Birth.

You are born, wah-wah-wah, aww look at the cute baby, christ wash the placenta off his face, etc.

In the early years of life you can be the center of affection, or at least these was one time the norm. You are a new life ushered into this world with love and appreciation. Your parents love you, the dog loves you, people visiting love you, it's all great and happy and sun-shine like. Now, with extraordinarily high divorce rates, poverty lines being wickedly disproportionate, etc. this is not necessarily the case. This will, however, not be the focus of what I'm trying to say here because this may or may not lead down into a chicken or the egg kind of conversation as the parents are victims of this process I'm going to attempt to outline. The events will be described in an americano-centric view point because they will be one of experience rather than scholarly descriptions, and this is the vantage point that I am writing from.

America: land of nothing's free, and the home where nothing's safe.

After this brief experience of, at least, some sort of family life in which you aren't responsible for much because you don't have motor skills, communication abilities, deeper level processing, etc. you are enrolled in school. Suddenly you're not so loved, you're teased at every turn it seems, but this isn't the point either. There is a trend throughout the educational process that will spill into your life thereafter that places importance on some things, and insignificance on others.

It starts early.

What's the first thing you learn? The pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag, and the united states of America; and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Then you repeat this every single day for the duration of your education until you reach, if you ever do, secondary eduation. The fact that just about every statement in this pledge is pure unadulterated bullshit doesn't matter at this point because you don't understand it; you're fuckin' 5. Nobody really reflects on what it intends, and I'm not saying that the words themselves has a subconscious effect on us all, because we memorize them to the point of having no influence on us before we understand what's being said.

The point is uniformity; unquestioned, authoritative, unyielding uniformity.

As we age this attitude is pervasive, and applies throughout our educational process. We all learn the same material in similar fashions, we're all issued the same social nonsense, and we're all given the same institutes and gatherings to uphold as worth while. The grand football games of highschool, the awkward dance socials of middle school, the ubiquitous threat of detention throughout the proceedings. Throughout all of this many social subjugations are taking place, but within the ambit of this essay I'd like to focus on the heart as it's pushed further and furhter into the margins until, by the time you can understand it, you aren't capable of experiencing it.

Well, that's not a very accurate way of putting it I suppose. By the time you are old enough to express love maturely, you've been educated in a fashion that, in this world, in order to be productive, you have no use for love; it's detrimental to success. This is a realization you make on your own, and it's rarely a truly conscious decision, but it seems to be the norm.

Throughout the highschool, it seems, we're taught, essentially, the same nonsense every year. The english classes go over grammer, and, at best, assign a new book that either no one will read or is of the skill level, and depth of something not worth reading; math classes exchange concepts for formulas, but they're all based on the foundation of having a "trick" to getting at the answer, without understanding of the logic behind it being necessary; history goes over the same, euro-centric, events every year under different names, but the material doesn't appear to change. The pervasive theme is speed, efficiency, everybody getting the same answer, and nobody really understanding why it's the right answer.

The result: at the end of highschool nobody seems to be aware of the fact that they've only been equipped with the ability to small talk (since everybody's taken the same material, thus having some sort of common ground), and the ability to do mindless, repetitive tasks.

Afterwards you have two options (well three if you count military, but the conformity and uselessness of love should be so abundantly clear in this walk of life that I shouldn't have to expand on it.): 1) Go to college, or 2) get a shitty job and be poor.

In both of these options the kind of employment available, either immediately and at low pay, or delayed gratification and higher pay, have, at their heart, capitalistic success as it's only goal. There's no passion for the task, there's no motivation, outside of money, for even seeking employment. So we live to work, rather than working to live.

So you wake up, go to work, return home with work on the brain (or go to your second job if you didn't go to college), with hopes of a promotion, a raise, what-have-you, and time for yourself is marginalized more and more to weekends, which, if you're a good little capitalist, should be spent doing work anyway. Then, of course, with what little liesure you time you have it must, simply must, be spent upholding your image of success. Constantly striving for a bigger and better house; keeping the lawn trimmed, proper and pretty; buying the latest style of success; equipping yourself with the latest technological advancement, cell phone with internet, pda with gpi, whatever; and holding "social" where work is functioning as the heart and soul, a morale booster at best, and shame shame shame if anybody outside of your high level of stature is seen there doing anything but serving food.

