Formalities, what caused them to disappear.

When you look at formalities what are the first words that come to your mind? For me it's sir and ma'am.

Holding the door open for strangers, being polite, saying thank you, all of these things seem like a lost art.

Everywhere I go I continue to see rude, stuck up teenagers with no respect at all. I'm not saying all young people are bad because that would be bashing myself (I'm 20 for anyone wondering) but the majority are definitely a lot ruder then they should be.

What is to blame for this behaviour though? Has America just generally changed what they find acceptable and the youth changed with it?

I think one of the key problems in the world right now is that not enough people think about a very key saying anymore, "lead by example". So many people don't consider that kids watch them trying to learn from them and forget to be good role models.

I think another issue is that people are constantly being exposed to violent, immoral content. One of the cruellest things that has become true because of TV and the internet is the simple fact people are more exposed to the stupid crap that goes on around the world.

As a programmer it's really a conflict of interest for me to be bashing technology but in all honesty it's the truth. Whenever you talk to older people a lot of the times they will say something along the lines of "the world was a lot better back 50 years ago." But that's not really the truth.

The issue isn't that people weren't crazy 50 years ago, humans haven't really changed all that much, what we have has changed but we as creatures haven't really changed at all.

The reason people believe things were better back then is because even when crazy stuff happened they just never knew about it, they were ignorant to what was happening and sometimes ignorance is happiness.

Ways to transfer news was very limited back then and it was simply a matter of people not knowing what was going on. Today we get to hear it all, most of the time a LOT. News casters have a funny habit of talking about the most depressing stuff 6 times a week and then only slightly depressing stuff the rest of the time.

An example of this is the batman shooting, if you were on the east coast that would of never reached your ears, you would of gone your entire life not knowing about it.

Same with most of the things that happen in the middle east that don't directly affect America, while I know it sounds bad to say this, people are better off not knowing about stuff like that when they have absolutely zero power to change any of it.

I simply believe that a combination of the extreme exposure of the reality of this messed up world along with the poor role models in society have truly just made people forget how to treat each other.

What are your beliefs on the matter? Regardless if you agree with me or think I'm crazy I want to hear what you think about the subject so please leave a comment with your thoughts.

Why money ruins people.

We have all heard the saying "money ruins people" and most of us have experiences the snobby rich person stereotype. But how does someone who you once considered a decent person become that way?

It's obvious to you that the only thing that changed was the amount of money in his pocket so you conclude money did it.

What I'm about to suggest might seem odd to you, you might even disagree completely. That's fine, but even if you disagree please read until the end.

What if the money itself didn't ruin them? What if the task of getting all the money is what ruined them. The constant thinking of how to get more, the length they went to get that money.

Now consider this thought process, what if they were truly always the way they are now but they simply never had enough money to be their true self.

Or maybe they saw it disadvantageous to act like themselves while they didn't have enough money to support themselves on their own.

Or, just maybe, all the people sucking up to them while they were being pricks gave them the impression that the way they act didn't matter.

I mean honestly, how would you react if you punched someone randomly and people still sucked up to you? That would encourage a lot of people to keep acting that way with the thought "I punched someone and even more people came to suck up to me".

So where is the real issue here? Personally I believe it is an issue with morals, people have become desensitized to violence and simple don't care or they applaud the outburst.

Look at celebrities for example, people applaud celebrities when they have outburst. It simply gets them a bigger following, so why wouldn't they continue acting that way? Gets them more money so why not, right?

This isn't to say it doesn't get them in trouble with the media at times, but their fans generally go wild about it.

So what are your thoughts about all of it? Do you think that money is the real thing that ruins people or do you think there is more then meets the eye?

How does anger affect us?

This is a more in-depth thought process behind anger and how it affects us in different ways and how we handle it.

So, everyone experiences anger at some point and time during their life, quite frequently for a lot of people. But what causes it and what are the side affects for us?

