Love convention by Paul Coleho

For a while I have been thinking what to write and I had some unposted articles but when I read this today I think it deserves to be posted. It is something many people forget while loving - Love convention. It is not by me but by Paul Coleho.

Convention of those wounded in love
Published on December 13, 2009 in News. 2 Comments

promulgated by Paulo Coelho in 2008 and dedicated today to Elin Woods

General provisions:

A – Whereas the saying “all is fair in love and war” is absolutely correct;

B – Whereas for war we have the Geneva Convention, approved on 22 August 1864, which provides for those wounded in the battle field, but until now no convention has been signed concerning those wounded in love, who are far greater in number;

It is hereby decreed that:

Article 1 – All lovers, of any sex, are alerted that love, besides being a blessing, is also something extremely dangerous, unpredictable and capable of causing serious damage. Consequently, anyone planning to love should be aware that they are exposing their body and soul to various types of wounds, and that they shall not be able to blame their partner at any moment, since the risk is the same for both.

Article 2 – Once struck by a stray arrow fired from Cupid’s bow, they should immediately ask the archer to shoot the same arrow in the opposite direction, so as not to be afflicted by the wound known as “unrequited love”. Should Cupid refuse to perform such a gesture, the Convention now being promulgated demands that the wounded partner remove the arrow from his/her heart and throw it in the garbage. In order to guarantee this, those concerned should avoid telephone calls, messages over the Internet, sending flowers that are always returned, or each and every means of seduction, since these may yield results in the short run but always end up wrong after a while. The Convention decrees that the wounded person should immediately seek the company of other people and try to control the obsessive thought: “this person is worth fighting for”.

Article 3 – If the wound is caused by third parties, in other words if the loved one has become interested in someone not in the script previously drafted, vengeance is expressly forbidden. In this case, it is allowed to use tears until the eyes dry up, to punch walls or pillows, to insult the ex-partner in conversations with friends, to allege his/her complete lack of taste, but without offending their honor. The Convention determines that the rule contained in Article 2 be applied: seek the company of other persons, preferably in places different from those frequented by the other party.

Article 4 – In the case of light wounds, herein classified as small treacheries, fulminating passions that are short-lived, passing sexual disinterest, the medicine called Pardon should be applied generously and quickly. Once this medicine has been applied, one should never reconsider one’s decision, not even once, and the theme must be completely forgotten and never used as an argument in a fight or in a moment of hatred.

Article 5 – In all definitive wounds, also known as “breaking up”, the only medicine capable of having an effect is called Time. It is no use seeking consolation from fortune-tellers (who always say that the lost lover will return), romantic books (which always have a happy ending), soap-operas on the television or other such things. One should suffer intensely, completely avoiding drugs, tranquilizers and praying to saints. Alcohol is only tolerated if kept to a maximum of two glasses of wine a day.

Final determination:
Those wounded in love, unlike those wounded in armed conflict, are neither victims nor torturers. They chose something that is part of life, and so they have to accept both the agony and the ecstasy of their choice.
And those who have never been wounded in love will never be able to say: “I have lived”. Because they haven’t.

My Comments:
1. a person should be aware that they can inflict damage to another person as well and be a careful responsible loving person. Cause pain only if absolutely necessary, like when they are lying to you or are cheating to you, that pain should be kept to absolute minimum [and it is well documented in Prison experiment by P. Zimbardo that people are born sadists]. Control your sadism as it is really painful.

2. I actually don't think we should use strong words towards them and we should not insult them in front of our friends. We might criticize them but not insult. There is a difference.

3. I don't think we can sometimes chose who we love, I think we can meet a friend and we fall in love accidentally. In fact there is one song by Dj. Tiesto which words are like this: "How was I supposed to know that our love will grow."

Dj Tiesto - Touch Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doPMhtF4_bY

4. The way they perceive love might be different for us than for them, leading to conflicts and disappointments, therefore one should seek the definition of love and whether it is equal to being in relationship if both people are single or not. Having said that, firing arrow in the opossite direction is not enough, it is because concious mind of a human being is able to override emotions with rational thinking and give up on a feeling for certain reasons known to them.

