Atheism: Its Future?

The Future of Atheism

The 21^st century has seen an unprecedented growth in the number of atheists in the world. The current exposure that atheism is getting from all sorts of media platforms is overwhelming. I’m an atheist and I’m proud of the courage that atheists all over the world have mastered, both individually and collectively, to stand up against the established religious orders that are currently in control of the masses. Atheism has generated a lot of debate questioning the most treasured beliefs that the human species have held on so dearly for millennia. Today, atheism has a wide range of organizations most of which can be geographically categorized. In every country in which the freedom of expression is well entrenched there are a couple organizations that trumpet atheism and free thought. The wave of atheism has been euphoric in many countries. This euphoria led to the emergence of a number of prominent personalities who have helped in granting atheism its rightful place in modern debates. Richard Dawkins, Aryan Hirsi, Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens and Paul Barker are some of the most famous people in atheist circles due to their fearless condemnation of organized religion and its negative effects on the social and moral well-being of the human species.

In the discussions about religion and atheism one question has been prominent. Where did life on this planet come from? Was it through creation or evolution? On this questions, it is blatantly clear that atheists through their reliance on scientific evidence offer a better explanation than the mythological stories told in religious texts. Atheism is winning there is no doubt about that, and the few who think otherwise are in this case, wrong. Beyond the horizon, I see a future where no child will have to be brainwashed with religious stories, a future where a majority of the population will be capable of viewing reality objectively. This is where it gets tricky. Atheists have been so preoccupied with demolishing the structures built by organized religion that no significant attention has been given to the consequences of the success of atheism.

In the case that atheism succeeds (I have no doubt it will), the future will most likely see the acceptance of atheism by the general populace. As a species we are getting smarter and more knowledgeable about the universe around us every second and this knowledge helps us in understanding who we are and rejecting information that is not backed by ample, quantifiable evidence. The main questions that we should ask ourselves as atheists is, how will a world that fully embraces atheism be like? Will a society that is majorly comprised of atheists and skeptics accommodate religious people? Will the right to religious freedom be upheld in an atheistic society? Will the said atheist society be autocratic and unforgiving when it comes to religious matters? Will the atheistic society treat remnant religious individuals the same way atheists are treated today in some countries, by imprisonment and death? In such a society, will the few remaining religious adherents be treated as psychotic individuals who deserve to be locked up in an asylum or will they be treated with the dignity they deserve as human beings? What role will atheism play in establishing a new social order based on secular principles? Will the principles of atheism and free thought be corrupted by being transformed into political slogans and doctrines? Will such a society be much better than the current one or will it just be a reversal of the status quo with atheists as a majority?

I do ‘pray’ I get the answers to this questions in my lifetime.

An Atheist Perspective.

The Kanyari saga took Kenya by storm. The exposé was not over before everyone went online and started talking about it. The media had a field day with it, working hard trying to get to the 'bottom' of the story. Before we lay this story to rest and trust me, two weeks from now no one will remember who Kanyari is, I'd like to give my two penny thoughts for free. This is an atheist perspective of this whole hullabaloo.
People have talked about how Kanyari is such an evil person for extorting money from believers, for taking advantage of the masses, for being a thief and shameless conman. People have called the people who 'planted' a seed as gullible and naive. But isn't that what all religions are? One big con? As Mark Twain succinctly said it "Religion was invented when the first conman met the first fool."
However, Kanyari  is just a phytoplankton in an ocean full of sharks and whales. Take for example the local Catholic church leadership which is fighting the Tetanus vaccination offered by the Government of Kenya, on the premise that it is a birth control strategy. The Catholic church has been known to vehemently oppose the use of condoms in HIV infested Sub-Saharan Africa. Jehovah's witnesses condemn their followers from blood transfusion or donations. Religions would rather 'you die' than offer an alternative to what they think is the correct interpretation of whichever bible version they read. I'm not religious but I bet there are more atrocities happening behind the scenes in the name of religion.
Monetary fraud is only a tiny speck of what organized religions rob from the society. People are robbed of their curiosity and free thought at a young age in the name of faith. Adults are led to believe that they will be accommodated in a happy place with candy for breakfast, lunch and supper when they die. Or an oven if you happen to be naughty.
Victor Hugo wrote 'In every village there is a light bearer, the teacher. And its extinguisher, the priest.' Religions cause more harm than good, all based on the belief of an imaginary being that none can prove "His" existence. Every time I hear Kenya being called a 'religious country'  I substitute stupid for religious. I may sound harsh but the truth is always unpleasant. The fact that Kanyari and his kin can find different interpretations of the bible just points to the fact that the Bible and any other religious book is man made. We would be far off if we stop talking about what the bible says and focus more on liberating people from the ignorance called 'faith'. Emile Zola  said the above in much fewer lines, thusly, 'Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church falls on the last priest.'

