What We Might Become....

Addictions are increasing. But it’s not drugs, it’s not sex and it’s not work. It’s something that has become so normal we don’t even realise it anymore.

We have been brainwashed, but this shouldn’t be taken a negative way. Brainwashing can, like everything else, have a positive effect. In general mainstream society, being brainwashed instantly gives the impression that we have lost our minds to some higher power or force. Brainwashing, to my opinion, could have a positive effect on us depending on the information we are being forced to take in. The brainwashing, predictably, has come from the media; computers, internet, televisions and even the radio. We hear new stories about the world consistently everyday, and without us knowing, they slowly corrupt and take over our way of thinking.

What we might become in the future is a humanoid which isn’t just more advanced technologically and socially, but one that is more aware of how different cultures in the world work and understand each other. We may be brainwashed to think certain things about individual cultures or people, but hopefully it can be directed in a way that makes us curious rather than judgemental. Where we have the will to travel overseas to learn and not take over with our culture. We should be travelling to learn and adapt, and to improve ourselves and experiences around the world.

The main fear, however, comes from real corruption at the hands of a corrupt doctoral force. It doesn’t have to be human, but it normally has to start from someone’s idea. If someone wants us to think something, and he or she has a powerful influence through supporters or a popular internet site, then they can make it happen. It’s easy to influence many if the fanbase is there to support you. The internet may make things easier to learn and to pass information, but it also makes it easier to influence you as a person as well. I fear that people may forget about the good side of the internet, and the power of information that it possesses, and the readiness for it to spread to thousands of people within seconds. Its an unbelievable tool when placed in the right hands, and for the right reasons.

We have to be careful. Or the influence might take over, and we might become something that is negative. But the positive musn’t be forgotten for sure!

What is a Liveable City?

We all want to feel safe in our houses, safe in our streets and safe in our towns or suburbs. That sort of safety and tranquillity is all a part of the scale of Liveability of an area or place. Every year, surveys are completed as part of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s: Global Liveability Survey, and these explain where in the world may be the nicest and more adequate place to live in based on several factors. These factors include: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and also infrastructure. These categories are compiled together to gather a score out of a 100 to see how liveable a place may be to live or habituate within.

Stability

The stability has several indicators like the other categories, and these include: crime, violent crime, terror, military conflict and civil unrest.  Now at first glance, stability doesn’t seem to relate at all to crime rates and violence. In society, stability can also be related to economic and financial causes and if someone is able to live a stable life where employment is available and the space to grow a family. However for this survey it is dependent on crime rates, and the severity of violence. Does this mean the aspects of economic stability and similar aspects are forgotten? Well the survey is all about hardship and the lack of, and is based around the ability to live safely (if possible) in an area, and so forgets aspects that will lead on from living in a decent place, such as employment and opportunities. It’s about if a place provides certain things such as a low crime rate in this case.

Does the particular place have conflicts that will harm living stage? That is what stability is based around in this context.

Healthcare

This is obviously about the ability to get medical attention, and takes into account the two different sides of medical care: public and private. Are both available, and what is the quality of these areas. Interestingly, the availability of over-the-counter drugs is also regulated and surveyed as well. This can explain a lot about a place, if they have the ability and money to fund and sell medicines and drugs that are expensive but effective. It adds up to how available medical assistance is of a place. Healthcare is a prime concern to many places in the world, especially third world countries which lack the money to afford adequate health care to cure disease and illnesses.

Education

This is a smaller section that is surveyed, and explains about the availability of private education and also public. However the survey does not look at the quality of public education which is different, and questionable. Is it saying that the quality of public education is unimportant, or doesn’t add to a places liveability? Surely if the local education that was public was at a high level it would produce a much smarter population in the long run, as not many children are able to study at private institutions due to financial reasons. Interesting stuff!

Culture and Environment

This is always an important section, and covers the most in all of the survey. Its all about how available certain aspects of a community are, and these can include sporting events and cultural activities, food and drinks and ability to buy and consume goods and services. The area that is the most strange is how humidity and temperature/climate is also measured in comparison to discomfort of travellers. This pretty much says that any country who has high humidity levels will score a very low result in this area. Maybe a more clear and better way of measurement can be seen through how a place responds to these conditions to make the place liveable. That would be a much more accurate response that really shows how a place is liveable is how they respond to natural environments that may cause discomfort.

