Died doing what they loved...

I always think it's funny --or sad-- when I read that somebody died (while working) doing "what they loved".
I'm sure if the day comes, I will be happy to be a pathologist..., but there are many other things I'd rather be doing at the moment of my death! To name a few, I like reading, listening to music, watching shows or movies, hanging with friends, having sex, singing, taking a shower, eating chocolate or sleeping.
Thanks.

Duh

It's been so long!! But today, as I was coming back home, I felt an urgent need to sit down and write. Maybe because it's so sunny today.
I read this morning about the plane that crashed in Egypt. I don't want to trivialize it, but I couldn't help thinking, why do I have to read about flight accidents every fucking time I am days close to taking a flight? Then I thought, dozens of people died (likely) and I am somehow making it about myself. Like I don't care about any of those people. And maybe if my plane happens to crash, somebody else will make it about themselves like my death doesn't matter at all.
Which brings me to the point. Nothing significant would happen if I died. The world would not be different without me on it. This, on one hand, makes me think, fuck! How unimportant I am! How pointless my life is! But on the other hand..., oh wow, it feels great! It feels like freedom. I have no responsibility to the world at all. Whatever it is that I stop doing (i.e. by dying), if it is really important, it will get done by any other. I will be grieved for a while and after that, my ever presence in this life will be forgotten forever, and I will never have existed.
So fuck it! I'm gonna go enjoy my freedom!

Just for the fun of it

I thought I wouldn't write again for a while, but here I am...
Just to share a brief thought.

Some time ago I watched a bizarre movie or some TV show episode, I'm not quite sure. It was about a killer who abducted his victims, placed them in front of a camera showing their image live on a website, and used a catheter to inject them with a continuous infusion of heparin (anticoagulant) starting at a certain infusion rate. For every number of new visits to the website, the infusion rate would increase. Eventually, the person would slowly bleed to death in front of the viewers. And this procedure would be repeated with the next victim.
The movie/episode brought up the following dilemma: viewers, as persons with their social moral principles, would of course not want another person to die. But at the same time, as viewers, they wanted to see what was going on, even knowing that their clicking on the website would contribute, though slightly, to the victim's death. Needless to say, all the victims ended up dying, the reasoning being, nobody cares about moral principles when they are just one out of thousands of anonymous users visiting a website, safe and bored on their couches at the other side of the screen. And they stared and watched a person bleed to death. And then, back to the real physical world, they would comment about how depraved this killer was.

And I can't help thinking that this american people cannot seriously be so easily manipulated, that maybe they are just anonymous viewers willing to see one more wisecrack, to be amused, curious to see what happens if this Donald Trump gets to be the final candidate, wanting to keep him alive for yet a little longer...
Because I really can't imagine how anyone would want this man to be their president.

Happy super tuesday...

Your move, chief.

What makes us

I thought my next entry would be about the most recent story I've read, The machine stops. But a facebook friend of mine made me change my mind.

So I have this facebook friend who could never be my friend in real life, ever. The way we think, our points of view, the morals from which we judge things, are incompatible and inconciliable.
We went to kindergarten together for 3 years. Then we never saw each other again, though we lived in the same neighborhood and he went to the same primary, secondary and high school as my cousin. And then one day, after more than 20 years not having talked or thought about each other, he found me on facebook and we started talking about our lives, what we were doing, the things we liked, music, movies... A quick catch up for a few days, which I believe both of us found interesting and nice. We even talked about meeting in person some day. Then after some time we forgot about each other again - but we stayed friends on facebook.

But for some time now, every time I log in, facebook shows me around 4 or 5 articles he's posted and every time I am so happy that we never got to meet again.

If I had to define him, from the limited information I get from what he posts, I would say he's a radical christian, islam hater, ultraconservative, fascist, racist, homophobic. He believes he has the moral authority to opine on how the rest of the people choose to live their lives (or die their deaths). He likes playing the rol of the christian victim, prosecuted for his faith. He sees life as "the world VS christians". He doesn't like the spanish Popular Party because it's not conservative enough. He doesn't like the new Pope because the way he observes christian principles is too loose and he's too permissive.

If he had to define me in return, he'd probably say I (me!!) am immoral, a babykiller, a terrorism supporter, a pervert, a sinner, a trouble maker. He'd reproach that I protest against bullfights but not against abortion and on this basis he would call me a hypocrite. The same way, he'd reproach that I protest about muslims but not about christians prosecution - again, hypocrite. And many other things he'd say about me, which would be probably as true as what I just said about him.

Anyway, one after another, sometimes I comment on his posts, sometimes I think it's not worth it. Sometimes he replies, sometimes I guess he thinks I'm not worth it. But the last straw was yesterday when he posted a link to an article based on the spanish version of this site ("Homosexuality and pedophilia"), calling attention on how pedophilia was much more prevalent among homosexuals than heterosexuals and therefore homosexuality equals immorality. I added "hypocrite" to the list of characteristics to define him, and I couldn't help mentioning the prevalence of pedophilia among christian priests so now I guess he added "pedophile" to his list of characteristics to define me (if he even cares about me at all, which I doubt).

The thing is, in my feverish state, I started thinking how he and I, two people with a similar background, educated in similar schools, according to similar ethics, have grown up to be so radically different. To what extent are we responsible for our thoughts?

During our childhood, it's our family that provides us the moral principles from which we will continue to see the world as we grow up. They are the first to tell us this is right and this is wrong. We don't get to choose our family. Had I been educated by this guy's family or he by mine, today I might be a fascist or he a pervert.
Then our parents decide what school to take us. At this point there are many factors intervening, none of them we control. Similar ideology between the school and our parents, quality of academic education, proximity, cost, references. I still don't know why my parents took me to a religious school, I don't know how much a religious education mattered to them, and I suspect, at that moment, it was one of the pluses. But at the same time they managed to counteract the school religious strictness with statements like "But no one really knows for sure", "It's not exactly like that", and such.
By our adolescence our moral principles are probably already set but still subject to shaping. From this point on, what matters most is the people we interact with, and these are either family determined or completely random (life determined). In any case, nothing we can do about it. But we already have a working definition of what is right and what is wrong, we already have a fixed level of indulgency beyond which we won't doubt to call something unacceptable, we have a permissible flexibility to establish a certain interval of doubt inside which we are able to admit that someone else's way might be as valid (or more valid) as ours. I guess my threshold for wrongness was higher than my facebook guy's, and I always recall my friend Santi as the first person who proved to me that one can be both a smart student and a heavy metal lover. I know it sounds lame, but that summer was a before and after in my conception of right and wrong, and it definitely widened my interval of doubt. My meeting him was completely random and it could have never happened as much as it did happen.
So life goes on, and we either do or do not meet people who are different or come from different backgrounds, and we either do or do not admit that it doesn't make them any worse (if anything, considering this guy's and my fortunate background, it makes them better). But we don't choose the people we meet. We only get to choose how we judge them. And that has already been conditioned for us before.

With all this I mean, if we don't control the people and events that shape our morality, who are we to judge how other people think?
Is my facebook friend to blame for his repudiation to homosexuals when god's existence for him is as real (and as provable) as god's inexistence is for me, and his god says homosexuality is a sin?
Am I to blame for not being sure about the ethics -or unethics- of abortion? Or for supporting euthanasia, after all the suffering I've seen (which he has not) and I've not been able to ease?

Is anybody qualified to judge anybody else?

It's what she does to him

I woke up this morning humming this song.
I'm having lunch at Wendy's, and BAM!

  Sorry that my last entries are not too deep...

Today

When only this explains.