Peace – The Truth and The Fallacy

  After a long, physically and emotionally draining, process of ramp-walking, style testing,   constructive judgement and image reconstruction, the ultimate moment of reckoning arrives. It’s the Miss World Beauty Pageant Finals and a blinding spotlight has isolated a contestant on stage for a question that will determine her fate in the most glamourized event of the year, “If you are crowned Miss World what is the one thing you wish to achieve?” Without as much as a shudder, cringe or moment to ponder while rephrasing the posed question, the composed contestant on the stage gleams even more as she assuredly responds, “World Peace”.

The concept of World Peace has always been appealing to humanity. Like moths drawn to a flame, we are inherently drawn to this idea of harmonious living and belonging. It has served to evoke ideologies about ourselves, our environment, society and the world at large. Seen from a scholarly perspective, these ideologies fall under humanitarian studies whilst critical analysts might consider such matters unrealistically optimistic and driven by the unattainable pursuit of a utopia. World views on broad topics such as this are never clear cut, none the less, lines are usually drawn to categorise widely similar universal perspectives. Naturally optimists would view world peace as a realistic possibility that can be pursued if strategic plans and procedures of state management are executed, whilst pessimists on the other hand would not even think the plans necessary since they would view such a concept as a fantastic fallacy.

Yes, our history recording wars, terrorist attacks, racism, xenophobic violence, hate speech, and many other problems facing human kind might as well be correlated to the Tragic Flaws in Sophocles’ classic works, or the Dramatic Irony in Shakespearean dramas. It’s a scary thought but we are moving forward.

Dane Wollin, 23, an international student at the NMM University visiting from the United States plans to major in this subject and intends to be a Mediator after his studies. On world peace Dane believes “with the right means, anything is possible,” while Kelly Reynolds, 20, studying BA (General) thinks that “there will always be ‘haves and have-nots’ within a society especially in the future with overcrowding and environmental crises. The competition for resources is going to seriously increase” therefore inciting exploitation of some country by others. Angela McFarland, 22, Majoring in Contemporary Culture sees the possibility of global peace as a slow process that is, “definitely not in our lifetime.” Defining herself as a sceptical socialist, Angela can see that “we are currently undergoing globalisation constantly,” she says, “peace on a global scale is inevitable but I’m not sure how long it’ll take.” 

The world is not fair and humanity is not perfect in its astounding magnitude of flaws. We have accepted such responsibility and that is what has given room for the positive change people want to make in the world. People no longer are willing to conform to The Just-World Fallacy where they would like to see the world just and fair and so they pretend it is. We all have deep concerns for our futures and the generations that will follow and ‘World Peace’ doesn’t sound like such a bad idea to carry on believing in and pursuing.

So next time a dolled-up Miss World contestant smiles on stage and says all she could ever want is ‘World Peace,’ you’ll do more than break out in convulsed laughter… you’ll think about it, maybe even consider it.

 

Sorry teachers, But Google is the only reason we will all graduate.

Google, the one friend who seems to know all the answers to life’s questions or at least knows where to hunt the information from. Google is not just a name qualifying as a noun any more, no, it’s evolved into a verb as well. “Google it” has become a popular phrase amongst our generation. Question is, how much can we trust it?

For those of you who use Google avidly, well done on being technologically developed! For those who wonder whether Google is a brand of binoculars, shame on you, you are a disgrace to the evolution of the human race! But don’t despair, I’m here to give you the 911 (Side note: I’ve refrained form using 101… it doesn’t make it sound that important).

Let’s make Google a person, a girl who has only been educated in private schools all her life. Until her parents became broke, now she’s in a public school with the rest of the world. She knows everything, she’s read books, entered for Olympiads and all sorts of mind enhancing programs. You ask her any question, she won’t tell you the answer right away, but she knows what file she kept the topic in and she just pulls it out and hands it to you. “Of course we can trust her, she comes from a private school,” say your classmates. You’re even confident to bring Google over to meet your parents, so they too can see what all the rave is about. They like what they see and approve the friendship. You’re allowed to access Google whenever you wish, sit with her for lunch at the cafeteria, share sandwiches with each other and all other friendly kahoonas.

