A man who never lived but in satin would go extinct in the real world.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary

A great article about how depression helps us concentrate on solving our problems and helping our ability to analyze them.
It really reflects the thoughts I have had for a long time, but it supplies scientific proofs to support them.
Also I feel like this relates to me at certain point in past a lot.

My favourite chapter of Nietzsche's Zarathustra (so far)

XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS.

With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and somnolent senses.

But beauty's voice speaketh gently: it appealeth only to the most awakened souls.

Gently vibrated and laughed unto me to-day my buckler; it was beauty's holy laughing and thrilling.

At you, ye virtuous ones, laughed my beauty to-day. And thus came its voice unto me: "They want—to be paid besides!" 

Ye want to be paid besides, ye virtuous ones! Ye want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your to-day?

And now ye upbraid me for teaching that there is no reward-giver, nor paymaster? And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward.

Ah! this is my sorrow: into the basis of things have reward and punishment been insinuated—and now even into the basis of your souls, ye virtuous ones!

But like the snout of the boar shall my word grub up the basis of your souls; a ploughshare will I be called by you.

All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and when ye lie in the sun, grubbed up and broken, then will also your falsehood be separated from your truth.

For this is your truth: ye are TOO PURE for the filth of the words: vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution.

Ye love your virtue as a mother loveth her child; but when did one hear of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?

It is your dearest Self, your virtue. The ring's thirst is in you: to reach itself again struggleth every ring, and turneth itself.

And like the star that goeth out, so is every work of your virtue: ever is its light on its way and travelling—and when will it cease to be on its way?

Thus is the light of your virtue still on its way, even when its work is done. Be it forgotten and dead, still its ray of light liveth and travelleth.

That your virtue is your Self, and not an outward thing, a skin, or a cloak: that is the truth from the basis of your souls, ye virtuous ones!—

But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth writhing under the lash: and ye have hearkened too much unto their crying!

And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; and when once their hatred and jealousy relax the limbs, their "justice" becometh lively and rubbeth its sleepy eyes.

And others are there who are drawn downwards: their devils draw them. But the more they sink, the more ardently gloweth their eye, and the longing for their God.

Ah! their crying also hath reached your ears, ye virtuous ones: "What I am NOT, that, that is God to me, and virtue!"

And others are there who go along heavily and creakingly, like carts taking stones downhill: they talk much of dignity and virtue—their drag they call virtue!

And others are there who are like eight-day clocks when wound up; they tick, and want people to call ticking—virtue.

Verily, in those have I mine amusement: wherever I find such clocks I shall wind them up with my mockery, and they shall even whirr thereby!

And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness.

Ah! how ineptly cometh the word "virtue" out of their mouth! And when they say: "I am just," it always soundeth like: "I am just—revenged!"

With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies; and they elevate themselves only that they may lower others.

And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from among the bulrushes: "Virtue—that is to sit quietly in the swamp.

We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would bite; and in all matters we have the opinion that is given us."

And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that virtue is a sort of attitude.

Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue, but their heart knoweth naught thereof.

And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say: "Virtue is necessary"; but after all they believe only that policemen are necessary.

And many a one who cannot see men's loftiness, calleth it virtue to see their baseness far too well: thus calleth he his evil eye virtue.—

And some want to be edified and raised up, and call it virtue: and others want to be cast down,—and likewise call it virtue.

And thus do almost all think that they participate in virtue; and at least every one claimeth to be an authority on "good" and "evil."

But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and fools: "What do YE know of virtue! What COULD ye know of virtue!"—

But that ye, my friends, might become weary of the old words which ye have learned from the fools and liars:

That ye might become weary of the words "reward," "retribution," "punishment," "righteous vengeance."—

That ye might become weary of saying: "That an action is good is because it is unselfish."

Ah! my friends! That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be YOUR formula of virtue!

Verily, I have taken from you a hundred formulae and your virtue's favourite playthings; and now ye upbraid me, as children upbraid.

They played by the sea—then came there a wave and swept their playthings into the deep: and now do they cry.

But the same wave shall bring them new playthings, and spread before them new speckled shells!

Thus will they be comforted; and like them shall ye also, my friends, have your comforting—and new speckled shells!—

Thus spake Zarathustra.

-Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus spoke Zarathustra.

I am volatile to random bursts of happiness. Nietzsche advocates that there is, and neither there should be, a reward for being a good person. Being good itself is rewarding enough. Well, in that case, if I want to be a good person I should feel rewarded, even if I'm really not, right?
(:

I know, right?

Freedom for Tibet*

*applies only to Tibet. Cars not included.

What is the opposite of open-minded? I can't seem to find just the right word. Prejudiced? Closed-off?

Anyway, from my experience I get the notion that all of anti-open-minded people are afraid of death.
Think about it. Do you agree?

It's also quite logical. If you lock yourself down in your own head, it's only a matter of time to realize that the time will run out for you once.
It's like being in a prison. I bet prisoners fear death.

Someone once told me that all poems are about either death or love. I believe it. It all reverts to those two. Now let's put that statement together with saying that poems reflect our inner thoughts and emotions.
See? It's either death or love.

You can't love if you can't open yourself to the others.

Midnight Dreary

Happiness is the ability to appreciate the good and to not care about the bad.
This definition means that being happy is not going to fix anything [about oneself].
That's a huge disadvantage. But being happy is still worth it - that is, unless you have too much to fix.

But what if you can't be happy and you can't fix anything either? What if someone simply takes over your... well, you? What if someone can control what you can do and uses it to restrict you to the point that there's only one option for you?
Then the anger comes. Or madness perhaps, in both its meaning.

