Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from April, 2017

School of Thought: Existentialism | Hri-Write

Existentialism is a philosophical school of thought that deals with human existence, trying to explain the purpose of a human life. Existentialism, like many other schools of thought, is of course only a speculation and something we made up, take what you read here with a pinch of salt ( after all, I don't know any more about life than you do! ) If I were to try to explain existentialism easily, I'm afraid I'll lose out on its intricacies, but I'll give it a shot anyway. Existentialism, at its most fundamental level, says that every person is responsible for defining their own purpose in this world and that we are governed by our free will. Existentialism says that we are not here to 'find purpose', but rather to 'create our reality and purpose'. It sounds simple, but that's because I've tried to break down roughly a few centuries worth of study and philosophical evolution into four sentences. Existentialism originated as a school o...

Hot take: The War on Drugs is a huge failure

I try my best to refrain from topics that have anything to do with psychotropic or psychedelic substances, but the implications of this topic in this day and age are so vast that talking about it would do more good than bad. The 'War on Drugs' was a name dubbed to the criminalisation of hallucinogenic substances during the presidency of US President Richard Nixon. It wasn't just a national campaign, because the US is a superpower, almost every country followed suit with some style of criminalising hallucinogens. This list included Cocaine, LSD, Heroin and the hotly debated Marijuana, which is making a comeback. Today, the war on drugs is a huge failure. The entire nature of the policy has caused numerous, devastating consequences. It's lead to mass incarceration (particularly in the US), anarchy, civil dissent and human rights abuses across the world. All of this comes at the expense of billions of dollars of investment into fighting drugs, while creating the ve...

Popular posts from this blog

Where is all the 'alien life?' - Fermi Paradox and other theories

My first blog, ever, was about understanding the odds of alien life. I've gotten much better at writing blogs since then (or so I like to tell myself), and it would only be right if I reinstate the legacy of that one. We should openly admit that when we happen to be under a starry night and see a sight similar to this, we all have a react in a different and interesting way. Some people are left boggled by the immense size of the universe, others by the sheer glamour of the scene and if you're anything like me, you're paralysed by the sudden realisation that you have a negligible impact on the universe. The point is, we all feel something . When he looked up at the sky, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi too felt something, a thought that lingered around this question, "Where is everyone else?" It's been half a decade since Fermi passed on, but he left us with a fundamental query and idea. Fermi realised that in a universe as old and vast as this, there s...

Why your digital footprint matters

Every second you spend on the Internet, you're actively involved in painting a digital picture of yourself. This portrait helps companies target content at specific markets and consumers, helps employers look into your background, and helps advertisers track your movements across multiple websites. Whatever you do online, you might be leaving digital footprints behind. ( http://www.internetsociety.org/your-digital-footprint-matters ) In short, your digital footprint is everything you do online. Social media activity, app usage, email records. Watching videos, visiting adult sites, using certain plugins, everything goes into this piece of art. Whether you like it or not, everything you do on the web can be tracked. A lot of people seem to think that using incognito features on browsers or routers does any good. It might hide data locally (on your system) but it does nothing to completely hide your presence on the web. A diagram of how your internet works The abov...

'Kids these days', and Juvenoia.

The phrase 'kids these days', has been used since time immemorial by older generations to express their disappointment in the younger generations. We love to talk about just how different life was 'back in the good old days'. In that regard, you see a huge number of 'only 90s kids will remember...' on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites. George Orwell had a brilliant quote that went along the lines of this: George Orwell (1903-1950), was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. There's a neat neologism for this phenomenon, Juvenoia . The point is, it's an endless cycle. Let's examine this situation. A family is sitting around the breakfast table, all engrossed in their own digital life. It's a common situation nowadays, right? However, in 1907, the Journal of Education deplored, "At a modern family gathering, silent around the fire, each individual has his head buried in his favorite magazine." Let...