Death!

Death! The very name strikes fear in our mortal hearts. It is a 'known unknown'. We all know death is going to come for us but we know not how or when. Its funny how we all expect it; a guest we prepare to host and entertain from the time we let out our first wail in a maternity delivery room. But lo! The shock, horror and self pity when the Grim reaper comes knocking. Such power. Such dread.
I look closely beyond the pain and grief and see a certain beauty and grace. Deep down the Grim reaper's heart I figure there is a soft spot filled with love and tenderness! Buried beneath the blood, bowels and gore in an accident scene. Hidden music in the ring of a flat line of a terminal patient and death's sweet scent that mingles with the smell of disinfectant in an ICU.
The reaper has around him an air of peace that cushions the terror of his presence. All we have to do is look and surrender ourselves to his hypnotic yet majestic charisma.  To die... To sleep... To sleep, perchance to dream.
There is beauty even in death. Most of us just choose to ignore it, focusing more on the pain, loss and grief thus leading miserable unfulfilling lives as a consequence.

Stand-Up Crap.

Humor is the spice of life. It is what makes human interaction bearable. Humor makes life's worst tragedies bearable and helps us survive through tough times.
This sanctity has been desecrated and modern humor has degenerated into something ridiculous. These days we have stand-up comedians and their humor is dry, dreary and boring.
I have tried giving it fair treatment, subjecting myself to hours and hours of horse manure but stand-up comedy is just the worst.
All these guys do is observe and identify themselves as belonging to a particular social group mostly ethnic or religious and use their understanding of the functionality of said group to make the intellectually inert laugh. A loud irritating laugh that is as a result of the person next to you laughing and having nothing to do with the joke. This attempted humor is blunt, painful and numbing to the brain.
The understanding of the subtlety of humor is non existent these days. Modern humor embodied by stand-up comedians is crude, shallow and uncreative. If you enjoy stand-up comedy, well you have a problem. But hey! That's my opinion.
I think that for humor to be funny it should be refined, satirical, ironic and deep. It should be open to different interpretations. Each person should see his or her absurdities reflected in the joke. Humor should be society laughing at its own reflection in the mirror and not some regurgitated bullshit about some social,characteristics that are observable by all.
So if you're a stand-up comedian or if you do enjoy such hopeless humor... Get a life!

