A New Perspective on Corona virus, the weather and Social Distancing

It wasn’t before bodies started dropping at an increased rate, people all around the world finally realized how serious the Corona virus pandemic was. We tend not to take things seriously unless it hits directly home. And when it does, we feel we have been sucker-punched for reasons unknown.

Catastrophes on this scale tend to teach humanity some invaluable lessons. Japan has become the birthplace of master architects, designing earthquake-proof, durable buildings that bend before break, due to the devastating effects of suffering from years of earth-shaking experience over the centuries. Fierce fires have helped us invent fire extinguishers, foam and strategies to contain them before spreading wildly. Floods likewise. What has the Corona virus taught us, then? Well, it taught a whole generation the importance of personal hygiene and how to wash hands!

Sadly, it has also shown us (those who can see) that our education systems fail big time. With extensive spoon-feeding over decades, young minds (but not limited to) never get the chance to develop creative thinking skills, questioning skills or basic reasoning. Here’s a tiny example of what millions of people shared on their social media, spreading false info without bothering to take a minute to think:

“Corona virus threat will be over by summer as it cannot survive over 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 Fahrenheit).”

Sounds reasonable, right? As we’ve been taught to assume viruses don’t like it hot!

But… the average body temperature of a person is around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit)! Which means it should die out as soon as it makes it’s way into our bodies.

Or…

The fact that Southern hemisphere countries are going through summer while northerners experience winter. As you can see, basic geographical knowledge does not help unless it’s paired with some kind of reasoning.

I am not even going to mention toilet paper hoarders that stockpile to last them decades, the self-quarantine gatherings with 15 or more friends coming from all over the city or some people having the habit of licking their fingertips when they count money, turn pages of a book etc… we seem like we understand… or that we care… but actually, we are all wearing masks, and none of them are for the right reasons.

Let’s focus on the weather a bit more:

The infection rate in warmer countries are skyrocketing (see Italy, Spain, France and Turkey) while cooler countries are more consistent with the infection rate. There are several reasons for this distinction:

People born in warmer countries have always:

Spent a huge proportion of their times outdoors due to the nice weather all year round.
Had more outdoor hobbies like swimming etc..
Showed their love of people by firm hugs, touches and kisses… (personal space does not exist in some warmer cultures)…
Enjoyed large group gatherings…
Taken life less seriously…

Now that they have to socially distance themselves from what they had been doing all their lives, they are having difficulty of changing their habits… so, they tend to sneak out and have a day off of their briefest cabin fever experience.

Social distancing can be great for a while (both for us and the world itself) if we stop whining.

We tend to present ourselves to others as what we are not, we lie, hide the truth, get jealous of people without showing them or share useless small talk. Perhaps, it’s time to turn to our inner selves and take a break, focusing on our true needs. This is an opportunity to improve ourselves, which we really didn’t have time before because of extensive socializing.

On the other side of the coin, the pollution over Wuhan, China has dispersed since people stopped going out… the fish in the canals of Venice, Italy have resurfaced again (this needs confirmation)… The world’s taking a break from us. Perhaps, we are the disease and the Earth is just trying to recover.

Redefining Death: A Contemporary Guide

As persistent seekers of healthy, prolonged lives and even immortality in the modern ages, we, mortals have always feared “death” as it means a definitive full-stop to what we have valued the most: Life…

But, what is death?

According to most dictionaries, “death” is the end of life…

For me, it’s “ceasing to exist in the former plane of existence”… but, I am not all into the heaven-hell thing as I believe those two opposite concepts were designed to direct the majority of the human race into doing good deeds, so that all good-doers are led to believe they will have their afterlife retirement lying in endless flower fields above the clouds, drinking mulled wine from its rivers and having sex for eternity (and that is without the help of Viagra for the elderly men). The evil-doers, on the other hand, will burn in agony for eternity…

Eternity? A concept valid for both heaven and hell? Wait! Living for eternity is achieving “immortality” Wasn’t that our final goal? Our seemingly impossible dream? To be immortal? Is reaching our final goal through “death”? Or, was the whole concept of immortality just an unintended word play, the creation of a concept due to bad punctuation and spacing (as in “Immortal” vs. “I’m mortal”)?

