I stepped on shit. But why did I?

Well to answer the question simply…  Because I wasn’t looking at where I was walking. To be more precise I wasn’t looking to where I was stepping at that given time, the time therefore when I stepped on shit. To be even more precise. But why wasn’t I looking at the time? Because I was doing other things at the time. What other things? Well I was sending a txt message to my friend. Why were you sending a txt message to your friend? Because I wanted to explain to him that I wasn’t going to go out with him tonight. Why couldn’t you go out with him tonight? Because I had to study my immunology. Let’s stop the questions here because it is infinite. I want to show you that by following this trail of thought and you get bored by asking questions to about this point you can come into the following conclusion: I stepped on shit because I had to study immunology in a future time. 

I gave that rediculous example because I wanted to show to people that as humans beings we have the pathological need to explain things. We always ask ourselves why did that happen, why is this thing like this and not like that? Why? There is a good reason on why we are doing this (Yes I know it’s sad that I have to explain why we feel the need to explain things). We are all doing this because it keeps as safe. The cause and effect of anything, if we manage to decode it down to form rules in our brains give as an advantage over people that don’t have those rules in their head. In more simple terms. It has been evolutionary conserved for the majority of human beings to ask themselves the question why. To ponder about things and find answers that they consider satisfying in order to put rules and laws that life follows. Life in this example includes the physical world. These rules may sometimes exist the physical world and extend to the paranormal world ie imaginary principles with no base in natural values that extend into having effect on the physical world. What this means is that when the human mind cannot discover rules, it creates rules that have no base or may have some base in reason and common sense, so that it can explain by the mere imaginative creation or by mere coincidence certain physical phenomena. 

There are countless examples of this phenomenon. Zeus the god of thunder, rain dances, virgin sacrifices to stop the volcano from exploiting, touching wood for bad things not to occur. We all have a thing/habit that we do that has no basis in common sense that we simply do in order to avoid or have a physical phenomenon occur in a predictable/likeable manner. Our own personal OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder).  You see for our brain something doesn’t always have to make sense in order for it to be associated. It’s a fale safe mechanism. It’s better to be safe therefore than sorry. It’s not logical, it’s based in the fear of the unknown/death as is everything if you take it down to the deepest level. 

What I want to do though is not explain why we are doing this, but to explain a different concept. One concept that most people fail to see in science. Just because as human beings we want to see reason in everything, it doesn’t mean there is always a reason for things that happen. Just because there is always a goal in our interactions with people and all our actions are governed by our futuristic aims, it doesn’t mean that nature, the universe or even the events happening all around us work like that. I heard from a guy at the university that when he looks at a problem from a physiological prospective, ie when he is looking for the function of anything in the body he is looking at it from the point of view, of why would god place it there. What reason did he have to put it there. What function would it serve in order for it to be there. You see what people and most people fail to see is that most things happen by accident. MOST things happen by accident. Only goal seeking animals make things happen. You need to realise that there is no goal set for our genes. Things happen because they do. Our eyes did not develop for us to see. Our eyes simply developed because it was beneficial for the body to have it.

What do I mean by that… Let’s imagine that I am god for example, I am not skipping evolution I am just doing it hell fast. Back to the example, I am god. I see animals that eat each other up with no eyes. Suddenly I throw 1 pair of eyes on one guy. I let the guy PROSPER and have childer and let his childer inherit the eyes until all of his species now has eyes and feeds on the other species. I feel sorry for the other species and I do the same for them. Now both of the species has eyes and the weakest species starts to develop tactics to avoid dying. For the hell of it let’s just say that it happens to be faster then it will run once it spots the other species. So the fastest of the hunter species will survive giving rise to faster children and the faster of the hunted species survives to give rise to even faster children. Yes it looks like a race. It looks like they are purposely creating faster animals.

Look again that’s not what’s happening. By accident something suddenly had a function. Let’s say I have a limited number of resources to spend and I do so by just blindly buying stuff and I get thrown into an island with those stuff, if by accidently taking a gun with me I’d survive, if I didn’t I won’t. If this is happening for billions of years this means that life suddenly appears as if it has a cause as you don’t experience the effect of failures of lost dead descendants. You only experience the successes.. This means that it appears as things have a cause. It appears as limbs have a role a function and a reason for being there. No. LIMBS came by accident and they evolved into having a function and a reason for existence when you look at it from the human prospective. Everything came to be by accident and everything obeyed the laws of natural selection which is just a biological law for a larger scale organic reaction. 

It doesn’t just stop there. We shouldn’t let as human beings our pathological need to try and give a reason into everything that’s happening. This is bad for our understanding and it’s really bad for science I think. What we should do and I think this is what modern science is doing. Is take what we have and explore what is happening and not try to explain or give a reason on why it’s happening rather than simply accept it as a fact. Just like physicists who create laws of the universe, they don’t try to give a reason on why the universe is as it is. They simply try to find the rules of it. Ie find the equations that fit however illogical with our understanding of the modern medium sized world. What you want to do is just find what it is that fits and works. Divise theories that explain the physical phenomena with no greater purpose or plan for them.

