Rika’s edit: This is not really an article, it’s Nero/whatever his new username is/DarkprinceofAwesome’s rather dark take on the future.

The future is a giant pot of boiling fear and hate. It is the only thing keeping us hanging on to any last shred of hope, no matter how small. It’s what makes us pray to something larger than us. It is the first and last frontier. The future is us.

When we think of the future in its entirety, we coil inward like a snake posed to strike. The fear we feel of something black and vast, unfeeling, the fear we feel of time, that it might swoop in and out of our defenseless lives and take with it everything we hold dear is just too frightening an idea to bear on our own. We hold the ones we love tighter, pull them closer when we think about the untamed future.
It makes us hate that which we thought we couldn’t live without. The fact that we are so vulnerable in comparison to the legacy we’ll leave behind, the memories of our greatness or our faults, the inspiration we’ll cause when we leave this world, or else the relief Earth will feel when we depart, is one of the most unbearable thoughts that can collide with a man’s mind. That’s why we turn to the others, those that don’t feel the way we feel, those who are carefree. We harry and hassle them with our thoughts, infect them with our despair, plague their every breath until they finally feel the hate that we’ve been forced to live with for so long.
The future is such a terrifying prospect that we need to have something to see, something to provide ourselves with to replace the bleak emptiness we see when tomorrow is mentioned. Hope is our invention, not an emotion. Hope is a desparate attempt to sway Fate’s decisions, our petty attempts to look so digustingly pitiful in Her beautiful eyes that perhaps She’ll change her mind, maybe they won’t have to die, maybe that bus driver will go to sleep early so he doesn’t crash the next day, and maybe she won’t have to leave.
The future is man’s greatest fear. Something that can outlive yourself and attack your children and wife, or husband, your family and friends when it’s too late for you to do anything can’t possibly exist. Can it? Does Man live with this infernal nemesis every day of his life? Isn’t it this exact thing that people have been trying to defeat or circumvent for their entire lives, until it was more obsession than hobby? The future is this enemy.
Yet, the future rests more inside us than anything else. The future can dwell nowhere else but in our souls. Perhaps this is the reason that we all feel a collective jolt and slip our hands into our friends’ to comfort both them and ourselves. The very thing that is destroying peoples’ minds is living in them. It’s not a distant, outside force to be feared. It is a part of us, just as much ours as the heart that beats the rhythm of our lives.“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” -Franklin Delano Roosevelt

This article is written for Bloggers Unite day to spread awareness on human rights.

Every day we hear about the suffering of people in places like Myanmar and Darfur. Almost all the time the issue of human rights come up. If human rights are so elementary, so basic, then why haven’t we straightened it out after all these years?

To understand that, we must look at the most elementary place in all of our lives.

School.

For twelve years of our lives, (and often times more than that) we sit in classrooms and listen to instructors. Debates fuel over our rights in school, the rights of the instructors, and the rights of what gets shown in classroom- basically, everything. Each side argues relentlessly on every issue, from cafeteria foods up to school calendars.

In a sense, school is like a nation. There are politics, (the student councils and class presidents, principals, teachers) there is drama, arguments, and many other similarities to a country. This environment shapes people, shapes leaders, shapes the future. What people come to learn here, they often carry the behavior and lessons they’ve learned for the rest of their lives.

What I’m getting to here is what may be the root of human right problems. What if the problems that brew in school begin the conflicts that plague our world? The cliques, the name calling, everything that may fuel problems of today could begin in school. A corrupt childhood makes a corrupt leader, right

Whether or not elementary school and childhood in general is or is not the cause of everything that happens, every living being on the planet deserves rights. It’s just the interpretation of the rights that we should have that is the problem. China’s idea of human rights is different than the U.S., and so on. So take a look into the resources popping up on human rights, and begin to find your interpretation of fair human rights.

Because everyone deserves the most elementary, basic, rights

-Rika

So many lines we’ve never heard, but when have we truly opened our ears?

Calister’s Random Afternote

It’s not enough to just to open our ears, but we also have to act. For example, if a country is thinking of attacking another country (for some random, usually unfathomable reason) then everyone needs to listen to everyone’s ideas on how to inflict as much damage as possible on an innocent country that was minding their own buisness. But even if they come up with this great combat plan, it’s useless if they just stand around not doing anything. (Well, they’d save a lot of lives)

Not much, apparently, otherwise we’d be doing a heck of a lot more right now than that. It often excites my curiosity that an entire world of people who wear 99.8% of their genetic material can be so wrong on some things. Take, for example, each other!

So, sure, we’ve had our disagreements in the past, but hey, nobody’s perfect (Except me), right? Not even 6 billion people who’ve had millions of generations to work out their petty differences out between one another with violence, but NO, let’s all save up our national rivalries and unleash them in the 21st century, right?

