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Today, I am procrastinating. I am procrastinating from something that I actually really need to do. I have four hours left in which to do it. So what did I do instead? I did my filing. I am nothing if not a contradiction - hideously all over the place when it comes to deadlines and doing stuff, hyper-organised with all other aspects of life. Apart from neatness. But anyway.

Whilst doing my filing I came across something that I just had to share. It's an assignment from my AS level Economics course - so, from 2003. Six years ago. Hastily moving on from the elderly feelings that provokes, it was a set of questions that I can only now guess at, but the answers are good. I remember that when I wrote them, I was pissed off about the general state of education. Yeah, there are flaws. I was seventeen.

1. What is the purpose of education and who should pay for it?

The purpose of education is a complex matter that I cannot easily explain. First and foremost I believe that present education is simply in place in order to assist young people to pass the exams and gain the pieces of paper that they need in order to qualify for a university place and therefore a job. A sheep could gain a place at Oxford University if it has the relevant GCSEs, AS and A2 levels (and could give an okay interview). This means that the real purpose of education, which was established many, many centuries ago, has become clouded by the idea that "we only need to know this" in order to pass an exam. This is backed up by the fact that many teachers now simply teach what is relevant to gain the piece of paper that says "you have passed!". This is called a syllabus.

Education came about as a way for people to learn the facts that governed their lives, to understand the world around them, to be able to gain jobs and to increase the output of an economy. Therefore it entails individual benefits as well as social benefits. Individual benefits are that the person who has been educated now can understand and do things, gain a job and earn their living. Social benefits are that due to many people gaining these individual benefits, the economy will prosper and grow and society will become more cultured and civilised.

Educations therefore contains a mixture of benefits while it performs its tasks to inform, instruct and inspire. This raises the question of who should pay for it, as, like everything in life, this wonderful concept is not free and gratis. Should the individual pay, or society as a whole? As both are receivers of the benefits, how can a government choose?

Education is, at the moment, classed as a merit good, meaning that its social benefits outweight its individual benefits. More people benefit, therefore, from me being able to write this than I do. If it as taken as read then, that society does benefit more from education than the educated individual does, then it is logical that society should be the one to pay, through taxation, as in the current climate. This also solves the potential problem of the under-privileged individual who cannot afford to be put through education.

However, it creates the problem of teacher strikes due to low wages, decrepit school buildings and generally lower teaching standards than if there were incentives to gain the best. This is why private schools are popular - they don't just get the best results because they can afford to create horrendous uniforms. Private schooling is successful in the measures that it exists in at the moment; if the entire school system was privatised, not only would the lower classes be quite possibly unable to afford it, but there would be no problems solved as each school would still operate at its previous efficiency, or lower. And if private schools were abolished, the rate of economic growth could lessen due to the decline in the most efficient form of education.

It's a no-win situation, therefore, I am pleased to announce that the present education system is probably as good as it gets.

2. Does free education exist?

There is no such thing as free education. Everyone pays taxes towards education, therefore everyone pays for it. Apart from tax evaders, of course.

3. Is education the same as housing?

There are two possible (legal) ways to live in a house:- to own it, or to rent it. The owning is a direct payment to cover its cost, while renting is an indirect payment. This is not unlike education, where private schooling is represented by direct payment for the service, and state schooling is the indirect payment through taxation.

However, by implying that the two are the same, this is saying that the child who receives a private education actually owns it, unlike the state child, who just rents it. Since everyone who receives any form of education is presumed to actually remember what they have been taught, it isn't really fair to say that just because they have paid for it indirectly they're going to forget it all. It is a fact that most state schooling is inferior to private education, and therefore might not have the lasting impression that it could do, but at the end of the day it is still a person's own education. Therefore, apart from the similarity between methods of payment, education is not like housing.

I was given an A+, by far the highest mark in the class, the rest of whom had produced textbook answers weighing up pros and cons and lasting entire sides of A4. It's obvious, but: having opinions is a good thing. But, taking the time to form opinions is (again obviously), even better. Anybody can have an opinion. A lot of the time these are influenced by parents, peers, environment, the news, celebrities, the Daily Mail, etc.

