7/16/2016 - Things are moving fast

This is a personal little thought or essay rather of me and my thoughts on the world that is 2016.

7/16/2016

Things are moving fast. Honestly, I hardly reflect and write articles on my opinions and thoughts on the world, politics, crisis, etc., but after the realization of the news and the stories and the ideals this morning, I felt the need as a human to share my thoughts and feelings on things.

Browsing YouTube this morning, I noticed videos on trending and recommended pages. They're the type usually there: footage from the recent terror attack, new songs being released, presidential election news...wait, what's the first thing I said? "Footage of the recent terror attacks?" Strange, right? What else do I find in these feeds? A brilliant little video on the vlogbrother's channel, titled "On Life and Mattering" or something of those lines. Naturally, it discusses people who are killed, the Black Lives Matter movement, Dallas, etc. Positive message, and I note it as just the usual. There it is again. "People killed" being natural, just like "footage of the recent terror attack." In between all this, we have the constant output and drama of Hollywood, the interviews and discussions of sports teams and their stars, the critics reviews on new games and movies, the videos of new songs. And I just think to myself "this is all too fast."

When I say that, I'm not sure if I mean "people are fast," "things are moving to fast," or "everyone and everything is rushing around." I'm leaning towards the ladder, as that's what my mind sees as the most logical point. So, with what I scrolled through and thought of, I felt inclined to some extent to talk about the world; Earth, us humans, Society, 2016, and what we are doing. And who we are.

I've been alive on Earth for exactly (excluding minutes, hours, and seconds) 18 years and 9 days. Of those 18 years and 9 days that I've had the ability to think, imagine, created ideas and theories, and discuss, I can say many of them have been spent to used to minor tragedies, too used to the following of everything, and too used to the streamlined media of everyone. Now, before continuing I will already admit I'm not researching here, I can't provide any facts that aren't already represented by truth in my words; this write up is just me being controlled by my mind who says I should do this. This is of course to be opinion-driven, but I'm not here to create a soapbox of my opinion, I'm here to reflect. If I falter to use correct names, locations, etc.: please forgive me.

The World, Earth, it's our home. Its the only place where other communicative life form co-exists and work together to strive for something that none of us quite understand. Many of us live for Religion, many of us for science, many of us for materialistic things or money; many of us live because its just what we do. But in our time in living, things changed. Humans; we discovered the essence of what we are: innovators. We, unlike most other mammals on this sphere, posses the power and nature to concept, think, socialize, build, and control. We truly are beautiful: our brains are as vast and mysterious as space; our own rituals and instincts bare resemblance to our wild mammal relatives, while we are tamed and modernized. And to be modernized, to be tamed, to live with the fruit of our efforts, we must have a society.

"Society." A double-edge sword. So many times has it faced the brink of extinction. So many times has it been burned, attacked, murdered, raped, harmed. So many times has it fallen, and then been rebuilt. Society, to me, is one of the greatest mysteries of the world. Maybe it's the product of evolution, or maybe religion or maybe it just "happened." But Society came, and through the years brought with it many of changes, and innovations. And problems.

Welcome to 2016. The beginning of the climax of what I refer to as the "Stellar Society." Stellar, as it works to serve in its purpose and against it. We live in an age of technology, internet: we have access to news, information, media, entertainment, and more instantly and almost anywhere. Human's opinions flood around, news reports fly everywhere; people can stay connected virtually anywhere they please. But if we re-wind the Stellar Society back to its beginning points, say near the 60's/70's.

Individualism is a beautiful thing, and is celebrated, adorned, and important in our modern day society and culture. You are You. People firmly acknowledge this now more than any other time frame: people are who they identify as, and with our hopes for equality we should all accept one another. Individualism is nothing new either; it's rather natural for the most part. Skin color, body shape, eye color, hair color, finger and arm and leg length, mind functions, sexuality, etc: all created naturally and are all natural individual variables. But when did we all become blank canvases? I believe society's modern form came about at the turn of the Industrial Revolution. Technology, industry, and big business changed everything for everyone; particularly because travel had become accessible, and people were given more leisure time. This continued to grow and grow, especially during the 60's and 70's, and it fostered sub-variables that people could pick out and paint onto themselves.

We chose to like metal music; we chose to like some types of sushi, but not all; we are a city person, not a country person; we are the strongest person we know; we chose to be racist; we chose to challenge those we get irritated from; we chose to recreate with drugs; we choose to be what we are, and because my opinion is my opinion, no one can reason with me and anyone who says otherwise can f**k off.

See what happened there? Those were all examples in my attempt to prove something about being individuals. With social media coming, personal agendas and opinions are now able to spread much like they did when travel became widely accessible.

Within the past years, news and media, politics and events, laws and people; they've made it acceptable to be what you want to be: and that's beautiful. But something happened, rather was overlooked along the way. Let's start to head back toward our Stellar Society in 2016, and take a look of the types of events experienced around the world during our trip:

School shootings, police brutality, racial disturbances, murder, sexuality discrimination, mass shootings, bombings, terror attacks, censorship, invasion, rebellions, be-headings, decaying climate; I'd continue but I'd end up copying and pasting that about 50 times over.

Thousands of the acts under these types of events grew because of us and because of what we see ourselves as: terrorist groups are cells with individuals who band together because they filled a variable to believe in extremist religious ideals; innocent students are killed because the individuals and their individual variables they chose led to the bullying of other individuals for what they chose as their paints on their canvas (or in some cases, just an individual choosing the variable to be tired of the world). Sexuality discrimination/sexism, racism: individuals chose to hate/belittle other individuals that share a general variable; Police brutality because one individual's naturally selected variable didn't agree with another individual's chosen variable to hate people of that color.

I usually just try and laugh away the world events, as I'm a broke guy focuses on other things; but I truly feel today I need to make a point clear. Will it be heard? No. Will it be read? No. Will anyone care? no. Will anything change? Of course not. But honestly, that shouldn't matter. What should matter is that I know I get my point out there.

The problem is clear. At what point that we developed ourselves as individuals did we forget that without the past unity and other individuals of the world, we couldn't be what want to be. At what point did individual opinion spread through social media to create groups of the same opinion to derail unity; the very thing that started individualism in the first place. At what point did we humans stop caring for other humans? At what point did we stop caring for other life (plants, animals)? At what point did we make ourselves the top priority of the world; At what point did we decide to constantly categorize things as "me" and "not me." At what point did we decide murder should be met with more murder? At what point did we become so dead-set on our belief that "all blacks are untrustworthy," or that "all Hispanic people are nasty" or that "all Muslims are evil." At what point did we lose ourselves, and the very essence that made us so great?

Thanks to anyone for their time.

Author's Note

Please excuse my loose opinions and any contradictions visible in this write; I really just wanted to get this off my chest and I didn't care too much to put research or facts behind everything I said. Unprofessional, and possibly against the entire message, I know; but I'm a nut.

Reviews

[Daniel Seward]

It seems as though things are more rushed and conflictive in our era, but I suggest you try reading the Dialogues of Plato. There was a variety of conflicting opinion in Greek society as well as shifting government and law. Basically all the problems of modern times were there in Athens 2500 years ago.
Interesting reading you though.
Keep writing,
Dan

[Jake Brunton]

Thank you for your reply. Interesting, I will definitely have to look into that sometimes! Thanks