Response to a video.

First before I start I’d like to inform you that this is a response to Fakesagan’s video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcVev_RKW6E&watch_response  )to Paul’s ego video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H8c8R70UjI&feature=channel_page ) and he is basically supporting the idea that Secular Humanism is a cult who can turn to be dangerous( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism ). Also before I go on I’d like to say that I wouldn’t call myself a secular humanist. I would call me a free thinking human that comes to various conclusions through thinking process (just like everyone else around here), but I guess if you’d like to label me you would call me an atheist. As for my beliefs I would say that I do agree with most if not all of the things that Secular Humanism supports but i wouldn’t go as far as to include me in their group. I would like to apologise but I don’t do video’s although it was suggested to me by a couple of people because I do not like the video recording process etc and English isn’t my first language and although I do have fluency I wouldn’t go as far as having to pick between greek/english words to get across what I have to say.

Cult (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult)  typically refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding population considers to be outside the mainstream, with a notably positive or negative popular perception. The word “cult”, which has at least eight meanings, has been a source of confusion.

Secular Humanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism ) is a humanist philosophy that upholds reason ethics and justice, and specifically rejects the supernatural and the spiritual as the basis of moral reflection and decision-making. Like other types of humanism, secular humanism isa life stance that focuses on the way human beings can lead good, happy and functional lives.

Secular Humanism is a philosophy it is not a cult. It does appear to be a cult  though when you see all the different groups and societies that have merged from it and as such I do get your reasoning on why it would appear to be a cult. But in the same way you wouldn’t go as far as to call Atheist’s a cult because they share the same philosophy that there is no god as the word suggests. In reality just like you explained it’s a philosophy just like Nitzche’s philosophy for life and just like any other philosophy. I would go as far as to extend it to the moral teaching of Jesus in that respect without all of the religious nonesense.

You say it’s dangerous because it’s utopian. The philosophy behind the idea of making the world a better place is always utopian and anything that promises just that should be avoided. I would like to say that I disagree with the whole idea of utopian principles. You brought up Marxism/Communism as an example of utopian system that came to be one of the most evil systems ever. I would like to point out that the system that was adopted in Russia was not the utopian system that Karl Marx suggested it was something entirely different. It was Bolshevik’s version of communism and it was edited to fit the situation and the gap that was left by lack of monarchy. Any system especially a political system must slowly be changed, at least in the consciousness of the people and this system hasn’t basically because the people were uneducated and the educated people were profiting by the monarchical system of the Tsar. Now Bolsheviks did just that and established a monarchy on communist principles. On the other hand I would like to point out that the current system of democracy that exists in the world is not a system where the views of the people is heard. In Ancient Greece all of the men (because women didn’t vote) had to vote on any issue and on any decision taken. Now people vote for other people that then take the decisions for them. Therefore the decisions taken are down to the voting of those people whose individual opinion might be lost through internal voting that occurs in the party as each party would support only one united view. Thus individuality is overall lost and the laws voted into place are in great deal against public opinion. It is however Utopian to think that for each decision public vote should be the one to decide because people don’t have the time nor care to do that. On the other hand it’s the right way to happen. Having this in mind I would like to explain why Secular Humanism is not a utopia. Because it tells you to look at the evidence and decide according to that. It doesn’t say anything else.

It is not wrong to hope for a better life and to seek for ways to improve the current living conditions and the world around you. It is not wrong to hope. Utopian systems fail only when they get abused and for that we have no-one else to blame but ourselves for allowing it to happen and for not being intelligent enough to stop it. And again Secular Humanism supports free thinking and free will which you support as well and so does Karl Marx but weirdly enough was not included in the interior policy of the Bolshevik party.

