tagged w/ The Human Condition
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"Americans"
is a short, public service film starring Sean Penn and Kid Rock, directed by Jameson Stafford. The goal of the film is to tear down the one-dimensional political stereotypes portrayed by the media by confronting them head on. It reminds us that what really matters is that we're all Americans, with diverse thoughts, opinions and stances on issues. We are millions of unique, individual parts, the sum of which comprise a whole that is the shining beacon of freedom throughout the world.
The film reminds us to be proud of our differences, and to never forget that we're all in this together as Americans."Americans"
is a short, public service film starring Sean Penn and Kid... more
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A Swedish couple ended up 400 miles away from their intended destinaton after they made a small typo whilst inputting the name into their GPS unit.
The tourists had intended to go to the beaches of the Italian island of Capri but headed to the town of Carpi instead.
"It's hard to understand how they managed it. I mean, Capri is an island," said Carpi spokesman.
Well manage it, they did!
( Picture: Ford Capri - A. E. Wolfe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cars-redcapri-blackpool-amoswolfe.jpg )A Swedish couple ended up 400 miles away from their intended destinaton after they... more
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The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education; money, circumstances, failures, successes or even what other people think or say and do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home... a relationship
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.
We cannot change our past.
We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.
We cannot change the inevitable.
The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude
... I am convinced that an individual’s life is 10% what happens to them, and 90% is how they react to it.
And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.
I've been wrestling with this issue for a while. I'm not certain what the actual answer is. It's very closely related to the topic of "free will" -- how much choice do we really have? It's possible that we have no real choice at all, that our "intuitively obvious" feeling that we do have a choice is really just an illusion created by the impossibility of actually knowing all the factors that coalesce and "conspire" at each and every moment to determine what our choice will be. All those factors are not knowable until the instant a choice is made -- and all the factors may well be unknowable, and so we may not even be able to choose… when a decision is made.
Some are in charge of their attitudes. Possibly those who were not subjected to extreme cruelty at a young age. Those who were not beaten, molested, abandoned...Those who were not indoctrinated with dogma early in their childhood. Those who were allowed to think and feel without coercion. But in almost all of us we find varying degrees of an attitude about many things. It is almost impossible to start out with a tabula rasa. Everything from genetics to our environment conspires to defeat the reasoning mind which allows unprejudiced choice.
People do try to force their opinions on one though. I have actually had people complain because so-and-so never agreed with them and thus was thought incapable of logic. To some folk there is always only one answer to life's problems and they alone have it. A clear sign of a person with poor communication skills.
For those that have dysfunctional childhoods and realize it, they have a hard battle to be able to change their own attitudes. Attitudes are instant and they're not from rational thought. For a long time, they still feel righteous and have a need to consciously be replaced with something better. It takes a long time for it to come naturally and even longer to realize attitudes should apply to one’s true self when being formed. You wind up living in a world of misguided social assumptions devoid of rational conclusions.
We're not blank slates when we're born. Depending on wiring and brain chemistry, a new person perceives and reacts to his world differently than the next person. There's probably more random chance involved than we would like to believe and less people to blame.
If we "mature", later decisions about our lives are simply influenced by earlier decisions -- we're a little smarter because we notice the consequences of earlier and often bad judgments, so we make some adjustments.
Even here, though, we can debate whether we're really making a choice; whether the consequences of earlier decisions are now determining what later decisions are or actually forcing us to make a new "choice" because we wish to avoid repeating the same mistake. So it is with attitude.
For some reason, I've always been relatively optimistic, relatively upbeat, and relatively happy -- and this has always seemed pretty effortless, like it's a genetic thing. I'm not sure how much control I really have over that -- though, whether or not I have any control over it for it absolutely affects how folks react to me, and has always had a generally positive effect on my life. So I absolutely agree that attitude affects one's life -- I don't know how much control I really have over it.
This whole concept of attitude is used allot in support groups. I could not conceive of a life without alcohol, even though I was dying of it. I looked at those who were recovering and had become joyful in their attitude as mislead, brainwashed and just plain stupid. I now call this attitude one of being terminally "hip". I was not like them, I could never be another fresh pressed cookie right out the factory.
Why do people that drink heavily, think it's a crucial defining characteristic of their being; is beyond me.Years of drinking everyday made me see the world through the wrong end of a telescope. All I had to do was to admit that I was powerless over alcohol, and surrender to the fact that I could not stop drinking. Me? Surrender? Never! I simply used my will power. That and 2 bucks will buy me a beer. No, it really is a long and tedious struggle before anyone surrenders to the fact that they could not have "just a few beers". Just as I am convince myself that I am the Captain of my Soul I am very aware that I am at the mercy of my doubts. Being at the top of the loop of life or the bottom depends entirely on my ability to orient myself. Some days are harder than others.
Our life's experiences have an impact on our attitude but only up to a point.
However, as we become fully mature adults, we should be able to rationalize our past experiences, let them go, and take charge of our attitude. Maybe I should say, ideally, we should be able to rationalize.....
Each of us is simultaneously captain...and captive....of his own ship.
Although I don't think the ingrained attitudes necessarily come from indoctrination (at least nothing deliberate), abuse or even from any kind of parenting. Many are just from life's circumstances. Good and bad.
Something my mom said a long time ago, ‘history is full of 'perfect people', trouble is they are all dead;' helped me understand life involves allot of letting go in order to grow but knowing what to let go is the key....It can only be done from within.
