Co-written by myself and my good friend Dave, I think we've got a real gem here. I meant to post this earlier this week but I've been busy.

I’m not sure when it began but somewhere along the brief history of the past 20 years it seems we all stopped rooting for the good guy. At first glance this warrants a response of “so what” but the repercussions of this choice seem to be affecting us on a deeper level. Long gone are the days of helping strangers because modern thinking says that they can’t be trusted anyways, they might sue you if you do something wrong or hurt you in response. If you see someone stopped on the side of the road struggling to get a tire on their car well that’s just their lot in life now isn’t it?

Somewhere along the way people stopped doing what was right in honor of thinking entirely for themselves and going above and beyond self-preservation. It was no longer satisfying to have 'enough' of something, suddenly people had to have so much of something that there was nothing left for anyone else. Status it seems began to be derived from how much of x object you had compared to others without it. Without warning it was no longer acceptable to be content, being content was a weakness.

A reasonably new car (less than 10 years old) that was reliable was an accomplishment 20 years ago, now it's sub-par. Unless you drive the current model year of a car with a price tag larger than your yearly income, you're just not good enough. Clean and neat clothes used to be all that mattered. If they fit your ass then they fit the bill. Now unless you're wearing $200 jeans you dress like a “scrub”.

At some point in the last 20 years it was no longer good enough for people to be full, they had to be stuffed. I mean that both literally and figuratively. Just look at how obese America is, we eat so much it causes our health to decline and our health care costs to skyrocket.

So where did we start to go wrong?

When I look back to my first few years of life on this planet I see a humble and decent lifestyle being had. People were still kind to their neighbors, kids were still playing with one another past dark on any street in America. I don’t believe anyone was ready for the drastic change that would begin to take place.

I distinctly remember the first time Halloween became an 'unsafe' holiday where kids couldn't be out past dark. As if all of a sudden the world at night time was a dangerous place. I remember frequently visiting parks with play grounds that no longer exist today because they were made of wood and not soft foam padding. It seems awfully funny of a premise, these were clearly far too dangerous to be used and yet my friends and I seemed to emerge from the challenge relatively unharmed other than a skinned knee here and there. I remember walking home from school when I was 10 with my friends because we were old enough. Now some schools won’t let kids outside the doors when they are 13 unless a parent has provided two forms of ID in order to retrieve them. When did this innocence get lost, and how do we find it again?

It could also be true that this is simply one of the qualities that the past holds, the quality of each day passing seeming better than the one ahead. Remember back to your freshman year of high school and think of all the good memories. You'll likely smile about all the good times you had with your friends, but at that time you were 14 and had no idea how precious those memories would become.

I like to think that my main focus in life is to actively improve on myself as a person. My goal is a constant cycle of trimming away the bad qualities and keeping the good ones. I am not always successful in this pursuit but I feel the question should be asked why does it seem hardly anyone else has followed the same path of improvement?

People hold so much value in showboating about how much they spent on their jeans or how much money they make at their job or how much expensive food they ate or how drunk they got. Is this all that life is about now? This endless pursuit of trying to feel better than everyone else, no wonder everything seems so shitty.

Why does everyone feel that they have to try to one-up the next guy? What is this deep seeded urge to show identity through how pseudo superior you are to everyone else? Don't get me wrong, I am all about healthy competition and in NO WAY do I believe we should allow a socialist agenda to take hold so we can all set ourselves on cruise control and no longer be concerned with progress, but they question must be asked - why does competition take place on the most unimportant of fields? Money? Cars? Material things?

Think of how wasteful those things are. Of how little they define you as a being. Sure, they are fun. I love new clothes or a few beers as much as the next guy, but in no way do these items define who I am and that very well may be the problem - people are letting themselves become defined by the most trivial criteria. People are so focused on this constant struggle to be better than everyone else that they no longer sit and think “maybe I should let that person stuck in traffic go” or “maybe my neighbors are decent people maybe I will go say hi to them”. See those acts right there are the “glue” that holds together the collective unit of mankind together. Without that we are just a bunch of assholes walking around thinking we are better than everyone else, that somehow our lives are marginally more important than random stuck in traffic person or person next door that you don’t know.

