Greatness
This came to me when I was sweeping the kitchen this morning. Mum had asked me to do it, and I thought I’d done a good, if not great job. However, it could only have appeared less than perfect to her. This made me realize that if anyone wants to appear great or do a truly great job, it’s the impression of the people around them that matters.
We can aspire to be great, but can we truly have greatness when others think of us as nothing? Let’s use fame as an example. One can only be famous when the masses adore them. Greatness is not something we can achieve, but a reputation that is built up over time. If only we lived in a society where expectations of the public were lower.
But I suppose in my world, it’s not the public’s opinion that matters. I already know I won’t fit in, but I am beginning to see that the expectations that my family holds of me may be a tad too high. I may be content with being a normal office worker, but would they be? No. I remember my father saying years ago, as I entered high school: “We expect great things of you, you will achieve great things.” I could consider what I do now to be great. Goodness knows how my parents’ expectations differ.
But then, what do we need in order to obtain greatness? This is another reason why I hate the term, we usually require material things to be great. There is no value in having a great personality. You need a big house, fancy car, something to symbolize your power. It all involves around money. Truly, then, we are animals. We don’t fight using primeval tactics anymore, but our objects fight for us in our constant battles to outdo each other.
Based on all of this, is it a truly bad life if an individual does not become great? At the end of the day, what matters is our thoughts. Others may want something of us, but shouldn’t it be about coming through life with what we need? Who is truly happy at the end of the day? Is it the individual who worked like a slave trying to achieve greatness, or the people who wanted them to be at their position? Being great is a waste of time.
And at the end of the day, so is sweeping the kitchen.
x Gezza
Elfen Lied: A Review
I’m going to try something a little different in this post. Half because after watching so much Zero Punctuation reviewing seems kinda fun, but also because it is practically criminal not to spread the word about this show. It’s name is Elfen Lied, and it offers an exploration into human nature and morality unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
Elfen Lied follows the story of Lucy, the appealingly typical angsty female anime teenager, complete with pink hair. However, Elfen Lied can only do anything but differ from other teenage dramas. Though Lucy looks innocent, she has a view to kill, she is a diclonius, humanity’s next stage of evolution. Born with two horns protruding from her skull and amazing mental and physical power, Lucy takes pleasure in annihilating anything in her sight, including humans.
The story introduces us to Lucy first as she escapes from an isolated research facility, testing the viewer’s ability to view gore to the limit as body parts are twisted, mangled and ripped off as soon as Lucy meets any person stopping her from freedom. Though seemingly unstoppable, in a moment of distraction Lucy is shot in the head. Although the shot was misplaced and Lucy survives, a split personality in Lucy is triggered, named Nyu. While Lucy is submerged in her own subconscious, Nyu leads a peaceful, mundane existence, unaware of her own power. Equivalent to a human child, Nyu cannot talk, feed herself or even use the toilet, and comes to depend on two humans she befriends, Yuka and Kohta. Naturally, it is revealed Lucy does not remain submerged forever, and the series follows the lives of Yuka, Kohta and Lucy as the military hunts Lucy down.
When I first heard of the series, it seemed hopelessly violent, and lacking very much in a plot. But it isn’t until a few episodes in that Elfen Lied really drags you in. Elfen Lied reveals a world in which nobody is happy, or free of guilt, despair or a dark past, and it shows the effects if this past on people too. There is a reason for every character’s actions, no matter how sickening they are. Amongst all of this, impossible romance flounders, and dreams of reconciliation are crushed. Offering an insight into the human mind that is rarely seen, Elfen Lied becomes a truly unforgettable series, even if it is only thirteen half hour episodes long.
On a personal level, the series really made me think about why people act, and reasons for how they behave. What experience could have developed those emotions? It also makes me think of myself, and how violence has changed the way I act, how I could be if that experience hadn’t have happened. How would things have turned out? Better? Worse? Everyone is comparable to Lucy in the sense that her life shaped who she is. If it wasn’t for her experiences, she would be such a different person, erm, diclonius.
So, give Elfen Lied a look if you have the chance. However, a warning. This is not a series for the faint hearted.
x Gezza
Are We Running Out of Resources?
I will admit this is nerdy. I am posting schoolwork on here. But go along with it! Earlier this term, I wrote a speech in order to answer the question: Are We Running Out of Resources? I thought it was pretty scary when I found out a few things about out precarious situation. So, without further ado, my speech, minus introduction.
