Bernatk - Heatherfield Citizen

Extreme close-ups of human eyes by Suren Manvelyan

And that taught me you can’t have anything, you can’t have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It’s like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it—but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.

F Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned

well that is London

In the past few years my activity on tumblr has been irregular. I have written original posts but also did a great deal of reblogging and quoting, which are both very nice but are not why I want to have a blog. For me it’s a place for intellectual exercise and an outlet of thoughts. I want to be more focused here to chisel my mind and crystallize my opinions and thoughts, therefore I will make an attempt at returning to exclusively post original content and I want to be more committed. If I could write here everyday I’d be thrilled but that’s probably way too much to be crammed into my schedule--which I admit is not full momentarily but airy spaces of time for relaxation are what keep me mentally fit so I don’t intend to deprive myself of them.

This is it for now, writing it down only so that I will be more motivated to follow through.

EVERYONE NEEDS THIS ON THEIR BLOG.

Lost Slayer by ~slyvanie

An Open Letter to TFioS

Dear TFioS,

I got you for Christmas and I watched you in the movie-theater last Saturday and I like you. I like you but that doesn’t mean I don’t have something to say to you.

Of course your unorthodox and irreverent plot is refreshing and it really talks to people in many ways. This is somehing that people are craving—what I personally am craving and thank you for being this way. A book review said that you are “damn near genius” and you are so. It sounds like a huge compliment (one that I’ve never received, so I sort of envy you for it) but this isn’t the greatest one, which would be:”it’s genius”. John Green is made of awesome and so are you, TFioS, still, neither of you are made of genius. Let me elaborate:

#1: Is the fault really in our stars? John Rawls would probably congratulate you on the fine point you have made about how nature is creating random inequality and unfairness. What mindless animal would one have to be to say that it is fair what Hazel and Gus went through, none of it out of their own making or desert? Their example—and the title really—shows what a great fault there is in what our lot is in life. It would have been fair if Hazel and Gus’ cancer was given to an evil mass-murderer—yeah, I don’t really mean that; no one should get cancer, ever. You tell it wondrously that no matter who you are or what you’ve done, this sort of pain is unbearably immense. Everyone deserves the same and that same would be a normal life, which is free of disease, free of tragedy, free of all sorts of bad things. Everyone deserves it because of human dignity, which is everybody’s. When Gus calls Hazel to the petrol station to help him because he got very sick, we get to see the unromanticized version of dying from cancer, which is the true version of dying: painful and miserable. This whole thing is an attempt to introduce us—through characters we get to care about and truly heartbraking events happening to them—to the reality of undeserved suffering in the world. I used the word:”undeserved”, but is it really? It would also be fair if everyone on earth was suffering the same as these kids, wouldn’t it? As I’ve said before, only a terrible person would say that, and that’s because of human dignity. And where does that come from? One could say that:”Yes, people do terrible things sometimes but no one deserves to suffer or experience pain.” Such a statement would be based on the concept of dignity, which’ existence we can only assume, following our moral compass, our feelings. Naturally, I wouldn’t say that there’s no such a thing as human dignity or that I want to see someone go through this hell. My point is that the origin of dignity is not inspected thoroughly and it cannot be a groundless assumption. If we built on it, first we’d need to see why it’s an unshakable foundation. 

#2: Infinities are problematic. I’m not going to discuss the mathematical inexactitude of your statement about the size of the infinity between 0 and 1 compared to the one between 0 and 2 because you’ve already apologized for that and also because it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the story, when Hazel remembers her time together with Gus, she is really grateful for their “little infinity”. I suppose she means that their relationship and their experiences were immeasurably valuable, even if smaller in number than the one’s of someone with a greater lifespan. This serves as a poetic and sublime element, though it also implies that even where there is great pain, there’s beauty. But if all that is equal in worth to what other people have, then why is it sad that they have to die? Or is it not sad at all? Is it okay for them to have to go through all that horror and then die so young? It’s rather terrible—or unspeakably terrible. But if only the quantity and the length of beautiful things in life matter, what’s the limit of having a good life? If everyone had the same amount of happiness and the same length of it and an equal lifespan, I suppose that’d count as a good world. But wouldn’t we try to extend the length of our lives if everyone was to live 80 years already? It would be neat if everyone lived for 200 years, wouldn’t it? And if Hazel and Gus were to live 80 years, whereas everyone else 200 years, would that count as a tragedy, too? Is it just the relative length and amount that matters or is it the absolute of them? It seems that both do: we want a relatively and an absolutely longer, richer life. That’s alright, of course. The ultimate thing we would settle with is infinity—literal infinity, not just the allegorical one. To have Hazel be grateful for what they shared is really awesome, my point is really what this tells the audience is unclear and/or indefinite.

