Journal Love is so out-of-style ❤️

[Daisie]

Feels like more than ever, it's so popular to hate the world. Hate like that tends to spread and fester, and you know what? I just don't want that.
I'm not sure how often this thread will be updated, if at all, but I want somewhere to put my neutral-to-positive musings about the world and life. Maybe I can make my own little dent in the negativity, and I can rest here for a while. Maybe you can too.

I don't want to pretend that everything is okay, cause it isn't. Claiming so would be a form of denial. But I'm not going to pretend that nothing is okay, either, since that's also pretty ignorant. I know myself, and I know that I tend towards the extremes, so I'd like to rest my mind and find a home somewhere in the righteous middle.

There's definitely a sickness overtaking a lot of people right now. I'd say it's overtaking the world, but to be honest, I don't have the kind of information to back it up. It certainly feels like depression and pessimism is rampant and plaguing the entire face of the earth, but I don't think that's totally true. I do know that it's plaguing the circles that I (and probably you) run in.

If you're like me, you're probably chronically online. I've tried to unplug a little bit recently, and it's a work in progress, but nonetheless, I've come to recognize a certain depressive culture spanning across a lot of the internet. It can be a good thing sometimes, to find a community of those suffering in the same way as you, but it also has the unintended consequence of making it feel like that community is all there is out here. I have to remind myself frequently that the internet (and my small corner of it) is an inaccurate representation of the world at large. It might try to have me believe that we live in a vastly unhappy and doomed place, but the internet is still one incredibly narrow source of information and experience.

I was fortunate enough to find myself at a convention this weekend, and one of the celebrity guests has a worldview I identify with a lot. See, again, I'm unsure if it's just the circles I run in or if it's a societal thing, but it seems like spite is such a normalized feature. "Losing faith in humanity", "I hate people", whatnot, I'm sure you've seen it or even thought it. But this celebrity was proudly preaching his love for people - something I've been trying to build for a long time now.

Truthfully, I love people. People have done so many unimaginable things - things I could never do as a wee singular person. Humanity is a complex ecosystem of intelligence, creativity, determination, and the drive to survive. Don't get me wrong, people aren't perfect - in fact, people in groups tend to be far more corruptible than people on an individual basis - but they're incredible nonetheless, and they at least deserve the chance to be appreciated.

People have given us everything we have. If you're reading this on the internet right now, you're using technology that took generations of lives to create. You certainly didn't do that: PEOPLE did that.

I've been thinking about my experiences with cancer, and I've come to the conclusion that I never beat it. I'll try not to sell myself short, either - I definitely went through hell getting through it. It was a brutal treatment that, despite being physically able now, I am still recovering from. I ENDURED the cancer and subsequent treatment... but I certainly didn't beat it, myself.

My cancer was beaten by people. The whole team of doctors that dedicated hours of their lives to finding the issue. The nurses that stayed by my side to administer the dangerous drugs that went into my body. But it's so much more than that.

Do you know what mustard gas is? It was a chemical weapon used in WW1, that was shortly banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. It was a horrible tool that didn't cause most of the death, but maimed countless victims during the war. It chemically burned the skin to blisters and did much worse to the more sensitive mucous membranes - eyes, mouth, and various organs.

Mustard gas is also the source of modern-day chemotherapy. We wouldn't have these methods of fighting cancer without that dangerous chemical weapon.

Somehow, through the suffering of those people, I get to live. I may have endured the treatment, but I certainly didn't beat cancer - they paid for my cure in their blood. THEY beat my cancer, alongside the doctors, the nurses, the scientists, the charities, and all the donations of money, academic pursuit, stress, time, thought, pain, blood, and even life. Every fallen patient who came before me, trying new treatments that failed. The mothers and fathers of children who have fallen victim to this same disease. All of that pain backed me up.

THAT is what people are, and that is why I love them so dearly. No amount of societal cynicism can make any of that any less true. An unfathomable amount of sacrifice has gone into allowing me to live, and that sacrifice comes from people.