The Down and Out

There has been a stupid slogan doing the rounds saying that you only live once. So if you live in the northern hemisphere you take a flight to Africa and take pictures of mating giraffes and while you're at it buy a few bracelets from a Masai woman whose brains are boiling from sitting under the scorching African sun for 12 hours and get a sadistic pleasure from hearing her thank you in a language you don't understand. While her kids are running around in some remote village hungry, half naked and covered in dust. If you're lucky you get to snap a few photos of said Massais standing outside their manyattas with poverty stricken faces. Lifes good. All the while you keep thinking what a blessing it is that you weren't born in such a miserable country. What you forget is that life back home is hard too for some people, who sleep under bridges and eat beans out of a can. I'm not against tourism, or spending your hard earned money. I'm just saying out loud what nobody dares to say.
The world is fucked up. No one gives a rats ass about the people who live in poverty. NGOs you say? They're a sham as far as I'm concerned. With their well worded Vision statements written by some phony guy with a fancy degree from Harvard earning an eight figure salary, who has no clue what its like to go for two weeks without food, or walk barefoot for twenty miles for a gallon of water from a muddy pond. These organizations thrive on the misery and squalor of the masses. Any attempt to help the less fortunate, on their part is hypocritical. If the world got better, our Harvard guy would be out of a job. He delays that for as long as he can, while maintaining a philanthropic self image.
Here's an interesting fact. If you have $10  in your bank account you're richer than 75% of the world. Makes you feel good right? More than half the people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. In total poverty. The elite don't give a shit. They are busy playing golf, polo or some other weird sport. Coming up with new ways to squeeze out the life out of all of us while sipping 150 year old liquor in their palatial homes or eating expensive dinners in five star hotels not concerned about the starving waiter who works 17 hours a day serving them or their equally hungry chauffeurs.
Next comes the bourgeoisie. The so called intellectuals. They are nothing but stupid, cabbage headed morons plagued by chronic consumerism. Zombified by an education system that turns them  to programmed consumers. They work hard in jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need. Who cares about AIDS or climate change or the fact that families are starving in Lodwar or a drone strike that killed innocent people in some village in Pakistan?... You only live once. The things they are concerned about are their DSTV packages with 250 channels, football matches in far away countries, expensive colognes for the fat pigs they call wives, Viagra, magazines, a fancy school for their kids and some guys name on their underwear. They buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like. They are luxuries, but pathetic sorts of luxuries.And the things they own end up owning them. They make good money and side with the rich because they think, in their own esteemed logic, that any economic freedom granted to the poor is a threat to their own liberty and well being.
All the while the poor are slaving their asses off trying to make a living in a cruel society, with religious dogma being shoved down their throats. Teaching them patience, perseverance and giving them false hope of a world beyond, while this one is being stolen from them. Urging them to look forward to a heaven after death while the rich are living in heaven right here and now.
Picture this. A starving 57 year old man works his donkey all day for a living carrying luggage. Energy is derived from eighty percent whip and twenty percent food. And the neck of the donkey suffers from large sores, but the poor animal works on dragging tons on bare flesh. It can still go on, thinks this miserable hungry old man, and he cracks his whip. The donkey gets whipped till the pain behind is more than the pain in front. The man and his donkey share the same fate. Both are victims to a cruel economic system. Poverty is not bad luck. Its an elaborate strategy used by the elite to maintain the status quo.  Marcus Cato once said that, a slave should be working when he is not sleeping. It doesn't matter whether his work is needed or not.
George Orwell had a theory why this is, he called it 'Fear of the mob'.  The mob would be dangerous if they had any leisure. Its better to keep them too occupied to think. If the rich would be honest to the question of economic freedom to the poor they'd say:
'Poverty is hell. But do not expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry that you're poor, but we feel safer if you remain the way you are and we can't afford the risks of emancipating you. Since you must slave to pay for our trips to exotic destinations, slave on... And to hell with you.'
Such is the way of the world. I guess the rich will get richer and the poor... Well, they'll get children! As Chaucer wrote 'O scathful harm, condition of poverte!'

Poignant

The sky, dark and gray,
The sun, subdued at last, heads westward in dismay,
Unable to cheer this day with a single ray,
The air, damp and foggy,
The earth, wet and slithery,
So still.
No breeze upsets the trees,
And the always frolicking birds,
Lie in their boughs heavy winged, cold and dull,
Such a beautiful day,
Melancholy and poignant,
 Reflects the colors of my erroneous soul,
And thaws my frozen spirit,
Raising it to a haughtiness that knows no limit.

D. T. Moi.

Daniel Toroitich arap Moi turned ninety yesterday. A great milestone in the life of a great man. He is a man whose life has been greatly influential and imperative in the Kenyan political scene. Of all the politicians in this country of ours, he is the only one whom I respect. He was known as the professor of politics, a title he earned by his great and infamous political deeds. After the death of Jomo Kenyatta he became the president for ninety days and liked it. And he sat on that seat for 24 years regardless of all the hitches he faced all along. One of the best traits about Moi is that in his political career, he was no hypocrite. He was corrupt and vicious and the whole world knew it. He was also kind and primary school kids knew that 'maziwa ni ya Nyayo'. He also filled the police force with individuals from his tribe. A deed that became the gist of comedians as they satirized the police using their comical accent.
Moi's presence was felt by all his subjects. From the farmer in a remote village listening to his Shortwave radio to the bodyguards who walked around him. Everybody knew who was in charge. His portrait was everywhere, the countrys' currency, shops and every single public office, had his own Nyayo philosophy and a phrase in the scout's loyalty pledge. He even had a whole day(October 10) named after him.
Moi played political chess in an era when everyone played checkers. He was an assistant to the first president, a senior to the former(Mwai Kibaki) and a mentor to the current. In 2002 when he chose Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor many people did not give it a second thought. Well, his choice is now the president and whether we like it or not Moi's political relevance will be around for a long long time. For many more decades to come, Kenyan politicians will remain eclipsed in Mr. Moi's shadow.
He is Kenya's very own Julius Ceasar. Happy birthday Moi. May you live for many more happy years.

