13 September 2014

Mannnnn, I am just so confused. Today I had a really deep talk with my man Aditi and I just have so much to say about life in general. I feel like we both have really good views on our society, and we just understand life more than many other people. Maybe we don't and our views are just completely wrong, but I really do think it makes sense.

I have a very cynical view of society because I'm just so used to people being shit face assholes to me. I'm not stupid enough to think that 'wow everyone in the entire world is a douchebag, and there's absolutely nobody decent in this world,' because that clearly isn't true. In my opinion anyway. It's just that I'm so annoyed that people don't understand. I mean it isn't their fault; I'm just annoyed for no real reason. Like we are doing research on philosophers in History, and each group has to research a certain philosopher. We got Thomas Hobbes, and everyone just thinks he's a dick 'cause he wanted an absolute monarchy. His idea is basically that people are inherently greedy, selfish, and cruel. I pretty much agree with that. In fact, much of the class agreed with that. Let me rewind a bit. In the beginning of class, the teacher did the agree disagree activity. It's when he puts a statement on the projector and we can choose to agree or disagree by going to either side of the room. And when he put up statements like 'if given the chance, people will step over others to achieve what they want' and 'logic and reason are more important in a society than personal choice', more people agreed to those statements. But the moment Hobbes says essentially the same thing, it's like "oh shit what a dick 'cause he thinks absolute monarchies are the best." I mean, after researching him I felt like his ideas were very similar to mine, and I really agreed with him. He emphasizes a lot on equality of all people, including women. He says that nobody is born unequal, it's society's civil laws that creates inequality. Or more simply, just society that breeds inequality. There is no good or evil, good is simply what we want, and evil is what we don't want. Life revolves around fear and desire, if there is nothing to gain in life, why do we live. We live for the experience. I agree that not everything in life is going to be all happy and shit, but we do so much to make sure it is. We do step over others to get what we want. If not actively, then by exclusion. Like if someone at Monta Vista (my highly competitive school) got the answer key to a test, there is literally like a .005 percent chance they would share it with anyone else. First of all, if they plan on using that key, it would be stupid to spread it because it could easily reach the teacher. Second of all, people are selfish, why give that advantage away. Maybe a really honest student would give it back to the teacher and tell them, but that has a very low chance of happening in my opinion. Even at a non competitive school, it wouldn't change at all. People want the advantage. Not just humans, all living beings want the advantage. It's all about competing to live. Except for us it's less about competing for our lives, it's more about competing for a good life.

Many people wouldn't even give the key to their friends. Friends are friends, but they are still potential competition. I know it, I see it. Not as extreme as the answer key scenario, but more of like finding out what's on tests. When people ask their friends, 'oh what kind of stuff was on the test,' it's easy to tell that they are holding back important information. There are people that do legitimately tell, but you best believe that the moment the person they told gets a higher score than they did, that shit's gonna stop. I know they aren't holding things back for the reason that they don't want to cheat because I see them asking others the same thing. So it clearly isn't a matter of integrity, rather it's for the upper hand in life.

But I digress, basically I just really agree with Hobbes when he said that people are born selfish and greedy. It's hard for me to really believe that there is any wholly selfless act of kindness. Like if you help your friend on a test, you are being 'nice' to them, but are you really? First of all, if you get any sort of guilt relief or feeling of 'oh wow I'm so nice, she will like me more now' or even more selfishly 'now she will be obliged to help me when I need it' then it isn't really selfless. Also, is it actually nice to tell someone what's on the test? In the long run, what will they do without you? But my point is that being selfish isn't an entirely bad thing. Why is it considered 'evil' to want the upper hand in life. Maybe not evil per say, but it's just that selfish has a very negative connotation to it.

This comes back to the idea of good and evil. I feel like if society never taught us since forever that killing is bad, then we wouldn't really have the idea that murder is evil. I think it would be more like, 'if you kill someone/an animal unnecessarily or in a cruel way that makes them suffer, you are being illogical and unreasonable, and that's a waste of energy'. Which is where I think our sympathy comes from. First from the idea that we get from society, and second from the idea that illogical killing is a waste. Like in the wild, killing a bunch of animals for no reason is just a waste of food. A waste of food and energy inhibits your own life, therefore you shouldn't do it.

You might think that I should think evil exists. I've met so many douchebags in my life it's crazy. I say they are douchebags because I don't understand why. I don't understand the logic for being mean to someone for no reason. Maybe there is a reason and I just don't see it. What I'm asking is: what are they gaining in life by bringing me down. Maybe it's just pleasure: they like the feeling of being mean. I suppose that does makes sense in a way; after all, I did say that people live for what they want in life. It's just a very illogical way to live in my opinion. So, in a way, I guess I do believe in evil, but do I believe in it because it's been wired into my brain from the moment I was born, or is it because what's right and wrong is already naturally there? As I said in the beginning, I'm confused. Is it nature or nurture? I usually always take the easy way out and say both, because I really do think it is both.

Moving on to a different topic, I always assume the worst of people. I do this so I can't be disappointed. People seem to always ignore me in favor of someone else. Especially guys. Now, I do acknowledge that this totally makes sense in an evolutionary standpoint because of course: the people we see as 'prettier' probably do have the better genes, which is why we see them as pretty in the first place. Now there are obviously exceptions to this. People also like intelligent individuals, though that has to do with genes in some way too. And as corny as it sounds, I suppose many of those exceptions are because of that little thing called love. I can't say much about that since I've never experienced romantic love. But anyway, I also think that what we see as pretty now may not actually be healthy anymore. There are already many debates on that so I won't even bother. As I was saying, I do understand why people naturally gravitate towards their attractive peers, I just don't understand why, again, people have to deliberately make less attractive people feel worse about themselves. Like sure you can be friends with whomever you want, and you can like whomever you want, but why do you have to be deliberately mean to me?