People and Jesus, but I know not everyone's as devout a Christian as I am, lol, so I'll resist the urge to preach my religion for the time being.

More than ever it feels like it's the "cool" thing to have this deep-rooted hatred for the people around us. Venomous judgment and spite, because that kind of anger happens to be what's readily available. It feels good to feel something, so why not hatred? I get it.

It just also sounds like a miserable way to live. If you're living this way, please know that I love you too, and I hope you can find a way out of it. It's a worthwhile vision to fight for.

I love people, and I intend to continue to love people.

 

[Daisie]

I got 3 less teeth
I love everyone
Melpomene thanx for messaging

 

[Daisie]

I once read a story on Reddit about a couple with a child who just seemed "demonic" from the beginning. Serious behavioral issues, screaming at all hours of the day and night, did anything he could to cause pain, even as an infant. Grew up to be a monstrous child and teenager, the story went into detail about all the things the parents tried to help, but nothing seemed to work at all, the behavior eventually worsening tenfold when they had a daughter who was behaviorally normal. The story ended with the parents having to assault their own teenage boy in order to protect their baby daughter, as he had a knife to her in the middle of the night.

It was kind of a harrowing story, not just for the obvious reasons, but because it goes against a lot of what I think about. It's one of those things that really makes me ponder. I'd like nothing more than the believe that the whole story was fake and made for attention, but I also can't deny that something like that could still happen, anyways.

Have you ever heard that saying, "hurt people hurt people"? It means that those who hurt others have also been hurt at some point, themselves. I'm a real believer in that, so this story shook me a bit. Is it even possible for someone to be born bad, like that? No preexisting trauma, just tons of uncontrollable rage?

I guess it could be a chemical thing. People are born with all sorts of disorders from birth, not all of which we understand or can treat right now. So I understand an argument that a mental disorder could have forced that behavior. But at the same time, I'm a strong proponent of UNIVERSAL free will. I think that everyone always has a choice, even if the cards are stacked against them. So while I think that a mental disorder like that could exist, I find it really difficult to believe that it could force someone into being a horrible person. Kids, of course, get more leeway on a moral ground simply because they have less life experience and lesser developed brains, but regardless, at some point, I really do think you have the full responsibility of making good decisions once you reach a certain age.

Another option is that the parents were lying about their treatment of their kid. I don't buy that this was the ONLY reason behind the bad behaviour, but I think they could have easily made some decisions that inadvertently contributed. The wrong reaction can make a kid's preexisting issues ten times worse, and twenty times harder to unlearn. Emotion that strong and for that long of a period can't be easy to handle in a kid, so it would have been easy.

Another idea is the one that really intrigues me the most. I also believe in the existence of souls. I think that our spirits existed before we ever came to Earth, and that even before we got here, we all still had our individuality. So what if that kid truly was just a spiteful soul? Is that possible, too?

In reality, I think I believe in some odd combination of all these. I have to wonder if our mental disorders here on Earth tie into our souls somehow. Maybe those physical abnormalities in our brain are a reflection of the flaws in our spirits, like physical hardware made to receive our spiritual software. Maybe they're all challenges tailored for us, made to test our limits or teach us something. It's even further complicated when you take into account the fact that physical or emotional events can thrust disorders upon you too: traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, or destructive compulsions learned from friends & parents. It doesn't all come from birth. The brain is where spirit, mind, and body all meet in a tangible, physical place, and we have such little understanding of it.

I still stand by my belief though. Even if that story has truth to it, I think that nearly every abuser you can find out there has been abused, themselves, at some point. That is, you'd be hard-pressed to find one that wasn't. The labels "victim" and "abuser" can coexist, and in fact, often do.

Not every victim is an abuser, but just because you are a victim doesn't mean you can't also be an abuser as well - in fact, I'd venture that trauma ups your chances of erratic, harmful behaviour, both towards yourself and towards others. Being aware of our flaws and working to fix them is a hefty responsibility, but it's one we all bear, nonetheless.

