Too busy, not busy enough

I have had a lot of "bloggable" things on my mind lately. My computer has been acting up lately, so I didn't get a chance to blog each thing individually, in depth. So I will just generally talk about what I've been thinking about.

I have been extremely bored all week. Bored and lazy. I have had nothing to do at school, and I had supply teachers all week. I always save my homework and assignments for Sunday mornings, so this morning when I had 3 things to do, I was so excited. I have just been so unchallenged lately. Peer tutoring is the only challenge I have at school. Things just seem to be moving so slow.

I have been so lazy--- and STRESSED OUT about BEING lazy, that on Saturday I woke up, got dressed, and started crying because I had to go to work. I took the day off as a mental health day. I just needed a day off, even though I have pretty much had the whole week off. But I am glad I did it. I just needed that day. It is weird that even though I have been bored all week that I needed to take another day off.

All I know is that I need a new challenge. I think I am going to pour my energy into three things:
1. My half marathon is on Sunday, so I am doing last minute training stuff. Sort of, I don't want to injure myself again! But today I am running 10k, but I am doing it at a fast pace. Tuesday or Wednesday I am going to do 15k-21k then on Friday I am going to do a little run, maybe 5k or so, just before the weekend. Also, I'm going to pour my energy into my bodybuilding as well. Today I am doing back. Monday I am doing abs and chest. Tuesday I am not sure if I am doing anything other than running or cardio. Wednesday is Shoulders, Thursday is back, Friday I am not sure if I am going to the gym, but if I do I am going to do a lot of stretching. Saturday I am going to toronto and then Sunday is the half marathon!
2. I am trying to read this book, but it is hard to get through the first few chapters. It's a sociology book I picked up from chapters, I thought seemed interesting. It's called "Going solo" by Eric Klinenberg.
3. I am going to start writing my essay for writers craft. I decided my final project is an essay. My topic for the essay is either "Why people think I am smart" or "Why I am not smart". It's going to be a satirical essay. But it is going to have to be pretty long. I think the rough copy is due in 2-3 weeks.

I hate having too much to do, but I also hate having too little to do. I need to find my balance.

Let's do this!

Anger, yelling, teaching.

I feel like something a lot of people don't know about me is my anger.

I generally feel like I give off a off-putting vibe when I am upset about something, but I generally don't yell at people.

At home, when I get mad with my mom, I always yell and get quite angry. Usually anger and a loss of patience goes hand in hand. In peer tutoring today I was so tempted to yell at a few different students. There was a supply teacher who wasn't controlling the class, and at one point when she was talking, literally every single student was whispering/talking/on their phone. I was about ready to stand up and tell them to cut it out, but I didn't want to override the supply teacher, so I didn't.

I can get quite angry at times. It is scary when I am. I feel like I lose my temper when I am really pissed off or passionate about something.

I also have a feeling I am probably going to lose my temper in residence at university. If I have a fucking stupid roommate, I am going to probably yell at them.

I don't have the best techniques. I feel like some people just should never be yelled at- ever, they just can't handle it. But other people can handle it. Sometimes yelling is the option.

In law we also talked about how teachers can still technically, legally use corporal punishment. I couldn't imagine ever, as a teacher, hitting a student. But today, I wished I could've smacked this one kid. I feel like a little smack could get them to shut the fuck up and listen to me.

When I'm a teacher I'm probably going to be really weird- as I have discussed before, that I am weird, and will probably use really weird teaching techniques. But I will not tolerate people not paying attention to me teaching. I will yell at them and embarrass them. Talking it out may work with most people, but haven't you seen at least one student who is always "talked to" and suspended, but never changes? I feel like if somebody really tried to yell at them that they would listen. It's all about discipline and controlling the room.

I've only really had one teacher that enforces this a lot. I read a book where this whole school was under very strict discipline and they all acted so calm and collected, which I thought was weird and unethical. After today I think it is perfectly fine.

I have only really had two teachers full out YELL at the class. I didn't care for one of them, and the other was okay. I have had many teachers get disappointed and strict with us. I had this one teacher that always gave us these huge lectures with a domineering tone. They were good and people shut up and listened to her, but nothing really changed, and she gave these lectures way too frequently.

I don't know.

I personally hate being yelled at. Depending who is yelling at me, I will just yell back, some people I might just take it from, but most I will yell back.

I remember in the Freedom Writers' Diary movie, Ms. Gruwell yelling at this one student who said he deserved a failing grade, because she felt like it was a huge "fuck you" to her and him. I think this is the type of thing that should actually be practiced.

There is no need to yell when you are working one-on-one with a student, because you can easily just talk to them. But if you have a class of 20+ students, yelling is the one thing to get them to all simultaneously shut the hell up.

