Welcome!

I just wanted to get this up as a test blog to see how things look. It's so liberating to be out here on my own...Anyway, I have a really cool idea for my blog's logo that will eventually be uploaded. I'm going to get an artist to do it so that it looks good. Mine would look like a retarded four year old drew it. It'd be a hand and a frowny face and a weird stick figure that looks like a potato man with tooth pick arms and legs. That's one thing that I wish I was better at. I really like art and really respect it's value to culture and to me individually, but I just don't have the skill to do it.

I usually try to watch Bob Ross's The Best of the Joy of Painting every sunday afternoon on one of my local PBS stations. I sit there and every time I am amazed at what this guy tosses out in an half hour. I cringe every time he spends fifteen minutes on these beautiful mountains and then draws huge pine trees across them. He says that you have to be brave to do that and maybe he's right. I think it's a travesty to cover up your amazing work and maybe I'm right.

I hate the Post-Modern movements of art. I hate the Post-Modernist movements anywhere. Especially in anthropology. I expect it in sociology, but when anthropologists get all namby-pamby and give off that "everyone's-opinions-matter-equally-and-are-all-relevant" bullshit. "We're all unique and special!" No, we're not. We're all essentially clones of one another. We're herd animals. We are naked apes that do what everyone else does and then somehow (mostly because of our huge brains) stress that, "No! We are individuals! We are unique!" Just like everybody else, right pally?

Face it. We have survived the dynamic environmental changes, cataclysmic events, and even ourselves for the time being, this way. We all stay together and we survive and raise more little naked chimps to enculturate and the process continues. What really do you have control of in life? Nothing really. Sure you can choose what toothpaste to buy (of the choices given to you) or you can choose what routes to drive to work (unless you're late, which you probably are, or you can't afford gas because the barons are a'robbin' so you get to work as quickly as possible on the shortest route), but what really can you control? Can you control the earthquake that could take thousands of lives along the Wasatch Front? No. Can you control an asteroid hurtling through space as it collides with the earth? No. Can anyone or anything? No. We can't even control the fact that every year we are pulled closer and closer towards the sun as it slowly dies over the next billion years. Someday, with or without homo sapiens sapiens (I vote for the latter), the planet which we degrade everyday will be sucked into the sun in one brutal last tug and all will be disintigrated within under a second. Instantly.

Does this cause us sadness? Should we all resort to nihilism and forget our common bond as citizens of earth? Quite the contrary. This chould drive us all to the largest existenialist revolution of thought this world has seen. Some call existentialism a fad...a French one at that. However, I think that in this world of individual fragmentation where humans are alienated from their true selves the existentialists have something to offer. The notions of living each moment passionately, self-responsibility, and the notion of taking responsibility for your own actions are all positive emotions that can benefit our culture.

Live your life to pursue new knowledge and wisdom. Travel, read a new book every few days, sky dive, take a pottery class, go snowshoeing...I could go on all day. Do what makes you feel good. Inside of each of us is the human potential for peace, creativity, and positive, progressive innovation. If we took time to develop ourselves, our species-being, what couldn't we do? Why can't new minds find a cure for AIDS or cancer? They are being softened by MTV and The Kardashians and Survivor, a show that teaches us all how to be "quality" individuals. In between this mush, we are indoctrinated by corporate advertisements promising us the moon for our loyal subjection. "Buy this and you get such-and-such," "Drink this and you'll get lots of blondes in bikinis playing volleyball around you." That last one doesn't work. Trust me. Except for that one time in that convalescent center...but that's another story.

The bottom line is this: take back your life for you. You are your own authority. Do not give away the only precious thing that we have in our lives: a mind of your own. You can give it to so many people. The charlatan preacher, charismatic leader, the politico, that asshole on talk radio, the CEO...they all want you. They want you to make and consume their products. Stuck in a never ending cycle, spiraling downward into the black abyss of alienation. They even try to take your heart now too. Live, not for moment, but for the constant. There is a difference. People who live in the moment live passionately, but often forget that moments and the actions committed in those moments have real world consequences. Living in the constant is like living in the moment, passionate and free, but with an eye to tomorrow.

Think critically. This is not simply being a critic. Think about what a critic does. They tell you whether something is good or bad. Why the movie was good or why it sucked (like so much out of Hollywood today does). How the restraunt's chicken tandoori was heavenly or how it smelled like baby shit. They only break down or build up. A critical thinker is different because while they are critical (like a critic) they posit evidence to back up a valid point and posit new direction where an invalid point is brought forth. They break down, and then build up a new path. They build up with carefully constructed, logical arguments and evidence.

The revolution does not need to be televised. It needs to happen in your own life. Your own mind. Your own heart. Reject the life of being a slave to anything and liberate yourself, for yourself, by yourself, and for nobody else. Reject stagnation and satiation. Have desires and passions. Lead yourself wisely to new heights. Count on yourself to lead you through life and you won't ever be disappointed by others who do not share the same passion for existence or comradery. We live shortly. Don't let time slip you by...