Add to this the feminist movement meaning that women are striving twice as hard to acquire this same state of self-imposed imprisonment, and you have a world where the heart has no place.

I'm not against the feminist movement, and I believe "equal pay for equal work" and the like is wonderful. Women and men have equality laced through them. My beef is that the brass ring that they should have an equal shot at acquiring is, at the current moment, horribly alienating and robs life of meaning.

Who has time to create meaning in life through the solidarity that can be found in family? Love has no monetary value; lust does!

I'd like to say utter nonsense, but it's not all that. There are people who "fall in line" and people who don't. What determines that, I'm unsure...but it's true.

Every person has to create their own meaning.

Plus, some people LOVE their work.

I am terrified of having the sort of life you describe. Go to work, work all day, go to sleep, start again. For the rest of your life. You get a weekend to yourself, true, but like you said, more often than not you have to work then as well... and for what? For a nice lawn? You do this until you retire, at which point you're senile and spend what little time you have remaining being bad at golf.

How boring. How utterly deadening. A killer of dreams.

I LOVE working. Sure, some days I might want to sleep in or take the day off...but for the most part...I've always loved working.

I think you are cynical without need. It is very possible to be what society deems 'sucessful' without being miserable, and without conforming. It's all a question of values. If you allowed yourself to be dulled down to the point where your priorities are having a high paying job, manicured lawn, and a Lexus in your garage, well that's entirely your own fault. It is so easy to do what it takes to survive whilst maintaining your own ideals.

As far as I'm concerned it us totally up to the individual whether or not they are going to live a benign, mediocre life, or find ways to enjoy life and seek self-gratification. Some people are followers, and some aren't. We all choose our own path.

So what's the point in this? Life sucks and then we die? Shocking discovery

Maybe it seems like utter drivel because I'm not American?

Edit: It has a good title.

[This message has been edited by Euda (edited 11-28-2006).]

quote:Originally posted by Twisted_Ferret:

How boring. How utterly deadening. A killer of dreams.

Agreed, it scares me that i could end up in a job like that. I couldnt take it. Id lose it. Id give myself a year maybe two of a job like that before i just had to leave, run away and never look back.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Too much deep thought.. makes my head hurt. Traffic_Lights, I often ponder the same kind of thing.. and I start to feel cold.

could you rewrite that when you're less stoned? you had a good theme going, then you changed it, then you changed it again. too disjointed.

"Son, you know when they said life was going to be easy? Well they lied!"



-My ol' Dad

Ain't never had no cause to disagree with him none on that neither.

What the fuck is your point?

If you hate life more than you enjoy it, kill yourself.

You aren't saying anything interesting, you aren't asking any question, there is no intelligent debate to be had here.

Keep your fucking emo 'filosofical' poetry in your live journal.

At the risk of angering the mod gods. Jackketch, please, dont indulge in this fucking blow job party we have in the west of complaining about life.

Everyone has their level, some people bitch about footballers who complain about their 'work'. Some people bitch about cunts like bono who are self serving but still complain about 'celebrity'. Bottom line, life here in the west is piss easy, most of our time is not spent surviving, most work time is spent to gain money for shit you want. You can survive quite easily eating what people throw away. In short, life is great, if you really find it so hard, spend a week in a shit hole country or start doing better drugs.

Not stoned, too much coffee, and too tired. Wrote it at work, and I had to leave abruptly so it's disjointed and incomplete. I plan on finishing it later as I just got home from sparring and want to shower up and what not, but the basic premise is, or will be:

life is geared to be quick and efficient

with life being geared this way certain things, unefficient things, must be cut, and this is good for a lot of things such as laziness, superfluous drivel, etc. But a lot of good things get cut as well, the whole "stop and smell the roses" kind of thing is subject to de-emphasis, for the most part.

one of the trends subject to this de-emphasis is love, again, for the most part. With most houses requiring dual income at this point to be considered middle class, and the American dream still being to be the top-dog, two cars, latest tv, etc. life-style this means that, even in the home life, love, and things like life, are pushed into the margins.