Whatever. I think it's fine for teachers to yell at students, I will probably do it, and that is all I have to say.

Am I a pessimist or non-conformist?

I tend to look at the negatives and things and specifically find the negative things in people, events, causes, etc.

I don't think it is a bad thing. My mind is extremely twisted compared to society, though.

I don't think being sad, depressed, angry, pessimistic, negative, etc., is actually "wrong" at all.

Maybe I am not a pessimist. I generally don't expect the worst in the world, I don't expect the good either. I try to look at things rationally. I do look for the bad in good things, though. But I don't expect bad things to happen. I also don't believe everyone is inherently evil, but I also don't believe everyone is inherently good. I think some people are and some people aren't "evil" or "bad". Although this gets me into the philosophical discussion of "What is good? and what is bad" which I am not getting into right now.

I don't totally think I am the definition of a pessimist. But I definitely am not an optimist. I'm just a negative person, I suppose. Negative, not pessimistic. Maybe my viewpoint is just different from everyone else's, well I know it is.

I used to be an extremist optimist around grade 7-9, especially in grade 8. I remember having like three different smiley face necklaces, which I would wear. On this one website whyville.net, I used to go on, my avatar was always wearing something that was a smiley or said "be happy" or something like that. I celebrated random weird holidays like "mint chocolate day" and used to skip around school like an annoying destinations student. (Destinations was a program for grade 7-8 students I was in).

I don't know when that exactly ended, but sometime when I first got into high school, probably.

The more I look at it, the more I see I am not really a pessimist. I am more of just a non-conformist, and since the conformist thing to do is to be happy and be an optimist, I just try to do the opposite of that. I'd really like to be able to understand the psychology of a non-conformist, better. I always strive to do the opposite of the majority.

For example, you know that really light colour green that is really popular right now (like this), well I used to absolutely love that colour like 1-2 years ago. Now it is overused, and I hate it with a passion.

Maybe I just try to bail on society and conformity. I'm not sure. But for whatever reason, I just hate the thought of being the same as everyone else, which is why I have essentially isolated myself, became quite the individualist and egoist. I just try to express the fact that I am a single person, there is only one of me. I have always thought this, even when I was what I call an "extremist optimist". I always said "be yourself!". I also remember thinking to stop saying "Be yourself" because everyone always says that, and to say something different. So I guess I was sort of a non-conformist back then, too.

I'm just negative. It's funny because I love being a negative person, and you think that I'd be super serious (which I usually am) but I am obsessed with comedy at the same time. I just need to balance out my cynical thoughts with weird brain-killing comedy shows and comics.

I'm glad I wrote this post, because it actually helped me figure out that I am not a pessimist. I went in writing this blog post, to try to convince my readers I am. But now I don't think so. Just a negative non-conformist. Carpe diem?

Views on Atheism + Reflection on "The Trouble With Atheism" documentary

A continuing post on my views on atheism and theism.

I watched a documentary called The Trouble With Atheism (watch here), which essentially criticizes atheism. I was reluctant to watch it when I first came across it, because of my strong views on atheism. I decided to suck it up and watch it anyways.

I like documentaries because you can easily follow a storyline, with a distinct voice. You follow a person's real perspective. It is so hard to be a un-biased watcher of any documentary because of the power of the voice, and how convincing it can get. But this is also why I hate documentaries.

This documentary, in my mind, was horrible. It didn't come up with too many arguments actually against atheism. First, it talks about how atheists criticize other religions for being hateful, when atheists are hateful themselves.

Let me point out for the first time; atheism doesn't mean "I hate religion" it means "I don't believe in god" therefore the voice of the documentary, Liddle's, argument is invalid.

It goes on to look at scientific reasons as to why we are here, and then Liddle will say "What happened before the big bang theory?" and what happened before all of these scientific things.

The end truth is; we don't know. It is like Schrodinger's cat, you don't know whether the cat is dead or not until you open the box. You don't know if god is real or not... but there is no box to open, you just can't tell. This is why agnosticism is more supported in this documentary than theism. We don't know how earth was created. We just don't.

At least twice in the documentary, Liddle asks/tells atheists that they are being "rather arrogant" about their views. Some atheists call the belief in religion "stupid". I agree, but that is not my point here. My point here is why the hell is Liddle calling atheists arrogant when he himself is being arrogant, even if simply by asking the atheists why they are arrogant?

What?

The one scientist responded something like (paraphrasing) "I don't care if I am being arrogant, because I am right". Way to go.

The funny thing about the atheism vs theism debate is it doesn't matter what side has more solid evidence than the other because in the end, even if atheism has 1,000,000 pieces of evidence that supports there is no god, and theism has 500,000, that evidence doesn't actually make it more real... we still don't know for 100% CERTAIN. The amount of evidence either side has, doesn't matter.