I often find myself wishing that people would just take the time to think about why they think the things that they do. I know I never used to. As an example, I classed myself as a Conservative for many, many years, simply because my parents were. I had no idea what being a Conservative was. I didn't even know what I thought about ideas connected with politics and how the country ran. These days, I don't align myself with any political party at all. I vote for whoever has what I want at the time. I vote for the things that I believe in. I will never vote for any party that is against abortion, for the death penalty, etc. I would probably vote for a party that was going to increase taxes, if it was for a good reason. I hate council tax, but I appreciate what it pays for.

I despise the BNP, but I'm fully for them to be able to continue to exist. Who am I to restrict freedom of speech? To tell people they can't believe what they want to believe? To think what they want to think?

Now, thinking about thinking what they want to think...that's what I wish people would do. "All these Poles and Pakis are taking all our English jobs for English people!" is not a valid reason for having pro-BNP opinions. Think about why people protest against troops returning from Iraq instead of telling them to "fuck off back to your own country!".

Obviously, my having put my opinions into a piece of schoolwork is not on the same par as putting work into your opinions and reactions. I just wish more people would. Wouldn't the world be a happier place?

< /idealism>

Current Music: Friendly Fires - Lovesick

There are certain questions that I just don't like answering. I don't mean anything ridiculously personal on a hygiene or sexual or any other could-be-construed-as-icky level (although, of course, I don't like answering those either). I mean questions more along the lines of:

Tell me a bit about yourself.

What would you say your greatest achievement is?

What are your greatest strengths?

Interview questions. The same as many people, I'd wager. Evil questions, especially the first one. Hell, I'm just so crap at talking about myself, that whenever anyone asks anything like "Tell me about yourself!" the first thing that springs to mind (after a Homer Simpson-esque blank fuzz lasting easy minutes) is always "I like cheese.". And you can imagine how well that would go down in an interview. Unless I was interviewing to work in a cheese factory. Or to be a cheesemonger. Is there such a thing as a cheesemonger?

Anyway. So, yes. There are questions that are not easy to answer, for various reasons or other, and so I don't like them. Mainly I'm crap at thinking of things to say in reply to them, unless I'm on the defensive. Which, again, not so much a great interview technique.

But then, then there are questions that I just plain don't like to even entertain having answers to. And these tend to all involve the concept of time travel.

What is your biggest regret?

If you could go back to any point of your life and start all over again from there, where would you go to?

What, if you could, would you have done differently?

And so on, and so on. A lot of people know that I tend to struggle with the ideas behind time travel (and time in general), but this isn't even anything to do with that. It's more to do with a stubborn satisfaction with my life in the current moment. An odd way to describe it? Probably.

It goes something like this. If things I did in the past were changed, if actions or ideas or events were seen as deserving of regret and open to alteration, then everything else would change too. Entire swathes of my life, my experiences, my sadnesses, my joys, my achievements and losses would be gone forever. How scary is that? The complete unknown of what could have occurred had I just not spilled that glass of water over him, or not fallen asleep on that sofa? And these are only relatively small implications - what if I had gone to a different university? Or started a different job? Or chose to remain living in a different part of the country?

It terrifies me. The possibility that I could quite easily not be sat here now typing this, not knowing the people I know, not having the amazing friends that I do, not being quite precisely who I am right at this moment. Of course, I do know that, in any one of the thousands of millions of alternate realities of my life that could exist, many of them are actually likely to be even better than this one. Maybe somewhere I'm already a millionnaire and my silly notion of saving the best till last actually worked. Naturally, maybe somewhere I'm a raging alcoholic living on the streets with nobody around me but a slightly tame rat that doesn't always bite my fingers, but sometimes just gives a friendly nip.

So it is the general fear of the complete unknown that prevents me from answering any question like that. Because just contemplating how different things could be if one tiny event was different is...shudder-worthy. For example, here is something I made long ago to justify why I should be happy that a certain someone (Person B) existed inside my life:

If Friend A hadn't moved in with Person B...