In college you see this kind of mentality as well with people either wanting to be successes at what they do, hence focusing primarily on that capitalist brass ring, or their they partyers....in which case they don't have room for love in their life either, because it gets in the way of booze and new pussy. Again, love, for the most part, pushed into the margins.

With employment immediately after college you have, again, for the most part, jobs people don't really feel like doing and it being very necessary to have more than one income coming into the house. And with the rise of teen pregnancy thrown in the mix you have what little time you have together when your oscillating schedules synch up is going to be spent resenting the hell out of each other, or drinking or something to that nature to forget about your shit state of affairs.

My point isn't "oh, boo-hoo life sure does suck" because I don't think life sucks, not at all. My point is a trend I see a vast majority[/i[ of people under-going that makes almost [i]none of them happy.

Sure there are those who like their jobs, but they are few and far between because for the most part people don't have a choice for what job they have, so they get the short end of the stick. Yes there are people who find contentment in life, yes there are people who give meaning to life, but when you take a look around and find adultery, over 50% divorce rates, miserable work-a-holics and a bunch of nifty gadgets, and "life's a bitch" being such common knowledge that it doesn't shock anybody you have to think there's a problem here.

If nobody is a big fan of this way of life, then why in the fuck are we all living this way?

It's about bringing some things back into the main stage of life, and outside of the margins; it's about these people who decide to give meaning to their life being everybody, rather than just the fleeting glimpses of exceptions; most importantly it's not pessimistic, but optimistic in that it is up to you!

I hate that the emo movement has made it so that anybody who tries to make a statement about life is written off as a psuedo intellectual who just wants to be so sad he's cool. I love life, and it's because I love life that I hate to see so many people do this to theirs.

quote:Originally posted by I_Like_Traffic_Lights:

Yes there are people who find contentment in life, yes there are people who give meaning to life,

Yes, there are...

There are people who seem to thrive on just the opposite...

Then, there are those in the middle. Which, I think are the vast majority. Not entirely contented, yet not entirely discontented.

Ever watch the film, "The Razor's Edge"? I highly recommend it.

I have to agree that your point didn't shine through, but at least it was well written and more entertaining and self-assured than a lot of the threads in here.

I agree with you to a point. I believe if you follow your dreams, and make money out of your dreams, then that would be working to live... or living through your work.

If you feel so disheartened by this future you see for yourself, then change it. It's easy to pick a goal and stick with it. Find something you want to do, that you think will make you happy.

Tee Hee.

Did somebody watch trainspotting for the first time or some other foolishness?

This isn't necessarily what I see coming for my life, but I just hate to watch so many other people going through it.

And I still have yet to watch trainspotting. I hear good things.

If anything is at the heart of inspiration to write this, other than being stuck at work, it is Marcuse, Habermas, Deleuze, Adorno, Sartre, Marx, etc.

Still want to watch trainspotting though.

Same, dude, same. (trainspotting)

quote:Originally posted by I_Like_Traffic_Lights:

Not stoned, too much coffee, and too tired. Wrote it at work, and I had to leave abruptly so it's disjointed and incomplete. I plan on finishing it later as I just got home from sparring and want to shower up and what not, but the basic premise is, or will be:

life is geared to be quick and efficient

with life being geared this way certain things, unefficient things, must be cut, and this is good for a lot of things such as laziness, superfluous drivel, etc. But a lot of good things get cut as well, the whole "stop and smell the roses" kind of thing is subject to de-emphasis, for the most part.

one of the trends subject to this de-emphasis is love, again, for the most part. With most houses requiring dual income at this point to be considered middle class, and the American dream still being to be the top-dog, two cars, latest tv, etc. life-style this means that, even in the home life, love, and things like life, are pushed into the margins.