Secular humanism as you say promotes science and you say that in turn makes it hate all religious people. I do not understand the link between loving science and hating religious people. I do understand loving science and in turn thinking that religious belief are stupid – that I can see happening but the hate I don’t. It’s just like ideas, you wouldn’t kill someone for being stupid, you might explain to him/her why they are being stupid but you would never kill him for being stupid or acting stupid unless of course his stupidity is hurting you and by hurting I talk about physical damage and not sentimental/emotional damage. Because as we said Secular Humanism supports evidence  and nothing else and from what I understand your philosophy for life agrees with that.

I know it appears as though I am supporting Humanism and disqualifying your ideas but I am simply offering my point of view. I also agree that idea burying is one of the stupidest things ever, so is censorship. If something needs to be said it should be said. If we fear people are so easily malleable maybe we should improve the education system rather than avoid exposing the stupid and in turn go against the human rights and the democratic beliefs that we hold so dear.

I would like to continue with your examples of Authoritarian humanists as an example on how beliefs can turn to hate and maybe dangerous.  As I said managing to understand that using evidence to decide on things is not a hard concept to conceive and also the absence of god isn’t either. As you said ideas can be dangerous yes, and ideas can also be edited and changed to fit the beliefs that other people have. Yes it is easy to do that, but on the other hand it is up to us to spot the stupid. It is up to us to understand what’s going wrong in this world. It is up to us to disqualify the ridiculously stupid beliefs.

People are generally stupid and most of the stupid ideas will appeal to them. To give you an example, if you look at the people you hang out with you will see that their processing speed and ability to communicate are close to yours. So it’s easy to see that people with limited thinking ability will follow stupid ideas because they can conceive and understand them. It’s something that we have to live with. On the other hand though I wouldn’t consider Secular Humanism a dangerous cult like you do. I would much rather see it as an idea just like a boat of ideas that can never be seen to be right or wrong until it gets tried out and put to practise.

I hope I didn’t go too far off topic because this is something I do all the time.

Thanks  :)

 

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.

Divisive from our nature, but at least not stupid

 

I shall start this piece by explaining that I am too among the people who do not have the intellectual capability to resist watching tv most of the time. But I do not watch tv for news or any other sort of information. That information I receive from the internet where I prefer a different and a non-censored point of view to their argument. I am one of the people who is subjected to all sorts of discrimination, not because of the colour of my skin as so many other people, or for my height although some people might choose to pick on that if they want to but nonetheless I am merely average, or for any other sort of physical appearance deficit that they might pick up on. On the contrary I am a person who gets picked on about his views about life, about my views about people, women, men, children, maturity anything that can pass your mind. I choose to be different mainly because I think the majority is usually wrong and usually lead into believing false claims, so I usually pick to support views that are not supported by the majority of people. I do want to add that it does add a bit in my sense of ego, to feel a bit unique although lonely at times.

I want to start this by trying to make you remember how do you see people on the street when you walk past them. Do you see a black person as a black person, a white person as a white person, a woman as a woman, an old lady as an old lady, a child as a child, an annoying child as the annoying child? Do you remember their face? It’s a human mechanism, an evolutionary mechanism if you would like to classify people. Old lady goes in the group with the old ladies maybe one or two in the group of the annoying ladies or the super annoying ladies and so forth. People classify people according to their differences. It’s a discrimination tactic that exists till this day due to our evolutionary past. Now there is nothing wrong with where evolution has brought us but we have reached a point where our intellectual capacity must overrule the evolutionary past, since it’s this past that people use against us Homo sapiens in order to guide our mind and thoughts. What I was trying to say before is that, we classify people according to their differences and not according to their similarities because if you were going to classify people according to their similarities they would all be one big group of people. Because that’s what we are people. This classification into groups (discrimination) is something that can be taken advantage off when rulers of the world need us to be divisive.