First Impressions.

In our contemporary times, ones worth is determined by ones appearance. What comes in through the ear, is considered less remarkable. I've heard it said that people decide whether they like you or not in the first few seconds, and they are swayed either for or against you by your looks. This to me is ludicrous, superficial and senseless, but sadly, true. People always say that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but no single person in the world abides by this gallant guidance. It is sad to see the pains that people go through to establish and secure their self-image. So much time, energy and resources are wasted in an attempt to look appealing to society's eyes, literally! Those of us to whom appearances mean nothing know the persecution, misunderstanding and a million other consequences that result from this attitude. But the sad fact is that people are always staring, and never listening. People don't and will never understand that the ear is the avenue of the spirit, while the eye is always duped by mere seeming. The society is deaf. You can't change hoi polloi's mindset, the best you can do is learn how to live with it. I can't change it. All I can do is point it out. There have been others before me to whom this societal deformity has been a source of pain and disappointment. Ben Jonson in his brilliant poem 'My Picture Left’ expressed this disillusionment in sentences that glide and ballet across the lines and assonances flamenco style, creating space where there was none ... And what better way to sum it up than with the pain of despised love?
“I now thinke, Love is rather deafe, than blind,
For else it could not be, Whom I adore so much,
Should so slight me, and cast my love behind,
I'm sure my language to her was as sweet,
And every close did meet,
In sentence of as subtile feet,
As hath the youngest Hee,
That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree,
Oh, but my conscious feares,
That flie my thoughts betweene,
Tell me that she hath seene,
My hundreds of gray haires,
Told seven and fortie yeares,
Read so much wast, as she cannot embrace,
My mountaine belly and my rockie face,
And all these through her eyes, have stopt her ears."
In the world we are living in first impressions are highly regarded, but they are rubbish. People would be better off and much happier if they'd give up such a base and trivial concern.

Bibliophilia

Books. The very word has an effect on me that many people may associate with coitus. Its a love that is inches away from becoming a mania. And its not only about the contents of books, but their smell, their texture and how the pages feel underneath my fingers. Few people understand this kind of adoration.
Books have been the solace of many souls. They offer an escape to worlds so far from reality, where tranquility is akin to oxygen.  So tired of practicality and routine, books allow the mind to roam in vast worlds with no law and order, where anything imaginable is acceptable. I'm addicted to that.
Bibliophiles understand the joys of being lost into the world painted by words. The joy of entering a library or a second hand bookstore and just running your fingers down the spines of all those chests of knowledge and mysteriously feeling as if you are absorbing all their wisdom through your skin. It makes my brain swirl and be ecstatic. A high that no drug, no matter how potent can match.
My respect goes to all bookworms to whom books are opium, and whose private rooms are too modest to be branded libraries, yet are full of books. Individuals to whom reading is much more than a leisure, but a religion and a way of life. As Macaulay so full of insight wrote " What a blessing it is to love books... To be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!"

Martyrdom

I've never been a fun of martyrs, as a matter of fact, I despise them. To me martyrs are the epitome of irrationality. As much as I adore heroic failure, I just can't grasp the sense of pushing this failure to the point of death. In the words of Twain  "Never put off till tomorrow what may be done the day after tomorrow as well..." Even death. Why die on a Tuesday when I can make it till Friday? And for what? Some ideology which is debatable? I live by one rule; Never shall I die for what I believe, I could be wrong. People who are willing to die for debatable beliefs are, to me, stubborn and incapable of intellectual openness and honesty. They display a rigidity which is despicable. Throw religion into that mix and you've got yourself a recipe for disaster and terror. Some may claim that martyrdom is much more than dying, that it is all about fortitude and honor. Well I find nothing honorable in being adamant till death. Do martyrs change the world? No. Their stories are just twisted into stretched fables about morality and standing for what you believe. Most of them are fraudulent personas who are idolized for nothing by their followers, Jesus for example. So many lives have been destroyed and cut short in their prime trying to emulate a senseless and fictional act. By the way Jesus resurrected, so technically he is not a martyr. My advice; if you are going to be a martyr, you better choose your animus with great care. There is a high chance you will be disappointed.

