Life is one hard place to live in. All the years struggle really add up. Imagine how many buckets we would fill if we truly let ourselves cry when the pain got to us. We endure all the fear, worry, stress, insult, rejection, dejection, embarrassment, and many more. Even if you have been fortunate, I bet you know a lot of people who have not been. And if you have been even more fortunate to be surrounded by people with good circumstances, then you must have at least observed the news and seen the agony of tortured souls. The worst part of all the suffering is that there is a significant number of people who don’t deserve to suffer, like the kids who just happened to be born into the mud pit.

This brings me to the point of this piece. First let me ask a question: If you had to chance to sing the national anthem in front of a stadium full of people, and you knew that you risked embarrassing yourself because you weren’t sure of the words, would you still go ahead and do it. You would either decline, or if you loved the chance so much, you would spend time learning the words and the training your voice for the next opportunity. So why is it then, that so many people choose have children at a time when they are not capable of being adequate parents. Look at all the teen pregnancy numbers to get an idea of what I mean. And its not just there, but also married people who spend all day away from their kids coz both parents have to work to pay off that Lexus and the Plasma TV, or the $300,000 mortgage. I mean, kids need love and attention and if we don’t spend time to guide our future generations, but leave it to the hands of people who couldn’t care less, then I must humbly but honestly say that we are seriously screwed.

I need not say more because the statistics abound with reports of teens using sex, drugs, and violence to fill the emotional void left by their parents, and the news is filled with cries about the declining quality of education, and the high drop-out rates. All I’m trying to say is, we gotta spread the word about preparedness, coz our kids are so precious that we must get it right, instead of hoping to make it work. Wait till you are financially and emotionally stable to have children. Please don’t have them until you can raise them. I’ve heard tears from lonely children for so many years; I’ve seen these children grow up to be troubled teens, and then later to wrecked adults. It may not happen every single time, but it happens enough times for us to stop taking chances. Our children need us to show them the way. Not just to tell them how it is, but to actually guide them, and the gradually ease off. A baby sitter isn’t good enough. We’ve gotta make sure we’re there for them, especially while they’re still little and impressionable. Because after those crucial developmental years pass, then its pretty much a one in a million chance that we will ever make a connection with them again. I hope we all take this seriously and spread the word. It is our future, and we must take control of it.

But don’t take my word for it. Check the stats and do your research like you would if you were starting up a business. See what absentee parenting leads to. See what they say about what most emotionally-deprived children grow up to be. I’m not calling for smothering (as a matter of fact pls avoid this). But do be there to guide, protect, support, and love.

There are those who have taken it upon themselves to make a living by trying to deceive people by selling them hope as a drug. It turns out that the height of hope gets reversed into the depth of depression when people realize that the world is a rough place. We need to stop teaching people about “happy endings” that come to you just because you “have a good heart.”

That fairy tale mentality is very crippling. Careful planning, shrewdness, and sometimes luck are the factors that lead to success (even though successful people don’t have perfect lives). It is not enough to be sincere; there has to be some foresight and planning. It’s is not enough to “be a good person” because even good people, if they are careless about protecting themselves, will get knocked to the ground and be left laying in the dirt.

The reality is that hope is only meant to cover the part of the equation that relates to luck. You plan your success and happiness to the best of your ability, and only after that, should you begin to hope for good things. How can you hope to harvest food when you planted nothing? First you till the soil, plant your seeds, water them, control weeds and pests, and then you can hope that no natural disaster wipes out your crop. Human advancement to this stage did not come through hope, but through the dedication to study and planning by the great minds and generations past.

No one is going to achieve any greatness simply by being sincere. Our culture lets us tell the opposite to kids, then they are later shocked hard by reality. Kids need to be cushioned and shielded, but it should not be a total bubble of naivety.

Hope is not to be abused as a drug to give people delusions. Imagine how much better off we would be if we spent more time plotting to succeed and less time day-dreaming about success. Just because you can think it, believe it, or “hope for it” doesn’t mean it will come to be. Imagine how unsafe our houses would be if we chose to hope no one would break in, instead of getting good alarm systems and having our locks and windows reinforced. Imagine if we were at war and we chose to spend our time fantasizing amongst ourselves about victory, rather than going to fight against our enemies. Also imagine how many wars we’ve won because our enemies were not practical enough to reinforce their defenses properly.

Life is not a Disney movie. Sometimes the bad guys do win, no matter how much we “good people” believe that we deserve to win. That’s just the reality of the matter. Dreams are meant for sleep and not for reality. Reality is to plan, work, and do all you can, and then afterwards, hope. It is not the other way around, and the role of hope needs to be diminished from our collective psyches.

This isn’t anything new to some of you, but the evidence shows me that a lot of us live in dream worlds. This is the reason why we buy products based on who has the most entertaining commercial. We choose to reward the company that can give us the most social confidence in their product, rather than do a little research to see who makes the most durable and reliable product.

This is also why we would rather slander our boss behind his back, than file formal complaints with his bosses or the HR department when we believe he is overstepping our personal boundaries. We sometimes take it a notch higher and make negative online comments about them (which for some strange reason makes us feel vindicated). It seems that the solution to our problems has been reduced to finding people who can fantasize about the solutions with us, instead of consulting to find an actual way out.