Stay vigilant, and always keep working to become someone more confident, more stable, and more capable than who you are now. Do that, and you not only keep yourself safer, but the people around you as well. Only you have that power.

 

[Chielite]

The world sure is complex.

You think very deeply about stuff.

 

[Daisie]

It's really interesting how, across all of humanity, we all need something to believe in. We all need a cause to follow, or we tend to really suffer for it. We need a god, even if that god isn't God.

I'm a definite believer in God, so obviously that's mine, but there is a vast array of things that can and will take His place if you don't believe in Him.

There's the obvious ones. Religious deities like Buddha and those found in Hinduism. There's no shortage of gods and idols found in cultures across the globe. But then it gets kind of tricky, after that.

Science is a belief. If we're likening to religion, the deities worshipped are the professionals in the industry. Just like religion, it's done a lot of good, and a lot of bad alongside it. And just like religion, the culture has its zealots who insist that if you don't follow everything that science says, you're ignorant at best and malicious at worst. There are also those who blindly oppose it, and insist it's done nothing good for us.

It's a delight to learn everything we can about this universe we inhabit, and I think it's our responsibility to do the very best with the information we have, based on the evidence we find. But many don't recognize that we still only ever have evidence, and it is still very incomplete. We're all capable of mistakes and corruption, particularly in positions of power, which includes academic advantage. We're all still just humans clutching to our god of choice, because we need to believe in something.

I'm sure this isn't surprising, but politics is another deity we believe in. I have a lot of friends I really love and value on either side of the red-blue split, so it surprises me how frequently I've seen people gleefully admit that they'd never associate with a Republican/Democrat. And I entirely understand. It feels very good to believe in the right thing, for the right reasons, and to disparage the evildoers who would seek to tear down the things you believe to be righteous. It's just also difficult, when you take on that lens, to see the enemy as anything other than the enemy.

I haven't even mentioned more obvious examples of political powers/government in place of religion, like the deeply unsettling case of North Korea, where the two seem married into one.

I argue that the worst thing that one could substitute for god in their own life is themselves. In which your identity and your religion become one.

Everyone thinks that they're right. If you didn't think you were correct about something, you wouldn't believe in it, so to some extent, everyone believes in themselves. But that's much different than self-worship.

I actually am making this particular entry because of an ad I saw once. It was some skincare advertisement with the phrase "worship yourself" on it. Now, maybe I'm just a little old fashioned, and maybe I try too hard to look for meaning where there isn't any, but I did genuinely have to stop and think of the implications of that.

It's the standard of the overwhelming majority of people that a good belief system is a largely selfless and giving one. It's something that helps others just the same as - if not more than - it helps you. So there's something most people find eerie and distasteful about belief systems that lean into selfishness, myself included.

Yet it is strange how we see it everywhere. This ever-present (perhaps growing?) sentiment of "I am who I am", which isn't necessarily incorrect, but frequently touted with an air of pride and arrogance. An implied challenge that reaches beyond self-acceptance, into self-importance.

No one is safe from that mentality. Not Christians, not atheists, red nor blue, rich and poor, those in the pits of despair and those with content, functioning lives.

We all need a god, religious or not, and if we don't choose it carefully, we'll find one where there isn't.

 

[Daisie]

Y'know how when kids are growing up, everything they make is basically a ripoff of something else?

I guess it's more obvious when they have hobbies like writing or roleplay. But there's this certain age range in the preteens to maybe mid teen years at latest, where the stuff kids write (at least, the stuff I wrote) is completely ripped from whatever they happen to be into at the time, with very little creative license.

I'm sure this is obvious to most people my age or older, but I guess it's taken me a while to consciously realize why that is. We all take ideas from what we know - we all learn from the content of creators we look up to, but the only difference is that we have a wealth of variety under our belt. The kids focusing on that one thing have experienced so little of other things that they can't benefit from the sheer diversity of content that we can, and that's totally okay.