Infrastructure

Basically just the quality of transport and provisions of services such as water and energy. This is clearly all money based, and the place who is able to place enough money into the area for transport and planning will succeed in this area easily.

Overall, the survey hits a lot of important areas of how liveable a city is, but lacks in how responses to discomfort is not measured. A place may not have the best transport facilities, but its their response as a result to their issues of lack of money or resources. I think a more in depth look into how a city continues with the 

The Killer Instinct

Stop. Make It Stop. Stop. Stop.

The realism is that the pain doesn’t stop for just you. If you are affected, there is a large chance that many other people worldwide are as well. People seem to forget that there are billions of people in this world, and that what may be happening in their lives is completely unique to their own. Of course this may be the case, maybe you are the unique individual in the world. But the killer instinct comes in knowing where to stop yourself from believing things that are a manipulation of your emotions.

From my experience, the human mind is naturally creative. We have the ability to see something we want, and visualise us doing thousands of different things with it that may benefit us or demoralise us completely. I think this ability is important to understand, because it’s what (in many cases) sets us apart from other species in the world. Our intelligence is beyond anything we have ever come across, and it is dangerous and that has been proven. We are always trying to think of newer ways to make our lives better, to fulfil ourselves and that is a basic principle of an organism. How am I going to get from here to there? It’s a basic idea and perspective.

We need, altogether, to start thinking of how to stop ourselves from making things out as something fake and unreal. If one was to study for an exam, and they believe they have done 5 hours of study when in fact they only did 3 hours with a lot of breaks and relaxing time, then they are lying to themselves. It’s almost as ridiculous as lying about what time it is. We need to develop the instinct to stop ourselves from making situations better than what they actually are. We spend our lives lying to ourselves that things are improving and we are all happier, and the past is forgotten. But in reality, the past is never forgotten. What has happened in past will remain there, and it won’t just disappear. It frightens me when people try to forget the past instead of learn from it. How can anyone move forward in life they are not willing to learn about past events in their lives and throughout the world? We function because of what has happened in the past!

Overall, we need to learn control. We may be unique at the core, but on the outside we exhibit emotions that are similar to many around the world. With this power and intellect, we are blessed with the ability to change how reality has affected us. This habit causes ignorance: the will to forget or purposefully pay no attention to the actual facts.

When will the pain stop? When we develop that Killer Instinct.

To Put Into Context...part 2

We listen. We ignore. We complain. We never learn.

The biggest regret that I have in my life is the amount of wisdom and ideas that I’ve ignored when given to me for free. It’s free education, inspiration and instructions that come out of nowhere with no work required to achieve it, yet I ignored it’s perspectives and suffered in the future. This led to the thought of how the world has also suffered similar fates. War is a clear and obvious example of how we have not learnt from past mis-deeds, and also the existence of communism in the world.

We all know the corruption that exists in our empires of inhabitation, our local towns are filled with those with greed in their veins. Pumping their minds and hearts with dollar signs when opportunities arise. But where are those people who work with no reward? Charity. That’s where. The silent but yet effective volunteerism in the world that keeps the world alive and respectful. The thing that gets ignored in the mainstream media and society’s eyes could be what saves us from total corruption and social breakdown. They must be recognised more, and it delights me in how schools and other local organisations all donate annually and some even monthly or weekly.

It will be a tragic day when charity fraud takes over the main scheme of things. Can you imagine using images of poverty-stricken individuals and towns being used only for cash and money? It is dreadful, and yet it still happens. In 2009, 5 Muslim men were arrested due to charity fraud allegations against them. The largest Muslim charity was targeted after money was given to a militant Palestinian Organsation (as CNN described). Absolutely dreadful that people would use charities as a way to get money, a scam at the highest level of disrespect. But the main message here is: it shows the power of human greed and how it can affect people.

For me, we have to remember how much power we have as humans to cause havoc and destruction. It’s so easy for us to do, scarily easy in fact. As said in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: man’s greatest weapons is his/her hands. And this is true. Our hands are the basis for all destruction that has ever occurred on this Earth.

WE must learn and we must improve!

Treading Water

Drowning is a slow and painful way to die. To many it’s a fear they are willing to live with upon their entrance to a watery grave, a terrain that is not ours. We consistently enter the realms of other creatures, and ponder their lands as if our own. But in reality we belong on the land, the surface. The unease of entering a new terrain or place is similar to entering a foreign land. We are disorientated, confused and very much alone. We feel naked and vulnerable, as if the food chain has shifted and you are the one standing at the bottom awaiting the predators of the area to rip you apart.

