Saving the world

Throughout my whole life, regardless of my situation, where I was, and how old I was, I’ve always remembered a single idea being in the forefront of my mind – saving the world. I think that everyone is moved greatly often enough about the tremendous pain that exists in our world, and perhaps wishing, even fervently, that they were Superman, or the scientist who cured cancer or AIDS, or an ambassador to the world. I would think that anyone has those feelings at least a few times throughout their life. It’s not silly – it only means you have emotions and empathy.

Especially lately, I’ve been so greatly affected by the intensity of the lives that people lead. Poverty, hunger, sickness, pain. It’s all out there, and so many of the people who come across this post will be completely separated from it. I know I am. I’m lucky. I don’t think that’s fair.

A common theme in the United States right now has been the idea of taxation and the incredible power that the richest people in our nation possess. The immensity of the wealth of the richest people in our country outweighs that of a significant part of the world. Our richest hold more money than a number of countries. I find that disgusting. People say that there’s nothing wrong with making a profit. I say in this case, there is.

Profit is made at the expense of other people. When I deliver a product or service to another person in exchange for monetary gain, I transferring that person’s wealth to myself. Everyone needs food. Everyone needs water. Everyone needs shelter. Everyone needs health care. (Try however much you want. I’m not wavering on that last point.) These items are not commodities. The most frustrating aspect of our economic system is that food, water, shelter, and health care are traded as though they are luxuries and privileges. They are absolutely not. They are rights.

Before the establishment of the Bill of Rights in the United States, opinions could be punished. Who was most likely to have their opinions voiced? Those with clout and money. Guess who is most likely to have food, water, shelter, and health care? Those with clout and money. This is why one of my favorite documents is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights (Google it, if you’ve never read it. Wonderful stuff.) The items that I have outlined should be rights, not privileges. No discussion.

I think that most people would probably agree with me on those points, or at least to the statement that everyone deserves those things. I want to tie in the idea of the Bill of Rights here. “Rights” to speech, religion, assembly, etc. were once privileges. They were bought and sold in a market of cultural standing and influence. Food, water, shelter, and health care are all items that are currently bought and sold in a market of dollars. It needs to stop.

The very concept of a person’s well being as a commodity is absolutely revolting to me, and it frustrates me that such a thing is the sad state of our existence. It is the reality, and there is something that can be done about it. There are so many problems in the world right now, and I believe that if we are to start anywhere, it needs to be in our integrity. We cannot claim to have integrity while treating natural human rights as though they are privileges. I do not believe there are many options available as to how we can go about implementing these as true rights. My solution is one to be run by a global organization, perhaps overseeing the distribution of these items through branches that are involved in more specific areas. Maybe the United Nations can handle it. Maybe we need to rethink the entire concept of international law, but the situation is unimportant. The implementation is unimportant. There are solutions, and it must be done. We cannot maintain our moral integrity if we don’t.

This requires that the wealthiest nations play their part. They ought to play the only part. We can feed the whole world. It is possible, and there’s science to back it. There are so many complexities involved in increasing the food production adequately, and I am not qualified to make the statements on exactly what needs to be done. Environmental, work, and efficiency concerns must be addressed. (For example, the world cannot sustain the stupidly omnivorous diet that Americans pursue. We eat way too much meat. More emphasis must be placed on plant-based foods.)

I needn’t go though each of my points and explain how each is possible. As I said, I’m not qualified to answer each of the statements, but I have read enough to know that while global population will need to be addressed in some way or another in time, we do have the ability to give food, water, shelter, and health care to everyone in the world. Why not?

Hope, addendum

Recently, as I mentioned in my last post, the topic of hope has been something that I’ve spent a lot of time musing over. Because hope is so personal, so human, and yet it can be so rational, it is really quite interesting to me. As someone whose main goal in life is to seek and identify truth, I find it fascinating to mull over the concept of hope because of this seeming contradiction.

