Dresses

Hello.

Since this blog's been a little silent as the three of us are busying ourselves with school, I've decided to revive it by having a random short post.

I'm personally not found of dresses. And here's a logical reason for girls to not wear them. (oh well I do think it's logical. But my logic is not known to be well accepted...)

Let's liken dresses to curtains. What are curtains for? To cover the windows. What are dresses for? To cover the body. Do you girls want to be windows? No... Do you want to be the scenery outside to be seen through? Oh this can't be a rhetorical question. Depends on each individual. Personally, I would not want to be a curtain or a dumpling.

That's all.

If it makes sense at any point, my life is complete.

ADD

I though I'd post this poem even though it wasn't recently written. I don't think I've posted it on fb yet either. I'm quite proud of this one because it was voted the best one in a class of several GE students. GE. Up till this day I still think I lucked out. We were only given half an hour to write a poem based on an assortment of words given. I tried to put in some symbolism but I'm not sure how well that came across. Here goes:

You stare at your fish

It swims, round and round

Never tiring.

You wonder why you

Never named it.

The laundry hums in the

Washing machine, then

Hums no more.

You peg a shirt to the

Clothesline. Then a single sock.

It comes to your mind

That your aunt hasn’t

Written back to you.

You stroll to the mailbox,

It stands lonely and cold.

You feel your pocket for the

Key but it’s empty.

You realize it’s sitting

Somewhere on your desk.

Back indoors you fetch

The key, but as you

Pass your fish, it stares at

You with shiny eyes: feed me.

You oblige, the flakes of

fish feed snowing down in a

green-red veil. You stare

At the nameless fish.

The single sock on the

Clothesline hangs desolately,

Wanting its other half.

The mailbox stands in the

Pitter patter of the new rain, still full.

You fish stares back at you,

Already forgetting the

Flakes falling and settling

On its head.

A coin is circular

Points of view are confusing things, all we understand about them is that they are inunderstandably manifested through the workings of any new independently thinking mind. Think about this for a moment. Let us survey the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy, greed and pride. Their very title "the seven deadly sins" conveys to the reader that they are what is considered 'bad'. Why are they 'bad'? What denotes that these seven things that constantly show up as long as we live are negative feelings?

Let us ponder on the deadly sin of greed. Every living being will have, to some small extent, greed. It's animal instinct. The more food you hoard, the better your chances of surviving the cold harsh winter. But when an individual is overcome by this greed, and hurts and mows down any who would obstruct him in his path to greater chance of survival, he is condemned by society as incorrigibly greedy. Why does this occur? From the beginning of time, this has been a world of give-and-take, falter in your purpose and you will be devoured and trodden upon by those who would set their sights higher.

Lust. When an individual lusts for another, most reactions are usually pale and minimal. When the individual takes action upon this lust, he is condemned. Where does this come from? Isn't lust simply the drive to produce offspring, to ensure the survival of humanity? One might argue that the lustful being only craves the sensation that he acquires from these actions, but we must also consider why this has such a sensation attached to it. Obviously sex is enjoyable so as to attract beings to partake in it, as that would ensure said beings' survival. It is evolution. Long ago, the animals that took no joy from sex would have died out, having no urge to reproduce. Lust populates the world.

Why is sloth a deadly sin? Every human being partakes in it, it is unavoidable. Humans require rest, and those which do not will die of exhaustion. Sloth is an instinct developed through the ages by the careful selective process of evolution. Why do something if someone else can do it for you? You will save energy that you could spend on other things.

Wrath is one of the most obviously negative sins. To exact revenge upon another is displayed in a very negative light. But once again, we must ponder where the urge for revenge comes from. Why is revenge sweet? Wrath is the carried-over form of self-defence. Sensing that our selves are in danger, we retaliate. When our career, reputation or life is in danger, we react naturally by lashing out at the offender, in hopes that said dangerous object will be debilitated, nullified or scared off. Is it wrong to protect ourselves?

We are seeing more gluttons as we develop. People eat and eat, and though this is a deadly sin, its' advocates are not very widely persecuted. I will not address this sin any further.

