Protect the Weak?

"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life."

These were the words of our illustrious president. He used it in reference to the recent death of Terry Schiavo's death. Death is always sad when viewed as the antithesis of life, but i'll try and talk about this later, right now i want to focus on the idea of protecting the weak. Terry Schiavo has been in a coma for 15 years, over a 1/3 of her life, every year it costs upwards of $80,000 to keep her "alive". The issue isn't whether it is just to keep her alive or not, that is a decision that should be left up to her desire and if not availible then her husband's. Does her family have a say? Absolutely, but not at the expense of Terry's own wishes, which were not to be kept alive artificially. Yet, i digress. I don't think this should be a legal issue, but something that should be left to the family. My issue is with Protecting the weak.

"Protect the weak", we are a shining example of that. Many people have come out today and spoken about how its the government's job to protect the weak and those who rely on the mercy of others. Apparently, they are just talking about the people who are in comas or going to die soon because they aren't talking about the millions of people in this country without food, shelter or health care. Aren't these people also in need of protection? Why don't we care about providing them with the basic amenities that all people deserve? I've seen elderly people in their 60's and 70's in the streets of boston, without a home, money, food or health care, aren't these people in need of protection? They walk around without very much clothing in this freezing weather, its pathetic. The politicans and the country is split over an issue with a woman, who in all probability would not have come back to consciousness, but doesn't care about the millions of conscious people in the country who are without anything.

The reason this is an issue is because we like telling people how to life or die in this case. We want to tell people that Life is the only choice, when it might be more humane for death to be an option. Liberty and freedom is founded on the premise of choice, having two or more viable options. The conservatives in this country want to remove that, they have an idea of an ideal world and what society should be according to their values and seek to impose that on others thereby removing choice. How does this relate to those without food, shelter or medical care? Well, in these cases it is seen as if these people have brought this condition on themselves and its their own fault that they are in the situation they are in and no one needs to help them, especially the government. These people only affect us in a tangential way, meaning we see them and we avoid them. Whereas, in Schiavo's case, the possibility of us being in a coma is less but the impact might be seen as so much greater and its a situation that they see as being out of our control unlike being homeless and poor, which clearly is due to laziness. Just my two cents and rant.

Pandora's Box

Most people know the famous greek myth of pandora's box. For those of you that don't know it, basically after Prometheus the titan created man and then gave them fire, the gods of Olympus were angry. So they created Pandora, the woman, and sent her to Prometheus as a gift. Prometheus refused to accept her knowing that the gods were deceitful and nothing good can come from them. Prometheus also cautioned his brother Epimetheus to do the same but Epimetheus was enamored by her beauty and accepted her. Hermes later came by and asked Epimetheus and Pandora if they can safekeep his box for them to which they complied. Hermes told them not to open the box and left saying he would return for it later. Epimetheus left and then Pandora was left alone with the box. She was overcome with curiosity and then opened the box. When she opened the box, all the evil and pain that mankind feels now flew out and entered all the people, she shut the box just in time to leave one thing in it....hope and then she opened it again and hope entered into all the people. This is the greek origin of the idea and emotion of hope.

Hope is both the bane of and greatest thing in human existence. It lets us survive ever second of every day, it gives us reason to live, a reason that sometime something great or fabulous will happen to us despite all the pain and suffering we endure. Some of us more than others, yet it persists, for most of us despite whatever we endure we still hope for a better tomorrow, a tomorrow that might never come or doesn't even exist. We have no real rational basis for this hope, in fact it makes no real sense. If anything it is like gambling but much less probable to happen. Hope is big game of chance, its pure probability or luck. We are playing a game in which we don't have any real reason to believe things are gonna get better or something good is gonna happen, we think just because so much bad has happened something has got to give and there must be some light at the end of the tunnel but sadly sometimes all there is, is only darkness, no light, just a tunnel that doesn't end or the end we'll never see. Hope is only pure chance, nothing true or real. It is a secret weapon we have but a weapon with no real power, a dud. All hope does is give us false sense of happiness, a false belief that things will work out, when in fact they maybe never do. Sadly we all wake up everyday, thinking that its a new day, a day different from the day before, a day in which something better will happen than the day before but its a false false reality. Every day is a continuation from the day before, no more new, just as bad or good as the day before was, and it will always remain so for most people. Maybe Pandora should have left that box shut and never let hope out, at least then we would all be able accept our fates and not falsely belief something better will come.