Human experience sometimes seems spiritual, as though it is something so innate in ourselves and in our environments that we simply cannot explain it. When I wake up and sit outside with my cup of coffee in the morning, there is something deeply moving and wonderful about that. I experience the world on a new, perhaps better level, one that I normally cannot attain while I go about my daily grind. It is moments like these that I try to create throughout my day, and sometimes they manage to creep in my schedule, when I hadn’t intended on it. I do not think that I can necessarily equate or correlate hope with this kind of spiritual idea, but my level of hope is often affected by my ability to appreciate small experiences throughout my day.

I today finished reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. My opinions regarding religion and his personal views aside, I was utterly inspired by his take on life and people. He was able to absolutely nail many ideas that I struggle to explain, and he took it even further, finding strands in the logical web that I hadn’t even considered before. He latches on to the idea that simplicity and living harmoniously with other people and the world around us is absolutely key, and I cannot agree more. Regardless of how my various opinions change throughout my life, something that has never changed is that I hold to the idea that our culture is too fast. We’re too hasty, too preoccupied, and too selfish. We are so incredibly focused on the task that is before us that we don’t even bother to remember why we’re pursuing it in the first place, and that is a fact that needs to change immediately. It is the idea that money, things, and prestige are our goals that prevents us from simplicity and harmony. This idea transcends all others, I believe. My political views are influenced by this idea, my opinions on religion, my philosophy, the very lens through which I see the world.

How to enable the world to experience this kind of deep harmony is tough. I haven’t experienced enough, nor have I read enough, to know whether the richest can feel it, or whether the starving can know it. I am quite certain that if we can develop a world where the starving are fed and the rich are selfless, that we will finally know harmony, and with it, peace.

That last paragraph is what causes me trouble. I don’t know if it makes me sound naive, too optimistic, silly, or what have you. I just refuse to believe that our situation is hopeless, because without that hope, what else is there? If we are all destined for despair in our very existence, why hope? We don’t just hope because we have to; we also hope because it is there. There is a reason for it. We can fix things. Hope is the feeling that I believe can motivate us to promote greater welfare throughout the world, so that maybe someday, everyone can experience peace. There will always be some element of pain, and I don’t think we can divorce that from our lives. Because it is inevitable, the best way we can deal with pain is to manipulate it to better ourselves. I can’t think of a more noble goal than this kind of betterment of society.

With that potentially convoluted set of thoughts out there, I’d recommend you check out Velvet Elvis. Regardless of your religious views, I think from a philosophical standpoint it is excellent, and you might be able to take something from it.

On hope

A question that I am often asked by people in general is “why do you hope so much?” (Or something to that effect.) As a background, I should mention that I’m a rather reserved person when it comes to social interaction. I try to talk only when I have something intelligent, humorous, or worthwhile to say (a conversation takes all types, I prefer to observe). When I do talk, I don’t think it’s fair to say that I’m optimistic. I do believe that I’m fairly realistic – I try not to let my perceptions of things color reality, but to understand that my perceptions are flawed and most likely wrong. With that in mind, I begin with the topic of hope.

I’ll try my best not to advocate either optimism, realism, or pessimism, but I’ll likely slip up a few times. I consider hope and optimism to be two different ideas, though certainly not mutually exclusive. Optimism is a bias. Optimism is how you view a situation: seeing the positive things in the world and being grateful for them. Hope, contrarily, is more the concept of seeing potential. When I see the world and the people in it, I see hope. I see potential for improvement. I know for a fact that we can do better, and that alone is encouraging. That is hope. The fact that I can look at a person and I know that they are experiencing the fullness of life is fascinating, and rather stunning as well. Whether or not one realizes it, people tend to see the world in their own unique ways. We adapt to our environments and, depending on the person, create psychological mechanisms to explain how things work, even if it is entirely subconscious. When I talk with another person about issues like this, I can see that they are asking the same questions I have been asking. They have the same existential questions that everyone else has, and it’s quite enlightening.

