well, it's currently 2:20 in the morning, march 17th, thursday.. can't sleep because i got loads on my mind.. i suppose this blog i only started for litfili is quite helpful in that sense: it helps me organize my thoughts.
i'd probably tell you that i can't sleep because i have been asleep since dinner, but who am i BS-ing? :)) it's a curse! my brain just won't shut the hell down!
reminds of this one discussion long ago in some class. that humans always strive to look for or have the best things in life. no matter what we have, we are never really content. we only realize we had the best all along when we have lost it.
"never is love's true depth known until the pain of separation."
what do we look for? things that we can't live without or things that we can't bear to lose? they may sound the same, but when you think about it, they are way different. the first entails survival: what can't we survive without. the second is more sentimental. i only realized the difference fairly recently.. thanks to a series of unfortunate events caused by yours truly.
why is human nature just so complicated? say one thing, mean another. do one thing, want another outcome. i'm boggled, but i do it. don't know why. and i thought i was pretty straightforward. i used to condemn those who never mean what they and say what they mean, then oh-hoh! i joined the club. i used to hate people like my dad, now i realize we're one and the same.
curse be the ramblings of a 20-year-old nerd! but hey, at least i got it out.. :D
first off, i'd like to say this. there is no black and white for me really. just loads of gray areas about right or wrong/ good and evil. i think that what is good is defined by the 'winners' while the 'losers' are forever put in a bad light. i dunno, it just came to me one day that what if our perceptions of what is right and just are really just that: perceptions. i don't make sense but let me put it this way: what if say the Nazis won that war ages ago. wouldn't they say that they were the good guys who triumphed over the other people fighting a good thing?
with that said, let me answer the question.are all humans animals when it comes down to it? well, technically, we are animals. we're just a more evolved and complex life form. but we started from the apes remember? we may have changed a good deal, but one thing we have kept inside through all the generations is our survival instinct. be honest. who wants to die? remember the SAW movies? they were given choices: kill another/face pain or die. they chose the former. why?? because we usually put ourselves before others. it's survival of the fittest out there. it's like the hunger games, but the arena is much bigger, and the prize of winning is much more valuable.
we are all competitive as hell. who's smarter, more beautiful, fitter, things like that. if whatever we have is essential to our survival, we use it. we hone it to be a better tool for us. if something brings us down, it must be terminated. say i had a headache which dulls my thinking, i take aspirin. right?
on a more dramatic level, i'd say that yeah, i'd probably do something 'illegal' to survive. i think the justification of the act depends on the context of why you did it. like dom's example on stealing food if you can't afford it when you are extremely hungry. i mean, fuck, i'm starving to death! ethics/morals are not my biggest issue at the moment! or miss dianne's example about the kids being prostitutes so they can feed their family. their parents pushed them in that direction. they think it's right. they think it's relatively easy money. i have dealt with kids like them when i was nursing student. trust me, some of them think it's the right thing to do because they help with putting food on the table. the parents probably think along the same lines. because they are desperate. at least we have comforts they don't; that's why we think the acts are so repulsive. but what if we were stripped of our creature comforts? would we stoop to that level? you'd be thinking about living in the here and now, not wondering about consequences of actions i suppose.
yeah, sure, we have laws and all that. but what are they really? they're just made so those on top can stay on top. nobody follows the law here. c'mon. take a look around. even the enforcers themselves don't follow the law. they were made so that we can call ourselves civilized. we have a government, we have rules, we have structure/order. it's just a glittery facade that separates us from other species: we have 'laws' written down.
the girl in the story killed her father. i still stand by my view that the bastard deserved the bashing to the head. technically, his life is in the hands of the daughter anyways since she saved him from the soldiers. and he didn't even care about it! "waiting daw". so she did sort of have the right to do whatever she pleases with his life. i mean, killing him is a bit over, but a guess all the pain just built up. the father was always beating them up, and then she had to sell herself to free his sorry ass. all that trauma and psychological doodah is definitely gonna make you crack. she's 15! that's her way of getting rid of the problem. i think their family would do just well without the dad.
i mean, i'd kill if it meant survival for my family. my top priority (as always) is my mom. she's the one exception to my rule of "ako muna". she always comes first for me, no matter what. mama's girl. pft.
wow. we've all experienced this one way or another. humans are just notorious for rarely looking past the outside appearance in making judgments. i get flack just for being Filipino actually. like if i'm in America, everybody would be like "oh, look.. a flip.. whore/maid." so that's just annoying. i'm actually scared to go to hong kong now for fear of being called a terrorist.
i suppose you will never really know how a person is really like unless you've seen them out of their element. a lot of people are good at faking how they act because they know what society deems as right and nice, so that's how they are. 'plastic', they're called. just wait until they're under pressure or faced with something not in their routine: they just might crack.
i remember this time when i was in 5th grade or something. everybody knows that i'm a book worm so i own a lot of books. the guidance counselor asked me if she could borrow my copy of Harry Potter 2. i lent it to her because i thought she was decent and she's old enough to respect property, especially a book i told her was sent to me from New York. plus she's been guidance counselor since i was in 1st grade, so i thought what the hell. i lent it to her. this is what happened. it took her AGES to give the book back. "naiwan daw". then when she finally gave it back, it looked like shit. the spine was creased in the middle, pages were yellow and dog-eared, there was a soy sauce stain on one page. it looked like it got ran over, then pissed on, then thrown around. I WAS SO PISSED. everybody knows i'm careful with books! up to now, i haven't been able to replace HP2 coz i'm slightly broke, so i can't buy the hardcover one (everything else i have is hardcover). it also never goes on sale. pft.
another time was when i was still in UPM. i was a fan of this arcade game called Wangan. so i made friends there who were also players. they were cool at first. masarap kasama. then a friend (who was in the same Wangan team as me) asked to borrow my cell. i lent him my old cell. he never gave it back coz he sold it (he was strapped for cash). apparently he stole things from our other teammates also. the females were nice. i thought they were mahinhin. then they realized i had loads of male wangan dudes asking me out. they turned all beastly on me. they ignored me, when back then we were tight. BITCH ALERT.
nowadays, i think i can tell a fake from a real person. at least i'm relatively better at it. i can tell which ones are real friends and those who only know my name when they need something (which is a hell of a lot of the people at school). but yeah, welcome to my life here. i'm just 'you', 'pst', or 'miss'.
about the variations from modern life, i'd say this story was about how a lot of things are more accepted now.. you know? like being overly forward with your intentions, or a woman doing just fine on her own without a 'prince charming'. remember how in fairy tales, the women were always soooo dumb? like they couldn't do so well on their own and how they seem so shallow minded? it's like they were programmed to be so helpless. which is why i don't like fairy tales much. this was the mindset up until the last century when women finally started realizing their strength. it's different from the other 2 stories. they are all modern, and the spinster and games chicks were complicates as hell, but the spinster had no issues with communicating how she feels. she was pretty forward with her interest by being at that bar every thursday, and also with her disillusionment when she left his skinny ass behind. so yeah. the other girls were just beating around the proverbial bush,.
