Graduated Difficutly

Difficulty isn't some constant. What's nigh impossible for one, could be effortless for another. It comes down to skills and mindset. You can't solve the problem without the tools to do so, just like you can't do an algebra problem if you don't know math. You can't solve a problem if you don't know how to think and process things, just like you can't solve that algebra problem if you're freaking out. Specific issues in our lives, obstacles of any size, hardships of any difficulty, people both good and bad, teach us skills. They teach us how to do, how to handle those situations, be it how to write an essay, how to study, how to handle difficult people, how to do taxes, how to do a specific job, how to converse better, etc. Dealing with difficulties in general, facing things, getting through pains and issues, that teaches you the skill of dealing with problems, which is your mindset, how to be, how to react when facing a problem, how to think, how to manage yourself, how to navigate problematic things. In time, if we open our eyes and pay attention, we get better at each, we grow. Don't judge someone for having trouble with something, or for not knowing, for not having skills. If they've never been faced with it, never been taught, never been exposed to it at all, how are they going to know?

The Abortion Conflict

    Abortion is the act of terminating a fetus of a pregnant woman. Although somewhat frowned upon, it's a common practice used when the mother's health is in danger, when the pregnancy is of criminal origin, when the child's quality of life will be very poor (unacceptably so), when a person's birth control has a mechanical failure (not from their actions), when a family can't afford the child, or when either of the parents is unable to cope with raising a child. Now, each person may decide whether this act is criminal, just, good, or bad, and the extensive involvement of personal belief in the conditions on which to judge this is where all the conflict arises.
    The two sides fighting, generally are pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-choice supporters believe life and personhood begins at birth, where pro-life supporters believe life and personhood begins at conception. Pro-choice groups generally hold that abortion is okay, since the fetus becomes a person at birth. They also speak on behalf of rape and incest victims, citing that such victims need not be forced to suffer more than they were already forced to. In addition, most abortions occur in the woman's first trimester, when the fetus is considered a part of the woman's body and thus is covered under a person's right to control their body and their own futures. Pro-choice members also contend that the right to abortion is necessary for men and women to be on equal footing socially and in the workplace. For example, when a woman gets pregnant, she generally must quit work around the time of birth and spend the next 18 years (at least) raising the child. This puts her 18 years behind a man in the same situation, but if she can abort, then she can be equal. Roe v. Wade, ruling that abortion falls under her freedom to person choice in family matters, supports this in America. Then there lies the issue of illegal abortions, rates of which would rise if women can't have access to it legally. People won't stop the behavior just because it's legally regulated or prohibited, just look at every law, tax, and rule ever made.
    On the other hand, pro-life supports hold that abortion is murder, since the fetus is a person with with rights just like any other person at conception. It follows that abortions, killing the fetus, is murder, since killing another person is murder. Alongside this, pro-lifers leave the rights of the mother with her: they don't extend to anyone else. The group supports adoption, as it follows their views in that the rights to life exceed any personal rights to equality or bodily control. That being said, they claim that a person's right to control their body and to equality belongs to them before conception through birth control and abstinence, after conception the aforementioned personal rights are forfeit. In the case of when a child will have a terribly quality of life, pro-lifers still support life, condemning abortion in that it makes a statement of how handicapped people aren't worth as much as normal people. On the same note, pro-life groups believe that abortion doesn't free women. Instead they should rally for cheap childcare, flexible schedules, and maternity leave in addition to help from the state in getting back into the workforce. The differences between these two groups are massive, polar opposite in nature, flawed, and completely based in personal opinion. (Please note these are general views,  not everyone in a group will agree with all of them)
    There is another group, though, one that looks only at responsibility. For example, it is held that, if a woman has voluntary sex,  she accepts the risks of pregnancy and is responsible for raising and supporting the child, whether she likes it or not. If she used birth control methods, then she will still be responsible, but less so since she tried to avoid it. If the sex is forced, then she is not responsible at all, as she had no choice in the act. This group is focused entirely on responsibility rather than on right, wrong, or legality.
    Then there's paternal rights,  a near unknown but growing movement. Unsurprisingly, most of its support is from men while it's opposition is from women. Men claim that if they must pay for the child for eighteen years, then they should have a say. Most men view the balance as tipped toward women unfairly, but most women see it as fairly tipped. This whole issue stems from differing opinions on the man's role and contributions. If the man works full-time and helps with the home and child after work, is he not giving at least an equal share? In that case, he does deserve rights. In others, as in deadbeat dads, they don't. It all comes down to how much the father will contribute as to how extensive his rights are, but you cannot know the future, only guess it. So the mother won't know until it happens, unfortunately, which makes it very difficult to administer paternal rights in the case of abortion unless you're married or have had a child before with the partner. Also it may be the woman's body, but her choice affects more than herself.
    As I hope you all have seen, no side is flawless. Consider this question: "When does a fetus become a right-bearing human being?" If the answer is at birth, the abortion is legal and omay. If the answer is at conception, then abortion's not okay and isn't lawful, unless the woman's rights supercede the child's own rights, then it would be okay for abortion still. Also, does a mother have the right to decide the future of another? Does that right to control her own future supercede another's if their future is affected by her decisions? If a woman gets pregnant, and keeps the child against the father's wishes, she is deciding her future,  the future of the child, and the partner's future with her choice, as the man has no say. In the case of abortion the man has no such right and as such represents a legal inequality, which may or may not cause serious issues. Finally, does anyone have the right to make law their own preferences? No view represented here has been anything other than pure opinion. All have tried to better society, but your personal opinion must be tempered with actual reason and logic as to why it will better society to be that way. Forcing your view down another's throat is reminiscent not of liberty, but of oppression.

