Robert Small, The blog thereof.

or,

Why I think the lottery and X-Factor like TV shows are bad.

Society owes you little. It does not owe you fame and fortune, that’s something you may well owe yourself to earn, but it’s not something that society owes you. Relatively recently it has become the fashionable thing to want to magically become rich and sometimes famous.Life is not a lottery, even ‘ideal’ jobs like ‘network marketing’ require you to work hard and learn your trade before you have any chance of making much money. However it seems we’ve become enchanted with the vision of instant ‘celebrity in a bag’; hard earned success gained from talent and energy has been replaced by flash success based on luck and the opinions of a couple of judges.

Not only do we want to chose our celebrities by the proxy of talent show hosts, we want to chose our rich by the proxy of lottery cards. There have always been ‘lucky’ people who gained riches through inheritance and had no idea how to use them. Today it seems to be something we desire, to get something without working or otherwise ‘earning’ it. Personally I dislike gaining anything by raffle or lottery, I was brought up to believe that success had to be earned and not won.

I feel this way of thinking could be part of the reason why we have such a ’sue, sue, sue’ culture. People are always looking for ’something from nothing’.

I may be wrong, tell me how you feel.

Kind regards, Robert.

‘Doesn’t have a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to,
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Man, please listen,
You don’t know what you’re missing,
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.’

People interest me, quite a lot in fact. I often hear people give a vague allegiance to a political party, but when I try to find out how many of the core values they share it’s often surprisingly fewer than one might hope. All too often it seems that people have one view and a different political support, believing in freedom and positive action against environmental crime. It’s true that we create not only our own future but the future of our children and their children. Surely then we should think more before we idly act or fail to act.

I believe that it’s the duty of every world citizen - and you are a citizen of the world, like it or not - to strongly consider and debate world issues. Our thoughts may well pave the future of our own lives and those of billions of others.

I challenge you to never vote for a political party because your parents did or because your friends do, I challenge you to be your own person and make your own choices. It’ll surprise you how something you do can change things so far from you. A Kabbalist described it to me like a stone thrown into a pool of water, although the stone may be small the ripples still reach a surprising distance. In the same way your hurried attempt to cut queues at a set of lights might spoil someone’s day in another country. Think, if such a small thing can do something so big, what can a big thing like a vote do?

Even your choice of car could change many people’s lives. A small energy efficient car will produce less pollution; and if you believe in global climate change or not, this is a good thing. A larger car may protect you better in an accident but heavily increases the chance of you injuring or killing someone else.

I think the moral I’d take from this is to think before you act, always. Don’t be a nowhere man.

Kind regards, Robert.

Morals are weird things. I believe most people’s morals are entirely taken from which angle they’re viewing a situation from. For example, a lot of people will tell you that they are totally against abortion; when you tackle them about it they will either clam up or show that there are ’some’ circumstances under which they will change their mind.

A young mother with four children and one on the way develops leukaemia. The leukaemia treatment will kill or severely maim the child, by aborting the child she would save herself. To save the child she must refuse treatment and sacrifice her own life, there is no way she can be treated after the birth, that is if she makes it that far.

So, as that young mother do you chose to live and be able to bring up your children or do you let the child live with the knowledge that you could never bring it up nor could you guarantee that it’d live if you die before it’s fully developed.

I believe the only solution is to truly take every single case as it comes, never to judge from the other side of the gate and never to presume that you know everything about a situation.

Kind regards, Robert.

“Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall into the clutches of the wolf.” Mahatma Gandhi

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has his foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu

In my belief it’s one of the great paradoxes of life. However much you blame the oppressor the oppressed are often still somewhat to blame, sometimes even when they’re trying to do something to stop this state of affairs. So as one would not like to take the side of the oppressor taking a neutral side becomes your only option; but as Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, taking the neutral side is as good as taking the side of the oppressor.

I see this often in every day life, people who for some reason are being bullied or *attacked* by others but seem unable to change the aspect of their behavior which brings this on. Sometimes they can even tell you what the problem is, but rarely can they fix it. They must learn to avoid the wolf, but maybe also we should protect somewhat from the wolf.

The real world and the Internet are very different places. If I walk into a job interview knowing everything about the subject and being fully equipped to do the job but without a degree and five years below the age they were expecting I’d probably be thrown out or laughed at. Online few such prejudices are present, if you can do what you’re needed to do then nobody will complain about you being 15, or having many years of school left. The Internet is not a replacement for real life, but it is very real; if I were to count the number of times someone has said to me ‘but that isn’t real’ (and I haven’t complained about the conjunctive at the start of the sentence) and I’ve challenged their concept of reality I would get very bored. The Internet is real, but it’s a different and rebellious cousin of reality as we know it. The money I earn is certainly real, the people I talk to are certainly real, the phone calls I make involve real voices and the work I’ve done at the end of the day is real.

Even though the Internet is real, I don’t think that it can be considered a legitimate replacement for face to face communication. I can work all day, speak to hundreds of people but find a conversation with someone in the flesh far more satisfying.

So in this safe haven which is the Internet there should be less prejudices, less cause for wolfishness and for the victims. I believe this is true, but only to an extent. There are still trolls, some of whom worm their way into authority to gain themselves some level of diplomatic immunity, and they’ll attack the weak. Often they’ll blame them for all the ills in vicinity but when the target leaves or is removed they’ll change to another target.

In real life you get similar problems, in a group of people there always seems to be someone who doesn’t entirely fit or is used as a general target, someone is always the joker and someone always the target. It never ceases to amaze me how cruel people can be, civilized people who you’d never dream have a nasty side can release the most vicious and vindictive attacks on others. If someone just really pushes a button which causes you discomfort it’s surprising how much you’ll begin to hate them. This is almost illogical hate, you don’t really hate them, you hate their actions; yet soon everything they do will become abhorrent to you and you’ll take any action you can to degrade and deface them.

This, of course, is if you’re the type of person who lets this get to you. Some people will teach you that all of life’s events are built up from energy/energies and that events and people leave energy/energies behind them. Furthermore they’ll tell you that keeping anger, resentment, angst, or whatever you want to call it will cause damage to yourself. I believe this to be almost entirely true, people who become angry and hold resentment against others seem to become eaten with this emotion and crazed by a desire to outlet it. When they do vent it doesn’t seem to do anything for them because they don’t seem to release any of the emotion permanently but purely expose it to the view of all and sundry.

But those who annoy can avoid it, for example I could have used better grammar and not started with a conjunctive. I’ve never tried the art, but I’m informed that it takes two to dance the tango; this is a very apt illustration for anger. If someone gets annoyed with you then avoid speaking to them or being around them, when they challenge you back down and avoid confrontation. Less bad energy will make you feel better about life and I believe it may eventually lead them to even like you. On the other end of the seesaw those who are annoyed by people should avoid them and attempt to not take the bait when they proffer something which normally would give you reason to provide an outburst. Often these outburst are disliked by more people than will admit it.

So, we have decided that both ends are partially to blame for most conflicts but what should the third party do?  Archbishop Desmond Tutu will tell us that taking neither side and turning a blind eye is the not the best thing you can do. I admit that I try to take the side of the oppressed whenever possible, the only time I avoid this is when I believe the aggressor is in the right; however if I see the aggressor is stepping over the line then I may switch sides. I find this very hard, especially when both sides expect me to be on their side as I’ve befriended both of them at some point.

I think that where you stand in any argument should depend heavily on your morals and how you feel, what you believe and not who your friends are.

Your opinions please. Kind regards, Robert.