Spring Break

So basically i've been in New York City for the past 5 days, and its awesome. I've been to this city like 4 times in 2 months, and hasn't got old yet, i'll be back here in a few days. I came with my friends Joey and Nikhil. Joey is a buddy from law school and Nikhil is my friend from undergrad. We got into NYC on friday night around 11:30, made it from boston in about 3 hours, which is good time, less than vegas. We got ready and left the apt within 45 min and headed out to the bars. We first went to this place called Proof, which according to Joey was supposed to be a good lounge, but apparently it is a undergrad hangout, which is superfically good but we are over that scene. Regardless, we decided to hang out for a lil bit and get a few drinks and partake in the scenery aka young nubile undergrad girls. ( just wanted to use that word, nubile) This one girl who was clearly drunk comes up to us while we are sitting down, and her freaking boobs were falling out of her shirt every minute, which again we weren't minding all that much but after 10 min that scene got played out and so we left and headed to another bar called Mercury Bar.

Mercury Bar was fun, we met some people that Nikhil knew and this other dude started to hit on Joey, we were gonna help Joey get out of it but the dude was gonna buy all of us drinks so we said what the hell, so basically Joey had to hang out with that dude for a few min, it was awesome. Then we headed to another bar called Metro 54 which was cool. Basically the next day we went around the city and saw Times Square and Central Park and the "Gates", what the hell is that thing. 21 million bucks on that? What a waste. That night we also went to like 4 bars: cellar bar, gstaad, light and then taj. Taj was happening as was Light, which had brazilian night. Kinda sad, the entire night I didn't see one girl that was worth my effort, aah well, c'est la vie.

Nikhil pointed out something that i didn't notice about myself recently. I've changed a lot in the past few months, i've become nicer in many ways, which is kinda weird for me. I'm not really sure why. I'm having a hard time being as much of an ass as i used to be, i'm actually a bit concerned about hurting people's feelings. Maybe its a sign of maturity? Anyways going to bed, late.

Ouch

Well its been a couple weeks since my last post, i've been somewhat busy. I went to NYC last weekend to visit my friend Aditya, who had flown up from LA. I hung out with him, Shanto and Bindi on friday night at this place called park, its pretty cool. The weekend overall was chill, nothing too crazy, i kept it lowkey, wasn't really in the party animal mood. Recently, i've been actually having a good relationship with my sister, which is really weird to me and is a sign i guess that we are growing up. She is considering moving to NYC this summer, which if it occurs will be kinda weird again because we will be in a new place together, although i highly doubt we will live together given that Big Daddy Schlong aka Mike Gates and i are gonna be roommates. (BTW I didn't make up that name, he is just called that)

I also dislocated my shoulder for the 13th time in 8 months on this tuesday. I was playing basketball and tried to do a big crossover in an attempt to juke the defender but my arm must have went to high and back which caused my shoulder to pop out. Its really getting annoying, i can't do most physical activities without worrying about it. I popped it back into place after 2 minutes of trying and then went out and played the rest of the game, so for the rest of the game i kept my left shoulder close to my body and didn't really try to move it except for dribbling. Despite that i did bring down a lot of boards and had 3 swats and about 8 pts. It wasn't my finest game but it was ok. On top of that, when i was going up for a layup the defender kicked me in the face and cut my nose and gave me a partial black eye, and was there a foul called? Nope, the monkey ass refs didn't call any fouls on the other team, only on us, what the bloody hell. My cut nose started to bleed a tiny bit and they wouldn't let me play until I made it stop bleeding. We got our butts handed to us but it was fun despite the fact the refs were douche bags. I think i have to have surgery and thats gonna suck, cause the rehab time will be like 6 months until i get full movement back into my shoulder. Anyways I think i'm going to NYC again this weekend with my friend Joey and probably Nikhil, still in the process of working that out. We have spring break next week and i will be spending it working on a couple of papers.