Any human will have been envious before. This deadly sin manifests itself in discontent, in the desire to have things others have. Envy is one of the strangest of sins, in that supplementary action must accompany it for it to be visibly a sin. We could say that acting on envy is the sin instead, but arguers otherwise would state that rooting out the core problem would be best. Again, envy exists because we inspire it among ourselves. To desire things that one does not possess is the drive for self-betterment, without which humanity would have never attained its' position and power among the food chain now.

Finally, we have pride. Pride in ourselves was originally to maintain a good image, to attract a mate who would deign one of such good image a worthy partner. Now, a prestigious background serves very little of such a purpose. Why? Over the years, having pride and the fear of it being damaged have sprouted from the want to belong. Acceptance or exile, maintaining a good image was an easy way to ensure survival. But pride now is more complicated. Pride is more than the inherent need to belong always embedded in social beings such as we are. Pride is acceptance of oneself, and of ones' accomplishments. To have something worthy of pride is considered good, but what about the pride itself?

After reading all this, perhaps you may have spotted a pattern. These seven deadly sins, are only considered worthy of condemnation when they have 'gone too far', a thin line again drawn by mass opinion. What if the publics' opinion was changed? These sins could be virtues. Just changing the way we think will reshape the world. While we are not psychic, our minds in their selves have tremendous power, capable of causing enormous change. It's an exhilarating thought.

The title of this post 'A coin is circular', is a reference to the common saying 'there are two sides to every coin', meaning there are two sides to every situation. That is a narrow-minded belief, as there are infinite, myriad possibilities of ways to look, survey and analyse a situation, thus my anecdote of the circular coin; circles have infinite sides.

I've nattered on too long. If you've read my post all the way to this sentence, I thank you for your attention.

Vicious cycle.

This post aims to address Cynic's post.

Vanity and seemingly frivolous actions typically boil down to an individual's self perception of the world around them. (and whatever the society has brainwashed people into what is beautiful)

As simply stated by Cynic, there are two reasons for being vain--self-esteem and self-image. Her definition of self-esteem is having one measure his own self worth by his appearance; while self-image is refers to one being assured of their worth. In short, it's either having yourself assure you, or have others assure you.

However, I think that there is only one reason for vanity-- insecurity. It's all about reassurance of your self worth. As for attracting a mate, that should not be called vanity, as that is a natural thing that all animals do. Vanity is a word that is more to the undesirable side. Since attracting a mate is normal, it's considerably at the equilibrium, and thus not included under vanity.

Now, we have identified the reason for vanity. Insecurity is a dominant feeling in all of us, no matter how well one hides it. It's inborn human nature. We doubt almost everything, be it ourselves or others. We suspect, we are afraid, we want to survive, we are not sure if we are good enough. This is probably residue emotion from when we lived in the wild. We had instincts then, and could count on them. Now humans have lost most of their instincts, the remainder is translated to insecurity, and some to what we call "gut feeling", which most of mankind now do not know how to use. As shown by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink", we can actually deduce alot from just a split second, thus first impressions matter much more to us.

Back to the discussion about insecurity. Insecurity is the result of our loss of instincts, the feeling of being crippled. Humans were suited for the unpredictable wild, as shown by how we still can adapt to different environments quickly.

As for the exceptional few who can't adapt, it's probably because of emotions. As we get further away from the wild, our lives are more predictable, our emotions are much stronger, and we cling onto things more.

Why so? Apes are shown to have emotion (if I remember correctly). They mourn for their dead. But life in the wilderness still goes on, they have to keep going. Their life goes by days. Our life goes by DECADES. We have suppressed the instinct and need to move on. (those who keep harping about the past)

So we have much more time to get emotionally attached to something, and have so little worries about our own future. It's all planned, just like a train track. It's this predictability that causes us mental disturbance. Some are too used to it, such that when something happens, they blame the whole world... Which is not an unfounded thing to do, since it's all of mankind's fault for making things the way they are now.

We forget that tomorrow might not exist, and take things for granted. The more a person is used to a predictable way of life, the more he or she resents when something changes.

Only one who can constantly remind him or her-self that their time is limited, can live in this world without being spiritually scarred.

