The Disappointed Idealist

Some people have a difficult time saying no. It's either because they are kind people who are afraid to hurt you or because they are weak people who don't want to take responsibility for their own desires, or because they know that this no can lead to a cooling of your relationship, which is something they do not want. Whichever the reason, their own wish is to not go through with whatever it is that you are asking, but are afraid or do not want to say that out loud. If you are one of those people, even if you think you have very good reason to do what you do, think twice of it. The time spent not saying no is a time lost for you who cannot move on to the consequences of this choice (desire?) and a time lost for the one asking, who while waiting for you could ask someone else, someone who might actually say yes. If what motivates you towards not expressing the no is the desire to not hurt the person that's asking, think that long-term your indecision (or fear of spe

The world, through movies and music, is telling you to hold on tight to your dreams, never give up and so on. As I already pointed out in this post , that depends a lot on your dreams. Dreaming too big can prevent you from reaching a level of happiness that is accessible to you. A pinch of realism is always good when you're dreaming. You have to try to evaluate yourself and your ability to reach those dreams constantly, before deciding whether or not to hold on to them. Still, sometimes even if you have this great voice you don't get to be a rock star. Sometimes whether or not dreams come true doesn't depend on you. But what you really have to realize is what is truly important to you. Why you really have that dream and what is the really important part, the one that will truly make you happy. And then, when the dream in itself seems unreachable, focus on that truly important part and figure out some other way to get it. Life can still surprise you. The saddest

Because happy holidays and because I am being literally bombarded with all sorts of ads like "make your family happy, buy them this and that." As already pointed out in pretty much all my previous posts, companies don't care about you. They don't care about your holidays. They don't care about your family's happiness. Everything they care about is money. They want your money, they want you to buy their products, so they sell you something they think you might like. Oh, but wait. It's not even like that. They sell you something they convince you to like. Either by hiring a cool person for a shitload of money to tell you that what they're selling is cool. Or by making studies that say that you will respond positively to one stimulus or another (say... a naked chick in the rain. And then suddenly, behind her, a nice bottle of wine that suddenly you want to buy.) It doesn't even matter whether or not the product is good. Every company'

Image source: here Granted, some of us have never had to worry about what to eat or where to sleep. Some of us have been dealt better or worse hands. I will never deny that the simple fact that I have the possibility (the computer, the know-how) to write this blog makes me most likely more fortunate than about 60% of this planet's population. But never make the mistake in assuming that just because a person has something you have to work very hard for (maybe something you've dreamed of all your life and never got a hold of), that means that they don't have their own issues to mess them up. You may see money and a good job as a purpose in life and may envy people who have more money or better jobs than you do. But while being rich and well-employed is pretty fine, some people have other purposes in life and other desires on their to-do list. There are women who can't have children and want to. There are men who want to travel the world but don't have the

I don't claim to be an expert in the field. I could not possibly write an article on the subject in technical terms. In my opinion, however, when talking to the ordinary person, that is an advantage. I've met a lot of people who completely disregard the issue of Internet Security. They use the same password everywhere. Sometimes it's a password like "1234". When I tell them to do something about it, they say "who's gonna want to hurt me? I'm just a nobody" Granted, if you are a public person, the likelihood of someone trying to hack into your accounts goes up. But that doesn't mean that if you aren't a public person that likelihood is zero. All you need is someone getting to you and starting to target you. And you don't need to do something extraordinary for them to start targeting you. Ways to get a hacker's attention on you: 1. Be friends or in the address book of someone they already hacked. There are cases when

We should be able to judge the quality of a cause, regardless who is supporting it. In fact, the best way to discredit a good cause is to find one dodgy guy/company supporting it. There's a whole PR tactic centered around it. The thing is like this: we live in a world of corporations and governments and other forces we may not be aware of, ruling covertly and influencing the events. They have interests. Their interests are theirs, and that is what they will be following. As already pointed out in this post , despite what they say, governments are not really preoccupied with your well-being. They are preoccupied with getting re-elected and maintaining an equilibrium with the corporations and rich people that sponsor them. Those corporations and rich people also have their own interests that are not yours. The public image of a company/public figure is a PR thing - when the public image is bad it means the PR did a bad job. The fact that the public image is good does not nece