There wouldn't have been so many great days out or weekends away, including Muse at Wembley
Therefore I would most likely still be in a past relationship
Therefore I wouldn't have become so much closer to other friends and lived with them
Therefore I wouldn't be in my current job, or have my current friends, or be living where I currently live...

Obviously it's a lot more complex than that simplification (after all, only I know all the reasonings behind it all) but you get the gist. It creeps me out. I could be so stuck and unhappy right now. But, I am not. And so, to any question like those above, I generally answer: "Mehh...I don't like to think like that, because everything would be so different, and I'm happy where I am, thank you."

Although... I'm pretty sure, like I said above, that there could be situations I could be in where I'd be happier. But that wouldn't involve huge epic changes to my current life. As in, everything would be pretty much the same...but better. And these would be reached not by changes of events, or people, but by changes in behaviour. My behaviour. This is why I started writing this. Considering past mistakes or humiliations is not something I often go in for - I like to skim past quickly and keep moving - but, I have to admit, that at many points in my life I have Behaved. So. Badly. The kind of badly that you'd cringe at if you saw it in a film. The kind of thoughtless, reckless badly that reverberates through time and completely unsubtly shapes how people think about you.

I'm pretty convinced that if I hadn't acted in certain ways, everything right now would be completely the same but also completely different. Is that possible? Well, let's use my above method:

If I hadn't often acted like a complete slut...

People wouldn't remember me as a complete slut
I wouldn't have any hot flashes of shame every now and then
I'd feel a lot better about myself.

See how it doesn't affect anything major? It would have made a lot of relationships with people easier. Less stressful. I would possibly have even more good friends. Like Person B from above.

So, those three questions again that I previously, in the context of events, would never like to answer?

What is your biggest regret?
My past variously bad behaviours.

If you could go back to any point of your life and start all over again from there, where would you go to?
I still don't think I could cope with living from age 17 onwards again. But that's where.

What, if you could, would you have done differently?
I would be a nice, non-mental, non-slapperish girl.

Even then, though, would I be the same person I am now? Sure, my life might be the same, but me myself...I have a feeling I'd be completely different.

That thought also terrifies me. And intrigues me. In equal measures. It intriguifies me.

So what exactly does it mean when I'm happy to experiment with myself and my personality, but am determined to hold onto the people and events around me?

Current Mood: tired

I've been thinking a lot this past week about martyrdom. Not as in saints and Joan of Arc burning to a crispy death - no, more along the lines of that passive-aggressive, guilt-tripping excruciatingly annoying behaviour that some people exhibit at certain points in life. One relative of mine is extremely good at this. Problems are flaunted with a degree of unhealthy pride by this person, said problems are publicised far and wide, and the problems apparently have zero chance of ever being resolved. The world is completely against this person. They continue with situations that aggravate the problem. They choose to remain stuck steadfast in the midst of their plight. They even offer themselves up to being taken advantage of, just so that they can then complain about it.

I generally like to think that I am not of this mentality. Sure, I like to moan. One particular friend likes to say that I only ever visit him in order to moan. But this is normally about trivial things - the temperature, a filthy sofa, the smell of grease hanging in the air...yes, I am aware this is making me sound like an old woman. I'm clearly born to crochet whilst surrounded by my cats. But anyway. I like to think that when faced with problems, or a situation that hurts me, I've learned to take the steps to get myself out of it. To make things better. To find the money to last the month, to stop the endless cycle of emotional battering, to find job satisfaction.

Except, I have noticed with horror over the past few months that a few of these martyr-like tendencies are creeping into my everyday routine. I actually used the phrase: "Well, nobody else is going to do the late shifts, and I'm going to end up doing them all anyway, so why don't we just skip straight to that?" the other week. And immediately felt like vomiting all over myself.

It's not just that. I'm also struggling against the notion that, in some areas of my life, I am
completely depended on by others and they would be quite lost without me. Not being a particularly egotistical person, I can only conclude that this is springing from a fledgling martyr complex. And I don't like it. One tiny bit.