For example after 9/11 the war against terrorism began which reminds of a religious war which happened in the past. It must have been noticeable in the streets that people look at Muslims, or people with long beards etc with suspicion. You see for the people, terrorists are personified as Muslims and in our minds Muslims are tanned, beardy, Arabic speaking, scary people. That’s the sort of picture we get and that picture creates this fear, that’s why I mentioned scary before, of that particular group. Now this effect can be taken advantage off when you need public support in starting something. Because when you start something there is no real need for public support as you have to carry it through. This is where I am coming at. The effect of the discriminating mind that we have, is making it easier for mass media and the government to control our thoughts in a much more efficient way than it was able to do in the past. It’s another kind of fear that people face, it’s not the kind of fear that people used to face in Communist Russia, which was fear for their lives, it’s fear of the unknown. Now that news can so efficiently be broadcasted and so easily staged, opinions can be shifted from one thing to the next in a matter of seconds.

This fear of the unknown, this fear of a certain group, comes in many forms. You see a picture is a thousand words. And when you have picture plus a thousand words to support what you want, propaganda cannot be stopped. This form of propaganda is so effective that is can be considered as the public’s own view point, as it is not enforced and is not obviously imposed to them. People can hardly pick it up. So how does this work? Well you have your head bombarded with pictures of horror of what those people can do to you for example pictures from 9/11 attacks. You have pictures of what they look like, not particularly nice pictures of them usually scary pictures of men with guns. You also have pictures of the state of life they have and then you fear for your life. You don’t want to be poor, you don’t want to live like them. Your life is not good but at least is not as bad as them, so you accept a few of your rights to be suspended. A few of your fellow citizens to be thrown in battle to protect you and you also accept all the extra stress that this fear brings to your life increasing your risks for many stress related diseases of which there are many.

Of course you can say we are intelligent people. We can understand when we are being lied to and we can understand when we are being played. Can you? Is truth something that as a species we are good at? We do not like truth, in fact our government knows that we do not like truth, and they know that instead of having truth we prefer to sit quietly at home, caring for our family, raising them to be able to live in a corrupted society, teach our children to accept lies, we even raise our children in a seemingly loving and stable home with no underlying problems. We choose lies over truth every day. We even choose lies over truth when we know that we are being lied to. Lies make us comfortable and lies are the root of everything. Because even though we might pick up when we are being lied to. We might be intelligent people, we might want to hear the truth but when we do, we can’t deal with it and we instantly switch off and accept the lies. The lies that will keep my children safe at home, the lies that will not make me fight for my rights, the lies that will not allow me feel as sad as I could when I hear the truth.

We are a sorry lot indeed. When we need a promise of an afterlife of meaning to be able to go on living this pitiful life, when we wake up in a home with no love just to pretend in front of our children that we are happy so that they can live the perfect lie, when we wake up knowing that I am not free to do what we want to and yet do nothing about it, when we deny truths about our past because it doesn’t make us happy then I can’t feel anything other than sadness for what we have become.

I read today that it’s a feeling that all the young people have. The feeling of wanting to change everything, the feeling of wanting to be a rebel, to overthrow everything that’s wrong in this world is young. It’s a feeling that you only hold for a number of years and then it dies out as you slowly realise that there is nothing in the world that you can do to change what already is there. There is nothing you can do to change the people who rule the world, there is nothing you can do to change your faith. You just slowly sit down and accept it. I don’t know if that is true because indeed I am still young and I am very immature in the most obvious ways. But I do not want to grow up knowing that I lived even my youth being a cabbage. An unintelligent individual who saw the world exactly how it was served to him and never fought to change it. I feel sick in my stomach most of the times about rules and decisions that people have, or by the simple sight of people where I study who instantly divide themselves into groups that share more similarities than they share differences. I don’t want to be just one of those people who do not accept people for what they are and see people for what they are not.

You see the root of everything as I said lies in the very basic concept in our brain which divides everything up. You’ll find it scarier that you have more things in common with people you think you have nothing in common with than what you think. It is not racism I am talking about here. It’s something else. I am talking about the controversy that although we are supposed to be one as society under one rule, and we as individuals do not impose our rights on others, we do very little to merge in and try to understand each other.

Stop discriminating.

Start living.

Do not believe, do not accept anything without evidence.

