International Water Crisis

Personally, before checking out a few clips from the documentary ‘Flow,’ I had absolutely no idea our world was in a water crisis. Maybe it’s because I’m to deeply integrated into Western culture, and too exposed to the worlds corporate advertising campaigns, which I’ve heard numb my brain to the point of no return, either that or make me one of the corporations ‘civil slaves.’













Either this is so much of a shock to me that it hasn’t sunk in enough for me to actually fully comprehend the international situation, or I’ve perceived the entire issue just as I perceive Global Warming: of no true immediate threat, and nothing I should really be worrying or thinking about for the time being.
A lot of people would agree that this is an undisputable sign of American-styled ignorance, and in most regards I would completely agree, but I believe the reason I don’t feel I should worry about this at the moment is because I’ve already got a lot on my plate: school, friends, family, future, the unquenchable lust for constant entertainment.
All inherently Western values, yes, but not anything I can really do anything about at the moment (for example: last week I took a day off from school, and am still feeling the consequential ramifications of my actions, and to which I know there was nothing wrong with what I did unless you’re looking at the entire situation from a deeply Westernized perspective.)

Anyways, I assume I shouldn’t be ranting about why I shouldn’t be worrying about this international crisis, and should be ranting more about it on its own.

In a nutshell: I agree this is a crisis that needs to be addressed carefully and in the near future, and, if possible, completely solved (although, like Global Warming and the human nature to war with each other, seems near-impossible to solve entirely.)

Poor people in Africa, as innocent as they are, do have a lot of alternatives as to what they could do to improve their situations, and always seem to use the fact that they live in poverty as an excuse as to why they take no action to do so. They expect there unreliable, untrustworthy governments to fix everything (or at least, most things) for them, when it’s obvious their broken promises are clear signs that nothing is going to be done for them.
So, if your government won’t do anything, do everything you can to do it yourself: if you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself, quit complaining and expecting the rest of the world to fix your problems for you. That’s not to say we couldn’t, or wouldn’t if given a valid chance, it’s saying that the Western world has made it more then clear that they have no real desire to assist Africa and its people with any issue whatsoever, and only wish to use African misfortune to concrete the popularity and commercialism of their top celebrities.

Different African countries are engaging in warfare with other African countries over who gets control over what lake, and who gets to trade what diamonds, and not surprisingly the only wars that get any attention in the West is the ones heavily involved with the trade of blood diamonds, not the wars over water, which just concretes further that the Western world has no real concern about the continent of Africa unless if somehow threatens its security and luxury.

Yes, their will be a day, not to long from now (I’m assuming), when America and other heavily Westernized countries will start giving a damn about the water resources in places such as Africa, Europe, Asia, and yes, Canada.
It may be a Third World War, or something of a slightly lesser scale, who knows? All we can do is sit, wait, and hope for the best (and hope for everything sane on this planet that another Bush or a likeness of Sarah Palin never gets elected into office (yes, we’re looking at you, you blindly conservative fundamentalist Christians)).

Anyways, I should probably start paddling faster towards the topic of international water as opposed to drifting carelessly away from it in another political rant, and as to avoid doing so I will talk about the pollution of basic tap-water in areas such as the Eastern United States.
This, as I see it, is of no real alarming concern as was made obvious in the ‘Flow’ documentary that humans in these polluted areas are quickly forced to adapt the pollutants to stop being a drain on them, and instead something that does no damage at all (whether this is actually true or not, I don’t know, it’s just what I derived from the documentary), and as such shouldn't be embraced, but should certainly be no source of catastrophic concern, because the world has got enough on its mind as it is: Global Warming, the constant threat of nuclear warfare, racial and political tensions (which I hope have at least died down slightly with Barrack Obama becoming president), all these conspiracy theories circulating around with friendly stupid people trying to look, seem, and feel smart, all these seemingly feasible conspiracy theories circulating among heavily theocratic people wanting to gain attention by making themselves seem distinct from the rest of the crowd, incredibly gullible, paranoid, power-hungry people quickly finding ways to seize power with little or no opposition, and, of course, terrorism.

An international water crisis is nothing we should be paying an incredible amount of attention to for the time being. Hopefully, though, we find a solution to it before it spins out of control just as the international oil crisis did, or we may have a Third World War on our hands.

“The gift of perception is a wonderful thing; you get to choose how you feel from moment to moment!”