I think there's value in that. There's something very charming about it, and even though I look back on my writing with today's perspective knowing how cringey it was, I really do value the fun I had writing it. I've learned a lot since then, and it's not that I want to go back to that period in my life, but I can now hold an appreciation for how unique and unrestrained that experience was. I had a fun time writing it back then, which was the entire purpose of doing it in the first place, so there's little reason for me to fuss over it now.

Shorter than usual, but yeah! Kids should be kids, cause... they literally haven't lived long enough to be anything else.
Guess it's not really that revelatory when I put it like that, but I wanted to put it somewhere anyways, I guess. I just know that I was really ashamed over a fair few things I made when I was younger, and it's truly shocked me how I'm no longer ashamed of them. I hope today's kids don't have to deal with that same shame and pressure.

 

[Daisie]

"If you could be any animal, which would you choose?"

I am so defeated to say that my younger self would be horrified. I have become the very thing I hated. I wouldn't want to be an animal.

I have become... boring.

At least from the perspective of a kid who would have done anything to be able experience life through the eyes of an animal. I don't consider myself boring now. I've just come to realize the incomprehensible amount of perks that come with being human. The fact that we even have the ability to ponder what animal we might want to transform into is so unimaginably far beyond any other life on Earth. The most bizarre creature here is us, by a wide margin.

I feel I have an incredibly valuable life here, as a human. I've had struggles that only humans could have. I've navigated my way through complex and layered social situations. I've cared deeply for things with no REAL value to anyone else, and I've been wildly inspired by people who don't know me, places I've never been to, and events that I only know about because of the impressive human need to document.

I'm writing out my thoughts on some roleplay website, created by a few people with a very niche passion, coded in some cryptic electronic language created by a few other people, stored on this server designed by a bunch more people somewhere, and accessed through my phone, where I can just wriggle my thumbs about a little bit to get my rambling thoughts out to you and whoever else made the mistake of reading this far, and it's all somehow running off of that big scary stuff that flashes from the sky, shakes the ground, and burns everything it touches from the inside out, so don't even ask me how that all works.

What even is that? It's uncanny and weird, is what it is. I think if animals had the capability to desire to be anything other than what they are, they would nigh unanimously want to be one of us.

 

[Daisie]

So it's maybe not a musing about humanity, but it's been on my mind anyways. I wish guilt and shame were a bit more talked about, though it's painfully obvious why it's not. The common denominator between them, confronting fault, has not ever been, nor will it ever be easy to do. Especially not in a public way.

Everyone is guilty of something though.

I think it's worthwhile to go over the difference between guilt and shame. There are probably a lot of opinions on where one definition begins and the other ends, but I've come across a distinction that's been fairly helpful. It was in a religious class, so I'll attempt to secularize it a bit, but in essence, guilt is the steady, guiding voice in us that nudges us towards clean morality, while shame is the hound that beats us down and attacks our identity.

It comes down to where the goal lies. Guilt is a positive influence whose purpose is to uplift us, while shame is a negative influence whose purpose is to keep us in the exact same place forever. They're two very different forces.

Guilt abides by a clear logic and reasoning. It creates solutions. It's uncomfortable, but also civilly critical, and is on your team. It looks towards the future.

Shame needs no logic. It's complacent and doesn't ever show intention of changing. It's scathing, monstrous, and a bully. It's only ever interested in the past, and keeping you there.

They're both capable of incredible intensity, and neither of them are, by any stretch of the word, fun. There is a distinctive difference, however, and that difference is something to play close attention to. Shame has a real way of destroying whatever it touches, and letting it influence your life and identity won't just harm yourself.

 

[Daisie]

So while I don't have Reddit installed on my phone anymore for a myriad of personal reasons, I found this post there that I thought was so cogent, regarding a user's difficulty socializing. The original thread was asking what bombshells people's therapists have dropped on them, and this made me really stop and think.

Spoiler: I've never had friends.

