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| Thread: Life..... |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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Nidhgrin
Honorable
Famous Hero
baking cookies from stardust
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posted January 01, 2004 09:52 PM |
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To me... life is like a stormwind blowing through a forest. Arriving on this world as little seedlings some things have been decided for us, the soil, the type of trees around us among many other things. We grow up, flourish and one day we fall down with the wind, giving space and nourishment for new seedlings. Though some things we cannot change, we do have the power to grow against the wind, or bend with it. We can choose to grow closer to some trees or more distant from others. We can spread our branches taking as much sunlight as possible growing taller than most trees around us, making some of them die... or stretch our branches sharing the sun with more, but less taller trees. When we grow in certain directions sometimes it may be... very hard or impossible to grow back the other way, and if we do try it may come at the cost of falling at some point. The forest is one, but every single tree is unique and special.
In my opinion life and love are so much intertwined... it's hard to see them as separate things. A life without love would be meaningless. The day i stop loving life, the people who are close to me, mankind, all animals and plants and all the other things i can see or think about will be the day i die.
If i would have to name the three most important things in my life i would say open mindedness, compassion, and integrity/thrust. For me life is about finding balance, finding my place in the world, finding myself. All the rest just comes as it goes, like the wind. This may sound fatalistic but it really isn't, we do have a will and 'do' have the power to change certain things. Most things though... even our very own thinking (through hormones, subconscious processes, ...) are not completely in our control. Realizing this doesn't make you weaker, on the contrary, it makes you more patient and more accepting when people act in unusual ways. We humans are not machines... and some days well are just better than others.
Every human being develops a value table through the course of his or her life. On mine open mindedness, compassion and integrity/thrust stand very high on the table. Without an open mind you will never learn new things. You will remain in the little world you know, convinced that the thruths you learned there are the only ones, closing your heart for other views, growing afraid of other things and ways, even take up arms to protect what you think is right, destroying other things you would see as wrong because of your background... I hope that more people have this value on their values table but i'm not sure. I just know that all of my closest friends have an open mind. All of them. Too many lives have been lost, cultures have been erased out of history, because of narrowmindedness. And it still happens every single day. People with another religion, another skin color, gay people, people with different habits or customs... are they bad by definition? No! We can see them as bad because they are different from what we know and think is 'normal'. Only... 'normal' is just a concept that exists in your mind, and the people in the group you belong to. Other people may have a different conception about what 'normal' is supposed to be.
Most people seem to think the ability to reason is the reason why we have 'a higher state of development' than most other species on this planet. I agree though i must add that even with reason, humans would be mere animals without compassion. Can you take something you don't really need, knowing that if you do someone who then doesn't have the chance to take it will suffer or die? I for one cannot... Too many people in this world still die today... of starvation, infections that could have been cured with the right (or were they affordable) medication, disasters of nature without the needed infrastructure... It's easy to look at your tv screen and see smiling faces, pretending everything is fine and follow the materialistic mainstream while more than half of the world population is dying, or living in inhuman conditions. It doesn't help to just sit there and feel miserable about it, that's right. But if everyone does what small bit he or she can do... you 'can' make a difference. Even if you only help a few hundreds of people working in a banana plantation get to a better pay, better education for their children and healthier working conditions by buying bananas that are slightly more expensive though just taste the same you do make a difference when buying those instead of the other, slightly cheaper ones (knowing people are working in miserable conditions to get those cheaper ones in your store). Not caring... being incompassionate, cold, hard and materialistic doesn't just make a person a mere animal in my opinion... it makes you less than an animal, for animals do not have a choice (except for certain primates and mammals possibly). They act out of instinct and cannot act in a compassionate way, humans can. I know this will probably sound hard but what are we really without compassion? When you can reach out your hand to give or help instead of take or hit why not be compassionate? I know saying this might make some people disagree, maybe even heavily  From my point of view compassion is very important, but everyones value table is different, this is just one view on what life is all about. (now flame away hehe  )
I don't think most people would disagree when i list integrity and thrust as highly important human values. Perhaps openmindedness and compassion, and a wondering look into the world, lead to a certain degree of naivity leaving you more open to people who are not worth your thrust, people who stab you in the back after you've accepted them with open arms. One reaction is to seal yourself off, to close down, protecting yourself from being hurt any further. Another reaction is to just keep thrusting people... maybe learning from experience and thrust your intuition. If you can't thrust people... people will notice and not thrust you back. Time on earth here is too short to crawl away in yourself in my opinion, and most people in the world are good of nature, even though they can do bad things at times.