#3: Where’s that extra mile? When Hazel and Gus are talking about what comes after death, I thought some conclusion would be made. Okay, there was actually this: even people, who believe in something transcendent aren’t necessarily morons. Thanks, I appreciate it, but whether or not there’s an afterlife, or whether or not God exists, these are sort of important questions. Especially when you’re so conscious about your imminent death. The whole thing is understandable, of course, since to someone who is not a believer, it’s obvious that there’s no Heaven, no Lord, no nothing, yet I was extremely let down, when Gus said that there has to be a point to it all and Hazel’s reply was about the overall pointlessness of everything AND then no distinct conclusion, apart from what’s above. It’s nice of you not to take away the hopes of christians though. But to make two teenagers so profound as Hazel and Gus are and then just let them be diplomatic about the point (or the pointlessness) of being is just lazy. It’s popular to think that a writer’s duty is to ask important questions but it is also their duty to offer answers to important questions and not be like:”Yeah, ‘A’ might be the ultimate truth, but whoever says ‘B’ is it, well, yeah, they’re totally cool to say that.”

Okay, TFioS, I’m sorry for criticizing you, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings or something. You are a beautiful book—you never forgot to be awesome. Thank you for existing and thank you for feeling the pain of everybody, especially of those who feel the greatest pain.

Best wishes,

B

P.S.: Okay.

i was with a new friend yesterday and he was telling us how he worked on a maple syrup farm and then he kind of pulls me aside and was like “hey don’t tell anyone but i can get you some maple syrup at a nice discount price but technically it’s not legal but let’s keep that on the down low” and i think i just made friends with an illegal maple syrup dealer

Beliefs

"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs" sings Jon Foreman. This is a great advice to us, modern-day people. We let ourselves be shaken by nearly everything: science, new religions, even the opinions that aren't identical to ours. Nowadays people are lacking confidence and mostly confidence in what they believe. In what WE believe.

On the contrary, when we don't believe in something, we mostly have absolutely no idea what that thing's about. We don't read the literature of the religions we don't agree with, so this means we are very far away from being given the right to disagree, since we aren't informed. When someone denies evolution, or science, they don't have a physics, chemistry or biology degree, they just are willingly ignorant.

At the end of the day, we don't have strong faith or strong doubt, but even when we do, it's based on nothing. But why is that? It's because we can't listen to all debates, read every book, perform each experiments to support our beliefs or doubts. In fact it would be impossible, since humanity hasn't yet answered every questions, we are too young a specie to know it all. This means that every faith and doubt will be open for discussion for an exceedingly long time.

Opinions and beliefs make us, people, so diverse and it's wonderful. However, it's quite trivial that in the end only one faith will prevail and on a distant-enough day we will know who was right because  every single belief system, no matter if they say it differently, excludes every other. You can try and model religions as different paths to the same place but it doesn't work. They're contradicting each other. If one's true, the other is inevitably false.

I know there have been countless flame wars generated by religious differences. You might even bring up the crusades as a fine example, however, the crusades are so much opposed to how christianity is defined that the "holy crusades" were acts of the least christian roots. Just saying... But where am I going with this? Fighting over who's right or who's wrong is folly. Think about it, truth will prevail. Forcing your ideals on others will never produce new believers, only averse souls. I, for one, am a believer of Jesus Christ. And yes, I'm convinced that I'm right about what I have faith in. I stongly think that everyone should believe in what I do, STILL, my onlytool to achieve this is live my life by the principles I believe in. You have the choice to disagree. I'm sad if you do but it's completely up to you.

Cheers :)