I've never really had friends. I've had colleagues and classmates and housemates and people who have hung out with me, but I never really felt close to any of them. And I did that thing you see on here sometimes - I stopped reaching out to see if I would be reached out to, and I wasn't, which I took as confirmation that they didn't really want me around, or at the very least, that they wouldn't mind my absence.

I was talking to my therapist about people I'd been close to in college, and she told me to pick one and talk about him. So I did. And after I shared some basic stuff like his name and his major etc., and a couple anecdotes, she asked me what else I knew about him. And I couldn't answer. It wasn't really a broadly-applicable bombshell, but she said "what else" and I started crying because I realized that for as simple as the question was, my inability to answer spoke volumes.

I've never had good friends because I've never been a good friend. I'm withdrawn and reserved and I always made others do the work to drag me out, without ever extending my own friendship in a meaningful way in return. If I wanted to have meaningful relationships with other people, I would have to build them. I'm still working on this, but I'm trying to make more offers and extend more friendliness to others in my daily life.

I thought this was so cogent and profound.
I'm sitting here wondering what to add, but I don't honestly have anything meaningful in mind.
Just echoing the sentiment of self-reflection: Do I put care and effort into knowing the people around me?
Do I extend my attention to others?
Do I spend time making people feel loved and safe?
I want to.

 

[Redfork2000]

Feels like more than ever, it's so popular to hate the world. Hate like that tends to spread and fester, and you know what? I just don't want that.
I'm not sure how often this thread will be updated, if at all, but I want somewhere to put my neutral-to-positive musings about the world and life. Maybe I can make my own little dent in the negativity, and I can rest here for a while. Maybe you can too.

I don't want to pretend that everything is okay, cause it isn't. Claiming so would be a form of denial. But I'm not going to pretend that nothing is okay, either, since that's also pretty ignorant. I know myself, and I know that I tend towards the extremes, so I'd like to rest my mind and find a home somewhere in the righteous middle.

There's definitely a sickness overtaking a lot of people right now. I'd say it's overtaking the world, but to be honest, I don't have the kind of information to back it up. It certainly feels like depression and pessimism is rampant and plaguing the entire face of the earth, but I don't think that's totally true. I do know that it's plaguing the circles that I (and probably you) run in.

If you're like me, you're probably chronically online. I've tried to unplug a little bit recently, and it's a work in progress, but nonetheless, I've come to recognize a certain depressive culture spanning across a lot of the internet. It can be a good thing sometimes, to find a community of those suffering in the same way as you, but it also has the unintended consequence of making it feel like that community is all there is out here. I have to remind myself frequently that the internet (and my small corner of it) is an inaccurate representation of the world at large. It might try to have me believe that we live in a vastly unhappy and doomed place, but the internet is still one incredibly narrow source of information and experience.

I was fortunate enough to find myself at a convention this weekend, and one of the celebrity guests has a worldview I identify with a lot. See, again, I'm unsure if it's just the circles I run in or if it's a societal thing, but it seems like spite is such a normalized feature. "Losing faith in humanity", "I hate people", whatnot, I'm sure you've seen it or even thought it. But this celebrity was proudly preaching his love for people - something I've been trying to build for a long time now.

Truthfully, I love people. People have done so many unimaginable things - things I could never do as a wee singular person. Humanity is a complex ecosystem of intelligence, creativity, determination, and the drive to survive. Don't get me wrong, people aren't perfect - in fact, people in groups tend to be far more corruptible than people on an individual basis - but they're incredible nonetheless, and they at least deserve the chance to be appreciated.

People have given us everything we have. If you're reading this on the internet right now, you're using technology that took generations of lives to create. You certainly didn't do that: PEOPLE did that.

I've been thinking about my experiences with cancer, and I've come to the conclusion that I never beat it. I'll try not to sell myself short, either - I definitely went through hell getting through it. It was a brutal treatment that, despite being physically able now, I am still recovering from. I ENDURED the cancer and subsequent treatment... but I certainly didn't beat it, myself.

My cancer was beaten by people. The whole team of doctors that dedicated hours of their lives to finding the issue. The nurses that stayed by my side to administer the dangerous drugs that went into my body. But it's so much more than that.