I am an agnostic atheist, and I think that god doesn't exist. Logic makes more sense to me than a human creator.

Actually, the documentary did put one thing in my head, into words. It went something like: "Religion hasn't been passed on because it is logical or because people believe in it, but because it gives a sense of comfort and structure to society". 

I've been trying to say that the reason why religion has survived this long is because of a psychological way of making someone feel better about them self or more "moral". The word "comfort" is what I was looking for! Aha! Thank-you documentary.


My final points always seem to come to two things, every time.
1. Our fear of chaos
2. Us not wanting to be wrong

1. Towards the end of the documentary, it made the point I hate the most: that atheists are not always moral beings. It was said that by taking god out of the equation, that a magical utopia won't just happen, because of human nature. We still do bad, even without god, and even with god, within our belief system in society. Maybe some theists just believe in god in fear of chaos, and want these religious moral values instilled in society, still just so we don't have chaos everywhere. To many people, without a god, we don't have morals. Without an afterlife, we have nothing to act good for. I am not a moral person, well I am, but not always. I just think that we should act upon our natural instincts. Sure, I don't want to be killed, but technically within nature, killing is natural. I don't fear chaos. Maybe this is why I don't fear labelling myself as an atheist.

2. People naturally hate being wrong. We may bring up a point, argue it with another, halfway believe we are wrong, and continue arguing it anyways because we don't want to lose our pride. We don't want to lose our pride.  Losing our pride and losing an argument means we are wrong. So if a person believes for decades in their life that god exists, and suddenly believe god doesn't exist, that would mean admitting they are wrong. It is a much easier choice to make to keep on believing in god. This is one of the reasons why I value Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote from Self-Reliance so much "Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though in contradict every thing you said today".

Have you watched the documentary? What did you think?

Why I am a Nihilist

I am a nihilist. This means I believe life has no actual purpose. I don't think there is a reason humans are on this earth. I think we have about as much purpose on this life as any other living organism does, even non-living things.

I don't think we were placed here by some god. I do not think that we have some moral purpose or afterlife to attend to. I think we just evolved. I guess I believe in evolution. I am not committing to that belief though. But it's the closest thing I believe.

I think we are just here.

There is no natural purpose for humans to be here.

I think that many people will argue that there is a purpose to life, not just religious or moral people, but even people with similar religious beliefs to me. It is a social purpose.

They will say things like:

• We have to get a job to contribute to society, economically and socially
• We work together within families
• We have friends, we live for people
• Life has a purpose, it is to live with other people alongside each other and help each other

Therefore even though life has no natural purpose, life has a social purpose.

We have a social duty to each other. Great! So I guess that means I'm not a nihilist, right? Wrong.

I am also an individualist. I serve myself before the society. I do not like things within this society. Therefore I don't want to live out societies' social purposes. 

So living out society's purpose, doesn't appeal to me, therefore even though I believe there is a social purpose to life, I don't want to commit to it.

So there brings up the argument "Well why don't you just kill yourself?". That is the first thing people say to nihilists. For example, this post which pissed me off earlier. Well why don't I? Honestly. Why don't I kill myself?

I honestly have no idea. If I don't live for other people, I don't live for this society, and I don't think we have a natural purpose, why don't I just kill myself?

I want to say things like "I want to change society to my ideal, so I live for that" or "I don't want to hurt my family", but they aren't even 100% true. 

If I wanted to fully support the argument I am trying to make, I should just kill myself.

But I haven't. Some parts of me do want to have kids and become a teacher, but other parts of me just see no purpose to anything, and I just either want to die or become a hermit. 

Honestly I can make the argument that I can't stomach the thought of killing myself, let alone another person. I can't even stomach dissections. If I were to kill myself, it couldn't be painful. It would be a poison, or injection of some kind. 

But I think I like myself too much to kill myself. I hate everyone, I hate everything, but I like myself. I am pretty fine with the way I am, so I don't really see a requirement to kill myself, even though I think life is purposeless.

I am not sure if there is an afterlife. I don't think if there is an afterlife, we serve some form of divine purpose to act a certain way on earth, to get there. I think you just go there no matter what. Like different dimensions, or something. But I think it is more logical to say that nothing happens when you die, and you just sort of rot. There are a lot of things in this world we don't know of. Maybe the soul travels on. Maybe the soul has a purpose to keep travelling on. Now, I don't believe if the soul exists, and if the soul has a purpose, that it is moral, but maybe it does live on, and take other forms. Who knows. I don't know. You don't know. We don't know.

These are the mysteries of the world.

But for now I am alive. I don't plan on killing myself. 

Plus I need to stay alive to teach other people their life has no purpose, right? 

I'm Not Perfect

Perfection. Having everything just completely right, the way you want.

