Colliding Ideas

Life is a mystery, and many of us ponder as to why or how our existence came to be. Each is entitled to their own opinion, and many share common ideas. Though many times they are incoherent, the idea that people think in a society is good. If we ourselves had no thought process, society would be stuck in an abyss of delusion where we would think only highly of ourselves with no true progress. Cultures and societies have managed to progress only because they are made up of individuals with their own ideas.

-Ivan

A distinguish scent

It's funny how you can distinguish a person just by their scent. When you've been around a person too long, sometimes you recognize them by their scent or when you borrow their clothes you can tell that their scent has brushed off on you. In an episode of Friends on KTLA, one of the characters was able to tell that her boyfriend was cheating on her because she scented another woman's smell on his clothes. Every person favors a different sense of smell. For instance, my favorite scent is is vanilla. My friends would be able to distinguish me by the vanilla scent because I would always smell like it. Individualism can easily be represented because a person chooses to their favorite scent to wear.

Cindy T.

Escapes

Everyone has their own way of avoiding the stresses of their normal lives. whether its something as simple as walking, or things a little more complex like puzzles or reading, people almost always seem to have something to fall back on to avoid the rough patches in their life. While browsing through the internet I came across this rather disturbing video. A video about those who believe that they have nothing more to fall back on.

It's not necessary to watch the whole video but it seems to be an interesting phenomena that people would choose to go to such a beautiful area in order to commit acts of suicide. Perhaps when people have nothing to escape to, they choose to return to nature and reflect on whether or not living is something that is worthwhile. With such a fleeting thing that life is, maybe some individuals would choose to end it the way they want instead of whatever fate would have in store for them. It's not a bad concept I suppose, a life of pure misery must not be easy to live through at all. Everyone has their own problems to deal with, however, suicide just never seems like the optimal path to handle problems.

-Chris M.

The features of being alive.

There are seven characteristics that define being alive. Living things are composed of cells. Living things use energy. Living things respond to their environment for survival. Living things grow. Living things reproduce. Living things adapt to their environment. From this, we can see that most things are distinguishable between two main categories, animate and inanimate objects. But regardless of these traits that group a majority of us here, there is a much more deeper set of traits that define us as who we are. We ourselves have developed various traits that make us different from one another. This is not enclosed only to humans or higher multicellular beings. Even single celled bacteria often develop mutations in their single strand of DNA that make them different from the rest. While it may be true that we often share traits with others, it can be assured that that is not a dependent variable, but rather how the trait is used or developed. Luckily, diversity allows for many individuals to chose how to use these traits and pass them on.

Sources:

http://infohost.nmt.edu/~klathrop/7characterisitcs_of_life.htm

http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Bacteria

Different hair, don't care.

In an episode of  ABC's 20/20 "What Would You Do?" showed how people with red hair easily get picked on. The purpose of this show is to have people reenact different real life situations to see what people would do about them and they realized that everything was just played out. On the show, an actor with ginger red hair did a reenactment of how he was constantly getting picked on by these actor bullies who always picked on him because his hair color was different. It took place in a restaurant and those bullies had to cause a scene in order for anyone to do something about the situation. One of the bullies said, "it's kick a ginger head day!" and came over to him and literally kicked him in the knee. A woman who was having dinner with her family came over to talk to him once the bullies left and told him that they were jerks and he shouldn't listen to what they say and that he should stand up for himself. Then in the next reenactment they bought in an actress with red hair. This time there were girl bullies who were making fun of her because her hair color is different. One of the actresses who played the bully was speaking out loud and said how her hair color was very "obnoxious." Another woman who was having dinner with her family confronted her and said how she should just leave her alone and she's a beautiful girl and that "every single person here is different from everyone else. There is no reason to pick on them." Once the woman found out everything was played out she was relieved to find out that those bullies weren't actually real bullies and that she was happy to know those girls aren't actually like that. This episode was a life learning experience and teaches people that everyone has different hair colors and they shouldn't be picked on because of it. Imagine you were in their shoes, you wouldn't want to go through what they go through almost everyday.

Individualism Article

Individualism: A Personality Disorder

I came across this article on individualism recently and it caught my eye. Since most of my generation were children we've been told to be ourselves and be whoever we want to be. With the idea of being whoever I want to be getting put into my brain at such an early age, I was a little surprised to read in the article that being an individual is a pretty recent idea in human history. According to this article, argument continues on whether or not being an individual is beneficial or a liability in personality development. I believe that being an individual is slightly less important at younger ages because its important to try different things to see what you favor. Eventually however, one must be able to break away from some of the larger influences effecting their actions in order to become themselves with their own likes and dislikes of activities or mindsets.


-Chris M.

don't dwell on the past

We tend to spend the majority of our time reminiscing about our past, thinking about how we could've changed it in order for us to have been happier with the way things really should've went. When thinking about the past, it tends to bring back fond memories or even the worst memories that you wish you could forget but can't because some things are just hard to forget about. It's better if we just stick to the present because there's no point in going back and thinking about what happened before because what's done is done. Wouldn't you rather go through life saying "oh well" than "what if?" In the story of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry states how a person should not regret their mistakes and should just go through life finding happiness instead of dwelling on the bad stuff. Each of us, individually, should just find a way to make ourselves happy and not have to worry about what we could have done to change the past.

-Cindy T.