Anyway, going to heaven sounds fun, right?

Then, why do we feel so down and depressed when we bid farewell to our loved ones on their voyage to a better place? Are we worried they might end up in hell? Are we just selfish for not being happy for them? Or do we secretly know that heaven does not exist? Who knows…

On another note,

As I said before, “death” is ceasing to exist and it happens to our loved ones all the time and in numerous other ways as well, like:

when we break up with a partner and never want to see each other again… or
when a loved one moves across the globe for a job opportunity, etc…
when someone we trust wrongs us in an unacceptable way…

The people in above cases “cease to exist” just like how I perceive “death”… and in all cases time heals us, gradually soothing the pain. The question here, is how we deal with the sudden loss… do we cry our eyes out until they dry out? do we surrender to booze or other similar ways to dull the pain? or do we seek their familiarity in the experiences of our daily lives and remember how they made us feel? No matter how we might grieve, time is always there for assistance…

As a final thought, I must say “death” according to me is like a paradox similar to the Schrodinger’s Cat… we can never know for sure if our deceased, loved ones are happy or not on a different plane of existence… until we are certain of their fate, they may very well be both happy and not…

Scripted Lives; 5 Acts, not a play…

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”
William Shakespeare

Act 1…
The man sees an attractive, young woman sitting alone at the bar. He moves to a better vantage point where he can see her face clearly and throws her a sneak look accompanied by a soft smile. The woman smiles back without breaking eye contact (If she doesn’t, the man starts from square one with a different actor). It’s the cue for the man to make a move. He does.

Act 2…
The man engages in small talk about the weather in the last few days. The woman agrees with a few comments of her own. They seem to have an excellent time although neither is into meteorology. The man offers to buy her a drink… one more of whatever she’s having. They start laughing at everything. Being funny ceases to be a requirement after this point.

Act 3…
They leave the bar together and go to whoever’s house is closer. They have sex. The man whispers how beautiful the woman is into the nearest ear. The woman instructs the man to go faster… or harder… or however she wants it.

Act 4…
They discover common hobbies, feel safe and loved in each other’s arms, and decide to go for a romantic relationship. The man buys her presents, the woman makes frequent surprises to him. The love between them is so profound that jealousy starts ruling the relationship!!! (Really ironic this one… As when couples love each other, they should develop trust not jealousy). They decide to get married though. After all, marriage is a sort of guarantee that they won’t cheat on one another, right?

Act 5…
As they can’t stand each other after countless fits; the man and the woman go for a divorce. After the mourning phase (or the relief), each return to Act 1 separately and play the same game expecting different results.

Just like theatrical plays, the illusion called life relies heavily on inter-human relationships…

Now, stop here for a moment and think about how you interact with other people…

Is every decision you make, truly yours? Does every word you say, belong to you?

Do we make choices in our relationships with others and carry on upon pre-taught thinking?

Acting out scenes with pre-written scripts like some untalented actors?

There are various books on pick up lines out in the market for the socially-challenged… Pieces of script, just in need of personal fillers.

Imagine reading a book or watching a film for the thousandth time… knowing the ending, but still trying to enjoy it, hoping the outcome would be different. It’s sheer disappointment as it’s the same title with a different set of characters after all.

Why do we do this?

Why do we keep on living li(v)es of who we are not?

The Near-Death of Decent Content

This article is a premature obituary of decent artistic content… in every aspect of our lives…

Decent Content in Entertainment and Art Forms

Early 21st century – 2020 (and ongoing/down-falling)

We have arrived at a crucial point in our mundane timeline when real and engaging content started slipping out of our existence at an ever accelerating pace… replaced by uninteresting shenanigans of the modern, content-less society.