I don't think I am a perfectionist.

I try really hard at what I do in school, work and my hobbies, but I don't expect to come out perfect. I usually expect to come out better than most people, but not the best. Is this perfectionism? No. Maybe I have high expectations, but I am not a perfectionist. But is that really better to have high expectations? I get let down easily.

A lot of people think I am a perfectionist. I find myself trying to convince people I am not a perfectionist. Especially to people at school. I just got perfect attendance. Do you know how hard is to convince people you are not perfect, right after you get that?

I don't think people expect me to do well all of the time. I hope not, at least. I think people just sort of assume I try hard at everything.

But I find myself purposely exploiting my weaknesses, in person to some people, and mostly on twitter, just to bring myself down in the eyes of others.

See, I am pretty comfortable with who I am, to myself. I act differently and change who I am a little, just to change the perspective other people have of me--- even if that is not the right opinion they should have. People always freak out at this too. Changing yourself for other people. But that is how I get ahead in life.

I am technically not changing myself, I'm just changing what people think of me.

This can get complicated, actually. If I show one person more aspects of one side of me, and another different aspects, so I appeal to them more, or possible even appeal to them less.

My point with this is that
- I am not perfect
- Some people tend to think I am perfect, so I exploit myself to change their mind

I think all people understand what I am trying to say about changing yourself. I think I just look at my personality in a lot of different ways. If I were to describe myself, to myself I would say I am quiet, analytical and weird. If I were to describe myself to a teacher I might call myself quiet, determined and dedicated.

My mom keeps telling me not to be hard on myself. People tell me to stop being hard on myself. They tell me to stop being a perfectionist.

But I am not perfect. I may have perfect attendance, try to look my best (on most days), practice really hard at running, lift weights and go to the gym, get good grades, etc.

But I also am not perfect at any of those things. I have only ever gotten top mark in ONE of my classes. I get good grades, but not the best.
I don't always look my best, I can't help that sometimes.
I injure myself while running, and have never gotten first in any running event, but I have always placed in the top 50% of my division.
I lift weights, more than the average woman, but I am still not the best.

Well my attendance may be "perfect" but that didn't count snow days. That technically didn't count the enormous amounts of time in english last semester we had supply teachers, and I would ask to go to the library and then just walk around the school.

Also, I completely forgot to do an entire half of a law assignment, that was worth a LOT. Luckily my teacher let me finish it lsat night to hand in today.

I am not perfect.

Theism

Personally, I identify myself as an agnostic atheist. I was raised an Anglican Christian, but somewhere around 3-5 years ago, I started questioning religion and the belief in a god/gods.

This blog post might be a lot for some people to grasp. Even I am having a hard time coming up with the words I'm looking for, so bear with me.

In philosophy class over the summer, we talked about whether there is a god, and what that god is like, so if the god was omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (being able to be anywhere at any time), etc. We talked about the image of a god (what he looks like), etc.

In history we talked a bit about the history of christianity, and this actually is what pushed me to being an atheist, because of how ignorant (I think that ignorant is a poor word choice, but I can't think of any other) all sorts of religions, including christianity, were throughout history.

I dislike the role of the churches, priests, the study of the bible, and pretty much anything surrounding religion.

But if I completely disconnect the idea of a god from any religion, it seems more believable.

I think that there is a possibility there is a god. As you can see throughout history, there have been all sorts of religions and beliefs, christianity, judaism, islamic, even greek polytheism... so many that it would take me forever to list. All together, though, there is an idea in there, of a god.

Sociologically and psychologically speaking, I think it is a viable point to state that people in today's day, use god as sort of a "get out" from their realities and a source of hope to look towards. I think people think god is very omnipresent when they say "God will show me the way" "God will present the opportunities to me", etc. I don't believe god is omnipresent.

But as I said, it is a common belief throughout history that there is some powerful creator or creators of the world.

I think if there is a powerful creator of the world, like a god, he/she isn't human-like. I just find it weird for a human to create other humans... well I guess that's what happens naturally, but I meant the creation of humans in "magical" ways, not reproduction. The greeks believed the gods to be actual humans living on mount olympus. Very human like. Others have worshipped human-like figures, that aren't totally human.

I guess I believe in some form of scientific theory as to why creation happened. But still I don't think I'll ever be convinced

But still, is there a god, nevertheless if earth was created "scientifically" (poor word choice again), and god is not omnipresent, is there some moral code given by someone all-knowing or all-powerful we have to look to?

I don't think there is a moral code, I don't think that god or any powerful figure has some form of "how to live" book, tablet or etch-a-sketch out there. I definitely do not think that if there is a god, that they are "all-powerful". I don't believe in people having power over one-another. People typically see god as a "good guy", but personally, I don't think that ANYTHING even a god should have power or control over any other thing. I don't care if you are Obama and a piece of grass, nothing has control over any other thing. I don't think that a "good guy" god could be all-powerful.