Perhaps my view of things is a bit colored. I see only the lighter shades of grey. Perhaps not. Something that I’ve noticed that has never changed, and has certainly always been a part of my conscious character, is that I hope. It might be naive, but I find the alternative unthinkable. If I cannot hope, if I cannot see improvement, happiness, love, struggles, and even pain, I cannot imagine what else there really is. The beauty of human existence is that our goals are to eliminate pain. We desire pleasure to such a great extent, that we take on struggles in order to improve our own lives, and especially the lives of our children. I take heart in the fact that we will never reach a situation where we no longer have to struggle, work, and see pain. We need it.

My last paragraph is likely to be misunderstood or misconstrued, and I understand that. There is so much incredible suffering in the world that I cannot possibly address even a small fraction of it in the terms of this post. However, I still want to address that. I know for a fact that we can solve problems such as hunger, drought, strife, war, and hatred. Humanity has the power to fix these problems, and I cannot imagine that we will go on living much longer without actually addressing them. Our current problem is only with prioritizing – we needn’t do anything more than change our priorities from oneself to ourselves. When we view the big picture with an open mind, I think that the average person understands the need to fix the world’s problems, and at any cost. We must ask ourselves the question, “Is it worth it?” Is it worth it to sacrifice human life for the sake of a few peoples’ bank accounts? Is it worth it to continue on destroying our planet so we can boast of our efficiency? Is it worth it to spend more resources on the few, while the plenty starve? Of course not, and no rational, good person would answer that question with a “no.”

My conclusion is this: hope is necessary. It is logical. It is rational. It is all that can be. Without hope, without the desire to accomplish greater things, get through our struggles, and change the world, what else can we do? It is an unfortunate accident of history that the best way to secure oneself financially is to profit off the poorest, but that is the fact of life in modern capitalism. However, I believe that going forward, the only solution that can possibly work is to improve the lives of the many. I believe it can and must happen, and therein is my hope. I don’t think pain will ever end. I don’t want pain to end. Pain is a source of character growth, and that is the purpose it serves in our modern world. We need to shape our world so that pain can become the positive thing that it has the potential to be.

I have to come back to the idea that this post can be really quite misunderstood, and I hope that it isn’t. I do feel the need to say these things, however, because I mean them in the most positive way possible. When we have hope, we have motivation. We can fix the world.

An irrational experience

One of the things that I tend to be lacking in is emotional understanding. Because I believe that my emotions are inherently irrational, I try to control them in order to reach my goals, rather than satisfy them. This is not to say that emotion is intrinsically bad, this is simply my preference. (In fact, if everyone acted like me, I imagine the world would be very boring indeed.) This is why I was confused earlier today when I had a rather intense emotional experience.

I was contemplating the thought of kids, potentially my own kids in the future, and how they would interact with the world. What do I want for them? What kinds of desires will they have, and will I have to bravery to help inspire and teach them how to reach their goals? Can I be confident and bold for my kids in the future? I realize it’s almost certainly a long way off for me, but long term ideas are my favorite ones to contemplate, so I won’t really address that point. My thoughts involve the dreams of children.

One of the most endearing things about children, at least in my opinion, is that they dream. They dream big, wide, and in great depth and detail. They have desires that transcend the imaginations that adults tend to have. Some people dismiss these dreams as being impractical, silly, and childish. While it may be true, I admire the idea of childlike dreams. A desire for what isn’t there motivates people to do great things, and I find that to be inspiring. I was thinking how terribly sad it is when a parent has to tell their child that no, they cannot be Superman. You cannot fly. You cannot save the world. You cannot dream.

However, I came to the conclusion that this doesn’t have to be it. We can still dream, even as we lose our childhoods. We needn’t forget what we really want out of the world. Yes, the world is certainly quite sub optimal (a major understatement). It is just that lack of perfection, though, that gives us the drive we need to achieve our dreams, though. I imagine that I will experience my own set of disappointments, setbacks, and kicks back into reality that cause me to doubt the premise I just stated. Indeed, I already have. It is just in these intense moments of realization, though, that we have the capability to make a difference. Perhaps not for ourselves. Perhaps not even for our children or our grandchildren, but for someone else. I find that incredibly inspiring, despite the pie-in-the-sky sound to it. I realize it’s hopelessly optimistic, but my dream is that there is dreaming. There is so much out there that can be done, and certainly none of us can accomplish big things on our own. Who would want to do it by themselves anyhow?

