First Take On Poetry

City Life
Gloom and doom, gloom and doom.
Of what else bringeth the economic boom?
Nine to five;
live not to live, only to die.
How high away do you wish to fly?

Ego

What is ego?

Ego is what I would call our false self, the self which gives us a false sense of individual existence. I call it false because it is dependent on others to give us our sense of existence, our self. Because of this, the ego fears loneliness and the unknown, thus tries to dominate and control the external world(the other) as much as possible, to instill a sense of order around it, a sense of self where the individual would be comfortable in. The ego compulsively thinks in order to be assured of its future existence, rather than simply knowing itself and the present.

Manifestation of the ego happens at the time we were born. When we were born, we were born almost completely unaware of ourselves. We open our eyes for the first time and we see another's face. The first thing we are aware of is not of ourselves, but that of the other. This is how we grow, we become aware of others first, then through others, we become aware of ourselves. This awareness is a reflected awareness. When we were born, we become aware of our mother first. When she hugs and kisses us to show her love and appreciation for us, we feel good about ourselves, thus the birth of the ego. Through love and appreciation, we feel good, we feel valuable, we feel significance. The opposite happens to us when we feel nobody appreciates us, we feel sad, rejected and inferior. This too is the work of the ego. This is our false self because we do not know us, we only know what others think of us.

Living in society causes our ego to rapidly expand as we meet increasingly higher amounts of people as we grow. Everyone we meet contributes little by little to our ego. When we meet someone new we reflect on who they are and they reflect on who we are. People try to modify your ego to ensure you do not become a problem in society. They are not concerned about you, they are concerned about society. They are concerned that you should become an efficient and productive tool in society. They are trying to give you an ego that fits into society. They teach you morality to help your ego fit into society. If someone does not have certain moral values, then they are a menace to society. This is why they put people into prison, not because they have done anything wrong, but because they have egos which do not fit into society. They are troublemakers. They are misfits of society. One man kills somebody - he is labeled a murderer. The same man kills thousands in wartime - he is then labeled a hero. The society is not bothered by murder, but the murder should be committed for the society - then it is okay. Society is not bothered about morality. There is no morality. When someone speaks of morality, he says: "Murder is wrong.", but what he actually means is "I feel murder is wrong.". There are no absolute morals. When people speak of morality they are actually expressing their feelings about certain 'right' or 'wrong' actions.

Not only the society, other people can also create an ego that can be manipulated and controlled. Everyone needs a self, everyone is unaware of his self. When other people give him his false self and he is convinced that that is his self. A child comes home with his grades - if he came in first in his class, the family is happy, they praise him, offer him rewards, they hug and kiss him. They are strengthening his ego. If the same child comes home a failure, then nobody appreciates him, then the ego feels weak and shaken. Same applies to our interaction with people in everyday life, when we feel that by doing a certain thing or mixing with a certain group it makes us feel good about ourselves then we seek to make this the meaning of our lives, it becomes our 'identity'. And when we feel that others are a threat to this meaning of our lives, it is akin to threatening our survival itself. We band into camps of Us-Vs-Them or Self-Vs-Other and we begin to view them as a threat and hate them with all our hearts. We begin to stereotype and judge them('assessing the threat') every time we lay eyes upon them. Just as a person who has a phobia of spiders is afraid of them regardless of whether they are potentially life-threatening or not, we too tend to attribute properties of what we regard as a threat to everything else that shares the same behavioral characteristics. Through the ego other people are controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then do they appreciate you. You have to walk in a certain way; you have to laugh in a certain way; you have to follow certain manners,
a code. Only then will they appreciate you, and if it doesn't, you ego will be shaken. And when the ego is shaken, you don't know where you are, who you are. It is from others that we get an idea of who we are. This is why we like to own and divide things into mine and yours. When we are around things or people which are part of 'us', we feel more comfortable and at ease. That is why we fear loneliness - when we are alone there is nobody to watch us, to give us our identity, and we feel lost. Our ego is afraid of losing things which we are attached to, which are part of 'us', which has given us our 'identity'. Our ego is our false self, and that which is fake is plastic, artificial and dead. However, we are content with a plastic self. Why? Because with a dead self there are many conveniences. One which is dead never dies. It cannot - because it was never alive. The ego fears death, because it is never content, there is always something more it wants to do, something more that it wants to have, and there is! The ego can never be satisfied even if it has conquered the depths of the ocean, or the edge of the universe, because there is still one thing to master, the one place they never looked, the place so closest to us, the place that is within us, the place which holds our real self. Nobody can shape our real self. Our real self is nobody's business. We come with it. We were born with it.

Man is the ego. Without the ego, man would be either an animal or something that transcends man. More on the animal and the 'superman' next post...

Strength

Anger and fear are some of the basic negative emotions that we feel everyday. They are actually very closely related to each other. Fear is an emotion directed towards things that we perceive to be a threat to us that we want to eliminate, but it is usually out of our means to do so. Anger are emotions directed towards things that we perceive to be a threat but within our means to eliminate. Anger is a behavioral pattern designed to warn aggressors to stop their threatening behavior. These feelings are usually synonymous with hatred. There is only 1 thing in common here, that these emotions are only directed towards things which we view are a threat to us. Why do we feel they are a threat? It is because they make us feel weak, and we hate that, thus we show hostility and aggression towards those threats in order to appear strong, but the truth is this: Deep down inside is a extremely weak existence who uses appearances to cover up for their lack of strength.

There are many examples of these: People who go around picking fights with others, People who put on a brave front and seeks generally fearful experiences in order to portray their fearlessness to others, all these are forced fearlessness and false strength because the purpose of these actions are to express their strength to others to cover up for their own lack of weakness in themselves. People who seek to overcome their fears do so only because they fear in the first place; the same logic applies here as well: People who seek to portray a sense of strength in themselves only do so only because they are weak in the first place.