In college you see this kind of mentality as well with people either wanting to be successes at what they do, hence focusing primarily on that capitalist brass ring, or their they partyers....in which case they don't have room for love in their life either, because it gets in the way of booze and new pussy. Again, love, for the most part, pushed into the margins.

With employment immediately after college you have, again, for the most part, jobs people don't really feel like doing and it being very necessary to have more than one income coming into the house. And with the rise of teen pregnancy thrown in the mix you have what little time you have together when your oscillating schedules synch up is going to be spent resenting the hell out of each other, or drinking or something to that nature to forget about your shit state of affairs.

My point isn't "oh, boo-hoo life sure does suck" because I don't think life sucks, not at all. My point is a trend I see a vast majority[/i[ of people under-going that makes almost [i]none of them happy.

Sure there are those who like their jobs, but they are few and far between because for the most part people don't have a choice for what job they have, so they get the short end of the stick. Yes there are people who find contentment in life, yes there are people who give meaning to life, but when you take a look around and find adultery, over 50% divorce rates, miserable work-a-holics and a bunch of nifty gadgets, and "life's a bitch" being such common knowledge that it doesn't shock anybody you have to think there's a problem here.

If nobody is a big fan of this way of life, then why in the fuck are we all living this way?

It's about bringing some things back into the main stage of life, and outside of the margins; it's about these people who decide to give meaning to their life being everybody, rather than just the fleeting glimpses of exceptions; most importantly it's not pessimistic, but optimistic in that it is up to you!

I hate that the emo movement has made it so that anybody who tries to make a statement about life is written off as a psuedo intellectual who just wants to be so sad he's cool. I love life, and it's because I love life that I hate to see so many people do this to theirs.

This is why I ride a bicycle

quote:Originally posted by I_Like_Traffic_Lights:

Birth.

You are born, wah-wah-wah, aww look at the cute baby, christ wash the placenta off his face, etc.

In the early years of life you can be the center of affection, or at least these was one time the norm. You are a new life ushered into this world with love and appreciation. Your parents love you, the dog loves you, people visiting love you, it's all great and happy and sun-shine like. Now, with extraordinarily high divorce rates, poverty lines being wickedly disproportionate, etc. this is not necessarily the case. This will, however, not be the focus of what I'm trying to say here because this may or may not lead down into a chicken or the egg kind of conversation as the parents are victims of this process I'm going to attempt to outline. The events will be described in an americano-centric view point because they will be one of experience rather than scholarly descriptions, and this is the vantage point that I am writing from.

America: land of nothing's free, and the home where nothing's safe.

After this brief experience of, at least, some sort of family life in which you aren't responsible for much because you don't have motor skills, communication abilities, deeper level processing, etc. you are enrolled in school. Suddenly you're not so loved, you're teased at every turn it seems, but this isn't the point either. There is a trend throughout the educational process that will spill into your life thereafter that places importance on some things, and insignificance on others.

It starts early.

What's the first thing you learn? The pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag, and the united states of America; and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Then you repeat this every single day for the duration of your education until you reach, if you ever do, secondary eduation. The fact that just about every statement in this pledge is pure unadulterated bullshit doesn't matter at this point because you don't understand it; you're fuckin' 5. Nobody really reflects on what it intends, and I'm not saying that the words themselves has a subconscious effect on us all, because we memorize them to the point of having no influence on us before we understand what's being said.

The point is uniformity; unquestioned, authoritative, unyielding uniformity.

As we age this attitude is pervasive, and applies throughout our educational process. We all learn the same material in similar fashions, we're all issued the same social nonsense, and we're all given the same institutes and gatherings to uphold as worth while. The grand football games of highschool, the awkward dance socials of middle school, the ubiquitous threat of detention throughout the proceedings. Throughout all of this many social subjugations are taking place, but within the ambit of this essay I'd like to focus on the heart as it's pushed further and furhter into the margins until, by the time you can understand it, you aren't capable of experiencing it.

Well, that's not a very accurate way of putting it I suppose. By the time you are old enough to express love maturely, you've been educated in a fashion that, in this world, in order to be productive, you have no use for love; it's detrimental to success. This is a realization you make on your own, and it's rarely a truly conscious decision, but it seems to be the norm.