For me specifically, anger makes me really sad, I tend to turn anger into self hatred. I don't like expressing anger towards people who don't deserve it so when I can't handle it then it turns into a self targeted attack on myself.

This type of anger can very easily cause depression in people because they are always attacking themselves with all their negative feelings and don't have a proper outlet. But what about people with external anger?

People with external anger tend to express whatever displeased them right away and target the source of the anger, this is a very quick release to the anger and mentally probably the most healthy, but the issue is controlling the level of that anger.

If you get too angry, or become overly expressive towards something people would consider minor, it could really ruin relationships or make people who saw the outburst think a lot less of you.

Anger overall is generally nothing more then a negative emotion, no positive feelings really ever come from anger. I'm not saying it's not possible for something positive to come from getting angry but anger itself generally is very negative.Have you ever had a positive angry feeling? Leave a comment if you have, I'm really interested to hear what you have to say.

But what about what causes anger? This again is very subjective to the person in question. For a lot of us we generally have a set of rules on how to live and what angers us is generally anything outside the scope of those rules.

Here are a few simple examples that can be commonly seen in public: Bringing a child to a restaurant, to a lot of people, is extremely annoying if the child is really loud.

Pets, seems strange but some people are just outright against people owning pets, and some people just don't like pets because of the general amount of work when taking care of them.

What really annoys me and makes me angry sometimes is when people mess up my food, I'm a bit of a food fanatic and love to eat so when my food is wrong it completely ruins the experience. I logically tell myself that mistakes happen and that it's not their fault and I shouldn't get angry and time moves forward.

Another thing that bothers me is when people smoke in a public place, most restaurants and other places have banned smoking but for the places that still let people smoke inside. Just seems a bit insensitive to me that people don't care how much it bothers the people around them when they smoke.

What makes you angry? How do you deal with it? Why do you deal with things the way you do? Have you ever thought about it seriously before? Leave a comment, let me know what you think.

The Theory of Emotions

So, emotions, that's a really broad subject to cover isn't it? Why don't we just cover the most common ones. Happiness, sadness, and anger.

What do you feel right now? Are you in a good mood or a bad mood? Everyone knows what it's like to be angry sometimes, you do, I do, everyone does. But why should we get angry, what has anger ever really gotten for any of us?

For me specifically anger has only caused health issues, specifically relating to my blood pressure. Has anger ever gotten anything for you? Good or bad, I'm interested to hear what your experience with anger has been.

I'm not saying there isn't time for anger, but some of us really do get angry way too much, over things that don't really require anger. An example would be something like someone messing up your food order, no reason to really get mad, mistakes happen. If you handle it calmly it can still be taken care of, possibly even faster then if you got angry with the employees.

What about sadness? Sadness is an emotion that, in extreme cases, can just completely drain your will to do anything and you just want to sit in a corner for the rest of time. This is a really powerful emotion that, if you're not careful, can really mess you up.

Just like anger I have experienced a very deep sadness where I really did just expect time to stop, I know now that's not possible and that the time I spent like that was meaningless but at the time I thought it was the only thing I could do. What are your thoughts on sadness and how has it affected your life, I would really love to hear your opinions or stories if you are willing to share.

Now finally for happiness, ideally this is what we want to feel 24/7. Life is almost like a constant battle to stay happy. I mean there is just no avoiding that harsh truth. You're walking down the street and you start to get in a good mood and then a potted plant falls from the sky and hits you right in the head.

You have been there right? Where every time you start to get that happy feeling something just completely comes out and ruins your day? What did you do? Did you get angry? Sad? Or did you simply say "No, I will not let these things ruin my mood!".

Everyone has a different way of expressing their problems and changing their moods. This is something I'm really interested in so if you could leave a comment about your experiences with this I would love to read them.

The Theory of bettering oneself.

So this is a little bit of a thought that escapes us a lot. What happens when we become content with how things are? What happens when we quit trying to improve our skills or personality or even our friendships. When people hit this wall things tend to quit moving forward for them, they tend to stay at the same position they are in and probably won't move out of that position without some influence.

