A wise woman once told me “you can do anything for 6 months”. This woman is my mother. There are times in our lives that we don’t think we can ever make it through. Severe debt, crappy job, Divorces, deaths of friends and family, etc.  These things can be so overbearing and consume every aspect of your life forcing you into deep depressions, anger and fits of rage, and possibly much worse.

During a hardship during college, no money, late hours to get my grades back up, early class schedules, you know the drill.  I felt it all to be too much. During this time I called home a lot and in one of my phone conversation my mother enlightened me to the this concept.

When you think about it, 6 months is really not that long in the grand scheme of things. 6 months is spring and summer, it is less time then it takes to have a child (woman can do anything for 9 months after being pregnant!!!), if you live to be 80 it is 2.25% of your entire life. If a day is 80 years, 6 months is the equivalent to roughly a lunch break (54 minutes of 24hrs).

There is a catch though, there is always a catch.  You must work to change you circumstances within those 6 months. If you are at a crappy job and tough it out for 6 months without looking for a new job or learning a new skill, 6 months later you will still be in the same miserable position. If life doesn’t show you a light at the end of the tunnel, keep digging (hopefully upwards!) and the light will appear. If you just stare at the end of the tunnel the light will never appear and you will still be stuck in the dark, damp, tiny tunnel.

Is that enough metaphors for you all? This concept incorporates another post I have written that emphasizes “the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary”. Six months or less of hard work, a goal and even just the tiniest bit of motivation to change your routine, even a fraction, will get you through any hardship that life throws at you.

So stand up, get away from your computer for an hour or so, and do something different. Hopefully something positive that will break your daily routines and shake things up just enough to allow the glimmer of change, hope and happiness break through your daily grind. In turn, allowing you to eventually break free and be consumed by the warmth of positive change. I know, kind of cheesy and cliché, but at the same time, nothing is closer to the truth. In 6 months you will reminisce on the moment you initiated this change and feel all warm and fuzzy when you realize you have made it through in one piece.

There is this quote I found on the web, it had no reference or author.  I found it to be enlightening and embodies my very own work ethics. Humans started off with this mentality and as society grew only about 1-5% of the human population still maintain this discipline. 5% is being generous.

“The only place success comes before work is in the Dictionary”

Truer words have never been spoken. Some how the majority of the Human race developed this mentality that they deserve everything and need not work for anything. I get up everyday, I drive 60 miles to work and 60 mile back home. I go to work on time and I stay until the jobs (goals) for the day are completed. If I have to stay late, I do. If I have to leave and work later that night from home, I DO. I do not get paid over time, I only demand that others around me work as hard as I do, or at least half as hard as I do (I can’t expect too much).

I pay my taxes, I pay my insurances, I pay my mortgage and everything else you need to pay to live within society. I come up a little short some months and others, I come out on top. I live on the edge of my means, no more, no less. Things could be better, but things could be a hell-of-a-lot worse.

The one thing I do not do is… Blame the person next to me, expect the person next to me to pay for my expenses, my life style, my means. I know if I do not get out of bed every day and go to work, learn something new, advance my skill set, network within my industry or studies, I will not succeed. I will not sulk at the fact that Bill Gates makes more in 1 month then I will see in my entire life. I will not hate the person driving next to me in a Bently or the owner of a house down the street with more bedrooms and garages than me. They worked their asses off for it and deserve to spend their hard earned money any way they seem fit to do so.  So do I.

It is not up to anyone else to decide how I should spend my success. If I choose to donate to charities, then that is my right. It is not up to the government, my community, my fellow man to tell me how to spread my wealth, my success. Yes we are obligated to help our fellow man, HOWEVER, as my father so eloquently  puts it…

“I will not help you hurt yourself”

Giving my “success” to a mother of 4 going on 6 currently receiving tax dollar funded welfare, unmarried and unemployed by choice,  is not “helping” her. Teaching her a trade/skill, donating to a nursery school or school with before and after care programs, giving her a box of condoms even, is helping her. My money will only hurt her, her children and this society more (insert Him if you take offense to me using a woman as a reference). Equip these people to contribute to society and pretty soon you will have an epidemic of growth and success. Like… I know!!!! my God, what would we do if that were to happen???  I don’t know, maybe colonize mars, the moon, discover a new source of energy, etc., etc.