If you are truly unaffected by something, you are not obligated to act upon it. There is a difference between forcing yourself to not fear and not fearing. Take for example: You notice an ant, if you do not feel threatened by it, you will leave it alone, but if it crawls on your skin, then you feel threatened by it and attempt to kill it. In other words, if you are really strong, you do not feel that others are a threat because they are unworthy of your time and effort. This is how someone who is strong, powerful and fearless would act; this is the highest level of strength.

How Conscious Are You?

Anger, aggression, pride, grief, fear, hatred, apathy, lust, pleasure, these are examples of various emotions that we feel from time to time. Sometimes we might wonder why we feel such emotions, but usually we come to the conclusion that it is external factors that make us feel that way. However, contrary to popular belief, it is actually the workings of our own minds in reaction to those external factors. Sounds confusing? Well, first you must know that the mind consists of the conscious and the subconscious. Most of our behavior is controlled by our subconscious mind rather than our conscious mind. Most of our emotions are a result of the subconscious mind pulling the strings of the body. Emotions enhance our ability to evaluate our environment thus increasing our chances of survival. Without our conscious mind, we would be controlled completely by our subconscious mind; our genes or cells piloting us to their will, whatever their will is. Our conscious mind is what allows us free will. Life is no longer just simple fight or flight because of our consciousness. However, I can say with a great degree of confidence that, everyone safe for a handful of people do not actually use much of their consciousness. These people(myself included) allow themselves to be controlled by their emotions, giving in to workings of their subconsciousness. Because of that, they allow others(also controlled by their subconsciousness) to manipulate them, simply by playing on their emotions. Fear, one of the most commonly experienced emotions, is also one of the most commonly exploited ones. Other emotions, such as pleasure, also play a huge part in determining which decisions we make in our lives. However, not all emotions are the workings of the subconscious mind only, there exists emotions that are a result of conflict between the subconscious and conscious minds, and emotions that are from the conscious mind only.

There are 17 levels of consciousness as given by David R. Hawkins in his book Power vs Force. Most emotions classify into these different states of consciousness. From the lowest to the highest, it basically means how much you actually use your conscious mind. We usually experience few states of consciousness at once, and we might fluctuate between different levels at different parts of our lives.

Firstly, the lowest levels of consciousness. These are what I would call the levels of subconsciousness. If you are living in these states of consciousness then you are probably living subconsciously.

Shame - Shame is actually a result of the conflict between consciousness and subconsciousness, however it ends in the triumph of the subconsciousness over the consciousness. It is a state of self-hatred where people feel they have violated social values or standards imposed upon them by others. It basically means hating yourself because you fail to meet standards that others place on you. Most people are this level are contemplating suicide. They have concluded that the only possible happiness is by eliminating the feelings of displeasure that perpetuate their lives. It is the lowest of consciousness because it defies even the purpose that emotions are for, to enhance one's survival.

Guilt - Very similar to shame, but people who experience guilt usually feel that way because they they feel they violated self-imposed values or standards.

Apathy - Apathy is a state of indifference where an individual has an absence of interest or concern to certain aspects of emotional, social, or physical life. These are the ignorant people, people who only seek to experience self pleasure without a care for anything else in the world, sometimes even for their own personal welfare. Hardcore video gamers, drug addicts, smokers usually belong here.

Grief - Grief is a state of sadness and loss. This is where an individual mourns over a loss of something close or important to him and does nothing but that.

Fear - One of the most important survival tools. However, living in the state of fear basically means fearing too much such that it interferes with your ability to make decisions consciously.

Desire - This is a state of addiction and lust. The individual is capable of thinking consciously but he chooses to let his subconscious desires get the better of him, and sets his goals towards achieving these desires. Very similar to apathy, however it is different to apathy because the individual is actually capable of using his conscious mind.

Anger - This is a state of frustration. The individual blames others for his own weakness, then seeks to eliminate his source of frustrations. However this is a needed emotion for self-improvement, although the individual might be stuck in hatred.

Pride - This is a state of pleasure, however it is dependent on external factors for the pleasure so it is vulnerable. Think materialism or religious fundamentalism. Selfish love also goes here; people might think that their love is in fact selfless but it is not(refer to previous posts). Most people might perceive pleasure to be happiness and get stuck at this level. This is also a state of refusal to be humiliated, to think that the beliefs and abilities of the self is better than everyone else.

The following are mostly a result of the conflict between the conscious and subconscious mind, usually ending in the triumph of the consciousness over the subconsciousness.

Courage - This is a state of self-improvement. This is where one finally picks up courage to improve himself regardless of the subconscious emotions that he might be feeling. The individual begins to drift away from the subconscious, self-driven thinking, and starts to do things that goes against the subconsciousness. For example: helping others etc. Note: Courage and fearlessness are 2 different things, courage usually involves self-sacrifice for others, however fearlessness is self-sacrifice for self only, think of it as pride.

Neutrality - This is a state where the individual is going through a relaxed pace, or just getting by. He has nothing to prove, thus he gets along well with other people. The individual is taking care of his emotional needs, however he does not push himself too hard. There is room for self-improvement, however the individual is contend with himself thus he improves himself rather slowly.

Willingness - This is a state of determination in self-improvement. This is similar to courage but in this state simply improving or getting by is not enough, instead the individual strives for the best. This is where the consciousness starts to become disciplined and organized.

Acceptance - This is similar to anger, however the individual attributes problems to himself instead of others and starts to work towards improvement. This is a state where the individual understands and accepts things the way it is.