Wouldn’t you rather be stuck with the truth rather than with the lies that just make your life seemingly beautiful?

Fight for truth.

Religion – The greatest threat in the modern world

Religion is the belief in a deity or if you prefer a supernatural being who created the world as it is or started the universe. A creator therefore of some sort that doesn’t obey to natural rules is the key concept of religion, where people come together and have a faith in a view of God which is specific.

Religion is the only thing I think about when I look at the future’s problems and the reason why these problems may be caused. Religion is the only thing I see blocking advancement. Religion is the only thing I see arming the hands of small kids with guns to kill infidels. Religion is the only reason I see why people would choose the supernatural views over the natural views.

Most people will think that this is not the case that religion is not dangerous. Religious people are most of the times quiet and nice people that gently live next to us. People like that could not possibly harm us in any way. I agree most people will not directly harm you. I am not going to go into the thinking of the fanatics nor compare religious people to the fanatics of their religion because I know that according to most religious people fanatics are simply people who do not understand the “meaning” of god. So I will just point out that most of the religious people hold beliefs that are outdated. What I mean by that is that they hold views that some times are as old as 2000 years old and sometimes even older than that. People base their morals on those views and their understanding of how the world works in opinions that are really wrong.

These views make people basically close their ears and eyes to the truth and progress. Progress in my book doesn’t just come with the increasing knowledge about the world which comes from science but it also comes from the lack of updating their morals. Morals are constantly updated and constantly changed towards the best I think. People are increasingly becoming more accepting to change and more accepting to people being different which includes homosexuality etc. I am not a homosexual so this doesn’t really affect me but many religions openly condemn homosexuality. Islam, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity are a few of the religions where homosexuality is considered abnormal to say the least and considered to be a very serious sin and is unacceptable. Some people do take this view very seriously and actually do not accept homosexuals, who are openly and widely accepted by society right now.

Religions make irrational things make sense. Irrational things such as the non consumption of pork meat, fasting, hiding any part of skin, getting crucified for Jesus, believing in resurrection, believing in after life are thought to be rational if you have your beliefs set on a religion. As humans we have common sense and we can actually understand that what we are actually doing or what we are actually believing is not reasonable, it’s not natural, it’s really not what we should have been doing. But faith comes to play a role. Blind faith is all you need. If you blindly believe everything starts to make sense. Every test that your body needs to undertake in order to feel “fulfillment”, any pleasure that is promoted by your physical needs should be controlled and limited if not stopped so that you should enjoy eternal life.

Religion wants the world to be illiterate. Religion wants the world to be poor. I know this doesn’t go along with the teachings of religion which basically teaches people to be nice to each other. But religion cannot survive without pain, without suffering without poor people. If there isn’t any of that, people start to turn into the more reasonable answers to the question on how we came to be and to the purpose of life rather than to irrational beliefs such as god. And illiteracy is not something the world needs right now. Just think about it for a second. If a person believes that everything came from a supreme being and that all the suffering on earth will be diminished once you are dead as you will go to god’s big hug and a place full of love then you can see how that can kill some of your humanism and most of your interest in finding more about your environment, about the world in general and the universe.

Religion hasn’t improved human life at all. When religion was introduced it may have done so, but everything from the computers we now use, the cars we now drive, the cures for many of the diseases comes from science. Our life is science made. What I mean is that most of the everyday comforts that everyone enjoys come from science and it is very astonishing on how all of us take all these things for granted where it needed centuries of research and questioning to achieve this level of understanding that can be useful to man. Religion served no role in this. Religion did not help this advancement and religion did not benefit from this advancement either.

I see the world changing towards the worse as people reject the new ideas, the new discoveries proposed from science and turn back to being religious and turn back to being illiterate. Global warming is a great issue and if the next president is a creationist one like Bush is it’s not likely that the global warming crisis will be controlled. Religion plays a very important role in Bush’s life which can explain many of the problems with his policies such as science illiteracy, such as war basing it on the concept that god actually told him to go to war, the otherwise almighty loving god.