Now you may ask me, Is success just money to you? how do you weigh “Success”?  NO it is not just material, success is a goal or objective that you set to achieve for yourself. Whether it is quitting smoking, earning 100 dollars a day or donating some spare time to teach our youth. No matter what it is, when you set a goal you must work to achieve it and then and only then shall you succeed. Start with “Baby steps” set a daily goal, then set a weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. and work every day to succeed. You will gain confidence, strength, and happiness that could Inadvertently effect and change the world for the better. One success at a time.

I’m not kidding. Take these words to heart, for they are the hard truths of human-ish societies and will be the downfall of our species.

This has been bugging me lately, are Gods mortals?

The reason I ask this is because of all the stories of the past and no stories of today. Lets take the Bible, because that is what i know best (13 years of catholic school).

Thousands of years ago you read about a talking God, a vengeful God, a passionate God. God was right there by Mans’ side. Chatting it up with Abraham, Moses, Mary, etc., etc. He was flooding the world, parting seas, raining fire, saving babies from Death, and asking humans for proof of love and making people speak different languages (Tower of Babel). God was very, very involved with humans cursing the wicked, fighting the devil, teaching us morality…

You see, I think God has passed on. Why? The times we live in aren’t exactly peaceful. If there was ever a time for God to speak up it is now. Morality is falling to the wayside, innocents are dying constantly, diseases plague us, everyone speaks English… humanity has become an epidemic and not a blessing.

Where is God? Did he die? Did he start another project? Scientifically he should be dead. If he could speak to us then that means he is within our Time constraints (speed of sound). He would be 10,000 years old right now too. BUT WAIT… God created the universe… We have proven the universe to be roughly 11 billion years old. He is one old SOB!

Or is it every one of our years is one second of God’s life? He would be 3,055,556 hours old or 127,315 days old or 349 years old on Gods time. Still Old as hell. So is God or are Gods mortal? God created the universe, Egyptian, Roman, and Greek gods were derived of universal and earthly phenomenons. Modern humans found those gods to be Planets, stars, animals and energy. And we all know energy eventually dies off. And if everything is made of energy then everything must die off.

Answer: Gods are Mortal.

We are just a spec on a spec and probably even smaller than that. To try to put this in perspective you will have to be good with zeros.

First, how fast is light? It is about 186,282 miles per second. The closest star to us is our Sun at 93 million miles away, roughly 8 light minutes. The next closest star, our best chance for life after earth is Alpha Centauri (actually 3 stars) just 4.27 light years away. or in other words 5.88 trillion miles multiplied by 4.27. That is a tiny, tiny bit over 25,000,000,000,000 miles away. How many years away is that at say 17,000 mph (how fast the space shuttle orbits the earth). It would take 1,407,588,235.3 years to reach the next “sun”. That is 1.407 Billion-ish.

So we have the distance and we can see the star from earth but can the star see the earth. Alpha Centauri A is the biggest and is about 10% more massive than our Sun, with a radius about 23% larger. How big is our sun? It would take 109 Earths to stretch across the Sun, and it would take over one million Earths to fill it. The circumference of the earth at the equator is about 24,901.55 miles. The Sun’s circumference is 2,713,406 miles and Alpha Centauri is 3,337,489.4 miles in circumference. We are talking millions of miles around versus 10’s of thousands of mile around. Still not convinced we are nothing.

With the Hubble telescope we have taken Deep Field space pictures and stared at what we believe as of now, the edge of the known universe. How far did we see…. after 10 days of pictures with exposures for 15-40 minutes per shot taken in ultraviolet, blue, red, and infrared light as well, showed us 1,500 galaxies in a space the size of a dime 75 ft away at various stages of evolution. This image shows us galaxies 10 billion years into the past, perhaps less than one billion years after the universe’s birth in the Big Bang.

Once again, not even a spec of a spec… specs are galaxies. So what makes humans so special compared to everything else?

Think about it.

There are many reasons for war… love, power, money, but all have one thing in common. The human believes he is right because his moral and social code dictates this to be true. Moral code is engraved within the human mind by its peers and the morals are a socially acceptable collaboration of beliefs bestowed upon every generation, past, present and future, these in turn are deemed acceptable.