So that leaves all-knowing. Is there an all-knowing god? If god exists, is he all-knowing? This is honestly the most possible thing I would be willing to believe. Maybe a god, maybe a human, but I think it could be possible for a person/god to know everything, supernaturally. I think this is the most legitimate characteristic for a god to have, if there is a god.

But still, I don't want to believe in a god/gods, no matter the religion. I don't think there is a powerful figure that rules over all.

So this is why I am agnostic. I don't know if a god exists or not. I kind of hope that a god doesn't exist. I don't pray. But sometimes I think, maybe a god could exist. One time a person I absolutely hate said "I think there are a lot of things in this world we don't know about" which is totally true, new things are discovered all of the time. Maybe a god exists. Maybe he/she is powerful. But at this point, I am not totally convinced.

This same person I hate was talking about how religions have made a lot of mistakes, historically, and I think this is why I always want to jump to the atheistic argument. I hate how the people of a religion have been cruel throughout the ages, I know there are plenty of nice people, and helpful people, but just looking back a few hundred years ago, the missionaries from the UK coming over to Canada, and trying to convert the natives/citizens of "Canada" to christianity/catholicism. They were all skeptical, but when churches are built by people, and they don't want a war, and they want to trade with christians, they are going to convert.

I think a lot of theists in this century are very nice, quite often they are charitable, giving, nice,  following the morals of their religion. I know that there are some immoral or amoral theists out there, that purposely spread hate against others, as well. So I really can't generalize a stereotype of all theists, especially since it depends on the religion.

I compare Canada to Greek and Roman times, a lot. To those who don't know too much about history, Canadian society is actually very similar to both Greek and Roman times. In Greece, they believed in polytheism, as stated. Zeus was the main god, the son of Rhea and Cronos, the children of "Chaos" and the "Skies" who were the actual originals. But the first group of children, including Rhea and Cronos were the titans. When they were liberated by Zeus et. al, they became the gods. The Greeks worshipped these gods with temples, events (the olympics were created to honour Zeus), and then as time went on, they slowly stopped worshipping these gods, because they realized how unscientific, unrealistic it was. They believed they were just myths. They stopped worshipping them, and just as an example, the olympics were stopped. Eventually, what most people know about greece, is the times of philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the times of democracy. A lot of rational thought came out hundreds and hundreds of years after they stopped.

Approximately 400 years after the death of Socrates, Jesus was born, to our knowledge, at 3AD. Now, I

I guess to finalize my point, I am still remaining an agnostic atheist. To me, this means that I am basically an atheist, with just a little bit in my mind that "Just maybe a god exists". I have just been thinking about theism a lot lately. I think theism is a really interesting idea, and I think it would be fun to believe in, but I just don't see much credibility to it, as I talked about, previously.

I don't think a god gives hope or opportunity. I think that you give yourself hope, and that if you are a theist, you mistake it as sort of a supernatural/god given gift. I wrote about this in philosophy, the idea that people who believe in god get these ideas in their heads of something good that seems hopeful or unrealistic, and that they think it is from god. The idea of god in their heads, although unreal in my belief, gives them hope. I don't think this is a bad thing. This idea in this paragraph I am trying to work on better. I want to really clarify it as a well-known philosophical/psychological theory, because I have never heard of any other person talk about this before.

I think this is because people are afraid of offending people and criticizing religious dogma.

This brings me to my final point, to connect this all back to my life. In my essay in law, we had to write about assisted suicide. I established myself as "For" assisted suicide, and for one of the points you have to show an opposing viewpoint and then rebut it. I chose to put in the religious perspective. I got 100% on the essay but my teacher wrote "I allowed the religious C.A. but try to remain steadfast in legal dogma" in the comments on my essay. My philosophy teacher also had reminded us of this.

But I really hate this. I hate how people are afraid of offending others. It is just such a natural thing to do. I think that offending people is mean, but it can also be a wakeup call. I don't consider myself blunt, I just know that I have the right to state what I want to state. This can be difficult in school. Although, I did get 100% on my law essay, so even though the topic probably made my teacher uncomfortable, it was relevant, so luckily he was unbiased and gave me the grade.

I change so often because I have a fish brain- Why Philosophy?

I have the crappiest memory.

I do not want to talk about that, here, now. But just let the record show that I can't remember shit.

Recently I was like "Why am I studying philosophy?".

I honestly had no idea why. I didn't remember selecting to study philosophy at any point. I knew that I blogged a lot about my choices for university, so I was looking through. Nothing. I found stuff that talked about me possibly wanting to do phys ed, psychology, wanting to be a teacher, not wanting to do anything, etc., but nothing specifically about choosing philosophy.