The following states are where the individual starts to reject most if not all of the subconscious emotions.

Reason - This is a state where the individual is capable of using the conscious mind to reason and to think clearly and rationally. When you reach this level, you become capable of using your reasoning abilities to their fullest extent. You begin to look at the world around you identify problems and start trying to change the world for the better.

Love - This is a state of selfless and unconditional love or compassion.

Joy - This is a state of true happiness. This is happiness from within, not dependent on any external factors.

Peace - This is a state of inner peace. There is no longer a need to worry for the future.

Enlightenment - This is the highest state of consciousness. This is where the individual begins to understand the workings of everything. This is where the individual is totally free from any fear or suffering. This is where the consciousness completely overthrows the subconscious emotions controlling the body. Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha is a very notable person that attained enlightenment.

Some of these levels of consciousness might overlap each other, however the general model can be seen. Do not misinterpret though, for I'm not advocating that our life should be spent trying to move up the consciousness ladder, nor am I advocating that this is a model of right and wrong, but this is just a model for self-reflection. Only by mastering your own emotions will you be able to stop getting manipulated by others or will you cease to experience suffering. For me, I'm stuck in levels of anger and pride, what about you? How conscious are you? What rules your body? Your subconscious emotions or YOU?

Living As A Hypocrite, Amongst Hypocrites

Note: When I refer to man I refer to the disgust of a living thing: Humans in general. There might be some handful of people out there who do not fit into this categorization, but if you are reading this post then you are probably not one of those people.

Man. Often have we compared ourselves to their fellow living beings, beasts. We claim to be virtuous, all-loving protectors of Earth, of our species and of the beasts living together on the planet. We always say they are smarter and superior to beasts, because our brains allow us to be capable of reasoning and logic. But how far have we gone with their advanced brains, really? If we are truly concerned about Mother Earth then why have we spent all these years raping her of all her resources and effectively stripping her of her beauty? If we are protectors of our species then why are we the only things that kill ourselves en masse? If we are protectors of other species then why do we enslave and slaughter them en masse for our personal benefit and entertainment? If Earth is our home, then shouldn't everybody be family, and shouldn't other living beings be our pets?

The truth is, the only thing that man is, is a bunch of hypocrites. Our advanced brains and intelligent thinking have only led us down one path. We have abandoned Earth as our home. Our home is in fact shrinking. First, we divide Earth into countries, separated only by imaginary borders so we can fight for domination over such false perceptions. Are we so different from the beasts that fight over domination of perceived territories? Second, in these countries we further shrink their homes into apartments. Thus, now a home is just the apartment we own, our family is only those who are genetically linked to us, our pet is an animal just for our makeshift entertainment and display purposes. Also, what has become of the notion that we are all-loving beings? Love has too been reduced from the self-disregarding love of everything to the self-perpetuating love of only those that which pleases us.

The truth is, man as individuals, do not care about anything that does not concern itself, despite how much it tries to portray itself as otherwise. An individual's life is based on chasing its own goals and its ambitions and engaging heavily in materialism and mindless self indulgence for the sake of personal comfort. Some might even claim to be part of religions which denounce such self-idolization! "God is dead!", literally speaking. God is dead inside all their souls. Most religions has become religions of hypocrites, choosing that religion only because they think that by mere belief in God will make their lives better. They will continue in their self indulging ways with complete disregard to the values and practices of their religion. Some do it more discretely, while some do it more blatantly, but both are just the same. As the saying goes: Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

The driving force behind us--the knowledge that there is something out there that is even more pleasurable to be felt; we desire it with all our heart and thus sell our souls and our lives away just so we can attain such objects. But what if the greatest pleasure is not that of any material object can bring? What if it lies just within us? What if the greatest pleasure is self-realization? The realization that we should be working inwards, that we can be content with ourselves the way we are, without the need for external objects to make us happy. Only by being aware of our ignorance will we be driven to greater wisdom and happiness; for all ignorance and self-vanity arises from lack of courage in the way we appear to others. "Dare to know! Dare to speak! Dare to be!". Only when everyone of us sees the pointlessness in indulging in material objects and ourselves can we restore the beauty back to Mother Earth and to our lives, and only then can we be truly enlightened.

Until then, I will be living as a hypocrite, amongst hypocrites.

Power and Our True Selves

Many a revolution in the face of history has been a revolution for greater freedom of man. What is freedom really? Why do all people desire freedom? Freedom is the power to do whatever one wants, to be whatever one wants to be. Driven by our lifelong quest for pleasure(or happiness, whichever way you want to look at it), we all hold an ideal world in our minds, be it unrealistic or realistic, and subject to change every moment. Everything we do, we do to be closer to realizing our dream of this ideal world; Don't we all wish for the power to change the world? Do not be fooled though, for there are very different ways in which this power is derived.

Power from within, based solely on one's ability and one's will, contrasted with legitimate power, the power of the masses. Contrary to popular belief, the leader does not command the most power. The leader is granted power by the people, but the people can take it back in an instant. The leader thus must do everything he can to gain favor with the people. He will coerce the people with his words and actions, he will promise rewards in return for the power granted. He must do everything he can to keep the people ignorant, to make them believe that he knows best for the people, and does everything he can for the people. He must tread cautiously, so as not to invoke the wrath of the people, who will strip him of his title as they see fit. Ironic, for the leader is in fact dependent on the people for his power; no longer is the people his slave, but he is now slave to the people. It is power nonetheless, however it only shows how weak and dependent we truly are. Real power is strength from within, strength to overcome all boundaries, strength to create one's own purpose and beliefs, strength to know whatever what ones to knows, strength to build one's own ideal world, strength to destroy whatever stands in the way. This is ultimate freedom, this is the true self that we all desire, instead of the illusionary self that we are trying to achieve; the self-image that is dependent on how others' judge our appearances and actions.