Do you know what mustard gas is? It was a chemical weapon used in WW1, that was shortly banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. It was a horrible tool that didn't cause most of the death, but maimed countless victims during the war. It chemically burned the skin to blisters and did much worse to the more sensitive mucous membranes - eyes, mouth, and various organs.

Mustard gas is also the source of modern-day chemotherapy. We wouldn't have these methods of fighting cancer without that dangerous chemical weapon.

Somehow, through the suffering of those people, I get to live. I may have endured the treatment, but I certainly didn't beat cancer - they paid for my cure in their blood. THEY beat my cancer, alongside the doctors, the nurses, the scientists, the charities, and all the donations of money, academic pursuit, stress, time, thought, pain, blood, and even life. Every fallen patient who came before me, trying new treatments that failed. The mothers and fathers of children who have fallen victim to this same disease. All of that pain backed me up.

THAT is what people are, and that is why I love them so dearly. No amount of societal cynicism can make any of that any less true. An unfathomable amount of sacrifice has gone into allowing me to live, and that sacrifice comes from people.

People and Jesus, but I know not everyone's as devout a Christian as I am, lol, so I'll resist the urge to preach my religion for the time being.

More than ever it feels like it's the "cool" thing to have this deep-rooted hatred for the people around us. Venomous judgment and spite, because that kind of anger happens to be what's readily available. It feels good to feel something, so why not hatred? I get it.

It just also sounds like a miserable way to live. If you're living this way, please know that I love you too, and I hope you can find a way out of it. It's a worthwhile vision to fight for.

I love people, and I intend to continue to love people.

I can greatly relate to this honestly. It feels like in today's day and age being hateful and negative is the norm, and it's hard to find people who have a positive outlook on things the way you do. I myself firmly believe that the perspective we view the world through can play a great role in how we perceive our reality. If you choose to focus on the negatives, then everything will look grim, but if you take the time to look at the good things, you'll find there's a lot to be grateful for.

It's true, there are some things that are awful, and I can't deny their existence, but there's a lot of good that is often overlooked due to this mindset of "people are awful" that seems to be more widespread than ever.

You know? As much as I've heard people say how awful recent years have been, I firmly believe we live in one of, if not the best period of human history. The quality of life we enjoy today is overwhelmingly better than what our ancestors lived centuries ago. The advancements in medicine (which you mentioned as well), the greater advocacy for human rights all around the world compared to the past, and so many other things to mention. It's not perfect, of course, but honestly, there's no other time period in history I'd rather live in than the time period we live in, and I'm grateful that I was born in this time period, and not 200, 500 or 3000 years ago. I wouldn't prefer it to be any other way.

Hearing someone who shares a similar perspective to my own is really refreshing honestly, and it's been a great pleasure to read this. I'll definitely be sure to keep checking this thread as you continue to write your thoughts like this one, I really think there's a lot of value in this. So thank you very much for that. I hope you have a wonderful day!

 

[Daisie]

I can greatly relate to this honestly. It feels like in today's day and age being hateful and negative is the norm, and it's hard to find people who have a positive outlook on things the way you do. I myself firmly believe that the perspective we view the world through can play a great role in how we perceive our reality. If you choose to focus on the negatives, then everything will look grim, but if you take the time to look at the good things, you'll find there's a lot to be grateful for.

It's true, there are some things that are awful, and I can't deny their existence, but there's a lot of good that is often overlooked due to this mindset of "people are awful" that seems to be more widespread than ever.

You know? As much as I've heard people say how awful recent years have been, I firmly believe we live in one of, if not the best period of human history. The quality of life we enjoy today is overwhelmingly better than what our ancestors lived centuries ago. The advancements in medicine (which you mentioned as well), the greater advocacy for human rights all around the world compared to the past, and so many other things to mention. It's not perfect, of course, but honestly, there's no other time period in history I'd rather live in than the time period we live in, and I'm grateful that I was born in this time period, and not 200, 500 or 3000 years ago. I wouldn't prefer it to be any other way.