But I was looking through my old blog posts from the summer, and I honestly don't remember most of that stuff. My memory of myself from that time was COMPLETELY different from what my blog lead off. I am not sure if I was just faking who I was there, or I am really bad at remembering things.

But here I am. Asking myself "Why am I studying philosophy?". I would be perfectly happy studying sociology, psychology or political science. Double majoring with two of those. I can better answer the questions "Why do I want to take sociology, psychology or political science?" more than philosophy. So now is time for some intensive thinking.

Reasons why I may possibly be taking philosophy:
- I liked philosophy in history
- I like philosophy over the summer, the course I took online
- I find philosophy interesting
- I got a good grade in my philosophy course
- I like to think a lot
- Philosophy relates to a lot of subjects I like, like education, history and politics
- I am trying to answer the questions of life, and thats what philosophy is
- I want to learn about others' ideas and thoughts

Okay I guess I have a pretty legitimate reason. But I still don't remember when I decided on philosophy. I think at some point I just decided on philosophy and political science and I just was tired of changing my mind, so I just rested there, and that's where I stayed when I applied to university.

I looked through my old philosophy notes recently, and reminded myself of why I like it. I like the debate of the topics. I like looking at things like ethics, epistemology, waves of thought. I don't know. I just get it. Philo/sophy, the love of ideas. That's what I love.

The 7 Sins and Psychological Disorders

Why is a psychological "disorder" is classified as a bad thing?

It's looked upon like some piece of a person that is unfortunate, yet must be destroyed. Sure, quite often psychological disorders impair the person from being able to function in society, or be happy with themself.

But what about the person that doesn't care about that stuff?

Society is built around the christian religion, a lot of our laws are similar to things written in the Old and New testament, other scriptures, and our morals are very close to those of the christian church.
Also, the christian religion has 7 sins:
greed, sloth, pride, gluttony, wrath, lust and envy.

My point is that in this society, we are based a lot off of the christian religion, and in this society, we have psychological disorders. The connection between these two points is that the 7 sins all reflect certain psychological disorders. I just made this connection a few weeks ago.

A christian might try to avoid the 7 sins and so naturally it makes sense that these sins correlate with psychological disorders--- because people with psychological disorders, although are supported more nowadays, have been looked down upon.

This just makes me wonder how credible psychological disorders actually are, if they are just historically based off of the 7 sins, which come from the bible.

Here is specifically how each connect:

Pride can easily be connected to narcissitic or histrionic personality disorder.
Greed is associated  with narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders.
Sloth means being lazy, slow, so technically any disorder associated with slow brain functioning, or being a vegetative state, is associated with the sin of "sloth". So even ADHD would apply here.
Gluttony is obsessive eating, so any over-eating disorder qualifies here.
Wrath is being angry, and excessive anger is a symptom of disorders such as PTSD and PMDD.
Lust can be associated easily with histrionic personality disorder.
Envy is actually one of the big symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder.

This just makes me question the credibility of psychological disorders. Why is it considered a disorder? Why if a person is acting schizophrenic, is it considered bad? Why should the person be treated to function within society?

Oh right, structure. We fear chaos.

Every conclusion I ever come to, is the fact that Western culture fears chaos. Even right now with Kim Jong-Un. Whether or not he has the technology, is irrelevant. Some people are just shrugging it off, others are not, but either way, people are afraid of chaos.

Eastern culture doesn't seem to be as afraid.

For all of you who are not history geeks, the term chaos comes from the Greek term kaos/kos/khaos which was from one of their creation myths, that earth was birthed from Kaos.

Throughout Greek history, and maybe a bit in Roman, their myths frequently surrounded the fear of chaos (not really Kaos, but chaos).

Since a lot of who we are is derived from Greek and Roman times, we also now, fear chaos.

At least this is my theory.

Some final questions I am going to leave unanswered by myself:

Should psychological disorders be looked at again, every few years, decades, etc., to see their credibility to the society today? Do psychological disorders outdate themselves? Think of the fact that being gay used to be a psychological disorder of sorts. Should the 7 sins be qualifications in the diagnosis or factors of any psychological disorders?

It's Crazy what People Notice and Remember

As the title says, it's crazy what people notice and remember.

Do you have these weird memories that are so weird that you remember? Yes.

You remember really really stupid insignificant details about shit, but not stuff you are supposed to know.

For example: During one of the exams I was writing in grade 11 I couldn't remember the answer to one of the multiple choice questions... and I quickly realized how sad it was that I knew the names of my teacher's children, but not the answer to the question. What is life.

Brains are weird, okay?