The more predictable our lives are, the more emotional we are.

I have this little thought here, and would like to side-track for a while. Resentment. That's what I think makes the difference. If there are ghosts, which there probably are, they must have resented in some way or another. That's a reason you rarely see animal ghosts. They know that nature is unpredictable. Not so when they are reared and killed by humans. There's rumors that there's cries of animals slaughtered in abandoned farms.

Back on track. More predictable, more time for emotions. More emotions, more attachments, more confusion, more resentment, more insecurity. Basically more violent emotions that keep chewing on your soul. It's a vicious cycle. Being more insecure, people make things more predictable.

The irony of mankind. Walking to it's own demise is it? Or will everything just escalate to a point of no return? The circle of life... Do we return back to where we started?

No one knows.

But for sure there was a reason why we have such instincts. Straying from the path of nature may not be that good after all... don't you think so?

*This whole theory of mine may be weird, and this post was typed out totally unplanned, so I apologize for its haphazard manner, and its spelling or grammar mistakes if any.*

P.S. *please comment. =) I like hearing others' opinions*

Questioning the roots of vanity and the seeming frivolity of the human race

I hope this in part makes up for my absence as of late.

Recently I rebonded my hair. And while I was in the salon (for a good three hours, I should add), I ended up thinking about an assortment of things, one of which was this: (taken from my blog)

Of course, being in a salon attempting to pull apart and destroy the bonds that hold together the very molecules of your hair makes one wonder what the hell one is doing there essentially killing their hair.

It also drives one to wonder why humans are so enamored with the idea of disfiguring themselves (think plastic surgery) in order to attain aesthetic perfection. I pondered this not for more than three seconds before I had the answer: vanity.

That was the easy part, of course. But what I wanted to know was the cause of vanity; why natural selection had not weeded out such frivolous behavior (it must serve some function or purpose), and if vanity was unique to the human species.

In the natural world the species most commonly associated with vanity and pride is the peacock (hence the similie proud as a peacock, I guess). But is this really vanity? All species of animals flaunt certain attributes in hopes of attracting a mate. This is instinctive and entirely natural behavior. Is it only considered true vanity when the creature in question is aware of his own image, and thus, his self-esteem? Animals are not known to possess awareness to this extent of themselves. Then, is vanity truly unique to our species?

Humans are aware of themselves as entities roaming the earth, possessing their own thoughts, and thoughts of their actions, and consequences to those actions. Animals seem to operate on the basis of don't think, just do. Which is all very dandy if you're an animal, because their instincts are seldom wrong. We humans, however, have less of such guiding instinct and must carefully think through everything we do.

This, I believe, fundamentally separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom (remember that we too are animals). Thus, perhaps this is what draws the line between vanity out of concern for self-esteem, and survival instinct. After all, animals have designated mating seasons etc, and peacocks only show off their tails by means of attracting a suitable mate (if they did not, the species would die out. Maybe that's why dodos are extinct. They might have been very stupid, very ugly, or both).

Vanity seems to serve (divisibly) two purposes in our society. The first is the aforementioned self-esteem. The second is self-image. One might wonder what distinguishes the two. For the purpose of this blog post, let us assume that self-esteem refers to one's concern about their image for the sake of themselves, that is to say, one who is vain for this reason measures his own worth by his appearance, and thus any efforts to improve his appearance is for the sake of himself.

Self-image refers to one's concern about being assured of their worth, not because it dictates their value, but because it dictates their value in the eyes of others. In other words, in order to attract a mate.

Vanity in part not be simply a result of our species being shallow and insecure. Part of it is for the sake of survival. Especially those who cannot fend for themselves. If you can't make it big in the business world, marry someone who can. Being attractive obviously helps here.

I doubt peacocks debate suicide on the grounds that they haven't been blessed by the glossy feathers of their rival peacocks and are thus useless, but then again, they probably don't have the brain capacity to do so.

Perhaps vanity started out as survival instinct, but we, being humans, decided that looks were useful for a  good many things other than simply to attract a mate (think social groups and peer pressure). Humans have a way of screwing things up like that.