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Lolz Alt

• -looking at Dirty Dozen List-
• Fern: I know.... 3
• Other: 2
• Me: WTF?! Why is there a dude?!
• Alt: ...Is it bad I actually recognize the dude? And which one he's from?

The Beauty of Love and Existence

So this Saturday, I was at UIL Region for Ready Writing. My essay got trashed by the graders. It made me quite sad. I rather like this essay. ‘tis not my best work, but I like the ideas it contains. The comments were as follows:

“Thesis and essay have no connection to prompts. The thesis as presented lacks originality and relies upon surface and shallow examples for support. Essay lacks direction. Do not use profanity.”

Whores. So, here is my essay:

            Logic and reasoning are the hallmark of a great civilization. Any society advanced enough to the point where people are no longer driven by their basest of desires but rather by reasoning is an indication that the society in question has developed into a great society. Since the times of the Greeks and the Romans, logic has been the desirable form of intellectual thought because of its relatively simply premise – do that which yields the greatest outcome. The problem with logic though, is that it lacks a human touch. It is a cold, hard entity that leaves no room for remorse, pity, or love. For an individual to live solely by logic would indicate that the individual had entirely blocked off all emotion. Such an existence cannot even be called as such. A true human existence requires emotion and strife and love and death and pain and all that makes us human. It is not our ability to think and reason that makes us, the human race, a great and discernibly dominant species; rather, it is our ability to feel. Emotion is the most vital part of human existence and should be the goal of all who love.

            On its basest level, this sounds rather silly. All people feel, so why should it be the goal of people to do so?  There is a distinct difference between feeling and having emotions. I would feel sad if my mother got run over by a car, but that is not the emotional response to that situation. My emotional response would e my outpouring of care and love and concern for her, ensuring her well-being or feeling heartbroken at the possible loss. Feelings are the shallow form of emotion of which all are capable. Emotions require a deep understanding of oneself and others, as well as a deep appreciation for humans in general. This distinction may look like a semantics argument about the difference between “feeling” and “emotions”. That is because that is exactly what I have done. Too many people go through life without contemplating the difference and as a result, lead shallow, meaningless, boring lives. Emotions help give life meaning. Emotions help give one a purpose in life.

            The greatest emotion known to all people is love. Nearly all people experience it, whether it be from a spouse, a family member, or a close friend. Most major world religions have a version of the “Golden Rule”: to treat everyone the way you want to be treated. The Christian version of this statement is to “love thy neighbor as thyself”, a message Jesus strongly encouraged. In fact, most of Jesus’s message can be boiled down to one word: love. The New Testament is filled with messages of love and acceptance, which is a worthy aspiration for all, even those who do not believe in the Bible. Messages of hate and cruelty though, can be found all over the world and throughout human history. The oppression of women in theMiddle East. The oppression of homosexuals in many parts ofAmerica. The Crusades. The Holocaust. Slavery. All of these show the incredible human capacity for terrible deeds. 10 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and mentally handicapped people were killed in the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler and images of Nazism still stand for hatred and intolerance. Despite all of the terrible acts committed by Hitler and his cronies, the Holocaust was one of the greatest instances of human kindness in all of human existence. Thousands of people risked their lives to save Jews, hiding them away, smuggling them to safety, feeding them, housing them. In theNationalHolocaustMuseuminWashingtonD.C., there is a wall that stretches for about fifty feet. Wrapping around both sides are the names of all of the people who helped to save Jews during the Holocaust. In the same city, there is another wall. It is black and stretches a great deal more than fifty feet. On it are the names of all of the soldiers killed during the Vietnam War. Those men fought and died because they loved. They loved their families, their friends, and their country enough to be shipped off to a foreign land to fight a foreign enemy in impossible conditions. The Bible has something to say about that as well: greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for another.

            “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love everyone who is around to be loved.” Kurt Vonnegut stated this in his novel, The Sirens of Titan, and this message just sums up humanism in one sentence. Humanism is a philosophy in which the goal of life is to love others. Thankfully, humans long ago mastered this concept and have been living it out ever since. Wait a second… that can’t be right. No. No, I have too much faith in people to believe thatAmerica was founded on the blood of the Native Americans whose land European settlers stole because it was there. I believe too much in human kindness and greatness to believe that Spanish explorers wiped out 90% of the Incan population. Or that these same European settlers then brought slaves over fromAfrica to work in sub-human conditions for hundreds of years. Damn it. Those things happened. Other terrible things happened. And more will happen in the future. The greatest chance we as humans have to prevent this is to love and to live.