It would be nice if all our enemies could be that delusional, to where their war against us comes down to making fun of us, or “talking smack” to us. Instead, they are bombing us. Thank God that we don’t have the same attitude towards security as we do towards other endeavors such as financial security and health.

Let no one get me wrong; hope is a good thing. We must ensure that we take some time out from the stress of daily endeavors. Hope is a perfect way for us to step outside the difficulty and remind ourselves of what we are working for in the first place, just like the builders always keep the scale model of the building in full view. The disaster would be if they dropped their tools and decided to be content with imagining and dreaming about the building, rather than getting down to complete the actual building. The purpose of hope is to encourage us to continue our real efforts in life, and not to take our minds away from reality.

There was recently an article about religion on Instablogs, where the writer was making a case against religion, and I felt compelled to make some comments (which turned out very lengthy). I feel even more compelled now to take a stand on the other end of the line. I make a case based on logical appeal, and will attempt to attenuate any element of bias. Here’s my case:

First: Let us define religion as a body that assembles a collection of ideals which they believe to be positive. This body also practices certain doctrines that they believe will aid them in instilling these ideals in themselves. In other words, they make effort to mix these positive ingredients into themselves.

The reason I specify positive ideas, is that there are groups of mystics and miscreants out there who pose as religions but are destructive; just like there are good governments and corrupt governments, but we ideally define that governments are meant to be good.

Second: The inclusion of the term positive in my definition of religion, as well the mention of the word “good” leads me to define what it means to be good. Goodness can be defined as accepting and practicing certain ethics that promote fairness, peace, happiness, and ultimately life, not just for oneself, but for as many people as possible.

It is this desire to spread peace and happiness to others that leads to the creation of religious bodies and here’s how:

When you want to make the best clothes, food, computers etc. and sell them to as many people as possible, what you really want to do is establish a company that produces and markets these things. Forming a company or organization is the best way to spread goods and services. Similarly, if one really cares about spreading goodness to others, then the best way to do this is to establish an organization that is dedicated to spreading and instilling these values in people. This is the purpose of forming religious bodies, and any so-called religious group not dedicated to this should be scrapped.

True religion is formed with the sincerest intentions possible, but some rogue elements misuse the platform to fill people heads with fear, instead of love. Their purpose of doing this is to manipulate people into becoming dependent on them, a position which they exploit for selfish gains. Debates after “beings in higher realms” and “what happens after this world” are adulterations of religion (and should be relegated to literature). Religion is about how us, beings in this world can live in peace in this present world we are in. The talks about “a better life in the next world” are actually originally meant to refer to our hope of making this world a perfect place to live, at some point in the future. It just turned out that some got very poetic about it and the metaphors became so strong, that some suggestible folks took them literally.

I embrace religion wholeheartedly because it has never caused me pain, or caused me to hurt others. Rather, the teachings of mercy and compassion have inspired me to help others who are in need (knowing fully that they can never repay me), and has led to others helping me when I was unfortunate to be in need.

The influence of religion is very powerful. It is like a very good software programmer who can either go black-hat and become a hacker, or go white-hat and write excellent security codes. Likewise, religious practices of meditation and focus, which are meant to inject good doctrines into the heart of our thinking, can be misused to place evil there. That’s why a lot of people are skeptical of religion. Its because of those who misuse its influence. To tell you the truth, even I as a religious person would support a ban on religion if evil men continue to abuse the way they are now, just like the fuse would cut the electricity to protect our valuable appliances. But to say that religion is bad through and through, no one should agree that notion.

Thanks for stopping by my article. I hope you found this worth reading.

It’s nice to see a design concept that aims to get people thinking about better ways of recycling, but this cardboard concept has too many flaws for us to expect to see it at our next party. Anyone who has ever cleaned up after a party knows exactly what is wrong here. Beer cans are usually never empty before being discarded, and you can imagine the extra mess when people try to place them into the horizontal slots. You could place a bucket near it for people to dump their beer, but who wants to be doing anything remotely considered work when they’re supposed to be partying? You could also try to place the cardboard in a tub to catch the spilled beer, but this tub would have to be very wide to catch the spills from the cans at the top, and as such would eat away some of the space meant for partying. There are so many flaws with this concept that it would be way easier to just stick to the old method of picking up all the cans after the party. On the positive side, we have to at least give some credit to the design for attempting to make cleaning up after parties easier.

Source: Idealist

Source: Since 1984

Source: ESO

Gizmowatch via Tuvie

Source: LuxuryLaunches

What looks like an ordinary steel tripod with glass attached to it at first glance, is actually in intricate piece of abstract sculpture with photochronic glass finish to give it ‘living’ color. The Desert Light’s designer Gordon Huether creates a masterpiece dynamic sculpture. The sculpture offers unique multiple experience to each viewer based on the viewing angle and time of day; not only does the perceived shape change, but the colors reflected off the glass are also altered. A person walking past or around the Desert Light will notice that each look they take presents a new perspective of the artful piece. This creativity is amplified by the imposing 12 feet of height and 5 feet of breadth. The public gets to enjoy the satisfaction of abstract creativity from every angle, and from great distances. This is successful art at its height. Excellent!

Source: Sculptor

Via: Contemporist, Skyscrappernews