Closing doors, looking out windows...

While I wait for Nick to finish making his Fireborn character, I thought I'd give some explanation to my long time readers...

Yes, I have deleted some of my old posts - the whole Alex/Conan Saga is something I would rather leave in the past, yah? I realise I made some oddly lucid observations during my mad rants, but I'm wanting to try and really give this a nice restart.

Besides, I'm constantly coming up with new and crazy ideas for this blog. Also, people can help by suggesting to me new ideas that they would like to see on this blog. What else can I have to make it more interactive? I'm eager to have more comments and thoughts, open debate, and excuses for people to send me chocolate. :D

I've been thinking about the future recently and how, at 31, I'm still not really sure what I'm wanting to do with my life. Sure, I want to be a writer, and I've applied for the MA in Creative Writing, but what else am I wanting? I have to work in the interim, and what kind of job do I want?

Which leads me to my thoughts about economy and the world. Why do we actually need money? People constantly talk about limited resources and unlimited desires - but it seems to me that is a bit of an excuse for laziness and inefficient planning. Humanity is so desperate to be unique, nobody notices that they really are already without needing all the crap that we add to it.

You see, cultures are important to me because they give us different insights into the world - the only way to see the truth of the world is to look at it from all perspectives. But that does not mean that we should distrust each other on a global scale - or take advantage of each other.

This is what pisses me off about humanity. As a whole, we are predictable and... well... stupid. We bicker, fight and act selfishly for really no reason. Why do people enslave others? I'm not talking about the kinky bedtime romps kind of enslaving - but the genuine, steal another person's freedom type enslaving. Humanity is all about power plays and control. Yet - couldn't we free everyone and give them all control?

In other words, does economy exist to help constrain the greedy and punish the lazy, or has it created the greedy and the lazy?

I keep thinking about how much food the Western world wastes and has just sitting on the shelves in supermarkets while there are people starving in another country. When I ask myself, why can't we send the food to the starving, the answers are numerous and all relate to money and power.

Not to reality. Not to the natural world. But to things that humans have invented in the clumsy well-meaning sense of survival. Let's get something clear here - controlling others against their will is an evil act. We do it all the time, and it scares me when I try to puzzle my way out of the labyrinth of well-meaning acts of stupidity that humanity has created.

Man, I'm sounding so down on the human race...

Let me put it another way...

When I was studying philosophy one of the first things I thought about with Existentialism was how it did, to a point, describe humanity in a way I understood.

See, human nature is a blank slate. There is no real human nature - rather we have the free will do define what it is to be human. That is why humans can be both good and evil at the same time. See, the problem has been that as humanity developed we kept adding definitions to our natures - humans are noble, they are greedy, they are hunters, they are pacifists, they are warriors... as we kept adding, human nature became more and more complex.

The problem is that we never took anything away. After we discovered technology we didn't stop being hunter/gatherers. This is because the change happened so slowly that it never really gave the old way a chance to be decisively negated. So with all these new definitions being added, humanity forgot that it had chosen how to define itself.

So that is why now, more than ever, we have such confused crises of conscience. We don't really know what we are expected to be because there are so many confusing and contradictory views.

Some see this blank slate as a bleak acceptance that there is nothing fixed and we are free to be murderers and killers.

But from an ethical viewpoint, I see this as very powerful - because we choose to be who we are. To me this makes an act of kindness so much more powerful. Because it was a choice. I genuinely believe that ethics exist separately from society. That they are universal common sensical ideas that supercede things because they are purely logical ideas when you account for emotions and feelings. (Which are, in fact, logical to me.)

So the upshot of it all is that when we choose to do a good deed, we don't just choose it for ourselves... but for all humanity. By choosing to do a good deed, we make humanity as a whole... good. That's a pretty empowering thought - and nobody suffers loss of freedom.

Bringing me back to the original topic - there is no reason we can't put aside our differences and try to work out the most efficient use of Earth's resources. Despite all the naysaying, the world has enough to help humanity achieve whatever it wants to do - that's the power of free will and why we are here. Humanity decides its own heaven or hell. It's just that some people have bought into confused and selfish definitions that existed at some point for someone to gain more power for themselves. But such gain is a fleeting benefit. No matter what people say about death, you don't take it with you - and I suspect that on the other side of things... well, you don't benefit there either.

So why bother doing it at all. We have lost our true spirituality. We hide behind religions, cultures in the search for identity. I'm not saying to deny all religion and culture, though, but to recognise that they are mirrors of our own desires. We should have control over them, allow them to mould and change as we change our natures with each new discovery... but instead we have tried to stick rigidly to the past.

We choose our history, our future and our present. So much suffering comes from either not making a choice or having someone prevent us from making our own choices.

So why not try to embrace the freedom that choice gives you. Don't give up on reclaiming your innocence and sense of wonder... it's there still if you really really want it. Being a good person doesn't need anything more than your own faith in yourself and accepting that you choose your reality - well, to a degree.

Anyone want to buy my ten CD self-help set now? ;)

**End Rant**

Until later!

Love and Huggles

Conan