            There are countless examples of terrible acts wrought by humans. I could continue to list them and at the end of each paragraph detailing these atrocities discuss human and how everyone should love everyone. The biggest concern with that format though is that the “why” is never discussed. Why should we love? Why should we live? The reason I have yet to answer these questions is because they are difficult (if not impossible) to answer. So, take a deep breath, because I am about to attempt the impossible.

            Love is the noblest pursuit in life. It is also the most difficult. People make loving people hard, but everyone should continue to do so because love brings out the best in everyone. Love makes on strive to be better; love makes one strive to work harder; love makes on want to live. Love is at the basis of human existence now. “The talk” that parents give their children (in)famously starts outs “when a mommy and daddy love each other very much…” This however, is a falsehood. Kids are born into loveless lives. They experience none of the wonderful things associated with a loving relationship, so who am I to presume to tell them that love is the greatest pursuit in life? That is the point where the pursuit of love can be almost more vital than the actual acquisition of it. So why love? Because it is the closest to greatness anyone can ever achieve. All things in life fade, but love can bring about changes and results that leave an indelible mark on the world. The founding fathers lovedAmericaand freedom and fought for it. That impression still exists today. My parents love one another. Their lasting mark is me. Love brings about change, usually for the better, and so should be strived for by all.

            Life though… Life is not worth living at times. Depression in teenagers is a common occurrence. I have several friends who are quite depressed, who, to them at least, life has too many bad things in it for them to continue. I have had to talk to them about the point of existence so many times now that my arguments have become trite and cliché: love, art, people, dogs, the future. The real purpose of life though is relative; it depends entirely on the person living said life. To some, this is work. To others, family. To me, it is simply to make others happy. One of the magical aspects of life is that it is different to all who experience it. One of the greatest purposes in people’s lives is to determine their purpose. That, that and all of the other unknowns in life aid in giving meaning to existence.

            The great Greek philosopher Plato advocated philosopher-kings – kings who were also great intellectuals, in order to ensure the soundness of their rulings and ensure that those who would rule are qualified. The Enlightenment was an era of intellectual prosperity in which reasoning once again dominated intellectual ideals. The Founding Fathers of America governed under such principles. And they, and Plato, were wrong to do so. Logic only extends so far in understanding humans, and to govern one’s people, one must first understand them. People are subject to their feelings, thus one with a great emotional depth should govern. Emotion and love are the greatest aspects of human existence and so should be used to deal with people. Charlie Chaplin says “people want to help one another. Human beings are like that” in “The Great Dictator”, a statement about the human race I desperately want to be true. People should love people. But they can also not. Another great thing about people is that they all possess free will and can choose for themselves. I choose love and I hope that others choose it and emotion as their goal in life, as it makes the world better and brings about change and beauty. 

Ready Writing essay

“So why love? Because it is the closest to greatness anyone can ever achieve.”

I wrote this in my essay on Saturday. I like the sound of it and I strongly believe it.

Life is meaningless, so why do I go on?

OK, so this is my ready writing essay. I go back and forth on liking this essay. Oh well. I dislike how much Igo dick stroking went on in this essay with my various history references and crap. Darn. Also, I basically used all of the essay writing material that I have - humanism, history, Hitler, and Kurt Vonnegut. I am beginning to worry about how well I can do on my essay on Saturday. I’ll manage somehow. Hopefully. Enough rambling. Here is my essay. Oh, the only thing I got marked down for on my essay was my title. 3 out of 4. Grrr. OK, now my essay. 

            The world is an impartial judge on one’s life and actions. It does not care about all of the good things one does nor the bad. It does not make life more difficult for the brilliant nor does it make it easier for the dim-witted. The world simply does not care. It is a harsh test for everyone: “here’s a good idea, let’s throw everyone into the most chaotic conditions possible and see who thrives and who dies. Oh, and some people will be born with inherent advantages.” This is the cruel joke that is life – chaotic, untamed, but beautiful in some twisted and perverted manner. Life breaks the strong and strengthens the weak, “kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave”, and through it all, everyone must live. So here it is, the cruel irony of life: every individual person has no more importance or significance than any other individual.