Which is another problem. If you seriously believe that you have a personal relationship with god, it’s very likely that you will believe anything you want. What I mean by that is that if in your point of view god wants you to do something it’s very likely that you will go ahead and do it. For example I had a discussion with some of my friends and I was arguing that our morals did not come from god. So I argued: ” Do you think it’s immoral to kill someone? ” everyone then answered overwhelmingly “yes” so I argued well what if god actually came to you and talked to you and asked you to kill people in his name, would that be immoral? Then everyone stopped, then everyone had no idea what to say. Then they argued that if this is what god thinks then we certainly have got something wrong. But in further discussion they did say that if god says that it is the moral thing to do, they would go and kill people. You see people’s morals are blinded by their faith as easily as in that example. It’s never right to kill your fellow human beings. Never. No matter if gods or demons or Easter bunnies ask in your sleep that you should actually go and commit such act. That is the correct answer that is the moral answer.

You see religion has a funny way of looking at the world. It doesn’t look at it from a physical point, it’s looking at it from a supernatural point. People that are at the top of these religious establishments actually think that they are the messengers of god and that what they think is right is what should be right for everyone else. I do not believe in such things. I think that an action is right or wrong without involving religion into it. If I did a psychotic episode would probably turn me into killing people in the name of god like many psychotic popes did as well as many psychotic murderers who were unlucky not to be placed at the top of the catholic church, as well as many murderers did for the opposite of god, the devil.

You see if you do not believe in such establishments things such as understanding a scientific discovery without actually having to filter it through your religious beliefs comes easier. You see that keeping your morals aligned with the modern world comes easier if you do not have to filter them again through holy books. Committing murders or crimes comes less easy if you do not think that a divine force is driving you to do it. The world is more appreciated and enjoyed if you do not hold a belief that better things will come to you after you are dead. The world does survive without religion, I don’t see the world surviving with religion for very long. It is actually scary when I actually see how much belief people hold in fairytales but I guess that’s something I just have to accept because like with everything else, beliefs tend to differ even beliefs in science.

Social Rape

Rape is not just the violent physical action that a person commits on another person. Rape is forcefully making someone do anything s/he wouldn’t normally do.

The human mind is undergoing rape since the day of birth. Like a trained dog the human brain is forced to live among the accepted social standards in order to be acknowledged by the rest of the equally raped minds.

Things like Army, Patriotism, Religion and Marriage (although I do accept the latter) are just a few of the social rapes that the human mind is undergoing due to the fact that it’s either tradition or good for the common interest. Army is a way of enforcing obedience to protect from or to kill another tribe. Army makes the person more violent and shapes the person’s character in such a way that s/he would be easy to use in time of need. Patriotism is the sense that your country is superior to all the rest because you were born in it. Patriotism just like Army may appear to be just a word but its meaning is shaped according to external influences such as propaganda from the government. Patriotism like the army, make a person ready to die for a reason higher than his/her existence, their country. And believe me there’s no reason higher than your time on earth. Religion is a custom, a bad custom that brainwashes the people from a very early age in order to be ready to give their lives for a cause that the church thinks is righteous or to enforce the opinion of the church on a certain issue. When you look outside of it, the church appears as nothing more and nothing less than a big financial organisation. Marriage is another social rape in the sense that it undermines the man’s nature (could do that with the woman I am not sure) which is polygamy and not monogamy and thus goes against nature. If you sit and look outside of it, marriage is nothing more and nothing less than a social contraceptive used to control population sizes and crime.

 

By acknowledging and understanding your nature (biological and psychological) which includes your already raped in many forms character, you can at least avoid the brain-rape you haven’t had so far and avoid it for you and for your children. Feelings never get you wrong in understanding yourself so trust them while you choose. Try and be who you want to be and not who they want you to be. The world requires more free thinkers than one thinks.