The nipping of this all in the bud handily corresponds with the fact that, as recently mentioned in my personal journal, in my work-related "Personal Development Plan" (doesn't corporate wank make you gag?) I have been recommended some reading material. Of the type that I would never read. Ever. In the past, when having read pages from books like the one that has been recommended to me, I've spent the entire time simultaneously laughing and crying at the sickening, OTT tragedy. Take When I Say No, I Feel Guilty. I read a few parts of this last year at a friend's house. I will never forget it. Not because it changed my life, or gave me anything that I would ever consider using, but because of a particularly hilarious lesson it told in how to use persistence to get what you want. A rather unfortunate man bought a hella load of meat at his supermarket and then forgot to take it with him. As you do. When he returned to the store, the employees were reluctant to give him more meat. As you would fully expect. Cue this man constantly repeating the refrain: "I want my meat." To everything. In everything. For example: "I have not lost it, I forgot to take it from the checkout, and I want my meat." "It is not in my car, I want my meat." "I was just explaining to this clerk what happened, and I want my meat." Over and over again. Apparently this is called the "broken record technique". Apparently it works wonders. Apparently it makes you sound like an rude, ignorant jerk. But this is the same with all books classed in the "self-help" category. They make me cringe. They make me feel patronised and uncomfortable, with their middle-aged uncle type humour and the self-satisifed air that they radiate.

And so it was with an extreme sense of foreboding that I decided to actually try the recommended reading. Which was, of course, that most famous of self-help books (apart from the Mars/Venus thing), The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

The introduction was unbearable. Really. I read it through squinted eyes at about 1am, which can't have helped, but I judged it was the right (ridiculous) hour of the day to spend on a task like this. The story about the author and his wife helping their son develop by letting him be independent and not coddling him was rather blatently obvious to me. I'm not a stony, detached person by any means. But surely it's logical that for anyone to fully develop into themselves they must be allowed to do this themselves? Anyway. I enjoyed the story about the ship and the lighthouse - at least, I would have done if it hadn't already been plastered all over the internet in a far funnier way and if Snopes hadn't already proven it false. By the time I got onto golden eggs and production capability, I was so ready to give up. My thoughts ran thus:

This guy is telling me to look after things, or they won't give good results? Are you freakin' kidding me? Are these 15 million readers severely backwards or something? How is this not obvious??

So much for the introduction. However, the first chapter - rather, the first Habit - has, I must say...some pretty good points.

Obviously they are points along the lines of "well, I do know that", but they're things that yes, you may know, you may feel are common sense...but do you ever actually think about or put into practice? As an example (something that Dumbledore would approve of) is that we always have a choice. There is always a choice of how you can react to something, how you can respond to something. It's so easy to take the negative response and be angry about something - changes at work, the way someone around you behaves. But, ultimately, surely it makes more sense to take these things and instead process them into working well for you? Say we run with the changes at work example (and there are constantly many, many changes at my work) and it means that something you've been working on now has to be done a different way. You have to entirely re-do it. I know my immediate response would be to moan, to be annoyed, to be negative about the change. But what exactly is that achieving? How exactly does that benefit me? Not at all, obviously. The time and energy put into the negativity could have instead be channelled into making the change work for myself. There is zero point in choosing to be angry and negative when one could choose to just get on with it and produce a good end result with minimal time and effort. There is zero point in moaning about something outside of one's circle of influence. I have become so good at not letting things that I can't control bother me...why can't I do this?

This does seem like common sense, and yet it's something that I can personally, hand on heart, say that I rarely, if ever do. Straight away I'm realising that, actually, this book is making so damn good points. Another of which is that of: why blame other people and situations for making you feel bad, or for producing bad results? Surely it makes more sense to instead say, yes, this person did this/this thing happened, but, never mind, I'm just going to get on with it and take the steps to make a better situation for myself? Because, as I mentioned above, I do tend to think that I'm quite good at changing bad or unfavourable situations. But am I really? Looking at it from this perspective, I'm not all that sure that I am. The negativity is strong in this one.

