon in the military. But if you remove guns it will solve the majority of our problems with killings.

If you think about it, the majority of killing come from wars, and gun killings. To reduce war, you need to get rid of these ideas of patriotism, nationalism, and countries in general, and instead, let people live with what they need and very little more, and let people care for one another. Once that is done, if we remove guns, there will be little to no violence. We will not need to defend ourselves from a government, we will not need to defend ourselves from a robber, we will not need to defend ourselves from other countries because there are none.

But again, the first step is to remove nationalism, patriotism, and countries and to unite as the human race.

John Lennon

It has been 32 years since the death of John Lennon, a former Beatles member who died on this day in front of his hotel in New York City by a fanatic.

John Lennon dreamed of a world without war, hunger, violence, possessions, greed, corruption, or hate. However, so far we have not made any progress to achieving this, and it’s about time we do.

I have spent the day listening to Beatles and John Lennon music, remembering the messages he sent of a better world. He believed we could make it, we shouldn’t let him down.

Here’s his song “Imagine” for us all to enjoy, as we too dream of a better world as he did.

Mentality

One of the mistakes we have in our societies is that we still think of things in a national and static way. For instance, when you ask people about whether a glass is half empty or half full, they will either say “half empty”, “half full”, or “both”. Now, if you viewed things from a dynamic point of view you would say “Well, it depends, are you adding water to the glass, or are you taking it out?”. Things are dynamic and changing.

Another real life example, when people talk about debt they usually say a number of how high it is (i.e. 3 trillion), but the correct way to put it would be to say if it has been increasing or decreasing, and at what rate. Otherwise the data is meaningless and you are wasting your time.

The other things about how we view things nationally, is that we always see things in the old mentality, as if economies and the environment were still more local. This would not have been such a problem some hundred years ago, but by now capitalism and the economy have gone global. Now, pretty much everything affects the rest of the world.

This is also meant for those who are politically to the left. A lot of leftists think that the U.S. is responsible for everything, and that’s not true. Now, I am not denying that the U.S. is the belly of the beast, the heart of capitalism, but we do need to change that mentality, because the real people to blame are the social and economic elite in every country. They are the ones responsible, not only one country.

The world has gone global, and we need to start thinking as they do if we want to fully understand how they are controlling and manipulating us.

Finally, the most important thing to do is to think of things like a system. For many years, we have thought of things with Newtons philosophy, that everything is but a piece in a machine, and if every piece is placed correctly, the machine will run smoothly. The problem with this is that too many things are connected these days that it has turned from being a machine to being a system. We need to start thinking of social studies in a biological way, as if it were an ecosystem. Because that’s what it truly is, everything is interconnected in so many ways that it is too complex to be like a piece of clockwork, instead it is a system with many connections, like the internet.

We are entering into a new era where this is the mentality that will be needed to fully understand why and how things work. Once we see that, we will be prepared for the future; once we see that, we will be ready to take advantage of it and perhaps make a better future for the human race and the other being that live here with us.

Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness

Last night I was watching a few videos by Alain de Botton, who I believe wrote a book in which these videos are based on. These videos are about six philosophers and their ideas on how to achieve happiness. The first one is Socrates on self-confidence, where Alain talks about Socrates and his ideas. Socrates thought first of all that everyone can be a philosopher, like I said in my previous post. He also said that once you have your own opinion to know when to stick by it.

Here is the video about Socrates, I will post the links with their titles below so you can watch them later, and so it doesn’t take up too much space or memory.

 

Here are the links:

Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness – Socrates on Self-Confidence

Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness – Epicurus On Happiness

Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness – Seneca On Anger

Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness – Montaigne On Self-Esteem

Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness – Schopenhauer On Love

Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness – Nietzsche On Hardships

Philosophy

Before we get to the main subject, we first need to know what a philosophy is. Most people think that a philosophy is a very complex thing that’s difficult to understand, something so unworldly, strange, and complex as the meaning of life. Well, a philosophy is nothing but an idea, a point of view, you don’t need to study philosophy in college to be a philosopher, do you think Diogenes, Epicurus or Socrates went to a special school to study how to be a philosopher? no, they didn’t. When ever you think about a subject or you reflect upon something or you question an idea and apply logic to it, that is exactly what a philosopher does. Now, knowing this, we can move on to how this is connected with politics.