The 'good life' doesn't leave as many obvious markers. They're what gives children confidence that they can take into their adult years. We teach our children they deserved to be loved. But they learn what they shouldn't put up with. All these things make up the attitudes they carry as adults. If your mom handled things calmly and with good cheer, her daughter is allot more likely to, etc.
You are the reason for your happiness and sorrow, not others and especially NOT those that give up their own joy so you can be informed and live happy ...
http://youtu.be/gJGQHCC62b0The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to... more
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New research suggests that more money makes people act less human. Or at least less humane.
In a windowless room on the University of California, Berkeley, campus, two undergrads are playing a Monopoly game that one of them has no chance of winning. A team of psychologists has rigged it so that skill, brains, savvy, and luck—those ingredients that ineffably combine to create success in games as in life—have been made immaterial. Here, the only thing that matters is money.
One of the players, a brown-haired guy in a striped T-shirt, has been made “rich.” He got $2,000 from the Monopoly bank at the start of the game and receives $200 each time he passes Go. The second player, a chubby young man in glasses, is comparatively impoverished. He was given $1,000 at the start and collects $100 for passing Go. T-Shirt can roll two dice, but Glasses can only roll one, limiting how fast he can advance. The students play for fifteen minutes under the watchful eye of two video cameras, while down the hall in another windowless room, the researchers huddle around a computer screen, later recording in a giant spreadsheet the subjects’ every facial twitch and hand gesture.
T-Shirt isn’t just winning; he’s crushing Glasses. Initially, he reacted to the inequality between him and his opponent with a series of smirks, an acknowledgment, perhaps, of the inherent awkwardness of the situation. “Hey,” his expression seemed to say, “this is weird and unfair, but whatever.” Soon, though, as he whizzes around the board, purchasing properties and collecting rent, whatever discomfort he feels seems to dissipate. He’s a skinny kid, but he balloons in size, spreading his limbs toward the far ends of the table. He smacks his playing piece (in the experiment, the wealthy player gets the Rolls-Royce) as he makes the circuit—smack, smack, smack—ending his turns with a board-shuddering bang! Four minutes in, he picks up Glasses’s piece, the little elf shoe, and moves it for him. As the game nears its finish, T-Shirt moves his Rolls faster. The taunting is over now: He’s all efficiency. He refuses to meet Glasses’s gaze. His expression is stone cold as he takes the loser’s cash.
Continues at link above.New research suggests that more money makes people act less human. Or at least less... more
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I'm taking a break from political satire for a while.
A lot of people I see remind me of David Lynch's comic strip, "The Angriest Dog in the World":
"The dog who is so angry he cannot move.
He cannot eat.
He cannot sleep.
He can just barely growl.
...Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis."
Peace.I'm taking a break from political satire for a while.
A lot of people I see... more
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Magnolia - Aimee Mann - Wise Up
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Humanity has always longed for immortality, but should we abandon our quest? British political philosopher John Gray suggests in his new book that we should, and learn how to embrace our mortality.
Would you want to live forever?Humanity has always longed for immortality, but should we abandon our quest? British... more
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Sandy and sun-kissed beaches, pristine sea water, and picturesque island sceneries are among the tourist attractions that lure visitors. But, have you ever wondered that there are surprisingly horrendous cities destroyed by subcultures of pollution, gangsters and/or poverty? These places have been considered as the most polluted, horrible, miserable and violent places in the world.Sandy and sun-kissed beaches, pristine sea water, and picturesque island sceneries are... more
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- a photographic gallery ,....of,...."odd", from around the world
ABOVE ^
-Zukhro, an employee of the city zoo, walks with Vadik, an 18-month-old male lion, on the territory of the zoo in the capital Dushanbe, January 20, 2011. Employees take the lion from its cage to have a promenade along the territory two times a week while holding a piece of meat to attract Vadik's attention so it walks nearby.
REUTERS/Nozim Kalandarov
19 more photos at
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http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTXWQL6#a=1- a photographic gallery ,....of,...."odd", from around the world
ABOVE ^... more
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ultimately, we are all residents of the same globe and share one thing in common: the human condition. The games this year have gotten both sides of controversy, but amid all that rumble, this is just a nice story to listen & see and let it sink in nicely.
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very poetic and inspirational. nice ride!
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BBC /Meet Beijing resident Meng Jie, who's cycling around China on a bicycle in the shape of the five Olympic rings.
"I believe the five rings bring the whole world together under the sky"
"Everywhere I go people are interested in the bicycle and gather around it"ultimately, we are all residents of the same globe and share one thing in common: the... more
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A catastrophic water shortage could prove an even bigger threat to mankind this century than soaring food prices and the relentless exhaustion of energy reserves, according to a panel of global experts at the Goldman Sachs "Top Five Risks" conference...
A catastrophic water shortage could prove an even bigger threat to mankind this... more
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Sometimes I feel so jaded by the way things are. the perpetual vicious circle the entire world is swept up in sometimes makes me want to surrender to my inner apathy and just not care anymore...
it's sad, but it's the truth.
here's a joke: how can you tell if a politician is lying? their lips are moving.
see, that's funny. it's only funny because we're all so jaded we've reduced our frustrations and angst to one-liners that we all laugh at and subtely, sadly agree with. Sometimes I feel so jaded by the way things are. the perpetual vicious circle the... more
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When reflecting on the current state of our world and the environment, I always go back to Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech because the words are so very true. And I believe that once we read them and take them seriously we will reach the higher consciousness we need to reach in order to solve our problems. This interpretation of his words is one I particularly appreciate.When reflecting on the current state of our world and the environment, I always go... more
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