5. The fact that love and war is being compared is somewhat sad and for me really depressing and in my opinion love is NOT a war and should not be thought of like this as this means that people will exploit weaknesses of partner even more.

6. To know what weapons you have, what things cause pain and suffering and 'works' does not mean one should use them, it is opposite it means one should NOT use those weapons. In the same way that America and Russia have nukes and they don't fire at each other. Responsible love is when people have guns but they don't shoot at each other.

7. I must completely agree that feelings of love are sometimes so strong that by default it does lead to some sort of a war/conflict but understanding that it is by default lets two people to be ABOVE, control their actions (not emotions) and therefore focus on higher MEANING.

More things could be easily written, complex topic but let's finish at that.

This is my Mum's Week and THE CONNECTION week.

If anyone wondered what was she like...

This YouTube video summarizes it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1NjaLpITw

This week is THE CONNECTION week for everyone else except for me, connection with your Soul Mates, catch up with your friends. Who knows what they are up to... are they still alive?

She was THE SUN for me...



and the HOLY SPIRIT....



and one can connect to... the DEPARTED but it is hard and I don't even know if I can do it. I doubt it.

All cats have a tendency to lie....

All cats [YELLOW] have a tendency to lie because for them often TRUE = FALSE or so they want you to think so... The problem that a cat has is that cat is unable to lie to it's own heart. Meet cat - the perfect liar :)

Excellent post by our Swedish Lead Software Engineer about Cost of Features.

http://tech.shopzilla.com/2009/11/the-cost-of-a-feature

Reflections on vegetarianism

There is plethora of causes why one could become a vegetarian. For me, one of biggest driving forces was a number of ethical reasons. I have been vegetarian for over 6 years now and during that time I have been thinking about this topic quite extensively and I came across many comments from my friends. I wanted to share some of them and why I think that some of them are great and definitely worth pondering on and analyzing.

Needless to say, ethical vegetarians are not eating meat because of ethical reasons. They simply don't want animals to get slaughtered and some of them genuinely believe that animals should be treated the way humans are or at least close to it. Even ethical vegetarians do divide in their beliefs. Some simply want animals to live in decent conditions and want them to die without suffering, some of them don't want them to be slaughtered at all. In my humble opinion, by far the most ethical ones are fructarians, then vegans and eventually laco-ovo vegetarians. Fructarians only eat things that fall from a tree or a bush, they don't eat animals products of any kind. Vegans do not eat any animal products i.e. dairy products or eggs.

The reason I became a vegetarian is because I strongly believe that I am not in position to take animals live just for pleasure of it. I wanted to see if I am able to live and nourish myself without animal protein and I have succeeded up to a certain point. It is necessary to remember to replace protein that we normally obtain from meat with protein from plants. Protein is an important ingredient and currently human organism is unable to create it on its own. I say currently, because through the course of evolution in the long term, I reckon it would be possible even to change that. As a matter of fact, there are animals that do produce protein on their own. It is a matter of genes in DNA sequence. Assuming that a vegetarian diet is generally low in protein, mind you that in the long term it can be fixed through the course of evolution or by DNA programming (genomics).

I have experienced lots of problems with vegetarianism. It is like you open a pandora's box. One mental shift leads you to many other thoughts. Should I kill insects? Should I not wash myself like Buddist monks, that way saving bacteria from dying. In a sense it is impossible to survive without killing an organism of some sort. Viruses, bacteria are all organisms. Life and death seems to be deeply rooted in the way the world is structured. So, we are all killing all the time, we have to kill to be able to live, if we don't kill bacteria in our organism then that bacteria will win the struggle and eventually we might even die due to a sickness caused by their frivolous playing tricks habbits. So we established that killing is inevitable, then this raises a question how do we divide organisms into the ones that we think we can kill and the ones that we think we can't. Should we base this on size or on their intelligence? Is it ethically more justifiable to kill a mosquito, than it is to kill a dolphin. Undeniably, dolphins are smarter than mosquitos. That is one possibility but as Peter Singer [a bioethician] says applying this rule is like applying the same principle to human beings. If a certain person is retarded that might actually mean that they will be less intelligent than the smartest monkey. Should this justify that we can kill them and eat them or perhaps enslave them?