Hearing someone who shares a similar perspective to my own is really refreshing honestly, and it's been a great pleasure to read this. I'll definitely be sure to keep checking this thread as you continue to write your thoughts like this one, I really think there's a lot of value in this. So thank you very much for that. I hope you have a wonderful day!

Thank you so much.
I really needed this today.

 

[Daisie]

I may be a bit of an optimist at times, I admit. I used to be rather naïve as a kid, and sometimes I wonder if I tend towards that nowadays, but the more I'm exposed to the harsher realities of the world, the more it seems to assure me that some light is what the world needs.

Let's be extremely vague for a moment and say that the amount of "good" and "bad" in the world is somehow quantifiable. This number is the amount of suffering vs the amount of joy and contentment present. There's no way to know what that ratio looks like for sure, whether that number is net positive or negative, but just say that there IS one for now.

Then, ignore all human intervention. Cease to count all of the unhappiness and happiness caused solely by our use of free will. Without that, we are solely keeping track of the good and bad that's imposed upon humanity by the natural order of the world.

I don't know about you, but I can think of dozens of things that constantly bring that level of tragedy in the world up. Natural disasters, disease, accidents, freak occurrences. While I'm sure there are also countless natural things that increase the good on this planet, the way I see it, that quantity of good vs bad is always going to trend towards the negative. There will never be a sparsity of annoyances, tragedies, or pain. Even if humanity were somehow completely neutral in how we affected that number, it will always lean negative. There will always be resistance and hardship.

Humanity, however, has a unique power. We have the power to influence those levels. Whether or not we ultimately influence things for the better or worse has been the debate of many people for many centuries, an eternal struggle between cynicism and optimism, but I sincerely believe that we CAN. We are able to make choices and affect the world around us.

We aren't able to affect the ultimate number on much on an individual level, but the very fact that we can make any difference at all to that balance is something I find deeply inspiring. The ability to pull that number up from the negatives is something that rests on us.

Like I said, it's impossible to see exactly where that number would lie when it's an overview of the world. There are thousands of ways to interpret good and evil in the world, and billions of individual perceptions of good and evil that we cannot even begin to understand. But if it's negative, then we ought to try and drop some positive in where we can. And if it's positive, then more couldn't hurt.

I understand this is very black and white, and influencing the world for the better isn't as simple as this, but darn it all, I would like to at least be making an attempt. I want to add +5 here and there, even if I make a stupid -20 mistake. Meaningless or not, that's all I hope for.

I can make something good.

 

[Redfork2000]

I may be a bit of an optimist at times, I admit. I used to be rather naïve as a kid, and sometimes I wonder if I tend towards that nowadays, but the more I'm exposed to the harsher realities of the world, the more it seems to assure me that some light is what the world needs.

Let's be extremely vague for a moment and say that the amount of "good" and "bad" in the world is somehow quantifiable. This number is the amount of suffering vs the amount of joy and contentment present. There's no way to know what that ratio looks like for sure, whether that number is net positive or negative, but just say that there IS one for now.

Then, ignore all human intervention. Cease to count all of the unhappiness and happiness caused solely by our use of free will. Without that, we are solely keeping track of the good and bad that's imposed upon humanity by the natural order of the world.

I don't know about you, but I can think of dozens of things that constantly bring that level of tragedy in the world up. Natural disasters, disease, accidents, freak occurrences. While I'm sure there are also countless natural things that increase the good on this planet, the way I see it, that quantity of good vs bad is always going to trend towards the negative. There will never be a sparsity of annoyances, tragedies, or pain. Even if humanity were somehow completely neutral in how we affected that number, it will always lean negative. There will always be resistance and hardship.

Humanity, however, has a unique power. We have the power to influence those levels. Whether or not we ultimately influence things for the better or worse has been the debate of many people for many centuries, an eternal struggle between cynicism and optimism, but I sincerely believe that we CAN. We are able to make choices and affect the world around us.