I want to be someone who can be cheerful, someone who is not ruled by reacting to the things around them. Someone who can generate their own good mood, their own good results, their own positive situations. Do I ever do this? No. It's a cloudy day; I feel down. I have a bad month at work; I blame circumstance. I feel stressed; I stay stressed and lose sleep, get ill, feel like crap.

And so this links back into the martyr complex that I am desperate to suppress before it rages out of control and I start pimping myself out as the Office Gimp and concludes with me trying to strike a match on a pile of now useless paper work that I have strapped myself to. I feel taken advantage of: I need to stop wallowing in the cycle of letting myself be taken advantage of and simultaneously offering myself up to it. I need to observe the situation and take responsibility to use my influence to change it for the better.

Buzz words ahoy. But I really do feel as though this, these things that I have learned from this one chapter, is the only way to get rid of the Joan of Arc feeling. And, at the same time, to help me start being the person that I want to be. Don't get wrong, I don't want to not be me. I'd just quite like to be a less moody me. A more responsible me. A more proactive me.

Of course, I haven't even finished the sodding book yet. It could take a huge nose dive and I could end up demanding a full refund. At least, I could if I'd actually paid for it. And I don't think I'm likely to start buying self-help books by the wheelbarrow-load. As I've said, a lot of it is common sense. It's just...there are quite clearly a lot of things that are common sense that still elude people in their day-to-day lives. Now, if there were a self-help book for squeezing toothpaste from the bottom of the tube instead of the middle, or putting people first for a change if you expect them to do something for you, then I definitely know some people that would benefit from those. And of course, I could definitely use one on how to not be so freakin' negative all the time...

Oh, silly me.

And, just because this seems to tie in nicely, I was tagged to do this:

Make a list of five questions you wish someone would ask you about yourself. If someone comments to your post and officially asks the question, you must answer.

What do you actually want to do with your life?
Why are you so sarcastic all the time?
Why do you love making lists so much?
Do you have any regrets?
Which of your friends have you learned the most from?

I chose all of these because I don't actually know the answers to them, offhand. If someone asks me though, I'm going to have to think about it and therefore know the answers. Logical.

Current Mood: in need of shoulder rub
Current Music: Cut Copy - Feel The Love

This is something that's been bugging me for a few days now. And lolloping around in my head. I tend not to let things out of my head very often because of how once they actually start being written down, they mushroom in size by about 515 squared and sprout more side-bits and questions than there were originally answers, and then I get horribly confused and have to go away and be quiet in a corner.

But this...worked. Kind of.

Obviously, first of all I need to set the scene. My friend and colleague Rubina is Muslim - born in England, from a Pakistani family, proudly Muslim. She's also quite beautiful, and, hell, she has the most gorgeous long thick glossy ALIVE hair I've ever seen in real life. She's funny, chatty, warm, open, and extremely sassy and strong. Occasionally this will come across as petulance...occasionally it just downright is petulance, I guess. But I have never, hand on heart, met someone who can cheer me up and encourage me as much as she can. She's one of those people who always has (vomit-inducing as it may sound) the exact right, warming, cheering, strengthening words to say to anyone who is having a bad day. She's also one of the most generous people I've ever met - even going out of her way to buy me a scarf I liked (without me having asked or hinted - as if I'd do that) as a surprise on one occasion.

And yet, at the same time, she can often make me burn with...well, perhaps not anger. Certainly it's my own special brand of I DO NOT AGREE WITH ANYTHING THIS PERSON IS SAYING, ARGH, IT IS ALL SO WRONG I CAN'T TAKE IT, anyway. This usually happens when we get into debates about world events. Or religion.

One such choice "I AM BURNING UP WITH THE WRONG" moment was when she stated how she hated America. Not "disliked", not perhaps "disagreed" with its foreign policy, but pure hated America for its (in her view) desire to stamp out the Muslim religion and go to war with every country that it could. During that particular debate, when she got onto how 9/11 was all a government hoax, I actually had to leave the room. I feel strongly about these things, okay? And someone telling me that just because I don't believe that the entire tragedy was engineered by the US government as an excuse to go to war with Iraq (hmm) this means I do not research my opinions sufficiently...well, that's enough to make me realise I'm about to blow, so leaving the room is the best option.