But it's also crazy what people will notice. Today somebody pointed out to me that I sit weird sometimes (if I'm sitting in a chair, I'll lean forward and cross my arms and put my hands under my knees). She said she noticed in last year too, but she didn't say anything. Isn't that a weird thing to remember? That's what I was thinking.

It's so weird the little things I've done to influence people over the years. When I'm trying to influence people, it doesn't work.

Some things I've said to my 10 year old cousin, she still remembers. One time I gave her a mini-lecture on the fact that she should be able to make her own life decisions, and just because she's young, doesn't mean she can't. Apparently a few months ago she gave this huge lecture to her dad about how her mom wants her to change family doctors, and she doesn't want to, and no matter what her age, she should be allowed to choose.

What.

In peer tutoring, I feel like I am constantly doing this. It's actually insane how much these people are looking up to me. I love it so much. Not because it's attention, but because once I'm a teacher I feel like it won't be like this. I'm only 2 years older than them, so I am kind of like an older sibling. I've been through a lot of things they are going through, so some of them ask me about things sometimes. I really am not meaning to write this to sound like I'm awesome. I'm just wondering how much of what I say to them, they will actually remember.

I don't know. I'm being weird. 

Tired

I'm blogging from my iphone.

Don't you hate when you can't fall asleep because your brain just won't stop thinking? This is happening to me. I'm reading this book right now that is making me all thinky. It's about education.

I can't fall asleep. I don't feel like reading more of the book though.

I feel to excited and inspired to work. I have this intense energy and need to do something, but I don't know what. I almost decided to start sketching again. But even though I can't fall asleep, in too lazy to get out of bed.

This makes no sense.

I'm too inspired to sleep. I'll just stay awake daydreaming.

Oh just a note, I've been blogging like crazy the past week, but then I just save my posts as drafts either because I've posted something tht day already, or because I am not quite content with it. So look forward to some blogs about societies views on psychological disorders, religion, philosophy/memory complaining, and more.

I'm excited about my blog. In the fall I plan on creating my own domain and monetizing it. I might even get a professional to do the web design, and have a photo shoot. But that won't happen in the fall. But I am definitely monetizing it.

I'm too inspired to sleep. I'll just stay awake daydreaming.

The difference between theism and religion

Theism is the belief in a god/gods.

Religion is a collection of beliefs, understandings, and thoughts about the universe, and usually has a belief in god or gods.

You cannot prove theism, yet. There is no solid proof that a god or gods exist.

But religion, can be proved. Religion has existed. There have been thousands of religions, meaning groups that practice their collective beliefs.

Just because religion is true, doesn't make theism true. But, that is not what I am talking about in this blog post.

I do not generally like religion. I dislike the modern church. I believe scriptures, bibles, etc., to be fictional stories created a long time ago. Religion has been deeply flawed, historically.  When catholics from Europe came over to Canada during the great migration, and even before then when the UK (Britain) was trying to populate Canada with Catholics, to convince the people the be Catholic. Tjhey were hesitant to leave their native beliefs, but they eventually switched. Why? I believe the main reason to be that the natives and the europeans wanted to trade, and the europeans wouldn't trade with them unless they joined their religion. They send missionaries, built churches, and people slowly converted, so they could trade their furs with the european's silver goods, like needles and knives.

My point here is that the religion just came over and took over. This was one of the more peaceful missions.

Many missions ended in violence, because other areas of the world weren't as tolerant to new religions coming and telling them what to believe, and the new religions coming were insistent on them converting.

All of the blood shed, and immoral behaviour provided throughout history, by assorted religions, leads me to dislike religion.

I'm not hating on a specific religion. All religions are historically flawed.

I would say now, these churches aren't violent, like they used to be. There still are some violent churches, practices and religions. But arguably, less.

I still refuse to commit to a religion.

Now, theism. You do not have to be religious to believe in a god or gods. Religions tend to give out a guideline about what their god is like, omnipresent, omniscient, etc., which makes it easy for the theist to believe, if something seems more realistic.

Believing is weird to me. Like you believe a certain religion's interpretation of who god is, what he is like, what he looks like, etc.

I was just trying to imagine if I believed in god, what he would be like.

This is how religions have split throughout time, I guess. Thinking about what god is actually like, or more specifically, Jesus.

But theism itself, is not really a religion. It is a belief. One can be a theist, and not be religious.

I suppose one could be atheist and have a religion too. For example, lets say an atheist begins attending an anglican church. Sure, the anglican churches' belief is in god, but perhaps this person just enjoys going to church, reading the scriptures, educating them self about the moral aspects of the religion, and not the theistic. This person would then be religious, but atheistic.

But I am not a theist. I am an agnostic atheist. Essentially I am really just an atheistic skeptic. I am almost resolutely atheist. But there is always that little bit of doubt in there, because as I said previously, there is technically no proof there is, or isn't a god. So that's why it's "agnostic atheist".