Throughout the highschool, it seems, we're taught, essentially, the same nonsense every year. The english classes go over grammer, and, at best, assign a new book that either no one will read or is of the skill level, and depth of something not worth reading; math classes exchange concepts for formulas, but they're all based on the foundation of having a "trick" to getting at the answer, without understanding of the logic behind it being necessary; history goes over the same, euro-centric, events every year under different names, but the material doesn't appear to change. The pervasive theme is speed, efficiency, everybody getting the same answer, and nobody really understanding why it's the right answer.

The result: at the end of highschool nobody seems to be aware of the fact that they've only been equipped with the ability to small talk (since everybody's taken the same material, thus having some sort of common ground), and the ability to do mindless, repetitive tasks.

Afterwards you have two options (well three if you count military, but the conformity and uselessness of love should be so abundantly clear in this walk of life that I shouldn't have to expand on it.): 1) Go to college, or 2) get a shitty job and be poor.

In both of these options the kind of employment available, either immediately and at low pay, or delayed gratification and higher pay, have, at their heart, capitalistic success as it's only goal. There's no passion for the task, there's no motivation, outside of money, for even seeking employment. So we live to work, rather than working to live.

So you wake up, go to work, return home with work on the brain (or go to your second job if you didn't go to college), with hopes of a promotion, a raise, what-have-you, and time for yourself is marginalized more and more to weekends, which, if you're a good little capitalist, should be spent doing work anyway. Then, of course, with what little liesure you time you have it must, simply must, be spent upholding your image of success. Constantly striving for a bigger and better house; keeping the lawn trimmed, proper and pretty; buying the latest style of success; equipping yourself with the latest technological advancement, cell phone with internet, pda with gpi, whatever; and holding "social" where work is functioning as the heart and soul, a morale booster at best, and shame shame shame if anybody outside of your high level of stature is seen there doing anything but serving food.

Add to this the feminist movement meaning that women are striving twice as hard to acquire this same state of self-imposed imprisonment, and you have a world where the heart has no place.

I'm not against the feminist movement, and I believe "equal pay for equal work" and the like is wonderful. Women and men have equality laced through them. My beef is that the brass ring that they should have an equal shot at acquiring is, at the current moment, horribly alienating and robs life of meaning.

Who has time to create meaning in life through the solidarity that can be found in family? Love has no monetary value; lust does!

this sounds more half-baked then s&a, just saying

quote:Originally posted by I_Like_Traffic_Lights:

If anything is at the heart of inspiration to write this, other than being stuck at work, it is Marcuse, Habermas, Deleuze, Adorno, Sartre, Marx, etc.

Attempt re-writing it with allusions, it doesn't bleed though that rant.

quote:Originally posted by Euda:

Attempt re-writing it with allusions.

Why? This isn't heavily impacted upon any of these writers, per se, it's just that I happen to enjoy these thinkers and agree with many of the things that they say so that when I'm taking a position on life, naturally, some of their thinking will have an influence.

Besides, I was trying to make my thoughts as comprehensible as possible to the population of totse and adding a bunch of labor exchange commodities, subjegation of por soi, dialect development, and the like just aren't going to get my point across.

In fact it seems as if I'm going to have to dumb it down.

quote:Originally posted by I_Like_Traffic_Lights:

Why? This isn't heavily impacted upon any of these writers, per se, it's just that I happen to enjoy these thinkers and agree with many of the things that they say so that when I'm taking a position on life, naturally, some of their thinking will have an influence.

Besides, I was trying to make my thoughts as comprehensible as possible to the population of totse and adding a bunch of labor exchange commodities, subjegation of por soi, dialect development, and the like just aren't going to get my point across.

In fact it seems as if I'm going to have to dumb it down.



Simplify, Traffic...simplify. No need to "dumb it down", just present your point succinctly.

Sometimes, when you write Traffic...you lecture.

I do have a question for you though. Do you think there was a time when things were not like this...in some form or another? It certainly does not strike me as a new development really.