Our illusionary self, the self molded by society, that which teaches us to love, be moral, to be just(by society's standards) and fair, only serves to deny us of our true selves. That which teaches us to think and act morally, to take others into consideration for our actions ,to do only 'good' and to avoid all that is 'bad', only confuses us. This difference between what we ought to do, and what we want to do causes us to double think all our actions, raising questions about ourselves. If we question ourselves, are we not doubting ourselves? Often we reminisce about our childhood, as it is during this phase where we had little doubts or worries. We gave little concern to how our thoughts or actions, to how others viewed us. It is during this phase where we were closest to our true selves. It is also during this phase when we were most free(but also most vulnerable to outside influences). When we were kids, we loved to think that we were all superheroes with superpowers. The adults, jealous, shrug it off as child's play. However is this not the makings of our true selves? The self that is free, that desires power, amoral yet innocent.
As we grow up, we find ourselves becoming more worrying, thus we feel weaker than when we were younger. We started to place blame on many external factors for our frustrations, to deny our sense of weakness. We find ourselves asserting that people who blames themselves are weak in an attempt to justify our ressentiment. In reality, the opposite is true, for individuals who constantly blames themselves are constantly growing stronger, because they acknowledge their weakness. They are honest; the truth is that all our frustrations can be attributed to ourselves, and ourselves only. Only by being aware of our weakness and ignorance will we push ourselves to seek greater power and wisdom.

You may agree or disagree with me, but in silent contemplation I found that I know(or attempted to know) more about you than you know yourself. For that you should be ashamed. It is not what we think about, but how we think that makes us unique.

The Love Illusion(revised)

This is a revision of the previous 'The Love Illusion' post because the last post was a little hard to understand.

Firstly, for the sake of simplicity, I will divide love into 2 kinds, selfish or love and selfless or love. In both terms, the word self is evident. In selfish love, it is love, but however it is love driven ultimately by the own self interests. I will attempt to use an expression that prevails in everyone of us to explain the difference between selfish love and selfless love: Our Preference.

If we hold our preference in whom or what we love, then it implies that we love one more than others. Putting the 'self' in love. This love is loved based on condition, and the condition is that of what the self wants the condition to be: on the condition that the person is beautiful, on the condition that love be reciprocated? Only you can name these conditions. This is conditional love.

Selfless love is love with no preference. Loving everyone equally regardless of their looks or their actions and how they will affect you is true selfless love. Selfless love is unconditonal love.

Instead of reaching out for the love that you can never grasp; the love that is portrayed to you by other people to be pure and selfless, we should not be hypocrites and accept the fact that love is based on self-interest, as does every single decision we make. We should work to turn our unconscious selfishness into our living consciousness.

Understanding Our Will to Power

Your will to power can be directly linked to your inner desire for pleasure in these ways. Firstly there are 2 kinds of pleasures: the pleasure of the 5 senses and the pleasure of the mind, or the self centered ego. The pleasure of the 5 senses are self explanatory. Pleasures of the mind can be divided into 2 types. By using basic sadist and masochist pleasures I will attempt to explain the 2 not so different pleasures.

A sadist is one who finds pleasure in making others feel pain inflicted upon them by himself. It is the direct pleasure of seeing your influence in other people. The joys of parenthood is based on this experience. The joys of parenthood is actually the joy of looking at your child grow up to be like you, to think like you and to act like you. It is through this pleasure that you seek similar minded people for relationships. The feeling of looking at your influence on other people is undeniable, even I, am writing this post because I want you to be affected by it, be it positively or negatively.

Masochism is a very similar kind of pleasure. A masochist finds pleasure in pain inflicted upon himself by others. It is the pleasure one gets by eliciting a self-expected response from the inflictor by one's owns actions. It is the pleasure you get by manipulating others without them knowing you are manipulating them. Emotional people derive pleasure from such means, they pretend to be weak and expected to be treated with more attention and care by others, which they usually get, thus indirectly manipulating others into giving them what they want. The joy of altruism is too, derived from such means. The pleasure derived from altruism is such that you expect to be treated the way you treat others, in this case with 'goodness' or 'love'. This ethnic of reciprocity has been drilled into us since we were young. 'Good' be treated with goodness or rewards, 'bad' to be treated with punishment or badness. A simple way of illustrating that altruism is a form of self-interested pleasure: When you do charity, you usually will expect the same response from the people whom you are giving to, but what if he goes against what you expect him to respond? What if he starts to curse at you, or even attempts to kill you? You will no doubt feel displeasure.

Most if not all of our actions ultimately consist one if not both of these underlying pleasures. Now I will attempt to explain how the government supresses our natural will to power to satisfy their own desire for power. Unlike conventional means of control, which controls us by directly restricting our movement and actions for example: slavery, they attempt to control us by playing on our inner driven self desires. They encourage us to express ourselves through materialism along the lines of social norms. The interests of all the entities that you are under control of (government, religions, the military, educational institutions) are intertwined with corporate interests, and those entities also participate in the management of social expectations through mass media. They play on our inner desires by placing advertisements with subliminal messages everywhere and endorsing products with people with substantial power, thus making us desire those products as well because it now signifies our power. Associating these items with power makes us want to buy that item. By making us desire these 'powerful objects' and us getting what we want, we feel we are in control of our lives, we feel powerful, this is the illusion of freedom. In society, because they have suppresed our true destructive and violent selves, our desire to show our power is now our desire to make ourselves known to others. We have all become vain. Vanity is the fear of how we appear to others. Everyone is vain, no matter how un-vain you try to portray yourself to be. It is not only the media and advertisements that makes us want items. Government institutions can make us need something through laws or out of fear. For example: Education is compulsory and so is paying school fees. Or your doctor can tell you that you are sick although you are not to make you buy medicine. Thus began consumerism. Consumerism is how they keep us ignorant of our inner selves, and how they keep themselves in power. The whole basis of society is to keep us docile so we will not try to take control from them. However, there is one problem. The more we get what we want, the more we will expect to be given, or the more 'free' we become, the more freedom we expect to get.