Since the dawn of civilized society religion has been at the root of war. Christians vs. Pegans, Muslim extremist vs. every thing else, etc. The inquisition was Catholicisms attempt to convert the world to one religion. Sound familiar? Nazis??? Countless have been killed over beliefs that are suppose to keep us peaceful, loving, and true to our fellow man.

How can a code of morality created to guide us to do the right thing be such a destructive tool and motivator for war. Easy, What is “right”? Who says what is right and wrong? who is right and wrong?

Your prayers have been answered… I will tell you what is right and from this you can bet your ass everything else is wong. A certain religious phrase pretty much nailed it on the head. All religion should have stopped right here.

“Do unto others as you would do unto yourself”

This simple phrase is the base for true and unconditional peace. If this was followed, “an eye for an eye” would be nulled. there would be no need for “an eye for an eye” because no eyes would have been lost to begin with. But wait, what if i am suicidal? I would kill myself so does that mean i can kill others? There is always an exception to the rule and this exception is… Do you have the “right” to take someones life or anything from another human without consent? In the purest form, NO.

If only it were that simple.

Religion is the pinnacle of human-ish Stupidity. Before you go off on a tirade because you probably thought i just said religion is stupid, first you must understand i am not saying religion is stupid. I am saying humans are stupid and created religion to compensate for what they cannot explain.

Religion in it’s truest form is a community of morally driven humans. It has nothing to do with wood and stone (churches). These started off as a safe haven to gather to share one’s beliefs. Churches could have been a fire, a bolder, mud hut, whatever. Then as trade was introduced to human culture and money and materials began to drive humanity, religion became costly. Wood and stones needed to be traded, stone workers and slaves had to be bought, religion now needed to make money. [link to elaborated article here]

Religion is also open to interpretation and this interpretation caused conflicts. No Human is the same or thinks exactly the same. Where one human sees good another may see bad and this is what caused the different religions to evolve (in a nutshell). Like Jehovah Witnesses and Catholics. Jehovahs think drinking wine is sin because it intoxicates the sacred body. Catholics drink it up like no others and are at no risk of sin (it may be hell the next morning though!). [Read more]

As time progresses, we have many tribes, societies, countries and humans making religions that conform to their societies and understandings. As the world’s human population grows and tribes, societies and countries bump into each other, their beliefs are shared. Some are accepted and others are insulting, neither believe there ideas are wrong, some may adapt others’ beliefs to their own, but none will change or conform their Religion. If you don’t believe in my God(s) you are a heathen, infantile, sinner, outcast and don’t deserve to be part of our society. See where this is going?

Life is simple and our brains made it complicated. These complications needed explanations, there has to be an answer for everything. The only way to control the human brain was to develop a couping mechanism for the unexplainable. Without this ability to coup we would go insane. Humans created a “Higher Power”, something that knew more then them and put their faith in that to solve the unexplainable. We gave it a name, a word, and this is where it all started to go downhill.

Religion is a free psychologists at best. A way to explain and work through the hurdles of life. It comforts us, it allows us to talk to ourselves without being deemed insane, it allows us the one uniquely human trait… to kill for beliefs and not just for food, territory or survival. We are insane, all of us.

Yes that is right, we are simply an animal, a mammal to be more exact. What is it that makes us so different from lions, tiger and bears? Our greatest strength and greatest weakness… Our brains. Over 10-13,000 years the human species has developed and mutated into what we are now. At first we looked almost like an ape, slightly more erect, but still an ape. our brains were small and way of life was that of the animal kingdom… eat sleep and procreate.

As the centuries passed, weather changed, the humans changed. Our brains grew and most importantly our Frontal lobe grew. Why is this so important? Because this is the part of the brain responsible for deduction, short term memory, etc. Before this growth, like the animal kingdom, we just did what was instinctual. Now all of the sudden we could analyze, remember, communicate and create. This is our downfall.

As you will see throughout this site, our brain is our biggest problem. The fact that there has been such a long period of stable weather which has allowed us to evolve in an non-typical fashion. Stack our seemingly unique intellectual prowess on top and who needs an ice age, a colliding galaxy, a dwarf star dying, etc. We have no problems using our big brains to do natures work for her!