This is a debatable quote. I’ve found that I can’t completely control what I feel or when I feel it, but that I can control how strongly I feel it (most of the time).
It really depends what emotion it is: I find that the emotion of happiness is a very delicate emotion that can snap if the slightest thing goes wrong, or if you are emotionally sensitive to your surroundings. The emotion of sadness is hard to change or control depending on the situation, but can be dulled down using friendly support and things that cheer you up. There are rare times when sadness can be turned around completely if the root problem of the emotion is generally insignificant. The emotion of annoyance is something that is only created depending on how you perceive a certain thing to be; one of my greatest flaws is the fact that I can be easily annoyed by what others believe in, but I am slowly working on that as so I can at least teach myself to understand why someone believes in the thing they do.
The emotion of confusion, in my opinion, is the easiest to fix. All you have to do is look deeper into what you’re confused about and you’ll most likely understand in a short amount of time.
The emotion of anger is easier then most to slow down and even extinguish completely, but in the cycle of being angry can create the most damage (both permanent and temporary), and determined anger about a certain thing can lead to violence on different degrees, which is usually permanent mental damage if not permanent physical damage.

Mixed emotion is the only type of confusion that’s not as easy to fix, and can occasionally cause permanent mental damage if not dealt with immediately and in the right way.
Support from friends and guidance from others is the best way to figure out how you truly feel about something, but eventually you’ll have to take everything you know about how you feel and everything anyone has ever told you to attempt to help you and just sit down with it, and think. This will eventually lead you to discover how you truly feel, and hopefully for better as opposed to worse.

Now on to fear; and emotion that is easily toyed with and manipulated to work in the favor of the greedy and power-hungry.
Fear can be an incredibly damaging emotion depending on the scope and intensity it’s felt. Fear of death or fear of rejection can cause someone to lose there courage and not do what they had planned to do, well it can also do the opposite and force them to do something for the good of themselves and/or others.

Courage is only fear that is used for good.

Seriously Not Angry.

I Am The Batman

Batman a.k.a. Kyran Paterson-King.

Jesus Lives!!

Damn right I'm Jesus!

Have You Seen The Planet Yet?

Eye of the Dungeon

'There Probably Is No God, So Stop Worrying And Enjoy Your Life.'

The above words have been torn directly from an ad that may be running on the London local transit buses within the month, and even with those small amount of words, much is to be said.

Today, I wish to analyze it from different points of view, or, at least, what I see others would be seeing it as (ex: the ad as seen to Atheists, Christians, Muslims, and Jews.)

Atheists and anti-theocratic's will see this ad as a positive sign as to the rise in Atheist influence world-wide, and will probably continue to carry this slogan for years to come, with the addition that they will probably attempt to keep this slogans influence strong and hard for years to come. I, speaking as an Atheist, see this as one of the first steps to fighting against the ignorance and obviously misunderstood fiction of all religious texts.

Fundamentalist Christians/ Roman Catholics will see this as an incredible sin, and those who perpetrated its existence will 'all be judged in the end.' They will probably move to the next phase and become incredibly aggressive towards Atheists, and will probably try to force the government into making these sorts of ads illegal due to 'religious discrimination.'

This would be a move that would have, sadly, about a 50/50 chance of actually becoming law if conservative politicians have a large say in it.

Casual Christians will probably see this as a negative change, but will do little to influence its legal existence, and probably won't fight at all to do anything about it. They will be the people that may call it 'ridiculous,' 'outrageous,' or 'just plain wrong,' but they'll understand that these people have a right to freedom of speech, even if that means embedding their ideologies into popular culture through advertisement. Some may even think long and hard about the ads message, and may actually convert to the Atheist side of things.

Agnostics probably wouldn't take it into account at all. Some may oppose it, but they wouldn't even bother opening their mouths about it. Some temporary Agnostics (people that are undecided as to what they truly believe in) would probably waver more to the Atheist point of view. Whether they would continue to see it that way is an individual matter.

Jewish people (more Israeli Jews then international Jews) will take deep offence to this, and will probably retaliate against its message very strongly, using historical Jewish hardships as justification to how they're the ones who are right compared to not only Atheists, but the world at large (how exactly that would make sense, I don't know, but they HAVE used that reasoning before.)

My opinion on this whole affair is an opinion that makes alot of sense if you're a fellow Atheist or simply an Agnostic or casual Christian: this message is an incredibly respectable and obviously correct perspective on things such as this, but I do disagree with small parts of it.