You see nature has no mercy, a lion chases its prey to have a dinner. Lion does not understand that he/she could spare the pray. Lion does not have conscious mind. You do, so think about using it. Most people I met in my life don't really care about this at all. Ignorance is truly a bliss and people know it very well. I know it as well because I also need to switch off, if I was thinking all the time I would go mad. Anyone would.

One of my discoveries is that providing enough of vitamins and fatty acids is really heard on one's own without understandning more about nutrition. I used to have omega-3 deficiency that resulted in certain unpleasant things, let me put it this way. So, now I don't forget about omega-3 and A-Z vitamins for vegetarians and I am guilty of sometimes consuming sea water fish for animal protein. So as you can see I am not an angel.

Why it is indeed an interesting topic, because you see in the past, women couldn't vote and black were slaves. Why did we change that? We have altered this through evolution.

I often hear a comment that people love meat and they would never give it up for the taste of it. That is for me worst possible argument one can come up with, because it is like saying I like black slaves and I think to have a slave at home is really good and I would never give up a slave.

Many people do bring up the criteria of conciousness, in a sense that animals do not fear death and it turns out that some animals do fear death actually. There was a monkey that through sign language said that she/he was afraid of to die. Being afraid of death can be classified as a solid criteria of conscioussness.

Another very prepostrous thing is that people actually buy clothes made from furr. For instance, seals are slaughtered just for furr. This is the sickest really because honestly, it is not that hard to buy products that are artificial and at the same time you can use them, so leave poor animals alone.

Testing drugs on animals is also a tricky topic I must admit. If we do believe in inteligence based hierarchy that means that sacrifice of mice should allow humans to live longer. I do believe in layers and humans are indeed smarter [some humans unfortunately have inteligence of monkey :( or worse] but in general they are just more clever. So I personally support testing drugs on mice as long as it cannot be tested in any other way and is necessary to find a cure for a serious or not so serious sickness. That is just my opinion.

Perhaps one of the most interesting comments I have ever heard from one person is that it might perhaps be better to let them live and kill them so at least they can enjoy life a little bit. I must admit that this statement has really caused me to scratch my head. It is a very strong argument, the only problem is that you are the one that kills, so an animal has no choice but to be slaughtered. We are all gonna die anyway. This brings up an interesting topic and extremely controversial as well, whether in future we might need to have obligatory euthanasia for retired people as they keep living longer and longer. So you are 80 and you go to some clinic... Gosh.... I am scared but that only shows how difficult ethical problems are to solve and that right or wrong as a concept is changing over time.

Evolutionary psychology - cheaters and liars win :(

Evolutionary psychology - cheaters and liars win.

Having thought about this for long time and having understood the book - why men like bitches I reached conclusion that evolution does indeed favor bitches (the women and men who are lying and cheating and put themselves first) and in general colors/personality types that have a higher probability of cheating and lying (YELLOW and RED types) then thank God that psychological colours (types) are not inherited. That would mean that world would be eventually worse and worse. In the same way that people that steal are likely to be richer if there was no punishment, in love people who cheat are more likely to have more children and partners that will also love them back. So, imagine that in human mating, there is no court. The ones that LIE and CHEAT the most win the evolutionary game. The only court is you and your parents and family. You are the worse court actually, because you will actually prefer the ones that despise you and treat you like shit the most. Listening to your parents won't help either because by doing so, you will not follow your heart. So you will be unhappy. Bottom line is that following heart is as bad as listening to your parents, which means that that perhaps true happiness can only be in you and not in the one so to speak that completes you, which leads us to Buddhism.... but then poor Buddhists don't have pleasure of talking to the one that completes them, massages and all the nice things... Final punchline is that it is all messed up anyway. We are all messed up. Unless you think about the theory of...

About Cats and Mice and love...