“Let’s start off with a look at water. 70% of the earth’s surface is covered in water, and the ocean’s average depth is one kilometre. So obviously, if you’re a fish, you’re pretty happy at the moment. But, it’s going to be pretty hard to run out of water, right? Wrong. 98% of the earth’s water is too salty to drink, leaving the 7 billion strong population of planet earth with 2% of water. But it gets worse. Of that tiny 2% of water, 1.6% of it is frozen in glaciers, and a further 0.36% is underground, and we can’t get to it. So, after health regulations, what are we left with? Ah. 0.036% of the world’s water! But not to panic, because we also get our water from rainfall, and at the moment, thanks to our good old apocalyptic friend global warming, we’re experiencing a 1% increase in annual global rainfall.
But, there’s a downside. All this extra rainfall is all falling in the same places, causing flooding in some areas, and drought in others. Let’s look at some examples. First is Africa’s Sahel Desert, a dry belt that extends across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to Sudan. This region used to receive plentiful yearly monsoons, but it hasn’t rained in the Sahel Region for 40 years. 40 years ago, the Sahel Desert didn’t even exist! Lower levels of rainfall are also occurring in America, where rainfall is slowly moving northward, pulling the American southwest into a drought. The level of snow falling on the mountains, as seen to the left, also lowers each year, so lower levels of snowmelt run into rivers. When Europeans first settled in Australia, they enjoyed around 100cm of rain a year in Perth. This chart shows Perth’s rainfall levels, and in the last 200 years rainfall has decreased by 15%, and Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney are seeing the same change in weather. Just as in America, rainfall in Australia is moving northward, and the Northern Territory and Queensland are now receiving above average rainfall each year, while water supplies in southern cities are diminishing. Experts believe there is a 25% chance Perth will run entirely out of water, and Sydney’s water supplies have decreased by 45% in the last 7 years. It is believed that Sydney only has enough water in its dams to last another 2 years, and we can’t build any water treatment or recycling plants in such a short time. Based off this chart, we can see where most of Australia’s population lives, indicated by the black dots. The majority of the population used to live in rain-rich areas, but now the rain is moving, all these people, here in the south, are going to run out of water. Anyone fancy a sea change to Darwin?
But speaking of oceans and water, I’d like to raise one more important point, and that is what effect these dastardly H20 particles are having on our land. Since we have started global warming, oceans have slowly started rising. Because of warmer temperatures, glaciers around the world have started melting. Glaciers in America and Alaska have already retreated by twelve kilometres, raising sea levels by centimetres. But what’s twelve kilometres and a few centimetres? In 2005, the Greenland Ice Cap and the Arctic Ice Cap collectively retreated by 1 million kilometres. If glaciers retreating by 12 kilometres raised sea levels by centimetres, imagine what damage 1 million kilometres has already done. Currently, ice caps are melting at 10 times the rate of that in 2005, and it is expected sea levels could rise anything from 50 centimetres to 2 metres in the next 500 years, where we could loose up to 600 million acres of farming land, resulting in a global food crisis. But what about people? The number of people vulnerable to floods at today’s sea levels is 46 million. If the sea level rises by 50 centimetres, 92 million people will be out of homes, and if the sea level rises by 1 metre, 118 million people won’t have anywhere to live.
But for now, let’s focus on some resources we have on the land, one of the most used ones being timber. One of the big social issues at the moment is the rate of deforestation, and if this rate continues, we’re going to have to look at alternatives to paper. This is one of the world’s largest forests, the Amazon, in the process of being cut down. It is believed by 2030, only 40% of the Amazon rainforest will remain. In Africa, the rate of deforestation is twice that of in the Amazon, where 90% of forests are already gone. In America, one billion acres have already been cleared since European settlement, and the size of American forests decreases by 3% each year. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any pictures of this, which I put down to one of George Bush’s stupid laws which hasn’t been abolished yet. But the most worrying rates of deforestation are in Russia, where an area of 5 billion hectares or an area 8 times the size of Australia has already been cleared. At these rates, all the countries I have just mentioned will eventually run out of timber, some in as little as 70 years. And then we won’t have any paper! Maybe we’ll have to go back to the old days where we carve our class notes into stone for school. If you walked to school and took your schoolbag, that’d be one heck of a back problem.
