~Opalance

After opening up my neighbor's Sunday paper and going to the comics for the first time in a while, I noticed a recurring theme or two in them, but the dominant one was political jokes or points. Whatever happened to comics that simply existed to be funny and make you laugh? Now there are some that exist just to make political points and jokes. There were 7 comics that explicitly made a political joke and sided with some party on an issue or person, and a couple more that were borderline or well disguised. It's just so wrong to use newspaper comics to push political ideals and opinions, because little children read them, and they learn to laugh at things and think along the lines, it's like brainwashing and it's stupid, because half the people can't laugh at half the comics because it offends them and their political beliefs.

Thinking on a separate matter earlier tonight, I was pondering the base natures of three desires for my life, at their base they were my physical desires, my mental desires, and my spiritual desires. I look at these three to be fighting and combating one another, however I had a realization getting ready for work, that these three were not separate beings, nor separate forces vying for control of my being, but all three pieces of my being.

This idea diverges from the classic three major theories on the being, those of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. I view the being as made up of the body, or the genetic, physical, and instinctual parts, the mind or personality which is the building up upon personal experiences and memories that creates a unique person and determines how they respond to distinct circumstances and formulates ideas of their own, and the soul or transcended being which I see as a loose idea of underlying unique drive or focus or connection with the divine or spiritual realm.

Unlike Plato and Aquinas I believe the being of a person is much more connected to the physical body, the physical make up and memories stored in the brain, though I may agree that the soul might survive physical death, it is questionable as to whether or not that person exists at all in the same manner as they did before. This gives rise to the problem of if one part dies, namely the body, what would be left of that individual to carry on after physical death. Each part is not a separate being, but a piece of dimension of each other. They do not exist or move separately from each other, they imprint and affect each other and change each other over time, like how one's mind affects and can control base desires and motivations of the body, or the soul drive the mind to do things it does not understand and accept those things through belief and faith. They synchronize with each other over and over, until they reach a state of harmony ideally.

Left unchecked, each of the parts can bring around very bad things, letting physical desires overrule the mind or spirit's boundaries or the spirit ignoring the mind's prodding and questioning. I nearly made the flaw of trying to separate each part of them into unique personalities, which would be damaging obviously and bring about disaster likely enough, if brought to an extreme enough end. I would, and have been infact, have had these parts of me battling against each other, and the conflict dominating or pushing my actions back and forth, causing guilt and strife and conflict with me and others. It also impedes progress in bettering myself and advancing, as well as keeps me from synchronizing my being.

Inner peace is fundamental in bringing about self confidence, progress, self worth, focus, purpose, and clarity of thought. Not having it, and going back and forth or suppressing parts of your being only will bring about strife and flip flopping anger and desires and emotions.

"I think, therefore I am"
"Know thyself"
"You cannot abstract from the supposition of your own consciousness"

Instead of fighting each other or rejecting each part of me, I should be striving to accept, yet unify all these parts of my being, into one. Unity is the only route to peace. Unity does not mean sameness, it means sharing and siding with one another, understanding and having a common bond.


Also, I think this has many affects on how I view God, body, mind, and soul. People say that, but they don't mean it, they mean each part represents to us a piece or personality of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but each have their own body, mind, soul and thus being in their thinking, because they view the three as separate and in conflict with each other, instead of all part of the one, singular being. It's a seemingly subtle, yet fundamental difference of course. The three interact, yet are by no means separate beings or personalities themselves.

I'll need some time to digest the result and outcome from this new train of thought, and any input would be appreciated.

I just had a dream of the worst kind, one that rings somewhat true with my life and points out the depths of fears about my own soul.

I dreamed that I was on an island and there was another man swimming and I waved him over. He seemed nice, and I was genuinely nice with him, he had swam in the bay and had seen the island before, but had never ventured onto it, and we talked and walked in the interior, where there were run down buildings and a makeshift city. We talked and then were surprised, or at least he was, by a group of 5 or 6 other men, who I knew, but were now less than men, more like monsters, something inhuman about their nature and bodies, something wrong with them. I started trying to defend the man with my words, threatening them, but it was my threats that were what troubled me the most. I threatened to harm them the same way I had before, the same way that had caused them to become these monsters, each one of them I had befriended and killed someone they loved, or maimed one of them in the process. One I had killed his sister, posing as a someone behind a bar, I talked and befriended her until I got her to keep moving over on the stools into a darker side so we could talk, leading her into a trap I had set up that killed her. But it was so odd, I didn't feel hatred for the person, or their loved one, I didn't want them gone, I really wanted to be their friend and was sincere in my conversation, and once they were dead, I felt remorse, but apparently kept doing it. I woke up feeling sure that either I would kill that new man I tried to befriend or the others would kill him, due to my actions on them, which I may have planned all along, to create those monsters to harm others.


After waking up I sat and pondered this for a while, wondering if I do the same thing in real life. I befriend people with the honest intentions and desires of being a good friend. I lead them on all the while setting them up for the fall yet also trying to be a good friend. Then I cut them off and hurt them, making them dead to me and hurting us both in the process perhaps. I don't know why I keep doing it, but I was considering doing it the last few days in fact with a good friend.