So maybe that is the point of this blog, searching not for when that glue disappeared but how we can get it back. It is very clear to myself and others that we are certainly lacking something right now and I think that this something is what made my childhood seem so decent. It seems it has a lot to do with where our priorities have shifted to and how those new priorities affect our interactions with one another. When your life is nothing but the pursuit of tangible objects it is very easy to focus on nothing but them. Gotta get that big house, gotta get that $45,000 car, gotta eat nothing but the best meals well beyond the dollar range of the other guy. We seem to think that this is what makes life worth living, that this is the new pursuit of happiness.

Maybe I'm a bit of a survivalist, but the main criteria that I used to value things is simply this: if civilization as we know it ends and there is no outside help, when money doesn't matter and it is me versus nature, does this item help me exist? For the important things in my life the answer is yes. My training, both physical and mental, will become invaluable in a very real sense. Everything else - your big home, your AMEX with the $50,000 limit, your $45,000 car - those will matter fuckall and they will suddenly go back to what they were viewed as before all this nonsense started; just products whose value only exists in a world that we have created.

Something tells me if it ever comes to that point you are going to wish you spent as much time getting to know your neighbor as you did working for that car.

I'm starving and I'm about to run out the door. In a slightly surly mood from work I don't want to pull anything too complicated out of the pantry so I go for the cashews. A tasty snack that's got a good protein content and a reasonable amount of fat for some energy. I'll need it since today was my first day back at kung fu in two weeks.

I hop in the car, still feeling less than perky and head off. I notice that a small gnat or mosquito got trapped in my car at some point. With the windows down I hope that the little guy makes it out to freedom before the hot Atlanta sun roasts his soul heartlessly on the dashboard of my Mazda. But he's not going for the rolled down windows, the guy is trying to make it out through the damn windshield!

My attention turns from the bug to the traffic ahead. In Atlanta there aren't many places you can go without stopping at an average of 586 red lights or dealing with people cutting into your lane at the last minute. I pause for a moment to let a lady in. She hesitates and I lean over the center console and glare at her with a blank face. Finally the woman realizes I'm letting her in and she smiles happily with a 'Thank you' style wave. Clearly she wasn't thinking that these native Atlantans would waste their precious time to be a decent human being.

At this point I couldn't help but laugh. Here I am surly from work sitting in traffic just steeping myself in anger - which is just a horrible thing to do. I shouldn't let anything stress me out like that. It has too much of a negative effect. But as soon as I started laughing I realized that this is an excellent idea. When ever you are angry or stressed do something nice for someone, no matter how small, but make sure that it's an unexpected courtesy so that you get a real genuine reaction from them, and your day will instantly brighten.

As I continue on the road I pass by two people walking and I overheard one young woman say, 'I hate..' and when this phrase coupled with my very recent traffic experience I had a profound idea. Does using negative language have a negative impact on someones life? All signs (in my head) logically point to yes because you are conditioning your brain to operate in a negative fashion. And maybe someone has written about this very thing before since it seems like a pretty obvious fact, but I think I'll implement this in my life and see what happens.

Still milling these ideas of negative language (and the condition of your attitude because of it) around in my head I feel a small piece of cashew stuck in my patchy facial hair and my tongue instinctively shoots out to capture it.

But now that I'm thinking about it.. that might have been my friend, the trapped bug.

You know last week I had this deep charge that told me to blog angrily about how I push myself to train and when my real world life doesn't allow me to make it to class or do the things I know are really important I have a right to be hard on myself. I wanted to make points about pushing myself harder than the majority of the society we live in because I value what I have more than they do. I appreciate what they take for granted. I see and acknowledge the truly magnificent things that most people look over.

Or maybe that's just more self-important bullshit. I sit here now and while I still think that I need to push myself harder than I did before I can't use everyone else as a reason. Maybe this is just the next step I need to take to move forward. I really shouldn't use anything else other than myself as a reason to do anything.

Follow the path with heart. That's what don Juan said, right? The only one who knows that the path has heart lives in this meat shell. But this ties into what I was talking about just last week - one must be honest with oneself.

So I will continue to do what I do and appreciate the existence I've been given. Hopefully with time I will learn what I need to do, if it is anything different, and it won't be too late to achieve those things.