Whenever I'm in a group that isn't my friends, a lot of the time, nobody ever listens to my ideas. I say something and they literally are just like 'um, yeah sure'. I mean come on man. Why you gotta be this way. For real though. Once I said to my group, 'hey, I think we should have fire as more important than food and to some extent water' nobody listened. This guy in front of me literally went like, ummm you can drink water from the wild without boiling it. Like you might get sick. Okay bitch let me tell you something. Yeah you CAN drink the water and you MIGHT get sick, but do you understand that the moment you get sick, you will start to throw up and loose even more water aka die? Bitch I didn't think so. Obviously I didn't say that because I didn't want to waste my energy trying to convince these ungrateful idiots. Okay no, it's actually mostly my own problem, I didn't try and convince them because I was scared of being that annoying bitch that everyone hates because she takes everything too seriously. Okay, so I let that slide. 'Hey, I think someone should make a signal for rescue too,' woah I think someone actually acknowledged my presence this time! Oh, never mind, nobody gave a shit. So I thought about it. We were in lit. class and were preparing to read Lord of the Flies. So I was like okay, I'll relay my idea to some really outspoken girl in my group (keep in mind this group was 10 people) and she will say it for me. At this point I don't even care about credit anymore, I just can't watch these people being stupid for any longer. That sounds really condescending but let me tell you. Man it was so damn painful. The group literally put down 'building transportation' as one of the priorities. Oh my GOD. Of course we will just build a wooden raft out of logs and row our asses 9000 miles in some random direction to society. Bitch we are not in damn life of pi. So the girl relays my idea, and the same guy who dissed my idea previously goes like, 'yeahhh that's what I meant by transportation'. BITCH IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN WHERE TRANSPORTATION = SIGNALING. That's not even the worst part though. So after this guy agrees, I go like, 'okay so why don't you [the girl in charge of writing] write it down?' I was completely ignored. Shot down and shut down. Maybe she just didn't hear, so I repeat it two more times. Finally I just give up and ask her for the pencil. And she gives it to me so clearly she could hear me. In the end, I had to write it down. Jesus christ by then I was about to implode. I just ended up standing to the side doing nothing because I figured it wouldn't make a difference either way. It was just a game in the end.

Shockingly, when we started reading Lord of the Flies, I found Piggy in the same situation as me. Though much more serious. He has so many great ideas yet nobody would listen to him. They all listened to the hot guy, Ralph, and the guy with charisma, Jack. Ralph is a bit better now, but Jack just descended into intense creepiness. I can't deal with this book, it's basically filled with crazy douchebags. Which brings me back to the point of good and evil. Would it be bad if you were stuck on an island with absolutely no food left and you decided to kill your friend and eat them. Like is it bad to want to live? However, I don't like Jack because he kills with needless cruelty. He enjoys the sound the pig makes when she's in fear. The thing is, he says that he 'needs' pig meat. They establish that they actually don't need the meat because they already have sea food and plants/fruits (though I wouldn't eat just any random plant that might be poisonous). And his charisma causes many of the other boys to follow his ways. Mob mentality.

Okay I'm really going off topic now. When I said in the beginning about the philosopher project and people just thinking Hobbes was a dick, I have established that I clearly don't agree with them. I'm not saying I agree with absolute monarchies either, I just agree with a lot of what he said. I don't think people should completely self govern because the majority of people are pretty stupid okay. Including myself. Like the american revolution. People were all butt hurt about paying taxes because they didn't have representation. And I guess that makes sense, but I feel like if people had the chance to pay less taxes now of course they would. Going back to the point that people are selfish. If we governed ourselves, maybe the world would be 'nicer' but it wouldn't necessarily be better. Many people, like me, don't know shit about politics. Also, the world might be 'nicer' but that also probably won't happen either. Nicer is basically having the majority of the world agree with what you agree with. So basically it's what you want (again back to selfishness). I see so many people with my same view like accepting homosexuality, accepting equal rights for all genders, being against racism, etc. But that's in my community. I live in Cupertino (if you don't know where that is, it's where the Apple main building is, infinite loop. Apple is literally everywhere here), and Cupertino seems much more open minded than many other places. Then I realize that there are still many, many people in the world that don't believe in what I believe.

Back to the History project. So like there are two other people in my group, and I feel like they kind of understand that Hobbes' views do have a point, but they still conclude that he's a horrible dick. Like I feel like they don't understand because they never experienced it as much as I did. The cruelty of people I mean. The girl in my group is one of those really spirited hot girls, and the guy is just there. Pretty people can have problems too, of course, but I just don't think they can have the same problem to the extent that I have it (I mean people making fun of me because of how I look). Keep in mind that I do understand that being skinny doesn't equal being pretty, and being fat doesn't mean being ugly. Like not all skinny people are attractive okay. I'm not even going to lie. But the thing is, I don't care that they aren't pretty, and that's the difference. I have eyes, I can see superior aesthetics. No matter how subjective beauty is, I don't know, you can still just see. Like even if you don't personally think someone is pretty, you still recognize that they aren't ugly. I'm not sure how to phrase it.

Many attractive people are nice too. And I know it's partly my own fault that I'm not acknowledged. I don't actively try and extend myself because I feel like I might be annoying them. Like what if they don't want to talk to me. I'm literally shocked when someone who isn't my friend says hi to me in the halls. It genuinely shocks me. That's the level of confidence I have.