Is this good? Is this bad? I think that is solely dependant on the person, for me it would be something like a tragedy. I want to continuously move forward and better myself. I want to be as successful as I can possibly be. Not everyone has that kind of drive though, some people are content with decent pay with decent friendships and a decent life.

My question to you all is this, why should we become content with things? Or better yet, why should we ever quit trying to achieve great things from life? It really doesn't make sense to ever stop trying in my opinion. Even if things seem hard to gather if you stop trying you just dug your own grave and will never move any further than you have. If you want to make your life better I think that you need to focus on how to make yourself better first. If we are constantly trying to improve ourselves then the things around us will just naturally improve with us. What do you think? What is one key thing you would like to improve about yourself? I would like to improve my business sense.

The Theory of Staying Together

This is the idea behind parents staying together longer then they should. Don't get the wrong impression, I believe that people can stay together their entire life and be happy, the issue comes with those who can't.

I think once it gets to the point where the two are fighting a lot that it's rather pointless for them to stay together. I think that their main excuse "we are staying together for our child's sake" is a rather stupid and self-centered argument.

Here is the reasoning behind why I believe that. People have a funny habit of considering kids dumb and not knowing what's going on but kids can pick up on when something is wrong really quickly. If the parents are fighting or just not happy with each other the child will pick up on that.

Most children don't want their parents to split up, this is true. But keep in mind that they would most likely want them to split up over them arguing every day. No child wants to see the two people they love fighting each other all the time. And worse to know that he/she is the reason that they can't move forward in life and split apart could cause some very emotional issues. I think parents that openly use their kid as an excuse to stay together aren't truly thinking about the child's feelings and are just trying to justify their unhappiness.

This is especially true considering the fact that if the parents did get a divorce then the child could see both parents and the child wouldn't have to see their parents argue anymore. The child can see both parents and interact with them without the turmoil of them arguing or being constantly angry. This also leaves them open for a new, better relationship.

So where is the cut off point for them where they should just say, okay, enough is enough. I think this is very dependant on the people involved but for the most part I think a general agreement would be whenever you both start doing completely different things and never spend time together is the first sign. When you start adding arguing to that to the point where the two people just aren't getting along anymore is the big sign that they just need to get a divorce.

This is obviously a very opinionated subject however and with that said I would really love to read some opinions from others, so let me know what your thoughts are people. :)

The Theory of Self Importance.

Okay so this is the thought behind self importance. Don't ever sell yourself short or consider yourself unimportant. Even if you don't realize or see it yourself every decision you make can indirectly affect so many others.

Let's consider this scenario really quickly, if you decide to apply for a job and send in your resume you have just made a decision to attempt to get a job position, if this is successful then you just got a job that someone else applying for didn't get. Of course that person could of been denied the job regardless of if you applied or not but you sending your resume could of also had the direct affect of them being turned down.

There is also the more obvious and direct affect that the people who already work there now have you as a coworker. This isn't a good-bad affect, it's simply a result of your actions.

There are also smaller events that could have huge affects on everyone involved. This is going to be an extreme scenario just to get the point across.

Imagine this, you are planning to go out to watch a movie, you want to invite a friend but they seem to be thinking about something a lot recently and you're not sure if you should leave them alone or not. If you decide to call and they agree they could potentially talk to you about their problems while if you choose to leave them alone when all they might need is a friend, it might result in them deciding to kill themselves.

As I said, an extreme example. But sometimes it really is nothing more then hearing a friendly voice that can save someone from the darkness in their heart. So never consider yourself unimportant because even if you don't realize it, you probably have a bigger affect on the people around you than you think

The Theory of Life, Death, and the time before.

Okay so first I need to get this out of the way, this is completely unrelated to any religious beliefs and is based solely on the thought "what if". With that said I would like all readers to keep an open mind about this regardless of your beliefs.

