He reasons

Through many recent and not so recent situations, I have learned that you can not reason someone out of a situation that they did not reason themselves into.

He realizes his years

I realized something of significance tonight in the car...I am 17 years of age. Turning 18 in January, it's the first time it's really ever hit me, that I am sort of old now.

The years of fun, leisure and non caring, easy going living are far behind me now, and they will never return. From here on out, I will struggle every single day to try and fit in, to try and find my own place in this crazy world of ours. From now on, life get's serious, and so must I.

He Plays the game of life

The following is a very badly written post, I haven't written in some time so please forgive me. It's also a post that I know many will love to argue against, please do :p I think these posts would be a thousand times better if I actually bothered to read it over/edit ._.



Many smart philosophers and writers are often want to say things like "Life is a game, and we are all but a pawn" even William Shakespeare said that "All the worlds a stage" In our modern day, a lot of idealistic people I know seem to argue against this point. Many claim that life is not a game and that we choose our destiny and we choose what we become and every person has an intense burning significant.

Still though, one can not argue with the similarities that life has to just a game.

Think about each of us as an individual, now think of a piece in a game, say chess. Like the piece in the game, none of us has the power to choose what we are born into, additionally, what we are born into predetermines the path we will travel for the rest of our lives. It predetermines the hardships we will face, the friends we will make and the victories we will win.

Someone born into poverty will sadly struggle his entire life against it, let us compare him to a pawn...A piece that is not too significant in most games and a piece that is used by those that are higher than it self.

Now, the pawn has a hard life in front of him, he can move only one square at a time...A limitation comparable to those born in poverty...He has not much to offer and is easy to wipe out, he is plentiful and competition is intense. BUT, every now and then a pawn that is hard working, a pawn that is determined, disciplined and dedicated will make it to the end of board. He will make it to that point where he can become great, where he may be substituted for any piece in the game.

Isn't that a lot like life? Where those born in poverty must fight and struggle just to exist, fight against the higher born like us. But every now and then, someone will make it, over come poverty and be able to give a better life to his children than he did himself.


Every piece in a game has set limitations made with it, these limitations determine what sort of affect that piece will have on the entire game. Pawns may move one square up (unless starting) and kill only one square diagonally...Where-eas a Queen may move any where she pleases excepting the knights movement of course. Now, which of these will play a more significant role in MOST games of Chess?

The same can be said of life, all human beings are born with limitations that limit how far and what we will do in life...Some may be born with horrible diseases that they have no control over, others mental handicaps, and others handicaps that they place on themselves.

But the point is, it would be nice to believe that every body is significant, it would be nice to believe that every body has a a destiny and something to do that will make humanity better...But is it really true? Just like the Queen will make more of a difference in the game than a pawn, the president will make more of a difference in the world than a telemarketer. If that telemarketer, or if that other person just died randomly...How much of a difference will it really make? What would never be that could have been? I don't mean to downplay people as individuals, I think everyone is amazing in their own way and I think everyone is significant in their own and their friends lives...But how many of us are really significant in the larger picture, in the game of life? What blow will humanity suffer if a drunken, broken man dies? Only the potential that must have been, that always was...and was buried deep down

When most people say that life is not just a game or just not a play, they say that we all have the freedom of choice and choose what life we live. But is that really true? Do we not make choices specifically to the deck that life has dealt us? Do we not choose specifically because life has given us a specific situation...What if, maybe some how our choices too are predetermined, like we are meant to choose to go to university and study, which would have been our choice any way...Now I don't really know how to believe that, because that would require some sort of religious belief there too so I don't think it goes that far.

It just means that the choices we make, we make because life gave us that situation in which to make that choice...The result, is that we can not reallly choose, we can struggle and fight and try to make our lives better, but why do we do that? We do it because life gave us some thing to fight, life gave us a situation to struggle against, and life gave us something to fight for.

Yes, you are right...We create situations ourselves by choosing, but life gave us that situation when it gave us that initial choice. It just makes me wonder how much power we really have. I may often picture life as a complex algorithm with different paths and different choices that lead you down those paths...But what is the basis of the algorithm? What is it that gives us these specific choices to make, these specific decisions, to live this specific life?

In the end, one must ask...Do we have any real say in the matter? Or do we just go with the flow? Is life all nothing but a game? A game with no meaning other than to just survive?

He dreams of contact

Are we alone?

The answer to this much pondered question should be obvious...No, of course we are not. From every thing I've read, I find that it is impossible for Earth to be the only planet in the entire universe that can sustain life...The only way this would be possible in my eyes is if there is a divine being, but really, how likely is that? hehe ;)

*it's actually a really funny thing, I had a discussion with a friend who I know to be very religious about aliens, and she said to me "I'll believe it when I see them" I couldn't help ponder her beliefs in her god here"

Sometimes we just need to have faith, I Believe there must be some other life out there, whether it is cultured, intelligent or even capable of movement is not as guaranteed in my mind. Given the vast quantities of the universe, It's highly unlikely we'll ever actually run into other life though, but just imagine...

Imagine what our first contact will be like...What will mankind learn? Will we learn of ancient civilizations that destroyed themselves from within, foreshadowing our own imminent destruction? Or will we learn new methods of space travel, will our laws of physics be flipped upside down? Will Einstein be proved 100% off mark?

Or will we simply stare through a microscope, at a tiny life form...A tiny reminder of how small we really, truly are. A tiny reminder of how life will find a way, always?

Let's imagine our first contact is initiated by an intelligent alien race that arrives on Earth, a race that may or may not wish to take our planet for themselves

What will mankind learn from this race?

The biggest question I have here, is will mankind stand united, or fall divided?