Until one day, Google starts hanging out with the wrong crowd, allowing them to see all the files she’s collected over the years. They tamper with them behind her back, filling the info with gobbledygook that ruins the credibility of her sources. Later this bad crowd just meddles with her files without her permission, throwing dirt, litter and unfinished drink cans in it. Very soon, Google can’t separate what’s good from what’s bad in her files. Despite this, class mates still come to her for help and trust in what she provides. Soon enough, Google becomes the friend that your teachers say you should stay away from because she’s no good for you, she’s been contaminated and you can’t trust her.

This is the reality. We love the convenience and vast archive of files that Google provides but we can’t always trust the contents of the files. That is why we are encouraged to always try to be critical when we carry out internet searches.

Here’s a list of other search engines to try out:

Bing.com
Blekko.com
YoMeta.com
Entireweb.com
Teoma.com

 

Your lie was transparent, mine was convoluted.

We’ve come far as the human race and I reckon, lying has become part of our blueprint, part of our genetic make-up even. We’ve become so used to lies and telling lies that we don’t as much as flinch when we do lie. I don’t think we even consider it lying any more, because lying comes with such negative connotations, doesn’t it? They should rather create a friendlier word for lying for this decade. ‘White-lie’ just doesn’t do it, neither does falsity or untruth. Lying is no longer an art mastered by Secret Special Agents, gay Senator’s cheating on their wives or Shrien Dewani. Lying is a global prerogative to surviving in the concrete jungle, or at least that’s how successful business men describe it.

Let me bring this back home. I’m in no way encouraging the habit of lying neither am I denying that I have taken part in a lie, but so has nature. After all, rain is just a collection of humidity that’s tired of living a lie. What I’m trying to do is to bring all of us to a conscious state of mind when we are about to create a lie. It is known knowledge that once one lie is created, it leaves further room to build up on more lies in order to cover up loop-holes that never end. It’s those spontaneous lies that always catch up with us…

Bill: Hey, planning on going out tonight but the other guys have a test tomorrow. Would you like to come with?

John: Uh, yeah, I can’t. Sorry man.

Bill: Why not?

John: I got this assignment I have to work on for tomorrow. Planning to start tonight.

Bill: What! We have an assignment?! What subject? Did we have to research? Crap, I’m screwed.

John: No, no! It’s… you don’t have one, just me. I had to re-do the last one we did for English.

Bill: But you scored, like, 76% for that one.

John: I did?

If I were John, I would have gotten off on ‘I don’t feel like going out tonight, maybe some other time.’ Instead, John expressed this with unnecessary lies. That is why lies are better off well planned. Like that doctor’s not you wing off after you don’t pitch up for a test because you were unprepared, even that friend who turns ‘witness’ to you not doing what your folks suspected you of doing. These lies are too convoluted to investigate or probe into. The risk of a transparent lie is that you always get caught out and run the risk of everything you say never being credible enough.

Moral of the story: Tb4uL – Think b4 you Lie or don’t at all. It saves you on mental energy plus you have less weight hanging on your shoulders – almost therapeutic.

Sincerely,

Not a spy.  

 

‘How does that make you feel?’, ‘I don’t understand the question.’

Apparently boys/guys/men/males, whatever you choose to call them, don’t like to talk about their feelings.

Is there a truth to this or is it a myth like all the other things that scientists and theorists like to create about women to make us sound mystical? I should point out that I’m a girl/lady/woman/female and always have been, and so this subject I have chosen to tackle is completely foreign to me. I’m no mind-reader either, so no luck of me connecting with my older brother on a telepathic level to find a piece of the puzzle to this curious question of mine. ‘I could always just ask him,’ I thought to myself and both lobes of my brain seemed to agree. And so I will… and get back to you.