Another such moment came when I happened to mention that I had asked for The Qur'an for Christmas, as I wanted to read it. See, my opinion on all organised religion is the same: I don't like it. That's an entire other story, really, that I can't be bothered to go into today So, when she (as expected) asked my opinion on Islam, I gave it: that it seems pretty much just like every other religion (and so my base opinion covers it also). The response? Clearly I couldn't know anything about it enough, or have enough of a justified opinion upon it, due to the fact that I am not Muslim. They were interesting scorch marks, the ones left on my ears that day.

So, where am I going with this? Well, I was hoping to provide a basic view of how Rubina thinks in this context. Because I am about to move onto the main crux, and that is Rubina's fondness for the phrase: "Only God Can Judge Me".

I am going to hold my hands up at this point and say that there are not many people in this world who are not hypocritical, or who do not act hypocritically at times. Hell, I know that I can be hella hypocritical sometimes. Hypocrisy seems to be part of being human. Therefore it's not an extreme surprise that people of any religion can be hypocritical. Ha, surely this goes without being said? Christians who preach love for all and yet condemn homosexuality, Palestinian apartheid, "Butcher those who mock Islam" placards, Scientology just in general, etc. Yes, that last sentence was just to make sure I offended most anyone who could be reading this. But seriously, we have to fully expect that young men and women of all religions will have pre-marital sex and yet still take full advantage of every religious holiday and other partly self-serving parts of their belief, yes? A Muslim girl who holds "Only God Can Judge Me" as her code of life will perhaps tut and sneer at and, dare I say, judge another Muslim girl who is wearing a skirt (and therefore displaying her legs), yes?

Therefore, it's not so abnormal that Rubina, as an apparently devout Muslim, has a boyfriend of three years whom she is planning to marry at some point, but in the meantime she'll have sex with him whenever she sees him. I mean this with absolute sincerity: perfectly normal behaviour. However, it does become tempting to use it against her (as an affectionate tease, never with genuine malice) whenever she climbs up on her fundie branch. I honestly can't say that I ever have, but others have done. And it does become alarming how, each time, she responds with: "Well, Only God Can Judge Me, nobody else can, so that's fine". This is also the response to questions about any other religious niggles: frippery with her money (she can spend more in a day than I can in a week, and that's saying something), extreme vanity, not praying as often as she should, not performing Hajj etc.

I had a mini BURN moment the other day after yet another repetition of "Only God Can Judge Me" (yes, it's like working with Tupac), and snapped.

"That's such a ridiculous phrase." Said I.

"What?" asked she.

""Only God Can Judge Me" - seriously, think about it. Surely that's such a ridiculous thing to live your life by. It's like saying "Hey, I think I'll kill someone today - who cares what anyone here thinks about it, Only God Can Judge Me!""

The outcome of this was probably what I should have expected: disbelieving silence.

"I mean, it hardly promotes ethical behaviour, or personal morals that lend themselves to charity and care for your fellow humans, does it?"

Again, silence. I think I may have struck a nerve.

However, I also struck my own curiosity with why exactly I hate that phrase so much, and how much I wanted to explain this. It seems almost blatantly obvious to me, but perhaps it isn't.

Consider this: whether or not you believe British involvement in the Iraq war to be right, surely you cannot believe, if this involvement had been entirely down to your decision, that Only God Could Judge You for it? That it didn't matter what the hell the bereaved families of soldiers thought, because all that really mattered was what The Big Deity's thoughts were?

See, I can see where the motive for this phrase comes from. To the people that use this phrase, God is the sole reason for their existence. God created them, He created their world, He shapes their life and He is all that has ever been and ever will be. Stands to reason that He is all that really matters - since it'll be Him deciding whether His beloved creatures burn for eternity or live with Him in the afterlife, sure?