No doubt after reading you will feel displeasure because I am asserting that all humans are inherently driven by the self-interest to desire and to destroy that which restricts us from desiring. It is only your ego trying to deny that you are 'bad'. But is it really a bad thing? It is only a society that makes it up to be bad. There is no such thing as a common 'good' or 'bad'. 'Good' and 'bad' things or actions are usually justified by each individual solely by his beliefs, and society is trying to impose its beliefs upon us. Thus, I tell you, do not fall prey to the tricks of those above and around you. Rise up! Do not be content with the illusion that they have imposed upon you! Unleash your true inner human desires upon this world! The person who is the most humane is the one who is most powerful! We can only desire true freedom if we are not restricted in anyway, not in the mind or in the body. And restriction is placed upon us only by other people, thus the only way of attaining true freedom is by destroying them. This is our will to power! Our biological imperative!

The Love Illusion

Disclaimer: Before you attempt to read this post, this is a warning. This shocking revelation might affect greatly or even destroy what your life ever stood for depending on whether you interpret it positively or negatively. Read at your own risk or don't if you feel that you still want to keep intact the meaning of your lives.

Love, the only true, pure emotion(or so we think) that gives meaning to most, if not all of our lives. Most of us think we live just for our loved ones. Most of us think of love as extremely selfless. You guys must be wondering why i used the word 'think', that's because I'm here to say that the love that you know of is the most selfish thing ever, one that drives the real meaning behind our lives: Our will to power!

Let me ask you this: Do you really love someone, or do you really love only the feeling he/she brings you? The love that we know of is one that is most probably classified under the second feeling. Love is where two mutually selfish people come together because they make each other feel better. The same can be said for your love of things, you only like them because of the feeling they bring to you when you use them. Underlying all love is our strive to become master over all space(ownership) and to extend our force; our will to power. Our love or social relationships is when people encounter similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (union) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. When we say we love someone, we will usually think that we know whats best for him/her. Why? Because we want to impose ourselves onto them; our will to power likes it when someone listens to us, because its a sign that we are in control, that we are powerful. We only love things that does or say things that we like because it is an ego boost; and hate things that says or does things that make us feel bad, constantly avoiding them because they hurt our ego. Ask yourself this: Are you more likely to like something or someone that listens to you, or shares your common interests? The answer is most probably yes, that is how most of us choose our friends and relationships. At the bottom of every decision we make, lies our self-interests. Whatever we say or do, we expect a benefit to ourselves for return, be it immediate or not. Taking the above as example: We only make friends that agree with us, we say things that is acceptable inside our clique because we expect them to say something that is pleasing in return, to reaffirm our very existence for power. The same can be said when we do charity for the poor: We always expect a thank you in return, or expect them to smile and nod and treat us with respect. When they don't, we label them as rude, ungrateful. In this situation, am I right to say that we only do charity for the reassurance that we are 'good'? Our inborn self-defense mechanism too, serves only to protect our powerful ego. Do you always find yourself putting blame on something else? That is the work of our self-defense mechanism. To deny our own inferiority, we tend to blame external factors for our frustrations. It is always something else, never is it the fault of our infalliable, ever powerful ego!

Religion, too is will to power. People believe in religion because it strengthens them, it makes them feel stronger and smarter then others who do not believe in their religion because they have the backing of their god and they think they know the 'truth'. They too feel at an advantage over others because they believe that they will have a better afterlife.

It is in human nature to lust for power, which explains why humans are inherently selfish, shrewd, and this forms the major framework for all society where people pursue their self-interests in as many ways as possible. It is why there is a need for morality in society. Morality is a mutual agreement between people to prolong and protect their existence just so they can enforce their power on others for as much and as long as possible, until their very last breath.

The world and the will to live is the will to power -- and nothing besides!

True love, however do exist. If you truely love something, you will not expect anything in return for your love. This is the true selfless, pure love. If you truely love someone, you will not try to intervene in their lives. True love is letting nature take its course. If you truely love someone, set him/her/it free.

The Grand Illusion: Society

It was not long ago that people were killed for speaking out, or having thoughts that went against what the elite wanted the masses to believe. It was not long ago that people thought the world was flat. That people with epilepsy was thought to be possessed by the devil. That people flying in the sky brought bursts of hysterical laughter. One would even have been tried as a witch for practicing herbal medicine. The things we belive as truth does not mean that it is true, rather think of it as all that the elite want us to know. There is a cap on the amount of knowledge we are allowed to have, hence the term forbidden knowledge.

Many things in reality are created to keep us ignorant sheep, to keep us from acquiring these forbidden knowledge. We are all too wrapped up in the grand illusion that is society to question the secrets of the elite. We are told from birth to death how we should live like good, obedient little sheep. Sheepdogs always prowling in various forms to keep us in line. New technologies are introduced to us if there is a way to make mass profit from us. They make us believe we need it through various advertisements, and also taking advantage of our mind that is so vulnerable to herd conformity: when we see our friends or family that have something, we too desire that certain something so we do not lose out. We are all consumers. That is our label. From birth to death we consume. We are given mass education (brain washing), to learn to work, to produce goods and services for us all to consume more. We are told we are worthless unless we contribute to society. We must work, we must earn money, WE MUST CONSUME! Everything we do, profits a greater power than us. We are sheep or cattle. Take your pick. Your entire life is dedicated to making those above you rich and powerful. You wonder why you feel your life has no meaning?