Good content does not pay anymore…
Content does not pay anymore…
It has lost all its value…

Here’s why:

Leonardo created “La Giaconda (The Mona Lisa)” in a period from 1503 to 1517…it’s still the most visited attraction ever in one of the biggest museums in the world…

Circa 1500, Michelangelo carved out “David” giving life to a 5-meter (17 ft.), 6+ tons of marble… which still stands the test of time with all its glory…

And let’s not forget about other works of art created before the 21st century like “La Guernica” by Picasso or “The Scream” by Edward Munch… those were the times when art became alive…

In 2019… we had a browned-out banana taped onto a wall sold for $120000… The proud buyer and current owner defended the masterpiece as “… the unicorn of the art world…” Not only that he could have created a better piece with a fresh banana costing him less than a dollar, what would he do when the banana decomposes completely? Replacing the banana at regular intervals would certainly kill the originality of the fruity masterpiece…no?

The sad thing is that renaissance art masterpieces or any good art is truly appreciated only by a handful of people… the others most likely swarm museums just to take selfies with the art, and to make their social media followers/friends jealous.

This is the death of art…

Now, let’s have a quick look at the demise of writing… mainly script writing for contemporary Hollywood blockbusters…

Imagine a time 150 years + in the future when the only technological breakthrough seems to be modernized tanning beds capable of curing every disease while the world seems to have stuck in the 90s technology otherwise…

Or… a group of scientists land on a hostile alien world and one of them decides to pat a viper-like hissing monster with affection… and no… he wasn’t mind-controlled. How did he ever become a man of science anyway? Everything’s possible on big screen!

Or… a thin, feather weight ex-special forces operative lady takes on multiple trained assassins three times her size in hand-to-hand combat with a gaping gunshot wound in her leg.

Or… two science-enthusiast buddies invent a time machine and choose to travel 17 years into the past to allegedly stop a world-wide catastrophic event which started 25 years ago.

There are tons of examples of poor writing like the ones above in nearly all recent movies. Here’s the funny thing… all the titles exemplified previously have IMDb ratings of 6 and above. As people who gave high ratings are highly affectionate towards an actor or two in the production, no matter how bad the script is or how horribly the character is portrayed. Can you guess the titles of these three blockbusters (the last one is a series and not so popular like others)?

Music hasn’t been doing great either…

We tend to listen to the latest crap not because of musical or lyrical quality, but just because it blocks the ear-assassinating everyday clamor which is only a tad worse than what we pay for…

Right? Or… why would we just keep listening to band of mismatched instruments out-of-beat with lyrics like:

“Now you get to watch her leave out the window
Guess why they call it window pane…”

(I know I am going to be roasted by Eminem fans… but the word play on “pane” and “pain” is unbearable.)

Or…

“Are we humans?
Or are we dancer?”

(Or are you just untalented musicians with bad grammar?)

Lastly, check your favorite social media for good content… or just some content… I bet you’ll find none other than Instagram posts showing floor tiles with the tip of the big toe of the artist penetrating the shot from a corner with the message: “Good morning y’all!” Thousands of likes guaranteed…

Or…

A tweet from a celebrity saying:

“Today is Saturday, tomorrow will be Sunday and then Monday.”

It must have been very informative, enlightening and inspiring indeed as it got tens of thousands of likes and nearly three thousand retweets shortly.

Or…

A young, good-looking youtuber making thousands of dollars monthly by blabbering about her dull daily routine.

So, what can be done to revive decent content? Is it too late?

Not yet. But it’s getting to a point of no return.

Just try not to appreciate horrible content because someone with good looks created it. The more we appreciate bad content, the more they will be encouraged to create even worse content. Support true artists for their art and good content (not because they are cool/famous/good-looking) as they need some boost to be even better.

Why we need Drama and Pain in Life

Our lives are destined to get dull as soon as we’re born. As routines take over our childlike imagination when we step into adulthood, it gets even more boring; getting up, taking a shower, having breakfast, going to work, having lunch, coming back, watching TV with the usual wine glass in hand and going to bed for the next same day. That’s also basically why we all love weekends or off days, as they break the dullness of the routines we all loathe. We can go camping one weekend and stay home doing nothing the next. Any out-of-the-ordinary activity will make us feel good and boost our morale.

Routines are boring whether it’s the activities or our emotional state. We crave for changes subconsciously.

And that’s exactly why we need ups and down in our emotional state. To break the cycle… as against order, we are hopeless rebels inside.