“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it” – Albert Einstein. I try to go by this saying, but I know I’ll probably fail and be consumed by the system in the end. Because that’s what the system needs, obedient sheep from which it can feed and profit from.

Avoid the social rape don’t be another sheep.

Where to draw the line…

 

Opinions.

There are there to stay. Every man has the right to his/her opinion and has the right to express it wherever and whenever he/she considers appropriate. Opinions may include anything from why is earth spinning around the sun to why I crashed the ant even though it did nothing wrong to me. Opinions come as answers to a question that cannot have a fixed right answer. And the answers can vary to non fixed answers that only have to make sense for the person answering or expressing his/her view. Whether you like it or not there are bound to be stupid and intelligent opinions, more of the opinions would be stupid because that’s the kind of world we live in, but some will tend to be on the point and have some valid points to argue.

Debates.

Whenever there are opinions there would be debates. People that would debate and sometimes argue about a certain issue are people that do not necessarily share the same opinion and want to persuade the other person or the people around them that their opinion is the right one. Debates are logically end with no winners but people that are watching the debate or the public argument tend to switch sites or understand the issue to a greater depth than what they used to.

Ideally.

What I mean? All these things happen ideally.

There are debates according to some people that are held sacred. Religion debates, racial debates, how to raise your children debates, patriotism debates etc.

These issues are considered by the majority of people as so sacred that they cannot exchange properly views with someone that does not share the same opinion as them. People consider themselves democratic but they would not sit down and discuss with people that don’t share the same views as them about religion, about racial dominance. (NOW I AM NOT SAYING THAT I BELIEVE THAT A RACE IS DOMINANT TO ANOTHER THAT IS ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT BUT I WOULD HAVE NO PROBLEM TO DISCUSS THIS ISSUE WITH A KKK MEMBER)

In my opinion, and in the democratic world (ideally again I would call the world democratic because that’s how ideally it should be) we live in anything is under discussion. What’s always the case for a Christian is not the case for a Muslim what’s might be right for a white person might not be the case for a black person. Why? Due to the differences we share on our upbringings the differences in our genes and the different possibly education we may receive from different country states. Now for such polymorphism to manage to exist in the world there must be some sort of understanding. A mutual understanding and respect about the differences of each culture. True I will not argue with that, but through that understanding there should be respect for the other person’s opinion. As such any issue may be questioned and any issue is under debate respecting the fact that the other person may share a different view.

A debate is never out of the question with anyone and no-one. I will never understand why some people will refuse to sit down and talk with anyone that wants to talk to them. A debate happens and shows the world that every view is respected and accepted and that the world is a democratic one. A debate that excludes religion potentially divides religions even more. Muslims will tend to hate Christian’s even more and their differences will grow and grow. By evaluating certain people and certain issues as non-debatable you urge people to disrespect differences in opinions and to further teach their children that their beliefs are good the opposite beliefs are bad.

I will say it again. NOTHING is just right and NOTHING is just wrong. In the world we live in with the different upbringings everything is right and everything is wrong. Open discussions should be available about religion, about having or not having religion, debates about specific religions themselves, equality about NOT equality. That way people share their views. People will learn to accept different things, and to accept their differences which instead of separating them will unite them. Most of the governments do not allow this kind of public talk because it may bring trouble. Trouble is brought to them because they originally thought that it would bring trouble to them, and they followed a policy of “censorship” really, because that’s what it is, of public speech.

To finish this, I will say that there is no line to draw. People will have different sets of beliefs and I will have my different set. People will tend to accept certain people and reject others. Everything’s a fact but you will never manage to make a multicultural, an open and accepting world for anyone if you think there is a line to draw about sacred issues.

There’s only one line to draw, respect for human life as it is sacred, and that line is continually violated by all those people that draw all the other lines.

All those people that believe so much but do so little.

-pnx

[d]emocracy and [f]reedom.