My convoluted thoughts on this idea are, I’m sure, not entirely clear. However, I hope that there is at least one other person out there who might share my sentiments. It is human ingenuity and drive that makes us unique and important. Right now, most of us spend our motivation on getting by, and I’m not criticizing that. Personal well-being is absolutely necessary in order to obtain the greater goal I hope to see someday. I desire to see a system where people don’t need to focus their drive on simply getting by – but to improve the human condition. A lot of people have called this the “happiness-based economy.” Whatever one wishes to name it, I see it as a noble goal. I may or may not get to see it in action, much less be involved in it. I want to see people able to dream big.

People and Philosophy

One of the most interesting aspects of my life has been my constant struggle to understand how people interact in social situations. While I believe I have an above average intelligence when it comes to theoretical things and ideas, I tend to be downright terrible at handling interactions with people. I am sometimes literally dumbfounded when people ask me the simplest of questions, for multiple reasons I’m sure. I try to be fairly open about this because it usually helps me to be more confident and to speak up a bit more. It’s curious, because I actually enjoy public speaking. It gives me a thrill and a jolt of energy that I don’t normally experience. It’s an odd combination.

The point of this post is that I spend a lot of my introspecting time (i.e. most of my life) thinking about philosophical ideas that happen to be sparked by whatever situations I might find myself in. Even the simplest of things often sends me down a trail to finding some sort of greater meaning. I don’t mean this as something that is good. In fact, it tends to keep me utterly distracted from the task at hand, to the point where I sometimes don’t pay attention to things that are directly in front of my face. Even when I’m on the job, I will occasionally completely stop what I am doing because I lost grasp on reality for a moment. While it’s an interesting quality that I have, I by no means consider it to be an inherently good thing. Especially for the world we live in, it’s extremely impractical.

This brings me to the point that so often bothers me. One of the main reasons, I believe, that I have trouble with talking about things that are practically relevant. I am struggling to state this in a way that isn’t arrogant sounding, because my interests are by no means more valid than the next person’s. (In fact, my interests are often much less practical than others’.) However, there are only a few topics that I am actually going to always be interested in talking about. I can sometimes relate to something cultural or personally relevant. There hasn’t been a time yet where I turned down a conversation on politics, philosophy, or religion, simply because they fascinate me so much. It’s the same thing, I think, with people who are enthralled by sports, literature, or nature. Actually, I enjoy the latter group very much myself, but my interest in them dulls over time.

I would like to know how people gain certain interests. As far as I can tell, there isn’t much psychological research on the topic, but I do hope to find more as I look for answers. Perhaps my interest in psychology actually transcends my interest in politics, religion, and philosophy, because it explains them by definition – they are all things that exist in our minds.

All things considered, the mysteries of human existence are really positively fascinating. I am often glad that we won’t have all the answers (or, at least I’ll never know them all), because otherwise there would be nothing left to search for and discover. It’s the limitlessness of the universe that makes our wonder possible, and for that I am grateful.

Blog reboot

This blog has been here for about three years, lying dormant every few months as I perused various interests of mine. I recently decided that I wanted to begin blogging again after my latest hiatus, and I also resolved that I ought to remove all my previous content. Old links will not work, though certainly you are free to look through various cache sites, as I’m sure you can find it there if you’re really interested. The mass purge is largely due to the fact that I have grown in maturity and knowledge over the years, and it would be silly to leave content that I wrote when I was thirteen.

I am hoping to write mainly about political ideas that run through my head and different information that interests me in all different fields, including the sciences and humanities. I am really an academic at heart, and surely I’ll convey my nerdy interest in things throughout my posts. I love a discussion, so please never be shy, especially when I come out with an outlandish idea (as I definitely will from time to time). Opposing points of view are especially useful in coordinating a more effective way for us to direct our world.