This thought process is solely based on the idea of your own thoughts and memories and it's extremely important that you think about it while you read this otherwise you won't be able to properly think about the main point of this thought process.

So with all that out of the way let's begin. To start with let's go with what we know, we all know that the beginning of our memories is the moment we were born, we cannot possibly retrieve memories beyond this point, and technically we really can't pull any memories beyond a certain age where our brain is able to store memories properly.

For everyone this is true, and for the most part people never really give it much thought. But here is something to think about, for everyone our earliest memory is the "beginning of time" for us, we have no concept of time before birth, all of these crazy things happened before we were born thousands of years ago but for us it was a matter of a millisecond, it's as if it never happened.

So now let's expand that thought, if life before birth is simply something we are unaware of and that our birth itself is the "beginning of time" and that our life and memories are our eternity, then what about our "end of time" death. Could it also be the same? Where your time "stops" at your moment of death and nothing else really happens. For everyone else the moment is like an instant, it happens so fast. But for the person who dies I wonder how slow time moves for them in that critical moment.

Keep in mind again that this isn't meant to be a religious thought, this is meant to be a what if thought just to get people thinking. I was simply sitting here thinking about time before birth which lead to another thought which lead to this post.

The Theory of Abortion

Okay so this one is going to be a bit of a deep discussion because of its seriousness.

Anyone can argue either side effectively and for the most part nothing will ever come of those arguments that change anyone's mind. Even this post isn't meant to change your mind, just to give you something to think about.

From my point of view abortion is not only bad but scary. Why scary? Simple really, I'm someone who is adopted but not only that, I was given up practically at birth. My biological mother never once thought about keeping me but still gave me life, if she had done the more simple thing of abortion I wouldn't even be here right now.

My point of view is that if you're going to do something that gets you pregnant that you need to deal with that and let the life that is already being formed have a chance to live, we as people shouldn't have a say as to who is and isn't born into this world. Everyone deserves a chance at life, even if they are doomed to live in an orphanage for a while, it's better than never living at all.

Even if you argue that you have to go through the trouble of carrying a child your going to give away anyway my counter argument would be that you have to live with your actions and choices, I don't think you should run from a problem and deny someone a chance at life just because you don't want to keep them.

But I let it rest at that, as I said, I'm not trying to change your mind, I'm just trying to give you some to think about. By all rights if abortion was a super blown up topic 20 years ago I might not even be here today and even if life has been rather stupid and silly at times I would never wish that I wasn't born, I am grateful to be alive.

The Theory of Compliments.

Okay so this is going to be a bit of an obvious one, but still so important for people to understand. People like and more importantly need compliments. Yes, I'm saying they need compliments, there are people who are surrounded by such negative people that if you're nice to them and give them the smallest of compliments it can change their entire day. Not only that but the person giving the compliment or doing a good deed like holding the door open for someone, will feel better about themselves as well.

It is an amazing simple task to compliment someone or do a small good deed for someone, and it's completely worth your time. It can brighten their day, make you feel better about yourself and also it takes nothing away from you to do it, so why are you not doing it right now? There is no reason to not be polite to people, even to rude people. If people are being rude or ugly, why even acknowledged them and reward them with an argument. Just politely disagree with them and walk away, it's better for your blood pressure and you don't feel the extra anger after arguing with them.

Anyone have anything to add?

The Theory of eating

Okay so this is my theory of eating and it's really simple, if you can't eat something plain you probably shouldn't eat it at all. This is just a simple concept because if you don't like something by itself then why would you ever truly like it mixed with other things.

Lets take a very common combination into account, hot-dogs and ketchup, if you don't like hot-dogs by themselves then aren't you really just trying to hide the taste of the hot-dog with the ketchup at that point? Why even eat hot-dogs?

Why not eat something you enjoy with something else you enjoy, hamburgers and ketchup for example. This is all assuming you enjoy hamburgers and ketchup.


So... Thoughts on my theory with food?