In the mean time, who ever feels the need to contribute to this mystery or bust this myth, is open to comment below… I can’t promise my brother will be as open as I wish him to be but you have the chance to. And girls, don’t be scared to also share if you feel you have something valuable to decipher the male species.

Till then…

 

True laziness is being excited when plans get cancelled…

… But what happens when plans that were previously cancelled or postponed are re-set and have a deadline?

Sometime ago I played an unplanned prank on one of my friends. We had been given an assignment a while back on analysing characters in the play The Duchess of Malfi. Two days before the due date, the lecture postpones it for the next term after the holiday. Words can’t even describe how psyched everyone was because no one had actually began writing the assignment.

The next day, myself and two of my friends wait for a class in 30 minutes when, lets call her Alice, *Alice calls to find out where we are? Here’s where the fun comes in… this is the approximate re-enactment of the phone conversation:

Me: Hey, *Alice.

Her: Hey, is Scriptwriting finished already?

Me: Yeah it is but *Tutorial leader’s still here.

Her: Where are you guys?

Me: We’re in second floor at Embizweni, just sitting on the floor, stressing out and trying to meditate.

Her: Why?

Me: Well, *Lecture sent us an email telling us that the assignment is for tomorrow so now we’re stressing out.

Her: When did he send that?

Me: This morning. Apparently he has to have them before varsity closes because of some other stuff he has to do so tomorrow’s our last day.

Her: That’s bullshit. He can’t do that. That man’s crazy!

Me: Yah, I know. So that’s why we’re stressing out. It really sucks.

Her: I hate that man. He can’t expect us to hand the assignment by tomorrow, it’s ridiculous. Are you guys gonna be there for long?

Me: Yeah, we’ll just wait for you so we can calm ourselves down from experiencing adverse hypertension.

By the time I finished the call my friends were staring at me in disbelief. “Yoh Mila, you gonna give *Alice a heart attack, I swear,” exclaimed *Caramel shaking her head. Alice arrived seven minutes later fuming. You would swear she’d expel flames from her mouth, nostrils and ear holes as she stepped out the elevator. “What does this man want?!” she demanded in a heavy but soft tone trying to internally calm herself but she still had that sinister look on her face. If there’s one thing *Alice is good at, it’s expressing her feelings or thoughts through facial expression. Having her right in front of me, I couldn’t continue with the joke any further. “I was just kidding *Alice, the assignment is still for next term, we don’t have to hand in anything for *the lecturer,” I relieved, hoping she would not pounce on me in fury. She soon calmed down and all the tension in the air vapourised.

I got off un-bruised and unharmed but this just goes to show that if you spring up anything that has to be done in an ‘inconsiderate’ and limited amount of time to a Media student, You aint gonna get nothing but Hell Fire before any compromise or sense knocks in. We leisure in procrastination, the most we can.

Sincerely,

I’ll blog-post this later.

 

Don’t expect things to happen. It’s better to feel surprised than to feel disappointed.

If I could count moments when I have had failed expectations, the list would go up to infinity plus one. And of course, as a result, I’ve had to learn to rehabilitate myself or even tie up my wounds to hide them from the world. I restrict the right to be called an expect on dealing with disappointment and as thus, I am not prepared to offer a 10 Step Programme on the Aftermath of Crushed Expectation. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I hardly ever give advice on How To Deal… or even How To Prevent… Usually I’m on the receiving end of such fruitful advice. I can, as a substitute, retrace the aftermath I procured after crushed expectation.

I won’t dare over-indulge on details leading up to, or highlight the dependent and independent variables which acted as a factor in how drastic the recovery needed to be. But what I can do, is lay out the aftermath in phases. These are phases we all should automatically go through and if not, then clearly you haven’t completed rehab and have taken, what I like to call, the Amy Winehouse Route.