Majority Rule

Is it right that your personal preferences and opinions should affect what options another has? On one hand, we all want to live in like - minded communities, it eases social cooperation and helps us achieve harmony. After all, our entire culture works with majority rule, so the majority's views tend to control what happens in a country, state, city, etc. But, many times, the popular view may infringe upon personal liberties of groups and individuals within. Take the pre - Civil Rights Movement era: the majority view was that Africans were less than human, and undeserving of basic human rights in our country. Or take the Holocaust: millions of people died because the majority saw them as parasites and trash. However, we have also seen where majority rule has saved us from, surprisingly, holocaust and brought us closer than ever to true equality. When Adolf Hitler began his war to leave Germany the supreme powef and to create the perfect race, the majority of the world's powerhouse countries decided they didn't agree and stopped him, ending the Holocaust. And then take the Civil Rights Movement: Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. protested and risked life and limb to convince the majority to change, and to make life more equal for all. Ever since then, repressed groups have protested and made their plight heard to achieve equality. People imposing their opinions and perceptions on others has caused a great deal of bad, but it has also caused a great deal of good in this world. So what are ways we can use majority rule for good? How can we ensure it isn't used for things like the Holocaust again? Leave me some comments, I'd love to hear them! And by the way, this is just a quick look at this topic. Later,  well go through it more deeply.

Euthanasia's Dilemmas

Is euthanasia just? Or is it criminal? Euthanasia is where a person has someone help them die. It's somewhat similar to pulling the plug on a patient in need of life suppoert, except the patient decides actively when to die. The dilemmas involved deal mostly with the mental status of the recipients. Many people would agree that the laws are there to help stop people from making their last mistake. Many others, however, would question how anyone else has the right to decide that for them. Take, for example, a loved one with terminal pancreatic cancer. This loved one is almost certainly going to die, and it will be a painful one. Do they not have the right to choose to avoid it? Or must they endure a painful death because they're not seen as mentally competent in the eyes of others? Take another example: a loved one winds up comatose, diagnosed by multiple doctors with a very low chance of waking up. Traditionally, unless the patient has an order for what their wishes are, their spouse, their executor, or family decides the patient's fate, without the loved one's active consent or dissent. But why is that any better of an option than someone deciding for themselves? If the person deciding was close to the patient, they will most likely have great difficulty making a decision based in logic and reason. So I ask, how is it any different for a person in bad mental health to decide their fate? Or for a person faced with an extremely painful death to choose another path? In almost any scenario, the deciding parties will be in no mental condition to decide logically. Ultimately, it will come down to situational details, personal beliefs, and legality, but, barring that, just consider this: who has the right to decide whether or not someone may chose to die? Does it rest with the recipient? Or with others? Leave me comments with your opinion!!