 

Laters.

We live in hell

I was watching a program on tv half an hour ago which was about the killing of young Alexis in Greece and the events that occured afterwards. To make the story short for anyone that doesn’t know, in Greece on the 6th of December 15-year-old Alexis was shot twice by the police for no apparent reason and he died as a result of the shooting. On the next day and for every day ever since there were riots on the streets on what initially seemed to be a protest for Alexis’ death. The riots continued by anti-government and student groups who burnt down buildings, broken bussinesses and destroyed public as well as private transport vehicles. It seems that Alexis’ death was just the event that initiated the riots that are against the poverty, the hunger, the corrupt government and democracy that is in place in Greece. What urged me to write this post is not Alexis’ death although I do feel sorry for his family and I do wish for the imprisonment of the people responsible for that death. What actually urged me to write this is the anti-government protests that are taking place in Athens and throughout Greece as well as the rest of the world for what happened and what is happening every day in Greece. What urged me to write this post is the corrupt system and the slow but eventual loss of our freedom of expression under laws that oppress us and under governments that do not help the young people take this world forward.

A professor in the show said this: “Πρέπει τα παιδιά να καταλάβουν ότι δεν υπάρχει παράδεισος. Υπάρχει μόνο η κόλαση. Η κόλαση ομως έχει πολύ περιθώριο για βελτίωση”. – “The children should understand that there is no heaven. There is just hell. But hell has a lot of potential for improvement.” He said this referring to the political and social situation in Greece. But I will take it a step further. Hell exists everywhere. In all of the civilised world there is hell. This hell comes from the attempt to create oppressed people. People with no hope and no dreams. People that only wake up to work come back home and feed their potential party voters. Throughout the world I see governments formed that try to create people who are unimaginative. People that dream for nothing and hope for nothing. People who lose the ability to dream or at least if they can’t do that, they lose the ability to speak out for their dreams.

You see when the people are not hungry, have a home to sleep in, have no enemy to unite them – they stop talking about their dreams. They stop dreaming. When you control the media and the flow of information you control what people see as truth. When there is not a touch of intelligence in what people watch, or a touch of education people feel that if they get that car or that new computer their life would be complete. People buy and buy and buy things that they don’t need. They buy things and they forget to dream. Whatever time they have they use it to buy stuff or they use it to watch tv that forces them to buy stuff that they don’t need and then the economy is working. Then the people make money to buy stuff and what’s happening? Very few people are becoming richer and richer. What goal would someone have after being rich enough to live 20 lifetimes and 20 more? Domination. But how is domination achieved with so many billions of people around? It is achieved by making them think that they still have a choice, when they have none. Making them work more hours because it’s justified and then you have obedient slaves that work just to be slaves.

People have forgotten why they fought for so many years (2 world wars) just to be free. They forgot the essence of freedom. People don’t know what it means to be free unless you live under oppression and hunger. Our parents know and even them they might not even know, but our grandparents certainly do. You see the same with happiness you don’t know how it feels until you’ve felt pain and sadness before hand. A lifetime of happiness is a lifetime dull and boring if you ask me. If you never had to fight about anything in your life and it was all given to you, you never feel as if you have to fight for anything. If everything is taken away from you slowly you don’t even realise it until it’s too late. We are like a frog put in a beaker which is slowly boiled dead. Just like the frog so are we slowly being stripped of all of our rights and freedoms until it’s eventually too late.

I do not support any kind of censorship. I do not even support hate speech censorship. If someone hates someone or a group of people and he/she feels there is a reason to do so he should be freely allowed to express himself. That’s the beauty of democracy. You should be allowed to say anything and believe anything about anyone. It’s the essence to our free will. Yes this means that it will allow racist, homophobic, genocidal messages to be published but it means that it will also allow the human spirit which lies in the freedom of human thought to be expressed. It will also be a good way to see what people think, what their beliefs are and in essence you will be able to explain what you think too and choose your site. Becaues by censoring speech, by recording everyone’s moves with CCTV and cameras placed everywhere you don’t allow people to freely express themselves. Sure you cut down on crime and I believe that’s important too, but you don’t allow the common man/woman to walk and be free and do what he/she thinks is right. You just insert that man/woman into social norms that you consider to be appropriate and to a pattern of actions that you have already preselected for them.

Everyone follows the trend now. No-one decides for themselves. Instead of people trying to be different they are trying to be acknowledged in groups/societies by dressing or acting like the majority of them. Most people do not understand that there is always another choice. In Greece the riots express the desire to be free. It expresses the desire for the young generation to have a future, to have dreams to be able to freely be what they want to be with no control and nothing minimising their efforts and nothing stopping their dreams. You see all we have now was won by the generation of our parents/grandparents who had nothing and in the end managed to get something out of nothing. They are no longer able to see what else they  need because it’s too late. Our generation has the technology, it has the dreams, it has the power to go far… To not stop and say enough in what we all have. We have the ability to change tomorrow yet we sit down like ignorant fools, eating and sleeping going to school, doing our homework, partying late at night and seek  nothing. We don’t feel there is need to change what is already out there. We feel like we are all lacking something but we don’t quite know what it is.