As long as I can do drugs. It's all ok.

That's just the thing: this concept is one aspect of a trend so deeply rooted in the way that we live our day-to-day lives that it's difficult, nah, impossible to elucidate without a substantial explaining of the process, and how we've arrived in this current state of affairs. In fact, I don't think I have, as yet, stressed my main point sufficiently because there are so many various factors involved that it's difficult to get at, especially in the spurts of time that I have.

Suffice it to say that love is viewed as unimportant, at best, in our currenty americano, and, more often than not, it's seen as something detrimental; poisonous. And not just love, either, but art, philosophy, critical thinking in general, true motivation of spirit; these are all pushed into the margins as they don't readily produce a profit, they produce something genuine.

There are many things that are seen as acceptable losses in the name of progress. Some of these things are unrenewable resources, others are the face-to-face communications in the name of cell phones, internet, etc., others in the o-zone layer because who needs that? The interest of love, and genuine human compassion are also cut right off the fat of our product first society.

For example: Christmas is quickly approaching; a holiday that at one time was a religious act of compassion and kidness, a wonderful way to show those around you that you care, to show strangers the solidarity in the human spirit, and, of course, to celebrate the immaculate birth of Christianity's key player. How much of that do you see on a mass scale today? A little of it with the immediate family that you're obligated to? A few faked sentiments at office christmas parties? None?

What you have, instead, is the largest number of money spent during the year, all on credit, and mostly on-line, avoiding the whole human contact thing. It's another opportunity to show off your superfluous wealth, and then to ignore your family as you work, work, work, to pay off the crippling dept accumlated during the holiday shopping season.

Valentine's day, same thing, a holiday with good intentions of the heart but, instead, has become a day to spend an excrutiating amount of money in an attempt to get laid.

Love isn't cost effective; it isn't productive; it's silly; it's of no consequence to capital so get rid of it, what's the point in having it?

The point, as I see it, is that with all of these life affirming, and humanity fueling activites pushed to the margins society, as a whole, is suffering an illness. An illness of lonliness; of uselessness; of me-against-the-world; of aggression; of repetitive hypnosis; of disconnectendess; of inner-turmoil; of incompleteness; or defeat. It is an illness that many of us try to self medicate.....

quote:Originally posted by CatharticWeek:



As long as I can do drugs. It's all ok.

But which this self medication only retires us to the center stage of alienation. There's still nobody you can count on but yourself, because the only mission in life is to have the most stuff at the end; there's still little chance of feeling human, as the jobs available, the good-paying ones at least, are either at the top delegating tasks to people who will always feel lower than you, or they're more of an interpreting job for some computer in which the computer is closer to the actual employee.

My call to action is a call to live, and is rooted in a cry to end this entire way of life in exchance for a more authentic way of being. In this instance, however, I'm attempting to focus on the heart, and how the simple act of love is less and less inspired, and more and more malnourished, but I tend to expand, and get distracted, as this is more of a free-consciousness style writing, and there's a lot being affected by this relationship to the world: Our means of food production, our inclination towards war, the abstraction in funds of the super-rich, the cycles imbeded in the system to maintain the super-rich, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

My point is not to submit to this, if it's even only in the interest of your heart. Don't buy a valentine's day card, write one; don't forget others as you strive for the top; don't let your heart grow cold; be creative in the way you express your feelings for others, and the way you can bring about life and meaning as a connection between people; and DON'T FORGET THAT THE ORGASM IS NOT THE ONLY IMPORTANT THING ABOUT LOVE!

The process I've been attempting to describe is the process of our culture, but our culture has been so well engrained in our social fabric (in ways I've described and many many more) that people don't see it as one option among many any more, it has risen itself about the realm of discussion amongst the average population, it has achieved the status that God used to have. Though this process is massive, manipulative, and seemingly all encompassing, it doesn't exist without us, and laced throughout our being is a freedom; a freedom to choose to live this way, or to not; a freedom to love, or to seek riches above all else; a freedom to listen to me, or to ignore me. The culture that we are being bombarded with does not have much interest in this freedom, freedom isn't productive, freedom comes with errors; that's why we use machines and computers for so much of our society; they are without freedom, and without error.