There is one problem with this anger. It brings a hangover. Some call this hangover "the feeling of defeat".

I've never heard of anyone who could cure defeat alone.
But what if the person who has power over you keeps you alone?

Then things aren't even grotesque anymore.
They're gloomy, dismal, dreary-

I've been given all I need.
I've had taken away all I wanted.

creepy.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer_letters

It's a year

I was never very fond of calendars. They order you, as if they were superior. They tell you when the fall begins and when the year ends.
Fall never really starts with the calendar.
And for each one of us, the year ends at a different time. Just think about it. When does your year end?
Mine ended just now. A year from the first post here. A year from the first thing I've written. 

I remember it. I felt strange. It was peculiar. I sobered up after a week of being constantly drunk and I was trying to pull my shit together.

Philosophy says that beauty loses its wonder when it's repeated.
I have no worries though; beauty can never be exhausted.
We don't create. We have never created anything. Big Bang created everything. Or god did - whatever floats your boat. Humans are given the power to rearrange what there already is
To give it a meaning.

What represents this more than writing?

There are two things one does when being confronted with extreme uneasiness of being. If one goes through an existential crisis they're almost sure to fall into one of these categories: either they start to appreciate the wonderfulness of being with all its small components or they isolate themselves from feelings and sensations higher than they themselves are.
I never did go through a crisis and all the troubles I had I caused myself. But I want to fall into the first category nevertheless.
Aesthetics is important.
Aesthetic means pretty.
Meaning is more important.
Meaning means beautiful.

Let’s face one thing; we will never find the Truth.
But we’re getting closer and closer every generation.
Plato had a huge obstacle in finding the Truth because he lived before Newton. He had more to discover than to learn.
To be honest, though, I like it that way. It feels strange to know that someone, somewhere, before myself, must have had the same thoughts like I do. They probably wrote them down too. Maybe I should just read more instead of writing. But why would I do that? I’m enjoying myself far too much.

So there I go, towards another year. Let’s try to live up to this one. It’s gonna be a challenge but, oh boy, don’t I love these!

Ideal state

I have posted quite a bit of stuff about politics here, but nothing this exhausting so far. This is my project on Ideal State. At first I started writing it to publish here and then, purely coincidentally, I got the very same thing assigned for my philosophy class.
So here I present you a summary of all my political views - government, social policies, economy.

Comments appreciated.
please, please, if you read this, react. Let me know what you think

This is the link to the document:

Ideal State paper *click here*

It's the least we could do.

Loving lights.

I feel like the last bit of coal of a campfire. Still warm, but growing colder every second. I wish someone would throw some more material for me to burn through. Please cover me with leaves. My flame would rise up and shine bright once again, ever so passionately. But I'm probably finished now.

Perhaps I'm only the light at the end of a cigarette in a middle of the night, only flickering. And you don't know if you should put me out already or take one more puff.

The Loner said that people are full of lights. For every person that loves you there is one light shining inside of you. Maybe what I feel is just one of these lights inside of me, slowly fading away.

I don't even fucking know whether the light ever shined brightly. Maybe it was always just smoking a bit and flickering.

400

This is the post number 400.
And it's not even a year yet since I started with this blog.
It makes me want to come back to what happened since.
And there's certainly a lot of it.

We, as human beings, undergo constant change. How significant change it is is determined by how much we open ourselves to what we see around ourselves.
If there's something I really take pride in, it would be that I understand what must be done to truly open yourself towards your environment. It's not just listening. It's also thinking. Interpreting. Searching for causes and correlations.
A lot of people are not capable of doing that. Therefore they are what we call "ignorant".

Speaking of which, I argued with someone about success today. She said success is always desirable.
I replied with a story I know - my father's friend became a finance director in a Hong Kong branch of a certain American corporation. Huge success, right? But what did she get from it? Unhappiness. I cam see that living in Hong Kong is simply not good for her - we've visited her this summer.
See, problem about success is that it is misleading. It only counts with the possibility of a person knowing the best what's good for them. To have success you must first establish a goal. Setting up a goal for yourself is like creating an artificial dream. It just doesn't work - and if it does, it may get very scary.

I don't have a problem with this entire notion of "success being always desirable" though. What troubles me and makes my blood boil is, that this is one of the opinion that deny others' of their right to have a different opinion. Do not tell me that I should desire success. There are things more important to me and I have my reasons; go and be successful yourself. I pursue different achievements. Like experience, love (and by that I mean loving. There's nothing one can do to be truly loved. Being loved is a gift. Do not ask for gifts.), or finding the purpose. I consider those more important than some sort of pesky "success".

I also talked to a person that I honestly find fascinating. An Afghani boy who made it to America. Just imagine - being only 17 and already having lived in a refugee camp, having the memory of staring down into a barrel of a gun pointed at you, running away from death. I think this makes you a real person more than anything else does. We talked about happiness. He says his family was much happier in Afghanistan, when having food and drink was enough to make a man happy. In US...finding happiness is complicated.

Maybe that's the thing about happiness. It is one of the simplest emotions. Just searching for it is complex. But you can't find happiness on your own. Happiness is a gift. You can't ask for a gift.

Look at this graph. Psychology says those are all of our emotions. Where's happiness?

...sapias; vina liques et spatio brevi

spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero...

The world is not a brothel for your emotions.
-Arthur Koestler

I think just the very opposite.
I don't want to seem arrogant, but what else would my world be than a brothel for my emotions?

...emotions are the only thing we can truly feel after all...