My point here is just that religion and theism are two different things. Quite often they go hand-in-hand. But not always. I just felt this needed to be distinguished. I've never read anything before about a distinguishment, and I just kind of realized it a few weeks ago, that the two are completely different things.

Just as a final point, I really don't know much about religions, individually. I find them interesting. But generally, when I research and look at religion, I look at it with sociological, historical philosophical and psychological eyes, not really religious eyes, therefore I don't really know much about the actual rituals by religions, I just know more about their philosophies, past histories, effects on society and the individual. Even that I know very slim on.

It's the small things- Identifying ourselves and Inspiring others

Quite often when I have huge life changes or realizations, it is caused by something really tiny. Not always, but often.

For example: my religion. My religion has been through pretty weird stages. It gradually changed, but at times I would suddenly switch. At one point in grade 10ish I suddenly decided I wanted to be a more devout christian. The reason? I had this necklace with my mom's, my dad's and my birthstone on it, of a cross. I suddenly just felt like I should go to church. I didn't, but I watched a couple of live streamed church services online. After this brief 2-3 week phase, caused by a simple pendant, my religion slowly and gradually changed from being a christian, to being a christian spiritualist, then just a spiritualist, then agnostic, and now it is agnostic atheist.

It's just the really stupid and small things that seem to make these life changes. As you can see, they don't really stick.

I always make something bigger out of these small things.

Like the fact that I wanted to be a psychologist, in the past. I liked my psychologist at the time, and then once I was older, I read about psychology a bit, and then it almost became my entire identity that I wanted to be a psychologist.

It's something I do, I guess. I just make big things out of small things.

But I still feel as a whole, that many people can be inspired by really stupid small things to make life changes. Frequently, if a person thinks "I need inspiration" they'll go listen to some inspirational speaker. But the real inspiration people get are from random sources. You can't actively seek inspiration... well I suppose you can, but my point is that inspiration can come from anywhere, and that inspiration can be for anything. Like I hear my teachers talk every class forEVER about pointless stuff, but sometimes they just say one line, one little thing, that just gets me thinking.

The reason why I am talking about this, actually stemmed from a thought I had while on twitter. There are all of these accounts, and all of these people that tweet inspirational quotes, of their own or of others. On instagram I follow a lot of fitness gurus, who post inspirational quotes all of the time. There is all of this inspiration everywhere. I am not sure if all of the people posting these things are just trying to inspire others, or what. I don't really think it is all that inspiring or anything.

I almost feel like sometimes people just post things to get their opinions out there. Like with the gay rights tweets that have been going on the past few days. Everybody treats social networking like some central courtroom where they express their opinions, in hopes of inspiring others to believe the same way as them.

Maybe I'm being biased saying this, but I see a lot of religious posts, mostly for either christianity, or for atheism. I follow a couple of atheist accounts on instagram and pinterest, so that explains why I see that, but I frequently see atheistic comic/inspirational photos, or christianity comic/inspirational photos, actually most often on facebook, instagram and pinterest.

My psychological and philosophical and sociological brain is really thinking right now, "Why d people post these things so often?".

Do people really think they are swaying society with them? Are they trying to be insulting? Are they just trying to inspire or convince others of their belief?

I am super tired right now, and I am definately looking into this too much.

I think ultimately, the reason why people post "inspirational" photos and quotes so often, is more because people have this constant need to identify themselves as certain things.

We categorize ourselves into these smaller and smaller categories.

Like "No, I am not only a 23 year old male that works at Staples, but I have a red car, enjoy travelling and I love starbucks".

We are always trying to prove and identify ourselves to others, especially now with social media. We are also trying to classify others into these categories. Without social networking, it's a little harder, but with social networking we can find out so much more, because people are trying to prove their identities.

It may be a cliche, but you can tell a lot about a person based on their twitter, facebook, instagram pages. Sort of. If I were to look into this deeper, psychologically speaking, what people put on their social networking pages, isn't necessarily "who they are" it is "who they think they are" sometimes too. Quite often, without thinking, people will automatically stereotype themselves when they are proving their identity, so they will post things that are "like them" to post. Which makes sense.

I don't know, this blog post just went REALLY off track.

If you were to look at my social networking pages... you would probably in the first few moments of glancing at each page, that I am a teenage girl, in school, I like working out, I like running, I like comedy shows, and by looking at my pages (especially facebook) I don't have that many friends.

I touched on like 5 different topics here. But my overall points are:

1. You can be inspired by really small things
2. People are constantly trying to inspire each other and convince each other of their likes/beliefs
3. People try to share their identities and prove themselves through social media, somewhat subconsciously
4. You can tell a lot about what kind of people they think they are, by these social media pages



Have you ever been inspired by really small things?