Love's Conditions

Unconditional love, it's a very noble sentiment, no? However, unconditional love is still conditional. But first, let's have a look at what unconditional love love is. Unconditional is an an adjective defined as "not conditional or limited", and love is defined as "an intense feeling of deep affection." Therefore, unconditional love should be intense, limitless, feelings of conditionless, deep affection. This works fine when the person loved never changes, but that isn't realistic. In fact, it is impossible to love someone without conditions. Take, for instance, two young lovers. They are deep in love, , but one makes a mistake when the have a huge argument and cheats. How many people would honestly completely forgive their partners and and move on as if nothing had happened? Better yet, how many people are okay with their significant other in a relationship running around having sex with others? The answer is a resounding no, although I won't rule out that some may be okay with it. Now this isn't a condition for everyone, just some people. Others in open or polygamous relationships may be okay with it, but they may have other kinds of conditions, like being honest, or to take care of them when their sick, or even to always be a nice person. People often use the excuse that the other person has changed, or that their not the same person they used to be. In both cases, they did not love the person. They loved the malleable personality they had at the time. What I feel most people mean when they say unconditional love, is that they will love their significant other through anything that happens to them, not through any changes the person goes through. They'll be there through anything, as long as their significant other remains with that personality. The point is that, no matter what, there exists a condition that, if unfulfilled, would mean the end of that love.

Every Livng Thing Is Selfish

I have come to see that everyone is selfish. Now this is using Ayn Rand's definition of selfish, as in looking out for one's best interest. Some may dispute this, but as I will show, it's true. This rule applies to every single person that has ever been born or ever will be born. Let's start with children. Why do children even bother paying attention to parents? Because it is in their own best interest. Because if they choose to not follow the rules, things will be bad. In this case, children will do whatever makes them happy. If playing in the mud makes them happy, they will. When parents introduce punishment to this behavior, the happiness is tempered by the negative actions taken. If there is enough deterrent, the activity is seen as negative, and it will no longer be done. Basically, if the kid wants to do something, and there is enough punishment behind it, they will not do it. If there isn't enough punishment, then they will. It all comes down to how highly the kid values the activity, and how well off it makes him or her despite the punishment. The same is true for teens. Teens are constantly railed against as bad, yet they're simply smarter and more complex. We teens know what we want, and that isn't always instant gratification. It could be helping a homeless man, or starting a savings account, or anything. Parents always talk of teens wanting sex, so they establish penalties and punishments if they're caught. In short, if the teen knows a way around them finding out, and values the activity, they will do it. (Religious views will be talked of later.) This is the age when we begin diversifying our best interest, into anything. Where children simply choose instant gratification, unless pressured and prodded and prompted otherwise, teens choose delayed gratification as well. Not so much as adults, but still some. Teens will establish jobs, go to school, make friends, etc. All of this drains their limited pool of time, so why spend the resource? Because what we choose to spend our time, money, and effort in, we perceive will benefit us somehow. Adults, now they're complex. They'll often claim they aren't selfish at all, but that's hardly the case. Adults so often  claim they're better than the companies that are out for money, or people who only care about money, or material wealth. They're exactly the same. When asked of how they're different, they may say they spend their money bettering their family, not seeking wealth. Well, sorry to say, but you better your family because of how that action makes you feel and the knowledge that you will be better off for it. Certainly, if a primary supporter of a household never put money in the family, they would get flak from the members and extended members. If he or she fails to pay property taxes, income taxes, utilities, that member will have their property revoked, be put in jail, or have their utilities shut off. They get paid because the person wants a place to live, wants to not be in jail, and wants modern conveniences. The person knows these benefits will make him or her more production and happy. Now these are common examples, the complex reality is that anything can be viewed as making them better off. It does not rely on one perspective. Someone may view buying a new video game as more important than showering. In this sense, if either the power bill or water bill had to be paid, it would be the power bill. People do what makes them, in their perception, better off. No matter how you personally define it. People simply value different things, and as a result, will align their actions to make them better off according to those values. Now, for religion. A touchy topic, I'm sure. Anyway, people of faith are often called selfless, not the case. They simply value things labeled selfless, and align their actions to those values. Take a preacher; he gets little pay, but he values his work greatly. So he will keep doing the work, even if as a result he has to be extremely poor. A christian will help someone off the street, because it makes them feel good, or because of the reward of heaven or threat of hell. It's the parent-child relationship all over again. The believer will adapt their behavior to the punishments and rewards presented, because they see the rewards as what makes them better off, and the punishments as what makes them worse off. In addition to this, those labeled naturally selfless simply feel good for performing acts labelled selfless. So you can see, everything is done for the self, either to make the self better off in the future, near or far, or to avoid negative consequences.

How Do You Know?