The Aftermath is subject to Four phases:

1. Recognition: One never wants to admit that they hold high expectations until what they expect to happen turns into the unexpected. As Richard Wilkins once said, “Things never go wrong. They just don’t always happen how we would like.” And by ‘how we would like’ means ‘how we expect them to’. In this phase you should recognise that you expected way too much.
2. Mobility: Here’s where the pie falls disastrously off the table. You might get the urge to prove yourself wrong. You might get the urge to prove someone else wrong. You might get the urge to not do anything except wallow and drown while your eyes sweat a waterfall. This is normal. In fact, it’s an inborn part of the human condition. Competition. If you’re not in competition with someone or something else, you’re more likely to compete with yourself… convince yourself you’re stronger, tougher and wiser than what you were before that unexpected disappointment. Just be careful that your actions aren’t too drastic in this age, in other words, don’t pull a Britney and shave your hair off.
3. Enlightenment: This stage doesn’t just happen, but rather is a long and complicated process of denial and compromise. After a brief episode of paranoia and blame, you soon get to a place where you initiate retrospective mode. Kind of like watching a specific scene of a recorded show over and over until you start seeing things differently. You are enlightened to what drove you to have those expectations and from that knowledge you can hopefully move on to the next phase.
4. Acceptance: It either happens because you acknowledge that you were wrong all along, even if that fact may not be entirely true, or just because you want to move on to something better. Acceptance doesn’t lie in accepting defeat but embracing the win ahead. This should not be driven by expectation but by satisfaction with the present.

You don’t need to sign yourself up into an institution to acquire full rehabilitation when nothing seems to go the way you expect it to, your logical and sensible mind already does it for you.

So the next time the unexpected happens, try to look surprised, in a good way =)

 

I hate it when teachers say, “You think it’s funny?” Obviously it is!

Memories of high school days. You’ve got to love them. Back then, high school was my oyster, my entire world. I often considered what lies outside the yard but it never seemed to compare to the life inside. It was hectic and I could not help but think I had it bad. Now I’m in second year of my tertiary and looking back, I can only envy my younger- and chilled out -self. What was I thinking complaining so much; that was nothing compared to this world. It was good while it lasted but I do have the urge to jump into a Time Machine and rewind to me sitting listlessly is science class, just to give myself a well-deserved knock on the head.

I can’t deny the best moments of my high school life although others I would rather bury or better yet, cremate. I’m feeling nostalgic, so join me as I count down the best things about being a high school-ar.  

1. Having a headache being a formidable excuse to skip class and lie on the sick bed.
2. Having those crazy guys in class who always act like fools, taking up class time and giving the teacher less time to teach us why a verb doesn’t correspond with the subject.
3. Having those crazy guys in class who always act like fools, and getting a chance to see how many buttons must be pushed to watch the teacher blow up like a volcano and refuse to teach geographic scaling. Free period!
4. Having those lame guys in class who always act like fools, joking and pranking, but you laugh along anyway, beats listening to why electrons must cross over.
5. Having that favourite teacher who lets you work on your homework the whole period, and you work on catching up to your friends with the story you didn’t finish during break-time. Free period!
6. PT class (Physical Training) – changing into your sport clothes go outside and be marked for being able to throw and catch a ball and playing tag.
7. And last, but definitely not least, cheaper food products at the tuck-shop! 

These are a few, but they certainly stand out the most for me but I would not be too quick to jump into a Time Machine and go through it all over again.

Here’s to High School and to Teachers who put up with it!

 

My alarm clock is clearly jealous of the amazing relationship I have with my bed.

Being a Media student at NMMU is tough work.

This is not to complaint, it’s being frank. Who’s Frank, you may ask? Honestly, I have no clue but what I do know is that Frank speaks truth and the truth is… taking Media was a horrid mistake  is all Ka-boom (animated synonym for ‘fine and well’), but here’s what they don’t include in your welcoming pamphlets or Orientation week…

You Won’t Sleep! (maybe wink, but that’s about it)

Well sure you’ll get 3-5 hours max but it still  becomes a slaughter-house in your brain.  Your mind and body can only put up with so much Sleep-deprivation until it’s Hasta la Vista Baby!

