Well, it sounds like its from some cliché movie or crappy self help book;
but seriously, have you ever stopped and asked yourself who you would be if you
stripped off all that social conditioning, all those things your parents have
told you to be, and people have said you are.. Hell, while you’re at it, who
would you be if you looked different, or you lived in a different time?
Stop and think about it for a moment, where did your last thought come from?
And the one before that? Was it original, or did you think it before.. Maybe when
you think deeper still, who came up with that thought before you? How was the
seed sowed?
Have you noticed how you tend to think certain thoughts when your in
different places, maybe you go to a certain room in the house and bam, you
realise your thinking the same thing you were last time you were in that same
room.
If you had grown up 200 years ago, would you have owned a slave? Would you
fight to free that slave or would you fight to keep 'it'? And if you had lived
in Nazi Germany during the war, would you have thought Hitler, fled the country
or stood patriotically behind your countries ruler and all mighty protector?
"Of course the people don't want war. But
after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's
always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is
easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater
danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg
trials
Sometimes I wonder whether we're simply some semi intelligent post ape
species, marching inexhaustibly towards our own destruction, too fuelled by the
evolutionary forces that brought us there, too stupid to see it coming and all
together too clever to survive our own tools of destruction.
It’s like humanity is half way between two points, like
holding a giant target in the no mans land between two warring armies; we
either need to be a lot smarter or a lot more stupid, because as we are now,
we’re smart enough to be able to kill everything and stupid enough to be willing to do it.
"I don't know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world
war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the
fourth world war will be fought with -- stone clubs."-- Albert Einstein
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all
other countries because you were born in it.~ George Bernard Shaw
You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.~ [Usenet]
All great truths begin as blasphemies.~ George Bernard Shaw
So the question remains, who are you really? Are you in
charge of your own mind or are you simply a product of your past, just the
result of millions of iterations of an evolution guided gene mixing process;
enabling you to recognise patterns and repeat them more efficiently than earlier
models till that day where you too, like those that shaped the environment you
lived in; expire, reduced to nothing more than the fading memory of those still
alive.
Could you be something more than the flesh others see; a
soul that has never lived before, has never died before but will be judged by
your actions; a judgement that will propel it to the heights of eternal bliss,
of infinite rewards and the best of everything.. or.. doom you to the fiery
pits of a place so terrible its worth staying celibate just to avoid.
A binary choice between the blackest of black and the
lightest of light, an infinite reward or punishment, forever repeated as a
consequence of a finite set of actions in a varying world.
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man
would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment
and hope of reward after death.~ Albert
Einstein
Or maybe this life is simply one in a series of many, the
only purpose to continue to improve upon the previous life; doomed to repeat
your mistakes until you learn to change them and graced to have the opportunity
to do so.
Do you believe any of these doctrines? Is it even possible
‘believe’ anything while remaining ‘yourself’? And can you accept that
ultimately nothing can ever be true, including this statement; just like you
can never stand in the same spot in a river twice..
It’s pretty obvious things change, fashions come and go,
empires rise and fall, economies boom and bust, conquerors conquer and in turn
are conquered; yet is it obvious that like everything before now, that which
exists now will be looked back on like we now look back on slavery, black and white
TV’s and disco.
We all look back at Hitler disgusted, like we think of those
Germans that were too blind with patriotism and fear to oppose him with an air
of superiority; knowing that we would never do that ourselves, just like we
shake our head at how bad the ‘great recession’ was.. but do you look at these
things and ask yourself how will history look at what you did? And how long
before it repeats itself, as it always tends to do.
God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and
then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined
to solve the problem in the Middle East. […] -- George W Bush
I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our
Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work. ~ Adolf Hitler
Oh gee, now I’m taking quotes from Bush and Hitler to make
Bush look like Hitler… But, I’m sorry to disappoint, as I won’t be putting on
the tinfoil hat and screaming conspiracy, besides, there are enough differences
between the two to make such comparisons absurd. Think about it, Hitler killed
millions of Jews, and was a relatively intelligent asshole.
No, I’m asking you if you’ve thought how you will look back
at yourself in 20 years time, the way you thought and acted now, and whether
you believe your immune to the current layer of propaganda… Remember, Iraq Iran really has weapons of mass destruction and it’s
crazy and capable enough to use them on the whole world, guaranteeing its total
eradication from the map in a suicidal act of jealous rage if America doesn’t
step in and save us all from this terrible, albeit avoidable calamity. Honest
to God, a friend of a friend of mine said he saw it on fox news.
No, the whole purpose of this lengthy post is to rattle a
few feathers, to make you stop and ask yourself whether you’re wearing a mental
veil, to question who you are and why, if for any reason you’re here.
Just as a picture is drawn by an artist, surroundings are
created by the activities of the mind. ~ Buddha
Do you believe in good and bad? Who is good, who is bad in
your eyes? Well, heres a little more food for thought, its interesting when you
hear what people have really said, isn’t it?
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no
religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious
foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion
must be derived from faith ... we need believing people. ~ Adolf Hitler
I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens,
nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God. ~ President George
Bush, August 27, 1988
If I could find a way to get [Saddam Hussein] out of there,
even putting a contract out on him, … ahh … if the CIA still did that sort of thing,
. . . ahh . . . assuming it ever did . . . . . . . I would be for it. ~ Richard Nixon
I would have made a good pope. ~ Richard Nixon
Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of
insanity? ~ Arthur C. Clarke
I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your
Christians are so unlike your Christ. ~ Mohandas Gandhi
The United
States is in no sense founded upon the
Christian doctrine. ~ George Washington
Administration Treaty
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian
or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is
violent? It is because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind.
When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds
violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any
country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is
concerned with the total understanding of mankind. ~ J. Krishnamurthi
When I told the
people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood
up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the
Protestants in whom you don't believe?’ ~ Quentin Crisp
I contend that we
are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you
understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why
I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts
I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes that seemed too good
to leave out..
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it
tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. ~ Carl Sagan
I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong ... No
Vietcong ever called me nigger. ~ Muhammad Ali,
stripped of boxing title, convicted of a felony for refusing to serve during
the Vietnam War
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we
despise, we don't believe in it at all. ~ Noam Chomsky
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest
of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. ~ John Maynard
Keynes
We need a common enemy to unite us. ~ Condoleezza Rice,
March 2000
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a
bit longer. ~ Henry Kissinger
(Former US
Secretary of State)
If there has to be a blood bath, let's get it over with. ~Ronald Reagan, Vietnam
I am strongly in
favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should
be good and it would spread a lively terror. ~ Winston Churchill
commenting on the British use of poison gas against the Iraqis after World War
I
Shit, I almost posted a blog post without including a YouTube
video.. Well, these are good food for thought.. the first contends that we're all monkeys, good for a laugh and makes you think a little, as long as you don't find its contention interlectually insulting.
Click on image to view.
This one is the intro from idiocracy, and I highly recommend watching it, and the whole movie as well (for its underlying political message), this clip just makes fun of american hilbillies, and does so very elegantly, scary thing is, if you add another 50 years of fox news it just might end up becoming true sooner than we think.
Click on image to view.
These last two are just thrown in for good measure, the first being a cartoon of humans acting like a virus, and the second being agent smiths synopsis of humans from the matrix; can you see humanity behaving in this way? can you see yourself behaving in this way?
Click on image to view.
Click on image to view.
would find my blog
on google if I wasn't careful, and that's not good for business.
