a letter to the world...

Some noted that I don't really blog and write about things that normal people who don't know me would want to read. Perhaps I didn't have that illusion of grandeur: I didn't think that I wrote things that benefits the world. I would just add to the mess that readers have to navigate across. Here, you guys come back knowing what you're in for. Frankly, I don't know why you do come back...

If I can't make the world better, the least I can do is not make the world worse, to not add to the mountainous piles of bullshit already existent in our society. I offered nothing except for my (pseudo?)silence, which I believed to be more valuable than what a lot of people gives.

But maybe I am wrong. Maybe I should let the world decide whether my bullshit is worth reading. Or perhaps it's not about the world. Maybe it's really about me. I'm selfish, remember? Maybe the shit people throw back at me would help me. And well, maybe there're things that I do want the world to read. Here's something:

To the world: you're wonderful.

I know that the world is full of shit. People are stupid. A lot of the world is filled with irresponsible people who doesn't give a shit about their own life. I bring you to this quote, again: "...the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche, and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human." I believed this strongly. Once I was asked whether I liked people, and I hesitated in answering. The person who asked me this question then proclaimed that they liked people. I sighed, knowing that I was probably one epiphany short of agreeing with them.

Well, I didn't need this epiphany.

Truth is, I know that people are stupid/lazy/sad/irresponsible ... but I often fail to recognize these traits in the individual human. Yes, I see them very clearly in day to day life, but I take them for granted and gloss over them, almost. I also realized that the amount of base respect I have for each person is much greater than what I gave myself credit for: more so than the certain person who said they liked people, even. I want to ask that person, "Alright, sure, you like people, but do you like individual persons?" Of course, I don't spend every effort to give people something positive - but I wouldn't want to become a source of negativity for any person, either. I try my best not to hurt people, and under a Pareto situation I try to maximize utility. Sometimes I fail but... that's life.

Perhaps I'm an optimist in saying this, but now I want to question the above quote, because there is a gap between the average human and the chimpanzee that may be greater than the gap between that average human and Plato/Nietzsche. That gap is, of course, the mere potential for further self-awareness, for deep meaning, and art. These potentials are virtually non-existent in the chimps (individual chimps, not their species) as there are resources available to the average human being unavailable to chimps, purely as a consequence of their higher consciousness and ability to communicate/interact with other human beings. This pontential itself is worth respecting. It is sad that most of it is never realized, but we must not forge that it is there.

Once I was asked a question, about the one thing I could change about the world to make it a better place. At the time I said "nothing". One interpretation of this is that I'm a careless bum that hasn't seen the bad side of life and is too ignorant to think of something useful. Well, perhaps so, but I like the other interpretation better: that I believed that what we have right now is an equilibrium of some sort, based on conditions about what people believe and how they choose to live. Thus, even if I change the world in some way, it wouldn't last! People would pursue again how they choose to live and things would pretty soon return back to the way it was before.

Now, if I was asked the same question again, I would answer, "I'll increase how aware people are of themselves and the world." Perhaps then we would better attain our best potentials, and live more meaningful lives. The beauty of this is that the potential is there.

And that is one of the reasons why the world is wonderful.

Anyways, from now on: less emo-ness and more potentially meaningful bullshit.

End of Entry