Pretty much every democracy in the world is a two party system (where only two parties really rule): in Spain it’s PP (Partido Popular) and PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español), in the U.S. it’s Democrats and Republicans, etc. and you will notice that most people will identify themselves with one or the other, nothing else (unless there are other parties that still have some influence, like in Spain IU [Izquierda Unida]). In this you can already see a lack of diversity in opinions, how most people will stick to the norm which is center-left or center-right. Now, the problem isn’t this, it’s that people will define what they believe by their philosophy, they will say “I’m liberal, therefore I need to believe this and vote this.” The problem with this is that then you ask for their opinion in a not so political conversation and they might say different. The problem is that instead of deciding what you believe in on each subject and then saying which popular political ideology you are closest to, people will choose a political ideology and believe whatever that political ideology says you must believe in.

So now you might ask what you should do. Well, what you should be doing is instead of choosing sides on something as big as what political philosophy you have, choose on smaller things. For instance, in the U.S. we are having referendums (or had depending on when you are reading this) on whether or not we should have voter ID’s to stop voter fraud (for those of you that live in the rest of the world, yes, I know that you solved it decades ago, but most people here don’t like to learn from abroad). Now, at first, if you never really thought about the subject, if you were a democrat you would vote no, and if you were a republican you would vote yes. However, what you should do is to think, how does this affect my community, after all, we are trying to stop voting fraud in the country; and after thinking about it, you might want to vote the same thing, or the opposite, or something else entirely. For instance, my opinion on the voter ID is that we should have a voter ID in the U.S., but the government should also do a census to see who is going to vote and assign them a place to vote; when the voter goes to his/her assigned place to vote, there will be a list so that the people at the voting booths (who are chosen at random) will check you off the list of people who are supposed to vote based off you ID.

So, as you can see, you don’t need to base what you believe in on an individual subject, off of an already existing ideology. Now, as to how this connects to philosophy, everyone has their own philosophy, you have your own. Now, does that mean we are all philosopher, no, only those that actually stop, think, and choose independently of which popular ideology they supposedly follow, are philosophers. But that does not change the fact that you have your own philosophy, you might not use it in reality, but you have it.

Moral is, think for yourself; even though your personality is made by your community, you are still an individual being who can think for itself, you still have power as an individual to make your own decisions. So instead of making decisions based on what your popular ideology is, make decisions based on what you think is right after thinking about it thoroughly. You are not limited to what the system gives you or wants you to believe, your mind is always free to think what it wants, you are always in control of your life and you beliefs. So next time you are going to vote on something or make a decision, stop and think for a minute before you do, you might find that even though your popular ideology says one thing, your personal logic says another.

Fuck the vote

Hello everyone, I am currently subscribed to the “The People’s Uprising” on Facebook, and they posted a video that I found explains pretty much exactly why it is useless to vote. Now, a little bit of my point of view on the video. I’m not sure if the person that made this video meant this when he posted it, but, when in the video he says that companies are meant to serve you, the way I see it is that only local companies are there to serve you, the rest are only there to take profit from you. A little reflection for you there. But enough of me, here’s the video (by the way, please watch the whole thing, if you watch only the first minute you don’t get the real message):

Stuff

Stuff – Nicolás Ortega

There are so many things that surround us
Artificial things made by exploited beings
People that did nothing to deserve such harsh treatment
While we all pay the people that keep them prisoner

We buy clothes and computers and drinks
Most of which we could do without
Making the wall around you taller as it closes you in
All while these workers have nothing but sweat and blood

Mother nature continues to crumble
As we suck wealth from her like a parasite
She loses her beauty as we kill her slowly
With our greedy souls and our minds bent profit

There’s no renewable energy
There will always be some material to extract
Whether is it’s gasoline, coal, or silicon
The only solution is to consume less

We continue to buy more and more things
Stuff that we want because other people have it
Stuff that we want to impress others
Stuff to fill up the gap in our hearts where there was once love

We buy to fill up this gap in our hearts
But the heart cannot be filled with material things
It is love that we need to fill this gap
Love not only of a partner, but of everyone around

House & Television

House & Television – Nicolás Ortega

Life is silent
Everyone lives in cells
Made by their own actions
And their own individualism

Everyone lives in fear
Fear of the guy next door
Nobody knows him
Nobody knows anyone

People are locked inside
Being brainwashed by screens
Watching as the world they live in
Slowly falls apart

People build their own walls
Walls that only a select few can climb
They try to isolate themselves
Making their world smaller and smaller

Finally, the wall is complete
You know only yourself
They try You start to fall into pieces
As you cease to exist