We aren't able to affect the ultimate number on much on an individual level, but the very fact that we can make any difference at all to that balance is something I find deeply inspiring. The ability to pull that number up from the negatives is something that rests on us.

Like I said, it's impossible to see exactly where that number would lie when it's an overview of the world. There are thousands of ways to interpret good and evil in the world, and billions of individual perceptions of good and evil that we cannot even begin to understand. But if it's negative, then we ought to try and drop some positive in where we can. And if it's positive, then more couldn't hurt.

I understand this is very black and white, and influencing the world for the better isn't as simple as this, but darn it all, I would like to at least be making an attempt. I want to add +5 here and there, even if I make a stupid -20 mistake. Meaningless or not, that's all I hope for.

I can make something good.

I would like to say that personally, I think the quantity of good is often underestimated. A lot of people tend to take things for granted, things that are essential to our life that we'd die without, but since we've always had them, we often take them for granted.

Think of the way our world is set up. There are several other planets in our solar system, but all of them are either too close or too far from the sun. The Earth is close enough to the sun to not be a frosty wasteland, and far enough to not be a fiery wasteland, both conditions would be incompatible with life. Not only that, but our planet's atmosphere is such that the temperature is well regulated. Other planets like Mercury with no atmosphere to help regulate their temperature get insanely hot during the day that would extinguish all life, and then freeze at night, as they cannot retain the heat from the sun. The Earth's atmosphere is the perfect filter, allowing just enough sunlight and heat to enter during the day, and keeping most of it here during the night so we don't freeze when facing away from the sun.

Furthermore, despite being called Earth, about 70% of our world's surface is actually water, which is indispensable for sustaining life. And as if this wasn't enough, scientists believe that Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system, has a strong enough gravity field, that it drives meteors towards itself that might otherwise hit Earth. It doesn't mean we're immune to being hit by a meteor, but it does mean that we're much less likely to be struck by one, as Jupiter would pull most of them towards itself due to its larger size.

Of course there are natural disasters, disease, and other things that cause trouble to our life, though I believe the fact that we are here today, living and thriving on this planet, is a proof that there's a lot more good than we often give it credit for. It doesn't matter what someone believes about the origin of our life and the world we live in, whether they believe, like I do, in an intelligent design by a creator that's greater than us, or if they believe it's just a product of chance, the truth is that the world we live in has the best conditions for us to thrive in. There's a lot of good that we shouldn't take for granted.

That doesn't mean everything is perfect. There are still always going to be negative things happening. Natural disasters, disease, accidents, those things exist and we can't ignore their existence. But what we can do is acknowledge the good there is in our world as well, and embrace it. Acknowledge that the bad does exist, but acknowledge the good as well, and realize that the fact that we as living beings, exist on this planet, when pretty much every other planet on our solar system is a hostile wasteland that is incapable of sustaining life, our existence is truly a wonder to behold, that we may have gotten used to and thus taken for granted due to the monotony of our daily lives. But stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, it is truly fascinating.

And as you said, we can influence the balance as well, and choose in which way we want to tip the scale. I believe that we live in a world that, while not perfect, is wonderful, and that it's up to us to make the best we can of it. And in the grand scheme of things, I think one of the things that people remember the most about someone, is the impact they had on those around them. The way they made others feel. We have the power to improve not only the global scale at large, but also work at a smaller scale, tipping the smaller scale of a single person's life. A smile, a kind word in the right moment, things we do that might seem insignificant to us, but to the other person might be the thing that makes a bad day better, the thing that tips a scale into the positive.

It's truly a wonderful power, and I think if we can do something to help tip the scales into the positives, it's well worth it. Change starts one step at a time, and I think one good thing at a time, can over time, start to snowball into something bigger, something greater. One grain of rice can tip the scale. Even if it might not seem like it, one small thing we do today can mean everything for someone else. So let's do our best to continue being a positive influence to the world around us, one grain of rice at a time. I think something like that, is one of the best things we can strive for.