Upon seeing another intelligent life form that is so different from us, will we all realize just how similar we are to each other? Will we realize that these trivialities that separate us now, such as skin colour, gender or race really have no more meaning than the blank page that we often find at the end of a book?

Will mankind learn to stand united, to help each other, to look after others of it's own race, to accept all human beings as the same and one, to accept that this is our race, this is our heritage, our inheritance and everything that we are, it is everything that we have?

Or will mankind divide and break apart? Will there be political disagreements on how to treat the aliens? Will we wage war with ourselves to obtain these new technologies? Will we struggle against each other for an ally in a sentient being? Will those of us with power kidnap the outsiders to study and experiment, despite many protesting against it?

Will mankind destroy itself from within? Will we, in our individual, selfish greed, and our collective thrust for knowledge destroy the very bonds that separate us from more primitive forms of life?


I often think about what our first contact will be like, sadly it will probably not occur in my life time, it may never occur at all. If it does occur, it may just be us stumbling upon some microscopic or primitive organisms, not that that alone wouldn't be beyond exciting.

But I feel like mankind's ultimate test, the test that will prove our mettle as a race will be the one where we meet our equals, or the one where we meet those that are superior, that are beyond us. What will humanity resort to? What means will we go to not only survive, but to thrive?

But more importantly, how will we change as a race? Will this be the end of all of the many problems that we have placed on ourselves? Will we finally act on our current realization that we are destroying our beautiful planet? Will we see that we are disgracing members of our own race, that all we ever really seem to think about is ourself, as an individual, and not often about our race as a collected unit?

I think the most important thing we could learn from contact is that humanity is small. I know that to us it may often seem like we dominate this planet, where everything seems to be ours because we are capable of intelligent thought. This makes us not think so much about humanity as a whole...We think about "those people" or "the Arabs" or "the Chinese" We think about ourselves and the people we as an individual know...

But we never really think about HUMANITY about HUMAN BEINGS as a RACE. If we met other races of equal or higher intelligence, or equal or higher culture...we would see...we would see that humanity is just one small puzzle piece, that there is a bigger picture...that to survive, we need to learn to love all other human beings because we are all one and the same.

He chooses

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities" -Professor Dumbledore to Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (p.245)

I remember reading this for the first time, a long time ago as a young lad, and having my entire world turned upside down. This quote taught me how to live, it taught me that I can choose, that I must choose and what I choose has consequences as well as rewards.

He watches the face of teenage freedom disintegrate slowly

A rather dramatic title, I know. Surprisingly, this post is actually about Facebook :o I suppose Twitter and other social networking sites would also relate. It's a topic brought up by my brother in a conversation we had, I'm really really tired right now, so please excuse my many impending errors.



Facebook is huge in our generation. Everyone that is someone has it, and I know that sounds like a generation but one must understand the usefulness of Facebook. It allows us to easily connect socially and meet new people. I have personally made many friends from Facebook. While people find it awkward to go up to someone and just introduce themselves, Facebook works in a different way. I can update my status with the idea in mind that my current friends will read it...But then someone who I don't really know but have as a friend (or not) reads it, and they comment. Thus, I begin to establish a friendship with this new person and hey, introductions made easy. It gives us mutual topics of conversation.

But is this really why we joined Facebook? As an individual, most people will say that they joined Facebook to keep in contact with their friends, and because their friends joined it, but I believe subconsciously at the least, there is so much more to it.

You see, back then, Facebook gave us teenagers our own little world. It was a world where we could easily escape from adults and just be ourselves with our friends. It was our own beautiful utopia. We could escape from the stress of work, chores and life just to share things with each other. We could use it as a realm of communication between each other for anything, from arranging meet ups for a project, to arranging parties to just talking and getting to know others. We could use Facebook to catch a glimpse in to the minds of our friends, in to the lives of our friends. We could see the kind of lives that others our age live and appreciate the differences.

Facebook represented teenage freedom in it's greatest entirety, it was our world...Not this world ruled by adults in their big corporations, it was our very own utopia with just our friends. This is why so many of us found it easy to get lost on Facebook, just hanging out or checking out our friends.

But alas, times change, and the greedy corporate adults invaded our own private utopia. Facebook is no longer the same, it is no longer about socializing and having fun...All of a sudden, Facebook is all about marketing and making money. It is about online scams and selling products, about companies creating names for themselves and trying to reach out to their audience, about manipulating the masses in order to gain profit.

Think about it, when we apply for a job, we are told that our employer will check our Facebook account. Was this the true intention of Facebook? Was this what we ever wanted? No, of course not. But alas, it must happen simply because we, the targeted audience has moved to a new form of entertainment, and business have adapted.

But does this not bug you my friends? Our own little world has been ruined once again. I got really annoyed to find my entire family on Facebook, they have a right to join it, and it serves them well in their own way...But man it's like an invasion, just stomping into my room and saying "hey man, sleeping here" or something.

Facebook still exists though. I have not deleted my Facebook or stopped using it, simply because my friends use it. And for that, it serves a good purpose in keeping updated with their lives, it allows me to arrange and organize events and participate in organized events, it allows me to just generally know what's going on...

But the spirit of it has died. Facebook is no longer what it once was, it is simply a dead shell, I've noticed that the enthusiasm around it is dying out too.

I suppose it is some what ironic, since Facebook itself is a large company.

But think about the bigger picture here. We are all constantly barraged by advertisements, ushered subconsciously into buying, told how to live our lives and taught what businesses want us to know...And why? Just so that those individuals can roll around in their pile of money. Our society has become absolutely monetary, it is all that seems to matter. But really? Is money all that important? These printed pieces of paper that represent success, wealth and how happy you will be life? Are there not more important things for us as human beings to do...than to greedily get money so that we are the ones living in comfort?

He wants

"When you want something that you have never had, you have to do something that you have never done. " - Anom.