FUCK THAT I WANT TO LIVE! With all of the blissful uncertainties that entails, and you should want that too.

quote:Originally posted by I_Like_Traffic_Lights:

For example: Christmas is quickly approaching; a holiday that at one time was a religious act of compassion and kidness, a wonderful way to show those around you that you care, to show strangers the solidarity in the human spirit, and, of course, to celebrate the immaculate birth of Christianity's key player. How much of that do you see on a mass scale today? A little of it with the immediate family that you're obligated to? A few faked sentiments at office christmas parties? None?

What do you want, strangers to care about eachother? Try not living in a city

Given the season, I'll touch on this.



quote:Originally posted by I_Like_Traffic_Lights:

For example: Christmas is quickly approaching; a holiday that at one time was a religious act of compassion and kindness, a wonderful way to show those around you that you care, to show strangers the solidarity in the human spirit, and, of course, to celebrate the immaculate birth of Christianity's key player. How much of that do you see on a mass scale today? A little of it with the immediate family that you're obligated to? A few faked sentiments at office christmas parties? None?

I see a lot of people extending goodwill to others during this season. Where I work, the employees participate in supplying children with gifts who would otherwise have little for Christmas. They also "adopt" families. Some of the families are retirees who struggle to make ends meet, as well as working with other groups to provide entire families with things they might not otherwise be able to enjoy. Most of the places that I worked at extended this sort of goodwill during the season.

The company I work at also donates a generous amount of monies to charities throughout the year, and is very active in community work including environmental clean up.

Most of the places I have worked did these sorts of things.



The churches around these parts also do that. In addition they have families who take those who are less fortunate into their homes to give them a place to stay at times throughout the year. Some of the churches take families into their care and they stay there and members bring food, clothing, and other essentials to help them out.

The stores collect donations to be distributed as well.

Think about all the people who donate time and money to those who suffer from natural disasters as well.

It's out there, it's just a matter of opening your eyes to see them.



Are those not "loving gestures" from all manners of people?



[This message has been edited by oc6 (edited 11-29-2006).]

Looking at it positively, love is something you work for having the time to do, because once your a successful capitalist you are rich enough to work less and fall in love and have a family etc. whatever the hell you want with you American Dream, so it's kind of ment to include it, but only for the successful people. Disposing of the weak 'eh?

On the not so positive side, the whole idea of the work orientated society is so fucking annoying and the public distain for anything other than romantically retarded relationships just fucks everthing up and produces so many people who know nothing real.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of people end up just fine, if not perfect, but at the same time so many more are just fucktards who know nothing about real life and nothing about relationships with other people - just how to compete with their own gender to gain the attentions of the opposite sex, with which they then have jack all idea what to do with other than fuck.

Dam I hate shit stupid people, people with no ambition or who are happy to work in pizza delivery til their 90 are absolutly fine, just people who are fuck-twats and act like they know everything and that anyone else is wrong and should die.

Stupid 'responsible' adults who supposedly know what their talking about. They know no more about life than any decent 18 year old does, they've just done a load of crap we haven't and think they can tell us what to do when they have no idea what it's like to be this age anymore. I'm going to stop ranting now.

^^^

So, tell me...what is "real life"?

quote:Originally posted by oc6:

^^^

So, tell me...what is "real life"?



A half decent knowledge of perspectives other than your own.

quote:Originally posted by Strakynyar Krongoth:



A half decent knowledge of perspectives other than your own.



What perspectives of others do you have? First hand, I mean.

You assholes NEED to get more jaded.

quote:Originally posted by Bazzle:

You assholes NEED to get more jaded.

jad·ed

pronunciation of "jaded" [P]

adj.

1. Worn out; wearied: “My father's words had left me jaded and depressed” (William Styron).

2. Dulled by surfeit; sated: “the sickeningly sweet life of the amoral, jaded, bored upper classes” (John Simon).

3. Cynically or pretentiously callous.



Tell me......which of these definitions would be beneficial?