The Past

Some say it is not worth it to brood about the past, that our energies are better placed hoping for the future. Others say that the past is gone, today is here, and the future is yet to come, that we should place our hopes in the present obeying Horace's immortal words 'Carpe diem... Seize the day'. All these opinions are wise, but sadly, they are not true. The future is bulletproof, and the present is the least happiest moment of our existence.
We came into this world innocent, but as time progresses fate strikes. The currents and tides of life hit us like a sea onto a coastal cliff, and in their retreat carry away with them some parts of us.
It is how we repair the dents, how we fill the gaps that have been washed away, how we put back together the pieces of our broken lives that makes us who we are. And that, fair reader, is the essence of the past.
Our greatest mistake is trying to shut out and forget our past, and by doing so we forget that the present is what it is thanks to the past.
The past makes us who we are, it moulds us, strengthens us, defines us, as an individual, as a family, as a community, as a nation and as a species. If you can learn from your past and be content with it, yours is the Earth and everything in it.

Self Interest

It is the heart of humanity, the fuel that drives this great machine that is civilization. Yet despite being such an imperative factor in our lives it is the least understood and the most exploited. It governs every aspect of our existence, and influences our every decision and action. Self interest has been the fire behind evolution. It is hard wired in our DNA. It has been the reason why humanity is not extinct yet. The desire to survive. We all love ourselves more than we care about others. Love thy neighbor as thy self is simply ridiculous. Communism failed because it went against this fundamental aspect of human nature. Some people would say religion teaches the ideas of selflessness. On the contrary, it exploits self interest to extra ordinary levels. The fear of eternal damnation. Each one of church, mosque or temple goers are driven by the hope of salvation which is nothing more than the desire to save ones own skin and be looked upon favorably by whichever mythical being they think is in control. Charity by nonreligious people? Well,it all started as self interest that resulted into wealth and ultimately pity for the less fortunate.  Besides, one feels satisfied and good about oneself by being charitable. It gives you the feeling that you are somehow important and better off. Each and every human action can be broken down to the benefit it has to the individual. The only way to get ahead in life is by thinking about yourself above everything else. Sounds cruel and selfish. It is. It has always been and always will be. Self interest is civilization's drive force, the vehicle of progress. I just got rid of the sugar coating that is so treasured by the society.

Profile

Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a continual sacrifice that leads to nothing... That is all that lays before me. Is it despair? Then it must be divine.  I feel not the hope and optimism that comes with the passage of time. My life is subject to entropy, decay and eventually death. I seek hope in the thought that everyone's life is the same as mine. I'm I wrong? Possibly. I envy the average, normal individual, unquestioning in their faith, driven purely by instinct with a worldview that is governed by a duality of black and white. They have no concern about the most important and life altering shades of grey. I have a fucked up brain, obsessed by a need to make sense of every stimuli I experience examining, analyzing and contrasting. The burning desire and compulsion to fit everything in a jigsaw which is, sometimes me thinks, a futile attempt to make sense of life. The result... A twisted personality that no one gets and a neurotic brain that is on the verge of psychosis. I look at myself and there are so many things I hate in me. So many things are so hard to believe. I wish somebody would come to my rescue. Till then, I'll make the best of this gaol, with its wet dripping ceiling and malnutritioned rats.

Intromania

The walls are slowly closing in. I feel the air being squeezed from my lungs. The taste of blood in my mouth as my body is crushed between the spiked walls of socialization. There is a nervous bleeding in my brain as I struggle to be social, a fake smile here, a phony complement there. I feel like throwing up. And it always goes from worse to a living hell. A noose keeps flashing in front of me and its magnetic. Oh, the pains of being human. Do we really have to socialize. If death is the only way of being free of human interaction then suicide looks like a pretty reasonable option to me. Besides, I'm already choking to death, I may as well go out on my own terms....

Burn After Reading.