Fear is a powerful force. It is what paralyzes us daily.Fear of the smallest things, like forgetting something, or losing something, to fear of how our future might be, or fear that one might not be able to fit into society, after all we are made to believe that society is all there is, and thus if we do not belong to society our life has no meaning. Instead of living in the present, we now live constantly in fear of the future, and what is future really, it is too just another illusion that is time. No doubt fear rules us all. THEY use fear to rule us all. We must all act in spite of fear. THEY take advantage of our natural survival instinct which is fear, multiply it and enforce it through punishment, laws, media, parents, things that we interact with everyday, so we can have our daily dose of fear. They only control us, because we are afraid, call it fear mongering.

The media plays the biggest part in keeping us in line. They are the biggest sheepdogs of all. We are focussed on things like sports and celebrities. Just remember that what you watch on the evening news is filtered for your viewing pleasure. A wonderful way to manipulate how we see the world with a place in every home. Just think of how the media has changed your thinking, for example, what has become of your conception of beauty? For guys: strong, brave, muscular, unemotional, apathetic, aggressive, For girls: cleavage, stick thin, big eyes, small nose and chins, long eyelashes. Another example, your conception of ghosts: usually a female ghost with long black hair, disfigured face, wearing white. Hell, even your conception of good and bad: wealth and being beautiful is usually considered good because the media shows people who are rich and good looking to be treated better, and the opposite for the poor and ugly. The potrayal of such things in the media has such changed everybody's thinking drastically.

It would be ignorant for us to think that we know all there is, to think that the puny education we receive is enough for us to labelled 'smart', just because we understand how things work. These scientific theories seem to apply well into our universe, but that does not make them correct. Did mother nature come up one day and say: "Ok here's water, it is made up of h20.", nope she didn't. Why do you think scientists have been struggling to find a unified field theory? Simple, because it just does not exist. Different scientific fields of studies are just different thoughts. All we think we know about the world is what THEY tell us, and they will do just that, every single day we go to school, we watch television, we read the newspaper. Tell the masses the same thing over and over again till they believe it and accept it as fact. Even if it takes many generations to do so.

I believe the reality of what is going on around us is perhaps beyond what our dumbed down minds can conceive. Some people even reaching the point that they do not even want to think because they are so worn out by thinking academically, and choose to pursue false sense of satisfactions which is achieved at the expense of others; living under the illusion of the self-centered ego. Maybe that is the true purpose of education, to make us so worn out or so confident of our thinking that we no longer question any longer. We are just like slaves, they too, lived in a constant state of fear, however the techniques used by our slave masters have become so crafty and elusive that we don't even realize it most of the time. Slavery at its finest, controlling the slaves without them even knowing. They trick us into giving away what little freedoms we do have.

What you know as truth is what you have been conditioned to believe based on society and your life experience. Open your mind to new possibilities. That is how the truth shall set you free. This is how you will be aware and conscious of your own true nature.

Death and Technology

We now live in a highly globalized world, an age of technology, but have you ever wondered why technology was created? Well, technology was created with the intent of eliminating uncertainty and to provide convenience for our lives. The pervasion of technology into our everyday lives with the ultimate intention of eliminating all uncertainties from our lives certainly has achieved its goal, for now our lives has become much too certain. Our lives has become dictated by schedules, or timetables. Thats right, our lives are being run by the clock: Do you own your clock? Or does it own you? It is no longer you who determines where you should be at or what you should be doing, it is time. Everyday we find ourselves rushing to beat the clock, to stay on time, at the expense of our own lives. Day by day, we trade the time of our lives away for money. If time = money, and time owns us, does money own us too?

Our bodies are highly adaptable wonders, for example, if you do anything repeatedly, you can get used to that particular action. I'm sure the same can be said about adapting to live in a different environment. In this case, I'm talking about our bodies adapting to suit a environment with the convenience and ease of technology. We've become very dependent on technology to live our lives that we simply cannot do without it. While we are not yet totally dependent, we are slowly losing our ability to move and even to sleep without the aid of technology. This technological society exhanges our health for money, for example: Working long hours at the expense of sleep or meals, and sells it back to us in the form of medication, fitness centers and so on. Our bodies not only adapt physically, but mentally too. In the technological world where comfort and certainty is emphasized, our minds too have become increasingly afraid of the unknown, which is why we are constantly living in fear, fear of the unknown. We constantly ask ourselves: "How will this decision influence my future? Will I be able to lead a good life?", and thus, in pursuit of the 'good life', we sell our time, labour, thoughts, sometimes even our bodies for the sake of financial security.

Technology too tries to eliminate the ultimate uncertainty: Death. It is the ultimate goal of technology for us humans to find a way to become immortal. But think about this phrase: You never lived until you die. This phrase can be taken literally, I'm sure most of you have heard of people who had near-death or out-of-body experiences becoming totally different persons after. Ask yourself this: If you knew that you might die at possibly any moment, would you be living your life completely different? It's no suprise that most of us have not ever thought of death, or has thought of it but shrugged it off, thinking its more important to worry about the now. In this technological world, death is commonly denied rather than accepted. We usually try to save our sick with whatever cost for just a few more hours for them to live, we buy food ignoring the fact that animals have been slaughtered, we pursuit goals and ambitions that would not make sense if we knew of our eventual death.