Fracking is a quite a controversial subject nowadays. People I know are taking different sides in this story, and both have arguments that could work. But here's where I stand: 1. It has not been proven 100% that fracking pollutes, or so say the ones that promote it or defend it. But has it been proven 100% that it doesn't? If not, don't we have the obligation to check that, BEFORE trying it? Because if it turns out that it does hurt people and if only just one person dies because of it - regardless of how much money is made over it - then it's just wrong. 2. Regardless of whether fracking is dangerous or not, the people who live in the area have the right to decide whether or not it happens. If they believe it's wrong, it shouldn't be done. If you really believe they're wrong, bring arguments, talk to them. Sending the army against a bunch of ordinary people who believe are defending their lives is just wrong. 3. We live in a world where everything

They say it's better to regret something you did, rather than something you didn't do. I find that very debatable. It depends very much on what you're doing. The truth is that the size of the regret depends on its effects - how powerful and how long-term they are. Once you've done something, you can't take it back. You can just do what you can with the consequences of your actions. Does that mean that you should pull a Frank Sinatra and just say you did it your way? The purpose of regret is to make sure that you don't repeat a bad thing. That you learn from your mistakes and make sure they don't happen again. As long as you keep it at that, it's a positive thing in your life. The "No Regrets" mantra is a piece of crap: we all do bad things, but if we are not aware that we're doing them, we simply won't stop. But there's a limit to where you can go with regrets. When regrets start dominating your life and you can't stop

There's a lot of focus on numbing down our pain. We drown ourselves in work, alcohol, cheap TV shows and movies, stupid music with stupid lyrics (because smart lyrics remind us of what's real and hurts), food... you name it. Don't cry, it makes you weak. Pain makes you weak. It's a self defense mechanism, but like all other self defense mechanisms, it works like a double edged sword. It doesn't just numb down your pain, it numbs YOU and your chance of happiness with it. If you don't open up to pain, you close the door on happiness just as much. Think about being on your deathbed and looking down your days. Imagine that you die tomorrow and all you've done in your life was drink, eat and work. How would that make you feel? If there's at least a small part of you that's scared of that possibility or creeped out by the thought, then there's something in you that needs changing. Don't drown down the thought with the common sentence &

Louis XVI was not born to be king of France but became one anyway. He sucked at it, historians seem to agree - although he wasn't a bad person. He was just unfit for the role he was thrown into. Because of this, he was vulnerable to outside influences, people that had their own interests to consider, interests that weren't always the same as his. France had been an absolute monarchy for centuries - this means that in theory the power was 100% concentrated in the hands of the king. There were many issues  wrong with this, and the biggest one was that in the case of a king that was as ineffective as Louis, there was no measure of control from the people, other than rebellion. As usual, most people preferred not to go there for a long time. We might read a lot about heroes in the history books, but the truth is that in most cases heroes are made by circumstances. People fight for something when the situation becomes so serious that no other option is available. There are,

George Orwell's 1984 is a book showing what happens when power is abused in such a way by the system, that it literally becomes impossible to fight it. The situation is presented as such that most people are kept quiet through terror and fear. You would think that that doesn't apply to western countries today, wouldn't you? After all, most people reading this are probably having nice jobs, plenty of food on the table, a nice time watching their soaps and browsing their Internet. Nothing like the cold, grey environment described in the book. But then you read something like this article and you realize it's not quite like that. What's happening today is a lot scarier than 1984, because it's considerably less obvious. Today you are being numbed down and pushed into submission exactly through those methods: you are encouraged to consume, so that you get in debts that you will later have to pay and therefore become dependent on the system. The Internet is a