While life is not making choices in my opinion, a lot of important questions arise and need to be answered, as well as decisions and choices that have to be made. Depending on the values on our values list we weigh off certain options where to choose from and make decisions that way. Reason plays an important role in decision making, true. Many people don't seem to realize though that your ability to reason is heavily clouded by your subconsciousness or other bodily factors such as illness, tiredness, hormones... In my life the best choices i have ever made have not been made by pure reasoning, but by my heart and the values i stand for.
Quote:
Every person have thier own definition on life & live it diferently so theres no real answers but what you believe life is not everyones same definition you understand?
This is so true in my opinion It's what i call, or part of what i call open mindedness. Everyone has, and maybe needs a definition for love but we all find different answers to it. Usually there are more answers to a question, except in the world of logic and math, life is nothing like that maybe impossible to define with words.
(on a sidenote, shouldn't this thread belong in the other side of the monitor forum?)
~Niddy out~
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frostwolf
Famous Hero
livin' in a bottle of vodka
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posted January 06, 2004 10:02 PM |
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Long post Niddy...
I read it all and it all sounded so familliar.There are many opinions I used to share with you, and some that I still do.But, trough studies of history, religion, philosophy, psychology, and what not I came to one conclusion. Hommini lupus hommini. Man is wolf to man. If you want the translation, it means that we are a destructive race, we share the same blood and walk under the same sun and still we destroy without remorse and we cut each other's throats. Nothing seems to hold humans at bay. For each good thing that we bring into the world, we destroy others. We make a cure, but we create ten other diseases. We build a cathedral and we blow it up in war. No matter the good, it is in our nature to destroy,to crush and to kill. We'we been fighting each other blindly for thousands of years, for land, glory or religion, and we still fight now. We always find reasons to attack each other. We always destroy what we create. One man's nobility is countered by ten other men's materialism. We are set on our own destruction. There seems to be no other way than to kill each other...
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What can you expect from a world where everybody lives because they're too afraid to commit suicide?
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted January 07, 2004 01:24 AM |
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Translation:
Nidhgrin = life is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Frostwolf = life is a self-defeating prophecy.
The real question is: Which do you choose, for yourself, at a given moment?
By being the one who chooses, you make it become real either way.
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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bort
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Discarded foreskin of morality
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posted January 13, 2004 04:59 AM |
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Quote:
Long post Niddy...
I read it all and it all sounded so familliar.There are many opinions I used to share with you, and some that I still do.But, trough studies of history, religion, philosophy, psychology, and what not I came to one conclusion. Hommini lupus hommini. Man is wolf to man. If you want the translation, it means that we are a destructive race, we share the same blood and walk under the same sun and still we destroy without remorse and we cut each other's throats. Nothing seems to hold humans at bay. For each good thing that we bring into the world, we destroy others. We make a cure, but we create ten other diseases. We build a cathedral and we blow it up in war. No matter the good, it is in our nature to destroy,to crush and to kill. We'we been fighting each other blindly for thousands of years, for land, glory or religion, and we still fight now. We always find reasons to attack each other. We always destroy what we create. One man's nobility is countered by ten other men's materialism. We are set on our own destruction. There seems to be no other way than to kill each other...
It's sort of fashionable to say things like this and dismiss other views as naive, but I have a question -- if it's in our nature to destroy, to crush and to kill, why do the vast majority of people in this world go through life without ever killing? How many people do you actually know who have killed? Maybe you know a few soldiers. I do, but they're certainly not proud of having killed and really don't like to talk about it. Maybe you know an actual murderer, I don't know, but out of all the people you've met, how many have actually killed anyone? How many people do you know who have participated in blowing up a cathedral? There are and have always been people who destroy, crush and kill and they're the ones who make the news, but seriously, there are something like 6,000,000,000 people on this Earth -- what percentage of them have actually performed the horrible deeds you describe? 3,000,000,001 of them will have had to murder before you can start saying that it's in our nature to kill. If it's so much part of our nature to kill and destroy than why does it shock and upset us? If it's our nature, it should be no different from a frog eating a fly -- just part of nature. It shocks and upsets us because it's not part of our nature to kill. It's something a small minority does.