What it is is our lack of dreams. Our lack of exploring our environment and feel like we need to do something to change it. Technological change has been faster than anything but the change in ideals and philosophies behind life hasn’t. There are groups of people that are still fighting for equality that is a given for most of us. There are people dying of diseases and hunger which is just difficult for us to imagine so we just choose to ignore it like it doesn’t exist. Our planet is dying and yet we don’t vote for governments that promise change. If we are the future why don’t more young people get elected in parliament? Just like in the past and now in the future it would be us that will change and will see as important things that the old people don’t. We will fight for our rights, for the right to be free and alive throughout the world. We would be the ones that are going to change the world. But are we going to act? Or are we going to stay home and watch the world collapse from the safety of our couch? At least in certain places in the world there is still some fighting spirit, even though it had to come to a death for them to wake up. I don’t accept death and I don’t accept destruction. But sometimes it’s through destroying through fighting that you are going to get heard, that things are going to change. I feel that even if the whole city is burnt to the ground it would be right if things change. Because things have to change. Sometimes you need to act rather than just sit down and talk.

Assisted suicide, is it wrong?

Before I start I’d like to say that I am studying medicine and that I have an exam tomorrow but when I stambled on this http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bPS3pZGthw0 on youtube I couldn’t help it I had to produce something and put in my blog. 

Note: I am not going to give an unbiased view, I am sorry. I don’t have time and I don’t want to put an unbiased view on this. I will put my own opinion on the matter.

I believe that humans are creatures of free will. Certain individuals have a stronger sense of that free will. But in essence all people are free to do as they please as long as their freedom of will doesn’t harm the freedom of others. We all have free will but, in a democratic government we are free to express that will and we all do so every day by expressing our opinion, wearing t-shirts with logos, posting on websites, writing our own blog etc etc. There is also another concept that we all have. Our body belongs to us and we all have autonomy over our body. Autonomy which allows us to refuse medical treatment in the UK if we don’t want to get treated. As I said before, I am doing medicine and the central idea of medicine is to never do harm, and in biological terms the Doctors there are causing harm by assisting the patient to die. 

In the UK euthanasia is illegal. But it is legal for other animals if they are suffering with an incurable disease that is going to cause them pain and suffering. Euthanasia in that respect is considered the humane thing to do. And in all honesty it is the humane thing to do. You are letting your animal die pain free without even realising it is dying which for many people (most people wish that they would die in their sleep so that they would feel no fear about it) is the best way to go. In all respects though, euthanasia of a dog is worse ethically than euthanasia of a human being. The dog cannot grasp the idea of death, and it cannot understand the pain is going to get through and in a paternalistic way, we humans make the decision for it. Maybe if the dog had a voice and could comprehend thoughts such as these, it would choose otherwise, but since it’s an animal we consider it better (I know many people don’t, but I do) to make the decision for the dog and help it die. For a human being that decision comes after complex thinking. That decision for the person deciding to die is a long process full of fear, full of anger, full of of feelings of injustice but from what I get as the centre there assesses their psychological state never a feeling of depression so that they are consciously making the decision for themselves. So for a human being it is actually suicide just pain free. And the assisted part is in actually providing the barbiturate which depresses breathing and senses so you are basically dying a very pleasant death, in which by comparison to the death he was going to experience it would have been terrible.

But it’s not just down to that. If you knew you were going to die and you had a time frame for your death, wouldn’t you want your death to be in your own terms? In a setting that you choose, with people that you love and die without experiensing all the horror that is laid in-front of you? 

I will repeat it. In medicine we are told to never do harm. But we are told to respect a patients autonomy. We as human beings know that we need to respect each other’s freedom. We know that we have to respect the opinion of others, even though we don’t always do. But I don’t think that in this case medicine in doing harm. Medicine is helping someone have a pleasant and comfortable death. I know that doctors have a legal obligation to extend someone’s life as long as they can, but it’s their decision. If they could they would do it themselves. I feel that the doctors in that place are doing what every doctors should be allowed to do, when asked. It’s the right thing and it really is helping your patient. And since it’s their decision I feel that there is nothing wrong with it.

Also I feel that there is NO place for Religion on this matter. Medicine is based on science and there is no room for religion. Religion is solely allowed to play a role in the patients mind and if a doctor feels uncomfortable with it they should actually refer people to someone else. In this case it’s not a case where you need to report it. The decision is conscious, the patient knows what he wants and he knows what he is doing. And quite frankly just like a religious person, Craig Ewert even though an atheist, died holding just like any religous person his beliefs strongly in his death bed.

 

-Andreas