If you’re like me, sleeping is a rare luxury. The longest I’ve done without sleep was 41 hours in first year but then again, you could say I cheated ‘cause I took Berocca to get me through my last 4 hours of that day. You won’t find a world record for going without sleep in the Guinness Book of Records. They don’t encourage people to try it because previous attempts ended badly. In 1959, a not-so-smart DJ – Peter Tripp – managed to go eighty days without a wink of sleep. Shortly after that, he was fired for accepting bribes to play music and was divorced four times.                                            

Moral of the story: Though seeming totally irrelevant to Mr. Tripp’s situation, try not to have a heavy night partying during the week and don’t leave major assignments or projects for the night before! Lack of sleep has a negative effect on the functioning of your brain’s daily activities of encoding, processing and decoding.

Products containing caffeine work wonders, such as coffee, Coke Cola or Red Bull but I don’t encourage that you take these excessively. They can negatively affect the functioning of the brain, they are addictive at regular intakes and you run the risk of a concerned family member sending you to an Institution of the Mentally Insane and “I’m doing this because I love you,” won’t sound as sweet.                                                                                                                                                                 On a serious note, long-term effects of Sleep-deprivation are continuing irregular sleep patterns that are difficult to reset, fatigue, insomnia, facial imperfections and seeing pink elephants… though that last one may only apply to me. I encourage that you do not make you alarm clock the enemy, the poor thing doesn’t know any better than to scream at pre-set periods of time.

Did you know… It should take longer than 5 minutes but less than 15 minutes for you to fall asleep. Anything less than 5 minutes means that you’re over-tired and anything more than 15 minutes means you’re probably a bit stressed out.

 In effect… GO SLEEP!

 Sincerely,

Your Bed.

 

Dear Cellphone manufacturers, please invent an “unsend my text” option.

Texting

We’ve all had one, if not more of these moments, right? If you’re like me, then you’re very lucky because I can safely brag that I haven’t wished to disappear off the face off the Earth for sending something to the wrong contact that could cause conflict of interest or sending something entirely truthful but one you did not plan to expose to the receiving end. Do not loathe me yet because I have come close this awful mistake; when technology ends up taking charge of your own life, in a way you wish it wouldn’t.

I had a pal, lets call him Bob. In order not to denigrate my social upstanding, I’ll be hypothetical instead. Bob wants attention, so he decides to disappear off the face of the Earth and when I say disappear, it’s not because he organises his own kidnapping and demands a ransom to see who really gives a damn. No, Bob removes himself from all  Social Networks you can possibly use to get in touch with him. After three days at most, a worried pal decides to go back to basics and send him a text message which writes:

Ey *Bob*. I hope u’re still alive. Lol. I’m worried about u, don’t ask me why…

U’re a dinosaur on *insert social networks* except there aren’t any fossil traces of u left. Are you okay?

Sigh. Ok, I guess I’ll c u Wed b4 the last exam!

Don’t slit your wrists just yet! ^_^

 

The pal’s ready to hit the send button when she decides to first check if he’s still not there,  and there he is, appearing so much on updates that her *social network considers him a spam. It was a close call to Bob realising that his pal reckons he’s at suicide risk and to Bob getting a further reason to jump off Van Staden’s, “b4 the last exam!”

What is the lesson here folks… Tb4uS – Think b4 u Send! Whether be it a text message, email, even messages on Social Networks. If you don’t, you better live to tell the story.

 

Ninja Antics

I love that awesome feeling when you drop something and catch it midway.

My cellphone has recently been having a lot of suicide attempts on its electro-life.One time it jumped into a tea-cup that was half full, with the possible intention to drown or visit Gary the snail in Bikini Bottom. Luckily I rescued it in time before it decided to play ‘Catch a Jelly fish’ with Spongebob and Patrick.

Point to all this, is that in each and every one of us lies a Ninja ready to pounce, cart-wheel, or kick into any situation where human abilities may be futile.

And so I urge you to UNLEASH YOUR INNER NINJA!