A useful nightmare for once perhaps, it showed me something about myself.

What I mean by the title is that I believe there is a serious problem with social groups who are apathetic to the inner lives of other people. The entire "It's their life, it's not affecting us directly so let them be" mentality is letting people's emotional and psychological problems fester and grow to sometimes dangerous levels. An easy example is childhood gunmen, like in Columbine, it was their own problems, they were weird and emo or gothy or whatever, they had their personal interests and it didn't affect anyone, until it snapped and got to the point to where they acted out. I'm looking for less dramatic problems than that though.

By there being a group that is extremely open and has little to no boundaries in the personal actions the members inside it you are making a breeding ground for mental problems. This is because they aren't forced to deal with underlying issues that brought forth the abnormal responses, actions and mentality that is accepted by the group. By accepting the deviant behavior blindly and never confronting it except when it harms another member of the group, all kinds of problems with the individual will arise and become more and more grounded in who they are. By not dealing with or examining the symptom, they will never attack the underlying problem. Instead the group accepts, and in fact enforces, the troubled behavior and their troubled past or underlying mental problems go un-dealt with and is pushed to where it reaches a true state of denial.

A popular example presented in culture, if you are in a committed relationship but feel there is some sexual or thus emotional need they aren't meeting for you, in many groups it's perfectly fine to either leave that person in search of it, or to cheat on that person to fulfill that need. Now that not only ignores the underlying problem in your relationships where the person closes to you does not meet your emotional needs, but it also creates an emotional rift between you and that person. It doesn't deal with the problem, and it won't leave the person happy in the long run because they will never learn how to be truly happy with someone. Yet they are told they should do what they want to be happy and try to find that perfect someone who will meet all their current emotional needs, instead of examining the cause of their emotional needs. If they were to deal with their underlying problems of why they desire certain things, and examine their motivations for their actions and cravings, they would stand a far better chance of being truly happy in the end.

Now, certain groups do this more than others, and I think it just as damaging to be fully open to all things as fully closed to them, because either way people are living in denial of something, both ways in denial of who they actually are. Either denying that they have a problem, or denying that they have deviant qualities that stem from their own personality, rather than from their own problems.

The great problem with these groups is that they enforce the problem activity and encourage it because of their open nature. As long as someone is deep within on of these groups and subject to strong amounts of the social gravity towards certain beliefs, it makes it nearly impossible to help them deal with underlying issues, because they feel they don't have to and they aren't there.

I've seen and felt and experienced the dangers and outcomes of these groups personally and in my own life, and I must say, it's real and it can ruin people and their relationships. I just don't know how to approach the groups. You can't very well let them be, but they refuse and resist help and take you down with them. So what can you do?

During my time in CompUSA in the liquidation, I was forced to return a laptop I bought at the store, because they wanted to mark it up to get more profit off of it. I emailed the state labor office and got this response, here are the highlights.


"We are in receipt of your correspondence to the Louisiana Department of
Labor concerning whether state law prohibited an employer from forcing an
employee to return an item purchased at the price showing in the store's
cash register system.
Although an employee may certainly feel a sense of unfairness for being
forced to return a legally purchased item, state law does not address this
issue. Accordingly, the employer did not break a law in forcing an
employee to return the purchased item. To emphasize this, in every state
except Montana, there is a rule of employment law known as
"employment-at-will." Under this law, an employer may legally terminate an
employee for any reason or for no reason at all."

"Because of the employment-at-will doctrine, an employer could choose to
legally terminate an employee for failing to return a legally purchased
item if the employer ordered the employee to do so. Also, because of
employment-at-will, an employer can require that an employee work at a task that is not within their job description."

"Also because of the "employment-at-will" doctrine (and
subject to the same exceptions), an employer can create and/or alter an
employee's schedule and require an employee to work whatever hours that the
employer demands. Although "schedules" are often used by employers, these
schedules are not binding upon the employer and may be changed at any time."

" When the issue of health insurance is brought up, you should be made aware
that employers are not obligated by law to provide or offer insurance to
their employees. Paid (or partially paid) insurance, paid vacation, paid
sick leave, paid holidays, and paid bonuses, or spiffs, and severance pay
are all benefits that an employer may offer to an employee. Neither state
nor federal law requires that an employer provide these benefits."

"In connection with employment benefits, please be aware that employers are
not obligated to give employees any benefits."



Now, add to all that that the common worker has no right to say what goes on in the company he works for, no stake in it, no control over what it does and where it goes. I don't think workers in the US have near as many rights as we are made to believe.

No right to benefits, sick leave, vacation time, job security, stake in the company, control of the company, no purchase security, no bonuses, no scheduling rights, no severance pay, they can schedule you for whenever they want to do whatever they want, even if you never agreed to do it.

The company doesn't exist for the workers, or the customers, it exists for the shareholders, they are the only ones with control and security and rights.