Picture our heartbeat lines going up and down with each breath we take… a beating heart is the means of survival while a flatline kills us. Our emotional line tends to work the same way, never wanting to be on a dull, single flatline.

We make bad decisions all the time even if we are not complete idiots, choose abusive people to be our one-sided love affairs and torment ourselves for pleasure at every instant we can…

We are indeed drama addicts, inflicting self-pain just to break routine.

The Invention of Monsters

Since the very beginning of human existence, we have been inventing monsters of all sorts to fit our specific needs; ranging from scaring kids, all the way to entertaining millions of adults over the silver screen. Monsters have to be invented for various reasons regarding our weird norms of society.

Here are some reasons why we invent monsters:

The Minotaur, harpies (Herpes is a different, unrelated modern version), sirens, Cerberus…

… first enter our world at least 3000 years ago, merely invented to tell stories of heroism in a dark world… perhaps to spark hope in the most hopeless situations. In a vicious world of constant war mongering, heroes have to be poked to arise…

Black Annis, Baba Yaga, Namahage, the Boogeyman…

… are the first monsters we encounter in our childhood bedtime stories. They are allegedly the ones feeding on misbehaving children. It is an irony though; to invent monsters to embed fear into our children’s minds to refrain them from doing stupid stuff that might harm them, only to try to convince our beloved ones that monsters don’t exist afterwards. Children are highly susceptible beings armed with an amazing imagination in a world still alien to them. So, it’s no surprise they counteract the newly-introduced fake monsters by inventing imaginary friends whom they can fight these monsters with or just to blame the invisible buddies if they do something wrong to anger their parents.

The devil… and all the hellish demons…

… the devil is the adult version of monsters described just above that goes after adults who misbehave. And, the demons are merely the adult versions of our childhood imaginary friends whom we can fight with or blame if things go south.

Aliens, vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts, succubi…

… become popular in our adult lives for the sake of adding flavour to our miserably boring lives. In our adulthood, the magical life we first encountered withers away as we start living to graduate, find a place to live, go to work, pay bills, reproduce and get engaged in never-ending routines. Survival had never been this dull in our entire history, so we welcome these work-of-fiction monsters with open arms. And although some of them are derived from mythology, we upgrade or modify them to suit our contemporary taste hence shiny and attractive vampires or alien cockroaches whom we fear and loathe their earthly counterparts. Monsters have become entertainment.

Sociopaths, rapists, racists et al…

… are the real monsters we have been ignoring. They do the most damage to us, but they are not really feared or credited as the others. Is it because they are real?

Real real?

Redefining the Laws of Attraction for Love for the Modern Society

Warning: The following article has little or no relation to “Laws of attraction for the universe”

This piece of writing is all about how we pick our partners in relationships, how we fake ourselves and reflect a desired version of ourselves much like a peacock in its prime. At first, we tend to show others what we are actually not. Then, try hard to change each other in our image of a perfect partner, but weren’t their initial qualities what attracted us in the first place?

What we are trying to do in our romantic endeavors, fits Marcel Proust’s definition of love:

“No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves.”

Anyway,

How is it that we are attracted to certain people right away?

Is it…

the first sight?
the initial smell?
the very first touch?
their intellect? … sense of humor?
the way they talk?… walk?… smile?
having the same interests and dreams?
sharing similar agonies and suffering the same way?

Or… is it the combination of some of the above?

I believe everyone has their own subconscious priorities when it comes to attraction. However, in the era of social media, our priorities can easily be fooled…

Here’s why:

Sight or looks:

The importance of sight or looks should have come to an end as everyone looks good nowadays; taking advantage of technology, filters, editing on top of the freedom of being able to take many shots before choosing the most unnatural one and posting it online. This also makes the competition fierce as illusion surpasses beauty and the unlucky ones are the hidden beauties with little or no competence in photo editing…

It was extensive makeup, smart clothes and outstanding photo angles in the last couple of decades, but now it’s all combined with social media photo skills…

Smell:

Each one of us has their own distinct smell mostly regarding what we eat and how often we bath. As vanilla scented thugs and flora reeking divas roam the streets, frequent bathers preferring to use soap when bathing and wearing no perfume afterwards are on the losing side of the attraction war. But, perfume is like a mask. Nobody can wear it 24/7. The revelation of sour cheese aromatic feet and uncooked onion flavoured arm pits bring us to our senses after a warm, sunny day outdoors.