I think I've decided to turn this blog into a look into the twisted and convoluted world that exists in my mind. I personally think it's interesting (or maybe that's more of me thinking too highly of myself) and I can only hope that someone can use this as a tool to either avoid or steer towards the right or wrong way to live.

Only time will tell the truth.. if the truth even exists.

Upon the request of a friend I have decided to start writing in here again. Maybe if I update this more than once a month I can drum up some regulars.

You know, it's funny how the mind works. I have a million ideas stream through my head every day and even as I sat in this chair contemplating if I should get up and go to my computer to start writing (good thing my girlfriends laptop was sitting here) I had thought after thought whiz through my brain.

The strangest part of the mind is it's ability to protect itself. This may be exacerbated in my personal instance because I tend to seriously over-analyze things.. sometimes to the point where they no longer make sense.

But, for a moment let's assume that I am mentally stable and that I do think with a general clearness. I make this assumption because I typically function very well in just about all situations. This is not because I constantly think that I must act with honor or patience or peacefulness or vengeance or empathy.. I simply act and sometimes my actions fit these definitions. Sometimes they don't, but we're not all perfect.

I think that I am mentally stable and sane because I can remove myself from the protection of my ego and look at my faults (for example, my over-analysis.. among MANY others) but perhaps the protection of my ego is only partially removed, or maybe it has become really good at fooling me.

So operating under the assumption that I am sane and able to analyze myself truthfully we can come to a conclusion.

My way of thinking is threatening to people.

The way I perceive the world, the way I act, the way I think, the person I am is seen as a threat to those who cannot remove the protective layer of their ego and truly see themselves and their actions for what they are.

So instead of looking inward (where I typically look for answers) they, in a very Western fashion, look outward for blame. Sometimes I find this blame lands at my feet. Their ego cannot let them think for one second that the problem lies within *them* so naturally the problem must lie with someone else. They are invincible, infallible, untouchable.

While I do stand by my beliefs I also know that sometimes my thoughts, actions, and who I am are not in correct alignment with what is right and I must make a change. When these types of situations present themselves to me I stop protecting my ego and seriously analyze what can be wrong. I make adjustments that truly change who I am and continue on my path. Still acting without first considering if these actions are 'right' because, being a good person, they usually are right. Of course, when they're wrong I'm happy to admit it.

And this way of living is dangerous to some people. They don't understand what life is like without first wearing a mask and carefully calculating all their actions and thinking, 'How will this make me look?'

Since my presentation isn't of concern to me, it is a threat to those who are concerned by it. They try to pick apart the small faults that I've already admitted were faults. They try to compare how much better they are to my mistakes. In any way possible they try to measure themselves up to me to give themselves a pat on the back. Their ego says, 'It's okay. You don't have to worry about him because you're better than he is.' and then they supply themselves with an external reason of why they are a good person and never look inside to see who they truly are.

Their ego stretches to great lengths and snatches any opportunity to make itself feel better. There is no honesty, no integrity, no truth to define their thoughts, only the next external reason they can use to validate their existence and they crave it like a junkie needing their next fix.

Of course, I am open to the possibility that *my* ego has created all of the above to help protect *me*. This is the key difference between the way I think and the way most others think. I am open to blaming myself for my actions. I will be held accountable.

However, because most others are looking for external blame they like this option the best. I am willing to accept the repercussions for my actions and they are all too willing to deal it out. I am able to bend with the winds of change and adjust seamlessly and that is seen as the threat of being 'fake'. In no way am I fake, just adaptable and constantly evolving.

We stand in Darwin's waiting room. I am moving quickly towards the next evolutionary step while those who refuse to learn and grow lag behind and resent those of us who are far beyond their reach.

Saying 'Bless you.' after someone sneezes.

How long is this bullshit going to go on for?

Let's kick off this screed with my first statement - I have no issues with 'blessing' someone in whatever religious way you're comfortable with then they need it. Dying? Got your legs lopped off? Maybe a lawn dart missed it's intended target and is not currently residing in your eye socket. THESE ARE TIMES PEOPLE NEED BLESSINGS. Not when they sneeze. Not even close.

Think about what happens when you sneeze. You spray spit in a fine mist into the air. Likely some of it gets on me and whoever else is unfortunate enough to be within relative proximity of your DNA distribution. If someone walks up to you and spits in your face do you wipe it off and politely say, 'Well - Bless you! You might want to get some DayQuil!' NO. You are horrified and likely pretty angry.