It is amazing how much information we simply accept to be true. One such example I thought humorous was history. None of us have any way to verify what occurred, nor can we verify what anyone else says. None still live who were around long ago. This lead me to wonder, how do we know what is true of history? In today's world, someone's word is not enough, there must be physical proof and evidence, in addition to a story. Even that is not certain. What I propose is, all of this information given to us from others now and all throughout time, how do we know it's true? Anything outside our own experience is unknown, cannot be verified. So why do people simply blindly trust the dead? Why is knowledge of others simply accepted to be true? This applies mostly to history, science, and personal information. Math can be proven true with little effort compared to the rest. In science, we take what people before us have done, and accept it as true, so that we may extend the limits of science. If every scientist were to redo every experiment and every calculation before him\her, science may grow, but at some point, we would reach a limit, and be able to progress no further. This is of necessity, for making science greater than in the past. History is of the same. We accept what the majority of people say happened, because it is easier. That, and it is literally impossible for us to verify it for ourselves. And personal information, well, that's just laziness, and impossibility. No one can truly know another person's innermost thoughts, feelings, state of mind, etc. They can be told, which may or may not be true, or observe actions and patterns of behavior, which may be manipulated as well. Put simply, as far as the verification of personal information, it is impossible to truly verify the truth of what a person says of emotions, thoughts, states of mind. So, in answer of my initial question, we accept this information, because of necessity and impossibility. (And some people are just lazy when verification can be achieved, but, I will give humanity the benefit of the doubt here)

Impossibility of True World Peace

True world peace is an impossible goal. We can get close, but never touch it. One may describe it as a perfect dream for an imperfect world. I have heard from others that it may be achieved through hard work, or that perhaps we might remove that which keeps us from this dream. Many problems arise from this. The things that prevent world peace are these: the finite amount of resources(a fundamental aspect of the universe) and the nature of humanity. Let's begin with the first. As we all know, there is only a certain amount of energy in the universe, and only a certain percentage of that energy is stored as matter, what we see every day. So there is a finite amount of resources for each person. Next, we briefly explore humanity. Everyone seeks to make themselves better off, and this is done in a variety of ways. One person may view better off as having only what they need, and donating the rest. Another may view this as gathering as much as possible. And another may be anywhere in between. Someone else may view better off as killing off a race, or as being poor, or as eating healthily, or by eating unhealthily. The point is, people always want to be better off, no matter what that is. Looking at humanity throughout time, we can see that the desire for more, for luxury, for power, is always present. Some people may not feel these, but many, many people do. People want more money, more security, more easy lives, more more more. While we do curtail these habits from getting out of control, they are still present and as such, have an influence. True world peace can never be achieved unless everyone wants the same things, values the same things, desires the same world. The nature of life excludes this from occurring. We are all different, with different capabilities, different mentalities and experiences. Essentially, the only way true world peace could possibly work, is with robots, hahahaha. All programmed the same, all wanting and desiring and valuing the same. So, for humanity, this dream is just that, a dream.

What is Time?

What is time? Every single day people say the word, yet, does anyone know what it is? We measure events with time, we organize things by time, but what is it? What is a day? A period of time where the sun rises and sets. A second is currently defined as 9,192,631,770 periods in the transition between two hyperfine levels of ground state in the cesium-133 atom. It is fairly obvious that a unit of time is simply an observed period of time in which change occurs. We then measure our own change in terms of known quantities, such as day, hour, second, minute, year, etc. Each is simply an observed period of change, and by applying the titles of second, minute, hour, etc, we improve efficiency and speed up whatever it is we're trying to figure out or explain. Imagine trying to explain to someone what a second is, without being able to use any titles of periods of change. Life would literally be slowed down to a crawl. It is a work of necessity, and one that serves humanity very well. So, what is time? Time is change. Time is an illusion, it doesn't exist. It is just a name we give to help us measure how fast something changes in relation to a universally known constant period of change.

Relative Reality

Reality is relative. I have come to this realization of late in part due to a Logic class, and also due to the happenings of life. Every other person I will ever meet will have a differing view of things (some very little, others a great deal). Even should two people agree on everything in life, their views are different. There is no way around this, it is a simple fact. I could see a tree, for example, and another can see a car, and another a skyscraper. Each view is equally valid, and equally true. Simply because my senses say it is true do not make that any more true, as our senses deceive us all the time. I cannot verify what I see, by any means. I cannot prove what I experience is real. Proving said experience with the proposition that I experience it is simply circular logic and faulty. If two people see two different things, one cannot say which is right, nor which is wrong, only that they are seen. For those of you who think more people who agree with you solves this, also false. More people seeing the same does not assure validity or even a chance of validity, as reality can neither be proven or disproved. So, reality is a relative term that has neither validity or falsity.