Sure. But, also, sure, if He's judging us based on our actions and thoughts and words and basically everything...it's better to have lived through good actions and thoughts and words and basically everything. Yes? Else there beckons a world where it's fine to harm others, to make them feel bad about themselves, to hurt physically, because, hell, you don't have to answer to them. Only God can tell you that you have been very, very naughty, only God can punish you for it.

And so onto the punishment side of "judging". I remember here the Jesus story of "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". We're back right round to the hypocrisy I mentioned above. Because, indeed, if Person A is willing to lay down punishment or moral judgment on Person B for something that Person A has also done...here is where you reach the point that, hm, perhaps this "Only God Can Judge Me" makes sense here. Extend this a little further and you get the fact that everyone, every single person "sins". And if you "sin", how the hell can you shake your finger at somebody else who does? Shouldn't only the being that is above all sin be the only one who can lay down answers at your feet for your wrong doing? Shouldn't only the being who doesn't have a subjective moral yardstick be the only one who can punish you when measuring your crimes against said yardstick? WHAT THE HELL IS THE RIGHT ANSWER?? If we're looking at this from a religious perspective, is the notion of "Only God Can Judge Me" really quite sensible? Or is it still really a total crock of shit?

Well. Here's my opinion on the matter. If morality comes from God, then He decides it. Morals aid judgment. Judgment shows if something is good or bad. If Only God Can Judge, the average human can't judge anyone. Including himself. So he has no way of knowing if he is Good or Naughty. Morals become obsolete. God's words have no use. God's judgment becomes absolute. Free will is completely unnecessary. Humans become play things. But, but, "Only God Can Judge" is, at the end of the day, also a judgment. Play things making a judgment? BAD PLAY THINGS! HULK SMASH! END OF WORLD! MWAHAHAHAHA!

That's not how the world rolls, yo. If the God of major world religions exists (and you'll be surprised to learn I don't think so - yes, really), he's blatantly doled out thirds of "Please sir, can I have some more?" free will. People kill each other. People kill many, many people. People who believe that Only God Can Judge Them kill other people as a present to Him. I hope they're sitting on the VERY NAUGHTY STEP up there. Mainly I just hope whatever happened to them really, really hurt.

Overall, I basically think that "Only God Can Judge Me" is an extreme cop-out. It's a "shit, I know that was bad/I'm being a bit of a hypocrite...quick, how do I excuse myself?" thing for the religious and proud. Or the insane and mental. Even if they can't even admit it to themselves. But, as I said above, hypocrisy is an everyday, everyman thing. Doing bad things is the same. (Of course, I'm meaning "bad things" as in bitching about someone, lying, cheating etc. Murder and rape are not exactly everyday for everyman.) So, what's the Final Thought? It is this:

Only God Can Judge Me. So I think I maybe should be doing things, saying things, thinking things that He will judge me well for. But, crap. I know I'm going against His word with something I'm doing. Oh well, it's not like anyone here has the right to say anything. Only He Can Judge Me. Well, that's basically admitting I'm doing something wrong, isn't it? Oh, I'm judging myself, aren't I? So I'm being a bit of a hypocrite here, really. And, oh, shit. I'm judging myself. But, by my definition, God is the only one who can judge. Crap. I've just invalidated my own God, haven't I? So His word is not all. And the whole reason I said that thing in the first place has totally collapsed. So...maybe I just shouldn't say it anymore. Who's going to care? After all, Only God Can - shit.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: La Roux - In For The Kill

I decided I wanted Dreamwidth account mainly due to the curiosity. I am a Curious Person.

Of course, once the idea festered I decided that actually, I wanted to use it in a way that I do not use anything else. For purely public, possibly political, positively pedantic pensive posting. Alliteration FTW!!

It won't be a daily thing. It'll be lucky to be a weekly thing. But hopefully I'll enjoy it. And that's all that matters.

One niggle: I do not like the mood icons. I'm not paying just so I can put a customised mood theme on. Entitled to moan? Probably not. But I shall anyway. Moan, moan, moan.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: Friendly Fires - Lovesick

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

.

THINK.

What would you do differently?

Effective

Only God Can Judge Me

The First Post.

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November 2009

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