What should I do?

It's a question that everyone has asked themselves, whether at home and bored or facing a problem, like your car breaking down or not having enough money. To me the question is irrelevant, what is more important is that which underlies the question of "What should I do". That which underlies this question is in my opinion the mind attempting to rationalise outcomes and consequences of certain actions. For instance, if someone is short of money, in their own mind they might ask themselves "Perhaps I should steal a car and sell it, or maybe sell drugs" and then they would answer themselves by saying "Well, that would make me money but it might also land me in prison." It's just an example, but my point is that any question that one poses to oneself is asked in order to attempt to divine the best possible path to take regarding a certain venture. If someone wanted to go on holidays for instance, they would find a place in the world to travel to where they could have the most fun, or be at their most relaxed, or perhaps catch up with family or friends. Regardless of the decision that one makes, the outcome will most likely not be as expected to a certain extent. It's often the case that the picture we create in our minds of our ultimate fantasy or rather the best thing that could happen to us in "x" situation, the reality is quite warped. This begs the question, is reality warped, or is it the mind of the individual that is warped? For me the answer to this is in one of my previous posts, "Love life so that you can love death". I have a quotation here which for me sums up the way I feel about this topic:

“I dare to desire death, and to desire it more than anything”

“I envy the dead, and with them alone would I exchange my lot. Every
pleasurable fancy, every thought of the future that comes to me in
my solitude, and with which I pass away the time, is allied with
the thought of death from which it is inseparable.”

“If, on the one hand, I were offered the fortune and fame of Alexander or Caesar,
free from the least stain and, in the other hand, death today, I would unesitatingly
chose to die today.”

More food for thought... Ciao.

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One thing that I hate in this world more than anything else (not really just saying that to make a point) is advertising. Why? It’s about the purpose of advertisements really. Companies make these commercials for other companies, to make money for both parties. They do this by convincing people like us that we need and or want certain products. Basically, they play on the fear that we have as human beings of being incomplete, that insecurity that all people have in varying amounts. Some people are insecure about their finances, others about their image and even more about keeping up with technology. Everyone has something that they always have to have, the latest thing, whether its the latest lipstick from loreal, the newest anti pimple cream with a radical formula or the latest smart phone with a touch screen and maps and shit. But that’s precisely my point, ultimately no one really needs any of these things. I tried a job in sales once selling investment software, and quit after a week. I am struggling with an illness, yes, but at the same time that illness brought to my attention the fact that basically what I was doing was playing on people’s emotions with regard to their money. The problem with this was that in order to convince them that they needed the product, it was my job after all, I had to tell a whole host of white lies to get them over their own personal fear. It was like interacting with someone on the most intense psychological level in order to remove the natural fears they had about the product, caused by parental impulses or financial knowledge. Say things like “My wife and I have been using it for a very long time” or “I’m not an accountant, I can’t give you financial advice, BUT ...” Advertising and sales are work forces that take advantage of people’s emotions in order to make money. That’s what it comes down to. It might not always be in a negative way, for instance I bought an Omega watch for several thousand dollars, I just wanted one and the salesman facilitated that desire, but at the same time, lets say I walked into the store said I might wanna be spending around $1000 dollars on a watch, then I’m pretty sure he would have jumped on that and used all his sales power to convince my mind that he had a product which was just what I needed.

Again, this is all coming from a very fucked up brain, which happens to reside within my skull,  but nevertheless, I’m thinking that the last thing most people need is to get obsessed with is the latest this and the latest that. Desire is such that it should only come from your own knowledge and resources, and not be born of a great advertising campaign by a Political party at election time let’s say, or a salesmen that can spin a great yarn.  

Before I bought my watch, I spent a month or more researching Swiss watches, found out about how perpetual movements work, the materials they were constructed from, how they survive the pressure levels when worn 2200 feet under water and was amazed by the engineering skill. I didn’t watch a Rolex commercial and think, yeah it would be cool to have one of those. Watches became something I really wanted to know the ins and outs of and doing that made me happy. Similarly when I spent over $2000 dollars on my computer system, I only did so because I bought a dud and decided you know what I’m not paying the same schmuk that sold this piece of shit to me more money to fix it, instead I learned how to fix computers myself and even though I made a few mistakes, by the end of that $2000 dollars I was on top of the world with joy. When I bought my PSP or my Nintendo DS because I thought it would be cool to have one, I used them for a week tops and they just became expensive door stops.

Just food for thought.

Ciao. 

The function of suffering

At times, I ponder whether or not suffering actually has a purpose. I have seen on many occasions famous individuals stating that they could not believe in God due to all the negative aspects of life which they have seen, such as a child in Africa that had worms eating away at his eyes. Personally, I seem to have reached the conclusion that actually, suffering could in fact be proof of God's existence, not to say that a God exists.
Why and how have I reached this conclusion? It's rather simple actually, and may be said to be too simple in fact. Nevertheless, the process with which I reached this conclusion is as follows:
It seems that in all life there is one thing which is constant, and that thing is opposites. With regard to most animals and plants for instance, there is a male and there is a female. These lines are blurred by such things as homosexuality, which shows a state whereby an individual contradicts the norm of nature, whereby a male mates with a female in order to produce offspring. The presence of opposites is in my opinion the manner in which the world is balanced. This has been called different things in the past, be it YingYang or Karma or whether it is implied through God and Satan, or indeed mentioned in such texts as the Quran.
If I hold that mankind and all of its religion and ideology are formed in order to enable a balance in society and therefore happiness , then I also believe that if there is a God then he enables suffering just as he enables joy or happiness or well being. Therefore the purpose of suffering must be to achieve joy, for if one had never suffered how could one enjoy certain aspects of life sincerely? If suffering did not exist, then we would take all of the things which make life enjoyable for granted. For instance, I enjoy cigarettes because I know that once upon a time I could not afford them.
Essentially, one of the ways in which I rationalise existence is that all the experiences that we have, or indeed all of the things which happen as a result of existence are there in order to give some form of structure and therefore meaning to life itself.
I dunno, hopefully someone will respond to this and give me another opinion.