Category: Uncategorized

As this quarter comes to a close (yes, another post about college), I’m reminded of the academic progress I’ve made–not only through this quarter, but also through my entire life.

I think about the connections and satire between works, and I think back to how I would never have been able to make these connections when I was younger.

But as I was reflecting on my analytical life, I wondered, “why do we do these things?” Why do we have to analyze everything we do? Why must we analyze what people say, write, or think? Everybody just lives and dies anyway. There’s no point in becoming more intelligent.

Then it hit me. We need to become more intelligent so we can leave a better world for tomorrow–so our kids don’t make the same mistakes we did.

And even though this should be the general process of thought, it doesn’t always work out the way it should. Take, for example, the Holocaust and the discrimination in America in the 60s. Those were the epitome of barbarism. We tried to control nature, and by doing so, we ended up destroying ourselves.

It’s surprising that human nature still dominates over morals. Of course, that might not always be a good thing, either, but we can see this back on the rise. I soon see the further discrimination of gays in the near future.

It’s a storm that’s coming. And we can’t do anything about it.

I went to a football game today. I can’t tell if I enjoyed it or not–I felt really ambivalent about it as I was leaving. I had always known that football was popular, but I didn’t know just how popular it was.

There was a little over 62,000 people in the stadium tonight. With a max capacity of 67,000, that’s pretty good.  Especially considering that tickets were around $100 each.

That’s six million dollars. They made six million dollars in one night. 62,000 people came together to watch grown men chase each other and fight over a little ball while wearing tights. And when the dudes aren’t running, there’s a troupe of girls wearing tight, revealing clothing dancing on the sidelines. I questioned, why? Then I realized that a lot of the six million would be going to each of them. So much that they don’t have to find other jobs.

I was shocked. The behavior I saw was so….. primitive. We come together to watch feats of brute strength, and when we aren’t we’re just satisfying the lustful parts of our brains. All the while, we’re drinking beer and making raucous noises at the players. There’s no thought. There’s no respect. The behavior doesn’t suggest intelligent life. There could be gorillas in the stands and we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

That’s the other thing, too. The sportsmanship wasn’t bad. It was nonexistent. Every time the Visitor team (in this case it was the Eagles) had the ball, everybody in the crowd would jeer in a seemingly total drop of sportsmanship.

I think I now understand why football is so popular. Because it’s exciting, sure, but it also allows you to act like a caveman without people giving you weird looks. Because they’re also doing it.

Put 62,000 cavemen in a stadium and have them watch a bunch of guys tackle each other. What’s the product?

$6,000,000.

I hate to say this, but college is actually less mentally stimulating than summer is. It actually feels like I’m still on summer break. I play a lot of video games because I don’t get that much homework, and I get a lot more sleep than I would have.

I guess this is one of the biggest changes I’ve experienced when it comes to entering college–everything is so much more relaxed than I’m used to. I’ve long since forgotten much of the things I’ve learned in high school (like Java, which is not good), but now everything moves at a more decent pace. I’m not stuck practicing a concept I learned two weeks ago in my math class. But I guess that’s kind of what AP classes were like.

I’m actually pretty ambivalent about college at this point. Still. I’ve used the spare time to play games and reinforce relationships. And believe you me, there has been quite a lot of free time.

I wonder when I’m going to have to start stressing out. I mean, most of my stressing is due to the procrastination I do, and it isn’t pleasant. But I haven’t stressed out for many years now, and I hate to say I kind of miss it.

Wait, have I ever stressed? I don’t even know.

I’ll try to write more blog posts soon. Not much in terms of bloggable ideas comes my way very often.

It’s November.

College has only made time go by more quickly. This has been totally unexpected. I’ve had five weeks of school, which means that I’ve been to school fifteen days so far. Ain’t that a doozy?

One of my close(ish?) friends recently got a girlfriend. I think this is his first girlfriend, but it still took me by surprise. He didn’t seem like the girlfriend-going type, what with his putting up a front and all. For some reason, this made me re-evaluate myself and my relationship with women. What am I trying to get out of it? Where am I going? Will it cease to exist? Will it begin?

It probably didn’t take much for you to realize that I’m struggling through this. This is one of the areas of my life where I feel the least confident, but for some reason I don’t really care. This is contrary to the mentality of most boys my age (of which, hopefully, I’ll soon grow out), but I take pride in being mentally mature and cautious of the things I do.

Which brings up another problem. I’m too cautious of the things I do. I don’t want to dive into relationships because I’m afraid of what will happen if things go wrong, which I’m sure will happen. My sole fear of pain is what’s keeping my life where it is–I can’t grow in any direction. I can take physical pain, as long as it’s rational, but any emotional or mental pain will drive me absolutely insane.

I’ve realized these things about myself for quite a while. The only problem is, I don’t know how or necessarily want to change them.

College life.

In case you didn’t know, the ride from my house to school is ~an hour. A lot of that time is just sitting on the bus, waiting to get where I’m going. But why do we always feel the need to have something to do? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned thinking?

Thinking just doesn’t happen very much anymore. Everybody on the bus is either listening to music, reading, or sleeping. Why not just stare outside and think about the beauties of nature? Or if it’s too dark, think about how the darkness only accentuates the beauty of nature when it’s light.

Philosophers didn’t get by by staring at their iPhones all day. In fact, they didn’t get by at all. It feels like philosophy is a dying profession. Actually, philosophers weren’t exactly put on a pedestal to begin with.

To answer my question, I think that we as a society are slowly moving away from thinking, which fits into a slow-paced life, and moving into doing, which fits into a faster-paced life. This involves less staring and more time being busy. Business.

Ever notice that word? We’ve taken something with a somewhat negative connotation and built our lives around it. It’s amazing and absurd all at the same time.

Talk about oxymorons.

Also, Halloween is around the corner.

Happy Howl-oween.