Intellect, interests and dreams:

Nobody wants to go on a date with a dumb person, so people tend to over exaggerate their intellectual levels by either talking about their field of expertise all the time or blabbering about a recent post they came across on the internet without fact checking.

As newly flirting couples discover how similar their interests are, they’re immediately drawn to their partner with a magical bond. They think they have found their soul mates… but little do they know that each person is making up some of the stuff only to be liked by their partner. Sharing the same dreams is more or less the same. “Dreams can change” is just a lame excuse.

But… it’s not all bad as there are things where we can’t be fooled…

Like a surprise genuine smile, a soul penetrating gaze and touch… When we hug someone and enclose their bodies into ours, we just feel if the person’s feelings are genuine or not, thanks to softly twitching muscles under the meat suit that we barely feel or the equally overwhelming hug-back we receive. Try to caress the house cat and feel it hum like a generator under your touch to feel the full sensation.

Any relationship based on the initial falsified versions of both parties tend to fail miserably in the end. Our feelings for the love of our lives expire just like some stale crackers long forgotten at the back of kitchen shelves as our true images take over. We show a different, a fake version of ourselves to others initially and ironically expect the others not to do that to us. We idolize our deepest fantasies not the people who are only human after all. Unfortunately, the candle lit by a fake (person) in a pitch black night can only survive until the daylight.

The moral?

There’s no moral if we just stick to our seemingly boring ourselves right from the beginning so that we don’t have to pretend afterwards.

The Curse of Being an Empath

Fueled by TV shows or comics, we all fantasised about becoming super heroes as children… Some of us wanted to fly, some wished to be invisible while some indecisive others went back and forth; having a hard time choosing from a range of super powers like mind reading, teleportation, breathing underwater, bending elements (thanks for this one Avatar!) etc… but none of us ever wanted to possess the power to fix the world… especially the broken people roaming it.

When we grew up into adulthood, some of our super-power embedded childhood dreams came true as we walked down the career path to became firefighters, cops, doctors, teachers etc…. in other words; realistic superheroes of the modern age. But still, none of these careers involved fixing broken people (Unfortunately, nobody considers psychologists as superheroes).

Enter the scene “Empaths”: the human aerials for human emotions, believing that our only mission in this miserable world is to make people happy. We are modern superheroes, too. The only difference is that we didn’t choose to be empaths; or in other words, to suffer by embracing others’ screwed up emotions. As empaths we literally feel what others feel… we are often attracted by emotionally scarred people and try to fix them by performing our art. The happier we make people, the happier we become as we take in positive feelings as well.

Sounds good?

Then, how come it’s a curse?

Imagine sitting peacefully in a not so-crowded cafe sipping your drink in a self-induced bliss. However, it’s close to lunchtime and suddenly the cafe starts swarming with people of all sorts. All the empty tables around you are taken and clamour starts running rampage… it’s not the gibberish mix of sounds bothering you… it’s the uproar of the alien emotions flowing into your mind all at once just like looking right into the Aleph of mixed feelings. You look to your right, see three men in suits, check them out one by one as anger, greed and envy starts crawling into your soul in the same order of appearance. You turn your head to the left, see an attractive woman with her eyes glued onto her latte and disappointment rushes into your soul. You don’t even have to look behind you to feel the guiltiness ready to invade your soul. Suddenly, you feel pain in your gut accompanied with extreme bowel movement, you are almost sure that one of your family members or a close friend has a nasty diarrhoea. You briefly think if you’re going insane as you might be the unstable one feeling all these emotions at once. You never know. But it’s time to leave. You come eye to eye with the waitress to ask for the bill. She gives out a genuine smile with genuine sorrow in her eyes. You pay the bill, smile, say thank you, and leave, making her wonder why she felt so good after an ordinary gesture from a total stranger. Outside, you wish you hugged her tightly. But our contemporary rules of society does not look good towards sincere hugs coming from strangers. You get home and think why you don’t have a kryptonite to make you powerless as a superhero. You pour yourself a glass of red wine… close enough although the colour is off.