I'm gonna do this now...." Those who are familiar with my work will know what a distaste Motivational books are to me...." you see that's how a famous writer will write about his previous book. But since its the internet I can commit this blasphemous act without a moments hesitation. Now, to the matter at hand. I once made an aside about motivational books. I once saw a bookshelf of a friend of mine and all I could see were the names like Joel Osteen and Dannie Hood, and a bunch of names that gave my tongue a rigor mortis. Now, how a person can buy and read such crap over and over again is excruciating. In my list of the most profitable activities that prey on gullibility, motivational books are number two after organized religion, although I think one is  a brain child of the other. But I digress, over the couple of past centuries the intellectual curiosity of humanity rose to unimaginable peaks, suddenly man was asking weird questions and in a blink of an eye we had Copernicus and the solar system, Newton and his gravity theory, Galileo and his telescope, Madam Currie and radioactivity, planes, cars, penicillin, the A and H bombs.... And with all this came the fundamental understanding that we were part of something much greater. Man suddenly came to a realization that humanity is not the centre of the universe. Granted, the universe  doesn't give a rat's ass whether we exist or not. This sudden understanding of reality was blinding. While mankind is grasping around trying to make sense of what life is all about, motivational authors have taken this chance and are making tons of money feeding gullible human beings soul-butter and hogwash; crappy life lessons that are nothing but lies. Motivational books are nothing but psychological exploitation of the insecurity that all of us harbor within ourselves. All my heart's despise and hatred is directed to authors who take advantage of the pain, confusion and desperation of the masses. They write about solutions to human emotional calamities' that are non-existent and are bound to send their readers back to the bookstore for the next issue. Its all a mental con that drains its victims of their creativity, problem solving abilities and their grasp on reality and make no contribution to the betterment of humanity. If you are reading such books, my advice to you is to stop wasting valuable time and money on useless pages of words that talk of nothing but a Utopian world that does not exist, even after death. Take life as it comes, and don't listen to anyone who tells you it will be better. Sincerely, if it ain't better now, it never will be. The future is bulletproof. In the immortal words of Samuel Langhorne Clemens "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." No books telling you otherwise are worth reading
..

Blank

This cursor is blinking up at me in mockery. As if it knows that my mind is blank and I have no clue of what I'm going to type after this. Me and this stupid cursor, oh, how our lives are painfully similar. Blinking away at a steady rate surrounded by so much noise.  Shit... This is so gruesome having no inspiration to do something but yet having a burning desire to do it. Well I guess this will be all for the day, just sit here and act like a douche bag and watch cheap comedy and laugh at some shallow humor, surrounded by shallow, irritating people. I bet it can't get any worse than this. In the immortal words of A. Attanasio "Being human is the most terrible loneliness in the universe". Crap, the cursor wins. Blink on, ye slim, black, strip. I will be back with all me intellectual wrath...

Twenty First Century

The possibility of a revolution in the mode of thinking currently employed by the human race is slim, nay, improbable. It is of course quite evident that once in every a hundred years we witness one or two instances of great genius that dramatically alter our societal structure, our customs and our perception of reality.
Over the past century however, this sudden immergence of outstanding mental powers has declined and the frequency of which ingenuity occurs today is small. This can be blamed, chiefly on a brainchild of genius, technology. With the rapid growth of technology man kind has been subjected to partial or complete dependency to machines for the running of everyday life. This has led to a numbing of the intellect that is so motivational deficient. The culture of reading has died. Today libraries are deserted buildings with what many consider as old books rot and collect dust on shelves. Its a pity.I wish I existed in the days when scrolls and letters were the most advanced forms of communication. I bet back then wooing a girl was magical. You would write down a few lines of poetry and she would reply to you after 3 weeks... Just enough time to think things through right? And you would smell her scent in the leaves of the paper, marvel at the graceful curves of her handwriting and feel her emotions as her hands trembled while writing. But gone are those days. This days all you get is some weird abbreviations in a text and a stupid smiley face. Shit... Nobody appreciates longhand anymore. So here I am typing away this words to an audience I don't even know exists. Symbols that cannot convey my innermost feelings.
Technology has ruined the written word, now all we have are EPUBs and PDFs and fucking audio books... Cursed twenty first century.