Contemplation of death is extremely important to us because it reveals the unreality of our separate selves. Because the self that we define as our bodies, our names, our knowledge, our possessions, our self-image, will cease to exist when we die, that self is unreal and thus of extreme unimportance. To deny death is to deny life, Why? Because death is part of the life cycle, death is what completes our life. Living in this society, denying death and uncertainty; This fully insured, 100% guaranteed life that our social institutions suggest, channeled through the media, the schools, and often our parents, that is mapped out in advance to minimize uncertainty, is no life at all. Despite all our efforts to mitigate its uncertainty, life is fundamentally uncertain and out of control. Everyone senses on some level that our management of life is little more than a pretense by which we delude ourselves into believing in the permanence and stability of that which is neither. In this gigantic game of pretend, we feign belief in the normalcy of modern life, but no one really believes in it; hence the universal sense of emptiness and void underlying the adult world. From the very beginning, there is the feeling of living a life that someone else has planned out, a life that is not truly our own.

A life of uncertainty and learning from curiosity by taking risks is part of our natural instinct, instilled in our minds ever since we were babies. Instead of living our lives pretending we will never die, chasing goals, ambitions and false sense of satisfactions, live like you are going to die at any moment, pursue the things that truely matter, things that you can cherish on your deathbed, such as your own unique individuality, a free mind and an open heart filled with compassion for not only fellow humans but nature as well.

Deconstructing Capitalism

Many of you might know, the current economic system we are employing right now is the capitalist mixed economy system. I'm sure you should also know how this economic system works in general. This post is an attempt to deconstruct capitalism, to help you discover, recognize and understand the underlying and unspoken ideas and framework that form the basis of this economic system in 2 parts, the political aspect and the social aspect.

The Political Aspect
The very fundamentals of capitalism is already a contradiction, as the ultimate goal of all firms is to have complete domination over the market, however the government must do everything they can to prevent that from happening in order to keep the system going because if a firm has too much market power, it can choose to set prices or produce at whatever quantity they want, and also the firm will not be motivated to improve the quality of the good due to lack of competition, thus resulting in market failure. Although firms having complete domination over a certain market are rare, there exists firms with a considerable market power because they have a large share of a particular market. These firms are your multinational corporations(MNCs). Because of their importance to a country's economic growth, they can use their power to sometimes change government policy by threatening to withdraw from the country's economy. To get these MNCs to set-up in their countries, governments usually offer incentives such as tax breaks, finished buildings with full utilities, free movement across borders and much more to them. These MNCs, taking advantage of these incentives, will occupy many countries across the world, and use all of the countries's resources for production. The target of these MNCs are usually third world countries, however, countries where they can exploit the people by giving them low wages for long labour hours are also ideal. The workers, even though they labour, do not own the goods they produce, nor are they paid the true price of the good as it is sold in the market. The capitalist system is based on creating large amounts of profit at expense of workers. These MNCs are also a menace to the environment, as they hold the production power to strip Mother Earth of whatever resources she has left. However, governments still encourage them to work in their countries, allowing them to exploit workers and destroy nature all in the name of economic progress. Still think the government is 'for the people, by the people'? They make various laws such as taxes to keep much of the state wealth in their own hands, because they want only themselves and MNCs to be able to afford the cost to the means of production. The average worker, with his lowly wage, will therefore never make enough money to take the means of production from them, thus they become trapped in the vicious cycle. The main reason for the government to advocate this capitalist economic system is because they feel at ease and strengthened in this economy; they recognize their power in this economy, the worker however, sees in this economy its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhumane existance.

The Social Aspect
Capitalism encourages ownership of property. Everything becomes turned into property owned by someone: tables, chairs, oceans, forest, airspace, ideas, sometimes even people! Something is either yours or mine, there is no share: "Wanna share? Sure, pay me money.". This is how many conflicts arise, because everyone is fighting over the right of ownership to things. We humans love the joy of giving; however, because we were all taught to think the capitalist way, we are prevented from doing so. Capitalism has reduced everyone to acting based on economic decisions to maximize personal gain to earn one owns living. From a 'give' to a 'get' way of living, selfishness runs rampant through our veins. This concept of maximizing personal gain has changed our social life greatly in other ways as well. People are willing to go to great lengths just to maximize personal gain, for example, boot-licking, spreading false rumors about your competitor, becoming someone else totally, or even murder! We have also become very afraid of being judged negatively, for the fear of losing 'face'. This 'face' is our exterior looks; it is how we appear to others in our economic relationships that define us. In this capitalist world, we are all individuals with varying amounts of economic worth, and 'face' is directly related to our economic worth. If we lose 'face', we might end up losing economic worth, and the opposite might be said when we gain 'face'. If you feel this world is very 'fake', you are probably right because everyone is trying their best to up their economic value, by putting up a false exterior with hopes of being judged positively, thus increasing their social status and reputation, or 'face'. And who determines positive and negative traits? Why the media and government of course. Which traits were positive and which were negative. For example: hardworking is deemed a good trait, because it implies one is constantly working, and is most likely to achieve most profit; while laziness is deemed a bad trait, because when one is lazy he is not working at maximum efficiency and productivity. In order to determine our productivity value, we were forced into education and as such, we turn to various forms of entertainment such as video games and materialism to escape this harsh reality.

Sparked by the Industrial Revolution and the efficient productivity of the capitalist economy, the increase in technology developments led to globalization across many countries. Because of globalization, people now have shallower relationships with other people than they would normally; it is now possible to buy everything online without even leaving your house, just to state an example. This would lead to difficulties in understanding and adapting to each other uniqueness, which would be the cause of many conflicts.