Abortion of the Inner Child

We are born as small, cute and cuddly creatures; totally naked as there’s nothing to hide or be ashamed of, in this new, alien world. Soon as we start growing up, we display our emotions in the forms of genuine laughters or cries as honesty is always default at earlier ages. We are amazed by fireworks, cartoons etc. and believe in fairies, angels, monsters…

As children, we have huge dreams although our under-grown bodies have very limited capabilities. We are taught how to poop for instance. We think we can accomplish anything, but we are never given a chance. Our dreams get older and wither much faster than our bodies and brains.

Just as we reach our golden ages, we find out that we have to go to school and blend with the society and its unspoken rules. Just like all the junk in Pandora’s box, school teaches us useful stuff like reciting the periodic table!, as well as what’s right according to them and how to lie. All the contents of the education box are unleashed into our spongy, egg-shelled minds. Still, it never teaches us how to make deep, honest connections with others and be happy in life.

Late school era friendships start relying on selfish and personal interests. Most of us have friends so that we can show the world we are better than our buddies. We become jealous beings which will actually be the force that drives us into struggling to achieve so-called success in later life.

We graduate. We get jobs, routine becomes our thing. We work hard to afford things we don’t really need. We get bored and boring at the same time and start judging the few people, who are still clinging onto their dreams and inner child, as being immature and not acting their age. Perhaps it’s the big ball of fury and jealousy they have against us (Yes, I am with child) just because they have had an untimely abortion of their inner child.

We finally reach an age when most people expect us to die. It’s only then, we revert back to our childhood and do stuff which is considered stupid by the norms of the modern society. Luckily, old age is a great excuse to be truly ourselves just like back when we were children. But, in fact we have missed a whole chunk (the long, middle part) of our lives. The inner child has been reborn but sadly it doesn’t have much time now as it’s connected to our physical bodies. We never die alone in the end.

Magic ceased to exist for most people long ago whereas it’s all around us… just give a long hug to an upset person without uttering gibberish like “I know what you feel” or talk to your plants daily and observe the change. We are all magicians if we believe we are.

So, next time you see a child disguised in an adult meat suit,

…helplessly trying to tie their trainers…

Or…

…gaping with awe to their surroundings in a toddler’s toy shop…

Or…

…smiling upon listening to a well-known fairy tale they had heard 100 times before…

Or…

…cooking in the messiest way possible…

Just look them in the eye and hug them.

Love is all we need after all.

A New Perspective on Fitness… or an Old One

In the first couple of millennia of human history, people roamed the globe; hunting and gathering; challenging the forces of nature on the way just for the sake of survival…

We battled with beasts (See mythology) for fame and hunted wild boars to bring home the bacon…

We constructed authentic castles standing the test of time for defence and shelter… and made the pyramids to puzzle contemporary scholars…

We used cave walls as canvas to pass on our stories…

We stood against volcanoes and thunderstorms… and when we couldn’t, we worshipped them…

But,

We never worked out inside socialised caves just for the sake of looking fit… or drew musclebound torsos on walls for admiration…

Bodies at the time required no high-protein boost bars or gymnasiums surrounded by concrete walls, cluttered with man-made steel toys to maintain fitness. The natural flow of life in the beginning turned out to be a costly hobby in the end (Taking Gym memberships and related costs into account.)

Now, we are still “hunters and gatherers” of sorts… that is hunting for attention and gathering likes for the shots of artificially pumped up muscles on social media… How else would going to an enclosed gym situated in the middle of an urban jungle in a Ferrari instead of training outdoors be explained?

Which raises the question…

Will the necessities of our current life be costly hobbies in the distant future?

Will we find other ways to sustain our bodies other than consuming “water” just to survive, for instance?

Will we be crowding H2O pubs and sharing our experience on our water-sipping stories through our personalised akashic records?

Barış Cansevgisi

Author

Category: Random Thoughts