So how is sneezing different? It's involuntary? That's bullshit, too. Sometimes when I have to dook so bad I might just INVOLUNTARILY SHIT MYSELF. Do you bless me then? No, I'm ashamed and swimming in dook and you're laughing or vomiting.

I know, I know - thousands of years ago people thought your soul was escaping blah blah fucking a thousand years ago Lord Kelvin said that 'heavier than air flying machines are not possible' (go ahead, Google it) and this guy discovered what we now refer to as Absolute Zero so he was a smart mother fucker. Do we go around disbelieving that planes work? Maybe it's some Harry Potter magic shit.

WE KNOW THE EARTH ISN'T FLAT. WE KNOW THAT WE'RE NOT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. WE KNOW THAT ELECTRICITY EXISTS. WE KNOW THAT OUR GOD DAMNED SOULS ARE NOT LEAPING FROM OUR BODIES WHEN WE SNEEZE!!

STOP saying 'Bless you.'

It's not polite. It's not nice. It's fucking stupid and you're wasting my time because I either need to go into this rancid diatribe OR say, 'Thank you' and put on some damn mask so that you think I mean it. Neither of which I have time for.

Do you know how to see? Or are you simply just looking?

Yes - I've been reading Castaneda. I've also been talking to Drrice and I certainly can't forget the Pale One when I write.

I have been able to see exactly once and it only lasted about 20 seconds. Maybe I wasn't ready or maybe I was and my mind shut it off fearing for itself. While I can't tell you specifically about my experience (because everyone will see in a different way) I can say that the world I was seeing appeared more beautiful and clear than I have ever seen before.

We should consider that we only see what we want to see and we do not actually 'see' the world because we may be scared of what we find. I'm on a path that I can never turn back from. No matter where I go in my life I have gained knowledge that will always be with me. I see this as a gift and a curse because while I am thankful for the knowledge I have, the more I acquire the more difficult life becomes.

I don't expect it to get any easier and I think that this uphill battle is too much for most people and that is why they refuse to see a purpose in this pursuit. Perhaps this is why people do not see, and only look, because in order to be able to see you must want it.

This desire is what separates me from others who share this physical world with me. Most will not even consider that anything aside from what you can physically see and touch is possible, and while some will consider it they still will not believe it.

Why is it so hard to believe? We, as a culture in the United States, watch X-Men and Twilight and play Halo3 and we love these things but.. only as pieces of science fiction. Why do we need to quarantine them in that way? There is a part of us that enjoys the possibilities - so why do we shut it off and limit it to video games, books, and movies?

..And the amount of time spent on these activities is another blog for another time.

But for now let's consider what we see. Are we merely looking at something? Or can we see the deeper meaning?

Where do we begin? Let's start with a shotgun blast to cover all the key points.

People who have week long birthday celebrations are conceited husks with no sense of self-worth.

That should take care of offending nearly everyone. Now we'll start to pick this apart in a way that the average reader would in an attempt to either debunk my statement or try to make me look stupid.

First up, I know that I'm full of myself. I don't keep this quiet so it shouldn't shock you that I'm well aware of this. What I don't do is force people to participate in a week long 'Look at my I don't get enough attention and I need to feel better about myself because ultimately I am a waste of flesh' marathon where you proudly display that it's your birthday on every form of media you have available.

So, why do I care? Because it is this hollow sense of self-importance that is destroying society today. No one is actually deserving of a week long festival in their honor, yet they all feel that they deserve it. What have you done that entitles you to this? Unless you have successfully found a renewable and infinite energy source then I think it's safe to say you should can your antics and realize just who you really are.

Most of you are thinking, 'It's the one day of the year that I can make about me, why can't I just have that?' and go right ahead. Have your day and your cake. Just because I have never really celebrated my birthday does not mean that I have a pedestal to stand on and tell you that you can't have yours. But do you really need to make it so dramatic that everyone on the planet knows what week you have it in, but not what day it's on?

If this is what makes you feel happy and gives purpose to your otherwise meaningless life then go for it. I'll keep running my mouth about how it's incredibly self-absorbed and outwardly egocentric, though.