Democracy would be the political system that allows you to express your opinion on any issue and lets you vote and or support that opinion and if it wins the overall majority (over 50%) that opinion would be passed. That’s what real democracy is. We now live in a different word than of that when that democracy was put to practise. For more “practical” reasons we now have indirect democracy which in fact is, the fact that others express our views for us. How do others know your opinion? Well they really don’t but you vote for the people you consider moral enough to support the moral opinions. That’s also a reason why I wouldn’t write the word democracy with a capital ‘D’ as what we have is not real democracy.

No matter that through our democratic methods we have voted laws and gave humans their OWN human rights. Rights which include freedom of speech, freedom to move wherever they want to, freedom to live where they want to, freedom to own land, freedom to actually live with no-one else having right in that life other than the person himself. Well in a democracy at least in a democracy where I live in even rights like that are challenged. For once I will not talk about the Cyprus problem and how Turkey has repeatedly taken many of my human rights away from me but also how the Government of the country where I live in, an EU country with the European constitution voted above her own constitution how your own country would take your human rights from you.

I am going to talk about one specific issue which I feel very strongly about. Army, military service in general if you want to. Military service in Cyprus is not voluntary it’s actually enforced on the people. People with real problems are actually forced to do the military service and things are actually going to get stricter as the time goes by. Don’t take me wrong but I object any kind of authority above me, if that authority has no point, no meaning and no cause whatsoever and is just there to just make my life worse and miserable. Well according to my rights as a human being, I am not enforced to do anything if I dont want to. Why would I? Especially if I don’t believe in that something? Why would I be motivated by stuff that I find stupid to say the least? Knowing human rights on the first day you spend in the army you are forced again to sign a letter saying that you denounce your rights and that you are volunteering to get in the army. What happens if you don’t sign? Well I don’t really know, but let’s say it’s illegal not to sign that… How democratic is this law? How free am I and how much to say do I have in this? Am I considered lesser of a being than the average American, English, Italian, German or anyone else? Why do I have to be treated like that?

Then there’s also all this brainwashing, as Cyprus being a smaller country most of the news spread quite fast, and so politicians use methods to make people look as lesser beings if they denounce their RIGHT to not do the army. (There are methods which you can use to avoid doing your military service which are mostly humiliating for any human being but that’s what you have to go through to avoid that which makes you sick) People are considered therefore as upnormal, problematic and with serious psychological problems if they dont do their military service. They are given a piece of paper which means nothing anywhere else but Cyprus and announces to the world that you have psychological problems. Now wouldn’t that if we assume that what they write on that piece of paper is true, be a medical document in which you are entitled privacy? Hell why dont they stick burn on the forehead of the HIV patients something saying “I’m HIV +ve” something catchy to save some lives at least. But that is concidered racist… and this obviously is not…

No-one has fought against the legality of the army in court and people are afraid to do so, as it would be betrayal towards your country… Not that they would kill them or something but it would be bad towards their image as you see as I have explained before we are a small country and news travel fast. But I say who cares for a country that considers moral teaching her citizents how to kill, a country that denounces the people that dont want to learn that? A country that sends her citizents to do their military service but doesnt provide enough toilet paper for them? A country that teaches people only how to steal and how to be lesser and lesser human? A country that doesn’t provide you with the eduacation that is necessary and it is preferable that you follow extra lessons at institudes outside school just to learn what you were tought inside the classroom hours before? A country that stinks with filth, filth that is generated by the people in charge of it? A country that sells democracy only as an image towards foreigners so that we’ll attract more and more income to the country so we’ll keep on feeding the ‘filth’ in charge? A country that mistakes goodness in people in their ability of completing their military service just so they can get a good place in the so much ‘promising’ public service? A country that will remember you only when you have to give and never when you have to take something from her? A country that instead of helping, destroys people for their shortcomings? A country where the word freedom and democracy are spelled just like the title, meaningless with their first letters Capitalised and written so that they give out the true meaning of Freedom and Democracy only when you leave the country behind you?

Just an extract from the thoughts of a simple minded person, full of shortcomings.