Open Letter to Michael Bay

Dear Michael Bay, I hope this letter finds you well. I write to thank you for ruining the Transformers for me. You took a cool cartoon that I enjoyed as a kid and trashed it, turned it into nonsensical ruble and chaos. The first movie was tolerable, Revenge of the Fallen was pathetic. You really tried with Dark of the Moon, and when I saw it I thought it was a good recovery from the previous one. But, I guess you ain't a man who knows when he's failing. You should've quit and never made another installment, you could have let Optimus Prime bask in his metallic grandeur after saving Chicago. But you just couldn't, you had to come back again and this time you were at your worst. I mean what the hell was wrong with you when you were on set making Age of Extinction? What was going on in your head? What astonishes me was how you got Mark Wahlberg( Whom I respect and think is great at what he does) to play lead character in such a crap movie. Age of Extinction is the worst movie in the Universe, but I guess that doesn't bother you does it? I mean how do you sleep at night knowing how crappy that movie was. If you think it was great,  you shouldn't be in the movie business. Wahlberg's charm didn't even get close to making the movie worth seeing. The script was senseless, the plot so far fetched and unnecessarily stretched, the attempt on humor was depressing, and lets not mention the acting which was much more mechanical than the robots. By the way, did you have to fill the movie with washed up models in every scene. And what's up with all the advertising, I sat through the movie and at the end felt like I had just watched a two hour commercial, I guess you just had to kiss ass to your sponsors, what a disgrace. You really suck! And I want you to know what a dishonorable thing you've done to iconic heroes that helped a kid cope with childhood and I hope you burn in hell for that!

Sincerely yours,

Ralph.

Story of Our Lives

Our great depression is our own lives. Try as we may to look for scapegoats we are our own weight that pull ourselves under water. You look at the world around you and try to figure out what to blame for your misfortunes money, friends, family but the problem would be solved if your eyes would look at yourself. You are the cause of your own failure, pain, agony and hopelessness. If people were to stop wasting time trying to look for a problem where it is not and quit whining about how the world is a cold place humanity would be better off. The world doesn't owe you anything, it was here first. The reason you are what you are only you knows. Seize your destiny and quit being cry babies, just don't try to change the world or anyone around you. You are your own problem. So get your shit together and fix your life because no one will fix it for you. Not your shrink, your friends or those crappy motivational books you're reading( By the way, why do people read those books? They are nothing but a psychological exploitation. But that is a story of another day) So grow up and take control, you make your own destiny

Underdog Reality

If you are looking for hope or motivation in the following lines then read no further. The lines that follow will bring to you the harsh picture of reality that most people work hard to ignore.
Underdogs have been the subject of Hollywood blockbusters and television sitcoms for decades now. But if you really live the life in reality, the situation is quite different. In reality the underdog does not have the glorious redemption of the movie underdog. There is no glory in the life of  the real underdog. You live your life forever in the bottom of a well surrounded by cold darkness that slowly eats away your sanity. Unlucky for us there is no bat cave or a fortune that will be your redemption, like Bruce Wayne. We live in the well, slowly rotting and finally die in it. The entertainment world has succeeded in making the life of an underdog seem fun. But there is nothing further from the truth. Our lives are lived in the shadows, beyond the darkest corners of society, and every attempt to be seen is a risk of being mocked, looked down on and gossiped about. We live our lives in seclusion branded as outcasts, but I have to admit that being an underdog does have some pleasures despite being filled with pain. Live on then, yee underdogs of mankind, life does not get any better in the end.

Social Shackles.

Social protocol is overrated. Everyone expects everybody to smile, shake hands, hug, chit chat and all other exhausting social activities under the sun.
I find this tiresome. My most favorite fantasy, just one in my infinite number of fantasies, I live on an island, in a little cottage surrounded by 12 foot shelves filled with classic literature books and I'm the only living soul on the island.The thought of infinite parallel universes where in one of them this is reality makes me envy the other me.
Anyway, every morning I wake up and shudder at the thought of approximately 12 hours of social interaction. Its depressing to have to smile at a stranger, lie that you are okay when you are screaming inside, engage in stupid small talk about shallow subjects with nagging personalities and look happy around a person whom you know if given a chance you would not hesitate to put a bullet in their thick skulls. But still, its the norm.
So you wake up in the morning and fake everything, your feelings, your thoughts and your personality. And everyday this faking eats away your conscience and by the end of your life you are everything else but what you are.
We are shackled to society expectations and do whatever we can to make sure we live by the rules of said society. Who formulated them anyway?
Those of us who perceive the shackles and are able to free ourselves are looked upon as vagabonds and outcasts. We live in a free world of our own making and are misunderstood and outlawed for that. Freedom comes with a price. And being free of society is worth every pain I've felt, every friend lost along the way and the happiness of others that I had to sacrifice to achieve my own. Introverted and proud.

Religious Education Is Immoral.