So what does cats and mice to do with love? Well they do quite a lot. The thing is that, cats are quite malicious, he/she will play with the mouse before killing her. Why is that? We were told that animals are cute and they kill only to eat and they don't take pleasure in doing so. Bollocks. They do. The only reasons some animals do not behave like humans is because they are not smart enough. To be vengeful you have to be smart enough. Shocking, ha. Well. Now let's imagine a human being is a cat and another human being is a mouse. Humans do kill each other and cause each other pain. There is nothing revolutionary about that. When do humans stop being nasty? This is when they love... Love is very merciful. So if you are a mouse and you get caught by a cat that does not love you --- run fast. If he/she does love you, well... then... you start to trust... but be careful love is not eternal. How do you know if a cat loves you? Well, see if he/she suffers when you suffer.

On extarverted women and how they test guy's patience and his wussiness level

Extraverted women. I mean how sick do I have to be to write this. First of all, what is the heck is an extraverted woman? Well, extavertism is not something mathematically defined, so it is hard to measure. It is not impossible though and there are psychological tests that measure it. I see it as energy to live. Do you take energy to live from people or from yourself. If you take from people, then you are extraverted, if you take it from yourself then you are introverted.

Today, on a bus I heard a conversation that a girl was beaten and she had to split with his boyfriend and she only did this because of her mother. There are guys that will play on emotions. I have been in this vicious circle once when I was in love as well. You tend to love in a sick way, the one that hurts you somehow. How many times did I hear this story about being beaten? Why girls choose sick guys like that? It is not a recent phenomen, it is a repeatable thing. Every generation seems to be making the same mistake over and over again. Now, why is it happenening? Then I started to think and don't get me started when I start to think... Recently I heard from one extraverted girl as well, that she likes guys that stop her from being too naughty and stops her from getting away with stuff. It is almost like some extraverted women (20-30) still have a little girl inside them. Notice that I say extraverted because introverted women do not behave in that way. That little girl inside an extraverted woman wants to be spanked and told off when she does bad things. It is not a surprise that some sickos loose temper so much that they start hitting her. This is how this works. Then she feels bad but because she is in love, through her emotions she will be unable to leave him (it would hurt too much). Needless to say there are some proper mechanisms to provide feedback but the strange thing is that they like to try guy's patience. If there is a guy, that could be referred to as wussy allows a girl to do what she wants, she will ignore him and eventually dump him. This is because a woman needs a confident guy, not some guy that will cry like a baby. She checks that confidence by testing him out. It makes perfect sence from evolutionary point of view. Who wants to be with a looser? They need protection. The problem is that it often makes a relationship akward and there is a constant struggle. Especially when an extraverted guy meets an extraverted woman... Extraverts tend to loose temper much quicker than introverts. This is actually quite depressing and I wish this didn't exist as a concept and I hope to be proven wrong. The whole view might be scewed, so forgive me this biased point of view. As with all things in human sciences certain people will agree certain one's won't. Psychology is a complex topic.

You are the system

You are the system, the society in which you are brought up in. There are things you don't have to comply to survive but there are some in which you have to comply or you will suffer or die.

How can you change the system? Who can change the system? That is what revolutions are for. Does it have to be through revolution? No, it can be through evolution. Who changes the system? People like Hitler but also people like you on a smaller scale. How do we know that the system is right? We don't, we see it after some time and we adjust. So that is why I am a vegetarian. I don't like the system and I adjust. It is a form of a personal rebellion. I eat fish though... why? Evolution as opposed to revolution is time consuming but the good thing is that it is is more stable... You can only evolve if you think and work on your self and if you are not selfish. Do you have to work? No, of course you don't. You have to have strength and health and $ to survive but you don't have to think. Well, at least this is our current system... here in the UK.

Johari Window

I have been intriqued by a concept of johari window.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window

In a nutshell, Johari Window consists of Arena and Facade, which is something that is known to us, and Blind Spot and Unknown which is not know to us. Arena is something that we and people around are aware of. It can be anything, we can be smart, humble, etc.

[... to be continued...]