To compare us to farm animals: 1)A farm animal has loss of freedom, in a sense that it is restricted to where it wants to go, or when it wants to work, 2)The farm animal exists merely for the sake of production; it does the same routine everyday while awaiting its death, 3)A farm animal has no choice but to work, because if it does not work it will be left to starve and die. Does this situation look familiar? Well its because we are in the same scenario: A single capitalist employs an army of workers at wages just sufficient to provide for their basic necessities, the worker thus becomes a slave, he is no longer a free productive being because he absolutely must produce to meet his basic needs. This leads to the worker being separated from the act of working, because work has become a meaningless activity with little or no satisfaction. An average worker works 8 hours per day and sleeps 8 hours per day, but if the worker does not treat work as part of his life, am I right to say that we only truely lived less than 1/3 of our lives?

People form the basis of every economy, if there are no people, there would not be economy. No economic system can ever succeed if the people are not happy.

Education: The death of innovation?

I recall a time when i was sitting in my CATS(creative applied thinking skills for those who do not know) class when i was thinking about what was i actually trying to learn there. Well, the answer is pretty simple, it is to teach me how to think creatively as the module name states. The tutor shows us a number of ways for us to think creatively, and expects us to apply these thinking skills to our everyday lives. Fair enough, but my question is: Isn't telling us how we should think a form of restriction to the many other ways in which we can think creatively? Which leads me to question education as a whole, is the true purpose of education really to educate, or is it there to dumb us down, to restrict the number of different ways we can view the world, or interpret our experiences?

Firstly, the basis of all education - Spoken and written language. Spoken and written language serves as an ease of communication between people. The basics of spoken and written language involve identifying labelled objects, for example, an apple is well, an apple. By giving labels to objects, we are restricting our imagination, for example, you can't think of an apple as anything else but an apple. Another flaw is when we reduce beautiful things to just a mere objects by just labelling them. A person who makes the decision to murder someone else reduces the victim to a person, but the victim could be your close friend or family.In fact, in the last sentence, the term 'someone else' is already a form of reduction, as 'someone else' implies not yourself, or someone you are not familiar with. On paper, the victim is just a casualty figure, nobody knew him, so nobody cares, after all, he is just another person, but for the people that actually knew him, he is so much more than that. Little wonder why the world is such a cold place to live in. You might wonder now, well if we avoid spoken and written language then how are we going to communicate? There's body language, the language that we naturally knew, the language we did not have to be taught. Most of the communications between people are done subconsciously, through body language, rather than spoken language, after all, actions speak louder then words.

Secondly, science. Simply put, science seeks to explain nature in physical terms. To me, science is just another religion, the only difference is that religion seeks to explain nature in spritual terms. People widely believe that science is the model of truth. In scientific terms, theories are proven or disproven by conducting experiments. If the experiments give the same results as interpreted by our senses every single time we did it, then the theory is considered true. This scientific method has been our concept of truth. Applying the concept to our lives, if nobody else has sensed us, then we never existed. Is this why we humans have this desire to enforce our existence on other people through social status and power? The phrase: "My family is my life." or "My friends are my life" comes to mind, without other people, our very existence would have been denied by the scientific method. But some of you might say: "We only learned science in primary 3!" , true, but our parents have been enforcing this concept of truth since we were babies. Science gives rise to a new breed of people called skeptics, using the scientific method of thinking, are unable to conceive that of which they have not sensed before, as their imagination is now limited to which science defines as true.

Is there another concept of truth? Of course there is, that is through your intuition. Something is an intuition when it really seems to be true, but you cannot give a reason as to why it is so. Our intuitions are our instincts, our gut instincts. Sometimes it's better to trust your intuition, because if you do not trust yourself, who else can u trust?

These assertions might be too big a generalization to make and there's no way i can prove this to be true, at least not by the scientific method, but my intuition tells me so. This post is just food for thought, to look at education in a different way. Next time you think of an uneducated person, do not think of him as a brute just because he acts and thinks differently, rather, think of him as being innocent and able to form his own ideas about the world without any restrictions, because he is no different from a baby.

Identity Crisis

Hello all, for my first post, i will start with a poem:
"Oh yes, I am a sheeple, and oh so proud to be.
I am way too smart to believe in a conspiracy."

What's sheeple? You guys might ask. Sheeple is sheep and people combined, referring to how people act like sheep, they will believe anything that other people tells them, especially authority, these people are usually ignorant(sometimes to the point of being know-it-alls, and they can go on about how the government or some religious figure is always right), and the worst part is they influence(or try to) one another and they all become ignorant. These people only care about living their happy lives so they can have all the love and sex and video games and pretty looking stuff they want. They rely on the authority, media and friends to tell them the 'best way' to live their lives, and they try to follow it as closely as possible whether they like it or not, because they want to be accepted in society. "Wow! The best way to live my life! And for free too! These guys are great!" is probably what is going through their minds, but these information hardly comes free, the true cost behind these information is...

Your IDENTITY.

Think about it, if you allow others to influence your actions, the way you dress, speak, look or even think just so you can be accepted by others, then you are becoming a slave to their approval, and you are also going to end up dressing, speaking, looking and thinking just like them as well. When you look in the mirror, who do you see? Yourself, or someone else standing there? Your best friend peharps? Whose life are you living, your life, or someone elses?

I'm pretty sure some of you are self-conscious, because you are afraid of getting rejected for being different, some even to the point of totally hating yourselves because you are sick of not being able to be yourselves. "Either you be like us or you find yourself a new friend." they say, I say you go ahead and find another friend, who is willing to accept you for your differences, someone who sees you for your differences and not for your similarities. After all, being different is how we recognize each other, think of somebody and you will think of how he is unique and special as compared to other people.

In conclusion, all i want to say is to live your life your way, no matter what your parents, friends, government of even the media say you should live your life. Next time someone tries to tell you what to do, make sure not to get influenced by him unless you really agree with him, if not in the near future all that distinguishes you from other people would be just a name...