But aside from giving physiotherapists lots of money, lack of trees in the world forces us to use an even more scarce resource for power, oil. The most oil ever discovered was back in 1965, and though our ability to find oil has increased through technology, the amount we discover each year is decreasing, and the average size of an oil field, if we do find one, is 50 million barrels. Although that’s a lot of zeroes, it’s hardly a large amount, we use 84 million barrels a day. That’s 306 billion barrels a year. The last year we discovered more oil than what we used was in 1981, and we use 2 barrels of oil for every one we discover. But the most worrying thing about oil is this term called peak oil. In the context of one oil field, peak oil is when the oil field produces as much oil as it possibly can, and after it reaches peak oil, its levels of production can only go down until they reach 0. The term peak oil can also apply to a country, when a whole country reaches peak oil production. America reached peak oil in 1971, and England reached peak oil in 1999, followed by Australia in 2000. It is expected the world will reach peak oil production in 2010, where the prices of oil will skyrocket.
Oil is a good example of something that is not a renewable resource, that is, it does not replenish at a rate faster than we can use it up – it takes thousands of years to form. But if we start using renewable resources, then it is certain that all of the predictions I have said will not come true. For example, if we use electric powered cars and don’t use oil, we can’t run out of oil as quickly or cause pollution and global warming, therefore our oceans won’t rise and we’ll have more normal rainfall. We can also conserve what resources we have, use every drop of our 0.036% of our water properly, we can recycle and replant trees so our rates of deforestation go down, and so that more than 40% of the Amazon will still be here by 2030, and we can try to undo the billions of hectares of damage we’ve done in America and Russia. So, are we running out of resources? Based on current trends, we are. But we can change this answer from yes to no, we can choose to act on this issue or inaction, but time is running out, and we have to choose now.”
I already said my point within that speech. Get to it people!
x Gezza
Innocence
End of term usually means I have to clean out my room, only this time I’m trying to make it count, I’m going to throw out all the things that don’t matter to me. But when I thought about it, they all mattered to me at some point. Are we supposed to be progressive to the point where we let go of the past? Surely we are all nostalgic to a point. I am nostalgic for that time three million years ago where I was innocent.
I don’t think I was ever a purely sinless being. But still, how good is it to be a kid, and not be guilty of anything. To not be capable of doing anything wrong, or seeing anything wrong. Everything is perfect. But yet, that comes at the price of ignorance. We truly live in a society where every time we learn something we sacrifice our innocence more and more.
Let’s think of human beings as objects for a second here. It’s impossible to go through life untarnished, undamaged or in perfect factory condition. I’m in no position to condemn society, but I think it needs improvements. Some of us just go through life and get ruined. Wouldn’t you want to keep yourself in a pure state for as long as possible?
But the more I think about it, my answer would be no. Let’s say I have a kid one day. The chances are slim, but this is an example. To keep their innocence, would I smother that kid? Would I lie to them about everything? About how their goldfish never died? About how they just missed Santa, he was at home? What if they heard about rape? They’d have to go out in society some time. As I mentioned, it needs improving. This will not happen. Do we spread out the hurt slowly over time, or let it wash over that kid as a wave of despair?
Innocence is something that exists only to be lost. You can’t even keep it under a glass jar. Some idiot is going to come along and smash it open.
So no, I don’t think I’ll keep hanging on to those things from my childhood. It’s nice to have memories, but that lack of knowledge haunts me. Why would I truly want to remember a time when the only things I did really understand were lies? But at the same time, I’m thankful I was lied to as a kid. Wow, this parenting thing sounds really hard.
x Gezza
Bahaha.
It’s been forever since I’ve updated.
I randomly thought in the middle of last night how I’ve really abandoned this blog.
Poor blog. His pageviews are dying.
I promise I’ll start updating again after my exams are over. I’m trying to make a change these holidays, I’m even getting my room renovated. So let’s make this a little gezzabell’s-goals-for-the-holidays post. I’ll try to complete them.
- I will update this blog at least 3 times a week with meaningful posts. Not crap. That’s what twitter is for.
- I will update my deviantart account with at least 2 drawings a week, which took effort to draw.
- I will not, starting from these holidays, delete any of my drawings off my deviantart account or rip stuff out of my sketchbook. I will fail and learn from it. I will not feed my rubbish bin.
- I will throw out everything I do not need in my room, even stuff I’m keeping because of my vain nostalgia.
- I will exercise for an hour a day, more if possible.
Well not much else that’s really interesting is going on. I’ve been in a really can’t-be-bothered mood lately. I’m hoping it’s just a phase and if it’s some sort of new mindset I’ve developed, I’m going to try and get out of it. So I’ll make a goal right now, I will put effort into studying for my exams. Two weeks from now, they’ll be over, and I’ll be back posting.
Why does it seem this is a promise I can’t keep?
x Gezza
Oh dear. I just realised wordpress’ spellchecker comes up with blog as a misspelt word.