Turn the question around -- how many people do you know who have done something nice for somebody else no matter how small the deed. Shared a bag of chips with somebody, comforted them when they're upset, taken care of their dog and taken in the mail when they're on vacation, volunteered in a soup kitchen or for habitat for humanity or something like that, all the way up to donating a kidney or sacrificing themselves to save someone else. I can guarantee that list is longer than the list of murderers you know. Shouldn't that mean it's in our nature to be compassionate?
I'm not saying people are saints. They aren't by any stretch of the imagination. From what I can tell, people are just self absorbed and selfish most of the time, but they come out of that shell to be kind a lot more than they come out of it to be cruel.
Saying things like "it's in human nature to kill," is sort of dangerous, because if it's just part of human nature, just part of what we are, just part of our genetic makeup, then how can killing be wrong?
PS -- wolves don't act they way you described. They are not a destructive race and they do not destroy without remorse and slit eachothers throat. The phrase you may be looking for is "Hommini hommini hommini." Which, coincidently is the list of ingredients on a package of grits.
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Drive by posting.
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Romana
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Thx :D
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posted January 13, 2004 12:44 PM |
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@Bort : The murdering you are talking about, does it also imply the murder of animals? Or are you only talking about people killing other people?
And if it's only people killing other people, do you mean that in a direct way or also the murders people commit indirectly?
just wondering..
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Asmodean
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Heroine at the weekend.
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posted January 13, 2004 12:57 PM |
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Life is to be lived, not debated.
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To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted January 13, 2004 05:09 PM |
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bort: Good post, as usual. It is dangerous to assume anything about "human nature." An examination of the various life ethics among the vast array of cultures on this planet bears this out. Example: compare the Hopi People (almost completely pacifist agrarians, with a strong anti-murder ethic) with the Huns (who did not regard the taking of human life as a very serious event and did it regularly).
Romy: Good point. It is important to keep in mind, however, that some taking of animal life is done for food, and some even undertake it with great respect and rituals of thanks to the animal for what it provdes them. Others however simply do it for sport, the pleasure in killing which approaches the murderous element -- the point you are making. For those people, there is a presumption that humans have greater rights than animals. This "ethic" permits them to kill for pleasure with a clean conscience. On the other hand, there are few societies anymore whose members undertake killing other humans on a large scale for any reason other than self-defence.
Asmodean: The unexamined life is not worth living.
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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frostwolf
Famous Hero
livin' in a bottle of vodka
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posted January 13, 2004 10:59 PM |
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Quote:
It's sort of fashionable to say things like this and dismiss other views as naive, but I have a question -- if it's in our nature to destroy, to crush and to kill, why do the vast majority of people in this world go through life without ever killing? How many people do you actually know who have killed? Maybe you know a few soldiers. I do, but they're certainly not proud of having killed and really don't like to talk about it. Maybe you know an actual murderer, I don't know, but out of all the people you've met, how many have actually killed anyone? How many people do you know who have participated in blowing up a cathedral? There are and have always been people who destroy, crush and kill and they're the ones who make the news, but seriously, there are something like 6,000,000,000 people on this Earth -- what percentage of them have actually performed the horrible deeds you describe? 3,000,000,001 of them will have had to murder before you can start saying that it's in our nature to kill. If it's so much part of our nature to kill and destroy than why does it shock and upset us? If it's our nature, it should be no different from a frog eating a fly -- just part of nature. It shocks and upsets us because it's not part of our nature to kill. It's something a small minority does.
PS -- wolves don't act they way you described. They are not a destructive race and they do not destroy without remorse and slit eachothers throat. The phrase you may be looking for is "Hommini hommini hommini." Which, coincidently is the list of ingredients on a package of grits.
You are forgeting one thing. History, the decisions that affect us all, are made not by the masses, but by the few who achive great things, be they bad or good. It is enough for the leader to kill, the others will fallow.
Now, about the wolf part. You didn't get my point. The expresion doesn't imply that wolfes kill each other and so do we, the actual translation is that wolf kills man, and so 'Man is wolf to man' means man kills man(my earlier point)
Anyway,I don't want to soumd like the guy who regards life as worthless or men as murderers; however, I am passioned by history, and trough my studies I have come to realise that any progress mankind has made has always been shadowed by the war and crimes people made.
If you must know, I am an adept of peace myself, and I dream of a better tomorrow and try to do my best in this world...
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What can you expect from a world where everybody lives because they're too afraid to commit suicide?
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