This, to be brutally honest, sickens me and makes me wish that nothing would ever go wrong with the world. Which, unfortunately for mankind, I am accepting communism as the only way out. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate(d) communism, but hate to admit that I’m wrong even more. I honestly can’t describe how many times Democracy and Dictatorship have clashed in pointless bouts that gets millions murdered, and sure, Democracy’s always the good guy, But what happens when it’s not? What happens then?

“Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals with no cure except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff.” - Clare Boothe Luce

Rika’s Thoughts:

So you chose that one person should make all the important decisions for a nation? Although that one person may be wrong? Wouldn’t power be corrupted if one person had too much of it? Wouldn’t decisions be harder to make with only one person at the top? Wouldn’t life be harder with no freedom of choice? Without free roaming? I think that democracy, although it has many flaws, is a better choice. A communist/dictatorship government could go into war and the people would have to follow no matter what. In a democracy, there could be choices, there could be riots, there could be so many different voices out there to lead the government in the right place. Wouldn’t the power to be free- no matter how destructive it might turn out- be the best way to go?

Don’t give up, if you have never tried.

Rika’s Thoughts:

This is a good quote, but not always true. You can give up if the goal your headed for might have more risks then positives, and giving up actually might be a better idea. For example, if the plant on top of the refrigerator needs watering desperately but you can’t reach it, what do you do? Go all Tarzan and climb on top of the counters to get to the plant? Or give up for fear of a broken or sprained bone? Giving up can sometimes be good for your help.

What happened in the past will only affect you as much as you let it.

Calister Again:

Mistakes are good. You can learn from them. But sometimes we get these people who can’t seem to get over the mistakes. They stare them down as if the mistake is a car in the rear view mirror who is trailing them. Or a foreboding homework assignment. One or the other. But the point is that if you let the constant thinking of ‘oh I shouldn’t have done that’ continue, it won’t help. Learn from your mistakes and get over them.

You cannot wish for something you never wanted.

Rika’s Thoughts:

Wishes are born out of goals; often times goals that are difficult or impossible. You can’t wish for something you don’t want, but you can’t wish for something so easily acquired: then the wish is just a mere thought and nothing more. The goal must be difficult or lengthy. Wishes have specific, unwritten definitions. Usually, wishes are naive hopes that something will happen to make the whole goal easier, the wish very unrealistic. Sometimes the wish is realistic, but unprobable. The whole point of wishing is restoring hope, whether that hope is realistic or not.

The pen is mightier than the sword, but the mind is sharper than the pen.

Calister’s Thoughts:

Honestly, Socrates, I’m not into philosophy, but this is my favorite quote of all time. Sure, written words can hurt, but pure mind power beats all. If this was a game of rock-paper-scissors, knowledge could beat all of the above. And, technically, a sword would kill paper every time. Words verses wars? Words can’t win wars, and words can’t jump start a depressed economy, and even though words can help, they can’t do as much devastation as swords, and are certainly lacking against nuclear weapons.

Turn what you fear into something you can conquer and conquer it, what we conquer is nothing to fear.

Rika’s Thoughts:

Like Roosevelt’s famous quote “We have nothing to fear except fear itself” this quote is basically on the road to not having anything to fear. By making up our minds to not fear something, we can overcome it and enjoy life without that fear. That particular fear will always be present, but by not acknowledging it, we can live our lives more happily.  That is what we strive for, correct? Happiness? And if fear is our enemy, why wouldn’t we want to conquer it?

Now this also applies to extreme phobias; even though those are often times more extreme, they still can be conquered, and without willpower they will not be conquered. Everything begins with will.

“It may do us best to not know and be happy, but knowing will, inevitably, make us stronger for the future.”

Rika’s Thoughts:

This is very true. For example, if one country knew that another country was planning war against the other, it would make them stronger for the war ahead. Or, perhaps, in the best case, the war could be prevented. I think that the more people that are in the know, the more wars could be prevented. But, on the other hand, some information is best kept away from the general public to prevent mass pandemonium. If an asteroid is to hit Earth in 2012 and the scientific community is sure of this, the question is “Is it ethical to keep this information away from the general populous to prevent pandemonium?” Because then knowing that fact would make us stronger for what future? The last moments on Earth? But then if we weren’t told, we would be happier. Or would we? It’s so hard to choose an ethical decision in any topic. Illegal immigration is another tough discussion, and every side seems unethical. Same goes towards choosing between saving the world and keeping our economy up and running.

Like I said, this is a good quote, but sometimes not knowing not only makes you happier, but makes you stronger. Stronger as in a clearer mind.