I agree with the fact that there probably is no God, and that religious people obviously just use blind faith and the fact that their religions sound complicated as justification to say there religions are right, but if you use your common sense it'll tell you their really can't be a God if you actually think about it and don't start poisoning your mind with things that cause you to unconsciously force yourself into believing things like this. Religion is like Star Wars: Star Wars has a very long and complicated story behind it, and if George Lucas had wanted to, he easily could have said it was all true and made many people believe so, but not because it WAS true, but because it was so well thought out and complicated that people looked at it and said 'hey, if it's THIS complicated, there HAS to be at least some truth to it.'

Now, what I disagree with is the 'so stop thinking about it, and enjoy your life' part of it. Not so much the 'enjoy your life' part of it as the 'so stop thinking about it' part, and I'll tell you why:

Thinking about things like this is what makes parts of life very interesting, and can actually, in some if not most cases, add joy to life as opposed to add misery and hate. But, sadly, things like this will always breed discontent.

The Russian Revolution: Where would we be today?

Today I would like to address a very well known event torn directly from the books of history, one of the most prestigious and greatly justified revolts of all time: the Russian Revolution.

In technicality, the Revolution began prior to World War I with the country-wide labour strikes in 1905, halting almost everything in Russia for almost an entire year, and pulling the Russian economy into a catastrophic downturn until the Constitution of 1906 (the 'Fundamental Laws'), which stated that the Tsar Emperor had complete control over almost every aspect of the countries existence, including the entire existence of the Duma Parliament (created following the labour strikes of 1905).

All of these aspects were accepted due to the fact that loyalty towards the Tsar was still incredibly high at the time, and the Revolutionaries were still a general minority.
As soon as World War I broke put in 1914, loyalty towards the Tsar imperial reign reached an all-time high when a holy crusade against Germany was declared by Emperor Nicholas II.

This loyalty quickly fell in 1916 when Nicholas II took direct control of Russian forces on the front line, and began a string of defeat throughout the entire European theatre.
This fueled the spirit of Revolution in Russia, making the Tsar seem unfit to rule due to basic incompetence to defend the motherland (which was now cemented after being presented as a general possibility after the defeat of Russia at the hands of Japan in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war) along with a belief that they had complete totalitarian control of the biggest country in the world.

Finally, after over a decade of tension, a full-fledged Revolution broke out, and the Tsar were massacred in a small cottage they where hiding in at the time of the Revolutions end.
Following the end of the Russian Revolution, Russia became the USSR (Union of the Soviet Socialists Republic) under the control of Bolshevik Communist dictator Vladimir Lenin, who died a few years following due to poor health and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin.

Now, I would like to talk about the justifications of this Revolution, was it completely justified? Or just agitated to the point of bursting? I believe many points played a role in the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, such as the fact that Nicholas II admitted to being unfit to rule before he actually began his reign of blunders and terror, along with the fact that it was considered a great embarrassment when Russia lost the war against Japan, and the responsibility was pinned on the House of Tsar directly, with World War I being the absolute breaking point for the Russian peoples tolerance of the entire situation.
Other things that played a part was the installment of a German-Russian into the royal family during the Fist World War, and the corruption of the government following Gregori Rasputin's installment as the advisor to the Tsar.

So, yes, I see plenty of justification for this revolt, but I don't see justification for what the revolt led to: a frightened, paranoid, aggressive totalitarian communist regime that almost joined the side of the Nazis during World War II due to completely selfish reasons and their lust for more territory, but later pretended to be one of the good guys and joined the Allies following the invasion of Russia by German forces.
This then led to the Cold War, which, on a few occasions, almost led to a break-out of a Third World War with the United States and other Commonwealth countries.

So, again, there are a couple of ways this could have gone: if the Russian Revolution had either been thwarted or never happened in the first place, the Tsar would either still be in control, or a completely democratic government would be in control, as opposed to the current puppet democratic government secretly controlled by Vladimir Putin, and if the Tsar would still be in control, who knows? Maybe they would finally have a completely competent ruler.
Then again, if the Revolution had been representing a rise in democracy, then Russia may have become a much better place then what it is or what it was following the success of the revolt, and the entire world may have been in a phase of near-complete peace following the end of World War II.

It really gives you a lot to think about if you look at it hard enough.