            This depressing yet blatant fact actually has some uplifting quality to it. All men are created equal. In the eyes of the world, this is true. Everyone has the same chance of being great or being terrible. Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a possibility of being a terrible person. Instead, he fought polio, became the President of theUnited Statesand helped to combat one of the greatest evils the world has ever seen. And then he died, in April of 1945, right before the Soviet Union made its final push onBerlinand theU.S.ended the war in the Pacific by detonating atomic weapons. The man who said, “there is nothing to fear by fear itself” was forced into the scariest position that all must face – the unknown. His existence, most would argue, benefited the world and helped bring along the oft-ached-for peace that nations had been searching for all those long years. His existence had no more importance than mine or my mother’s or Hitler’s or anyone’s. It is not one’s actions or thoughts that give them any type of clout as a person but rather their very existence. By simply being, a person becomes just as great and important as FDR and Hitler and Gandhi.

            Life has no inherent meaning. We simply assign a meaning to it in order to solidify our existence in this universe and so that we do not go insane. People desire purpose almost as much as they desire sustenance. The latter makes living possible, but it is the former that makes life worth living. So yes, I of course am going to say that this purpose is also meaningless. I could continue to list everything in life that has no meaning or that places everyone on an equal playing field, but that is rather dull, mechanical, and monotonous. Therefore, I will instead instruct the human race on how to live. There are two main precepts for living as a member of the world: 1) all men are created equal and 2) people make people happy.

            As has previously been discussed, the world sets everyone equal to one another. Despite having acknowledged this fact in 1776 in his Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson still owned slaves. He was an imperfect man of his times, when “men” meant “white men”, not “people, even women, African-Americans, homosexuals, transgenders, Atheists, Mormons, and Christians”. Now however, we take man to mean everyone and we live perfectly in that manner. Oh wait, that’s not how it works… The Holocaust shows very clearly how unequal and cruel this world is. The twisted racial ideals of Adolf Hitler caused the deaths of ten million Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and mentally handicapped people. His idea of “man” was Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s idea of categories of men in which the Aryans were the greatest. In the 1960s, in theUnited States, people were fighting to have “men” include “black people”. Even today, all men are not equal. The saying may still stand in one of this nation’s founding documents, but it is not lived out in the nation. Women still fight for equal rights, African-Americans fight for equal rights, and homosexuals fight for their basic rights – the ability to marry, adopt children, and be acknowledged as humans rather than a disease or sinners. All men are created equal, and though the world has worked to get closer to that reality, there is still much work to be done in that area.

            More fantastic than the creation of the Universe, gravity, plants, oxygen, the stars, or any other creation to God was man. Whether or not one believes in the existence of God, the base principle is still a valid one. People are the greatest thing currently in existence. This sounds incredibly pretentious and humanocentric, but upon examination, is quite valid and logical. Humans are able to think and communicate. This is why humans are amazing. Their fantastic capacity to learn, think, and convey ideas is so powerful that it has given them the ability to effectively rule the civilized world for thousands of years. Thus, if the greatest thing in the world is humans, then the goal of people should be to make other’s happy. As Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Makes incredibly clear in Slaughterhouse-Five, people are capable of incredible atrocities, but also great kindness and happiness. People are incredible creatures with a capacity innovation, thinking, and an inherent goodness to them. Humanism, a philosophical belief system adhered to by Isaac Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., is essentially just that. To a humanist, all people are wonderful creatures capable of awesome wonders and so should be praised for this. People should exist to make others happy. If everyone went through life like this, then the world would be a happier and better place. Currently, people live to make themselves happier, whether that be with money, power, sex, or something else. This cold way of living is hardly a way of living at all. The cold indifference it would take to have a relationship with another person just for one’s own personal pleasure is chilling. In my vast experience, the whole 17 years of it, people are the greatest source for happiness in my own life and in the lives of others, so people should live to make other people happy.

            Life is a cruel thing, capable of great beauty and love as well as destruction and death. It is a chaotic beast that has no way to be tamed and has no inherent meaning. The purpose of life, however, is living. Living to the fullest extend of one’s being, opening one’s mind to the multitude of ideas and emotions in the world. Man was not intended for greatness. Man was intended for anything. Man should live as it sees fit, whatever belief that may be. Whether a person be a Creationist, a humanist, a Kahntist, or any other system of thought-ist, they should just try to live in a manner that satisfies them and does not harm society. As was previously stated, I have specific instructions for mankind. They also come with a small side note: they do not have to be followed. Because people have free will, they can do whatever they want. I just think that the world would be better and people would be better, if people were treated as equals and people strive to make others happy.