Just because we have the intellect, curiosity and power to take over animal kingdoms and prey on them as our own doesn’t mean we can blame them for deaths. Shark attacks are growing more and more popular each year, worldwide.  I have heard people blaming sharks for their will to attack and prey on matter that angers them, or upsets their lifestyle. It is about time we look at ourselves and how we do. Would we be comfortable if an extra-terrestrial being invaded our planet to kill and prey on us? I don’t think we would. We see ourselves as the top of the food chain in the world, and we use the power to corrupt ourselves into thinking we can go anywhere we please.

Yes it is ok to explore and learn about new terrains, but it is important to be respectful to the creatures that live there. If you enter the ocean, then you accept the consequences of the shark attack or any other watery threat that exists. You are entering, without an invite, into the lands of a whole new empire and food chain. You are the bottom, and you are the easiest to kill.

Remember that, and start being more aware of what you look like to other inhabitants of the Earth. We are a species like everything else, lets learn about other species without disrupting their habitats and blaming injuries and deaths on these creatures.

That feeling of treading water…it just makes me want to step away.

Remembrance Day

Have we forgotten how to react?

This is a day to remember those who have perished in the past in whatever profession and in whatever cause. It is a day to allow our prayers to enter their families lives, and to respect what the soldiers and other similarities have done to support what we have today. However, we seem to get twisted by the media in this respect.

For me, we have to remember who died for us. But we have to also remember about those who died for other people. People that may not be seen as friendly or as allies, but yet are still human. We seem to forget that we all the same, and we should all be treated equally as one collection not as a dispersal of groups amongst the world. Remembrance day is a day that the world should come together and pray for who died to protect their own personal beliefs and the society they have today.

It may be portrayed as the day we worship Superman, but it's also a day where we show respect to the enemies as well who have died at our hands. Yes, our beliefs differ to theirs, and yes they may have been cold murderers but they went down fighting for what they believed in. They went down fighting for what they thought is how the world should be, and it's the same for us. To me, it's important to recognise their sacrifice as well. Don't let the media smear you're minds into thinking the day is only for our troops who have perished. Its for all the troops who have died on this Earth fighting.

 

We should be grateful, and we should be respectful. The past creates what we have now, and also what will happen in the future. Could you imagine if there was no intervention for WW2 or the Cold War? What if we didn't fight back? The world would be a very different place from what we see now. To many it would be catastrophic, and heavily under dictator corruption. Our lives would be nothing as it is now. So please…show respect for what has happened.

 

RIP

A Virtual Future? #1

Our lives. Our Earth. Our Future.

The constant waves of tension that appear with the online, virtual and sometimes deluding worlds created by our hands can reveal a sign of the future. Online messaging devices such as Skype, Viber and MSN have taken the world by storm, and completely eradicating the mainstream use of the postal service. Posting a letter has become something of the past in society. It was reported that in the UK alone, the amount of letters sent annually around the world had reached the lowest point in over 15 years. 

Its a sign that our lives are changing, probably faster than what we actually realize.

In the common day situation, once somebody has announced to their peers that they will be posting a letter to a relative or a friend, it immediately brings the thought of importance. Sending something hand-written is normally saved for celebration, it is a sign of care and respect towards the recipient because the time was taken to write instead of type as per ordinary.

Little do we realize, the more this sort of reaction occurs, the larger the push for a dominant virtual future where the online world becomes even more accessible and addictive due to its easiness to use. However, the main question can be asked in how we should take action to this. Do we embrace it fully and completely destroy physical ways of communication such as the postal service, or do we continue to try balancing it out.

Looking back at the decline in letters sent worldwide in the UK, ideas were brought up about modernizing the service of post around the world. Even though no strategy was in place for this, it is personally obvious the use of emails and online material will be the inevitable future. It may happen next year, or in 50 years, but eventually the use of physical communication could become obsolete. What will this lead to? Unemployment and social depletion may be possible answers.

The main message here is that our future is in our own hands. The use of the Postal Service as an example is because of its obvious nature and popularity. If we continue to socialise on the internet as our main form of communication it may cause problems in the world with jobs as many areas become obsolete. Balance is the most important part and also control. Do we as humans have the ability to control our own future, or will we let the past mistakes made take over?

More on this later.