The move by the Kenya Institute of Education to reform the 8-4-4 curriculum is a great step towards ensuring education in our country meets local and international needs. Their endeavor to make the curriculum relevant would be incomplete if religious education will still be taught in school.
Religious education draws a bulk of its material from ‘holy books’ which contain innumerable fictional tales of virgin births, ghosts, talking donkeys and flying horses, which are taught to students as historical fact despite all evidence to the contrary, makes religious education intellectually immoral. Religious education also kills the curiosity of children by its biased praise of faith without questioning.
The fact that religious education is allocated equal time as science subjects in schools creates a state of psychological chaos in the minds of students. For instance,   the teaching of creationism and intelligent design as a fact alongside evolution, leaves students confused regarding the origin of life in the universe and any honest enquiry is, given the unwarranted respect given to religion in the country, not satisfactorily answered. This misleading of young minds is unacceptable and outdated given the overwhelming scientific evidence that has proved religious dogma to be false and fictional.
It is time that the education system stops teaching Bronze Age mythology from the Middle East and focuses more on instilling students with factual and practical information that will help them unleash their potential and play their part in improving the state of humanity through creativity and innovation. 

Twisted Perception.

Despite its title, I like to think the following lines are realistic and not twisted at all. I like the movie 'The Book Thief' mainly because its told from Death's point of view, in this case Death being used as a noun.
To use the words of Donald Rumsfeld I consider death as a "Known unkown". Every morning I stare at the ray of sunlight shining into my room and see a new day. But where others see new opportunities , I see new possibilities of the ways I will die. Out there somewhere Death is rolling his dice to find out when and how to kill me, maybe by choking me with a grain of rice, be tripped by a banana leaf and break my neck, get hit by a falling meteorite.... The possibilities are endless, and every day I climb to my bed I laugh at what a looser Death is. This may seem as a twisted perception but its only because as human beings we like to mask this harsh reality with the fictional thought of an afterlife. Let us entertain this thought for a second and say there is an afterlife, what if there is nothing there but spiders, giant spiders kinda like the ones in The Desolation of Smaug. What then?We just end up being toys to some spiders and we all know that's no way to enjoy immortality. But I digress. Anyway I have been beating Death at this game for the last 21 years, yet I'm wise enough not to stretch my luck too far. We will all die someday so I'll drink and enjoy the company of women(I'm just kidding girls don't like me) its something about some social protocol I can't seem to grasp... Anyway when you wake up in the morning don't lie to yourself about new opportunities, look at it as another day to dodge Death. That mindset keeps you on your toes and trust me, you'll never feel more alive.

Night.

It is true that we all face dark moments in our lives. Life reaches a point when all hope fades and our light is extinguished.
Life turns out completely different from the way we envisioned it in our childish dreams. Life is harsh. Doors slam in our faces, bridges burn,tables turn, people let us down, and we all die with unrealized dreams. Despite all this we keep hoping and looking forward to a new dawn and a new day.
A never fading faith burns in our hearts that no matter how hard or numerous times we fall we always find the strength to get back up and stagger even deeper into lifes darkness. We struggle through today hoping tomorrow will be better, we spend our lives shrouded in darkness waiting in vain for the sun to rise, and walk through lifes dark tunnel hoping to see a light at the end of it.
Despite these unfortunate circumstances, we all have a repetitive voice in our heads that keeps us going. The voice that tells you to hold on when the going is rough, the one that tells you there will be calm after the storm, to smile despite the pain in your heart, and that its always darkest before it gets pitch black. Keep hoping!

Of Life

Physicists have an interesting theory that claim that time as we ordinary people know it is an illusion. The theory claims that ordinary subdivision of time into the past present and future is senseless. What had me intrigued is the portion of this theory that claims the future is already set. That was a blow in the face and takes me to my next point that whatever happens in our lives is not coincidental. It may sound like a pretty mystic conclusion to be drawn from science but its not. The greatest mistakes we make is to look for prognostics in casual events. We strive to understand a deeper meaning in the events in our lives. It is this strife to look for meanings that are naught that knock us completely from the truth.
Man has been known to be, and still is, deficient of gratitude. We always ignore what is given to us and focus more on what is not. The attitude of deficiency hinders us from enjoying the fullness of our lives. My advice is to enjoy what you got, forget what you don't.
Nature has offered us many pleasant yet simple gifts, the breezes that caress our skins, the sweet scents that entice our nostrils, the melodies that enchant our ears, the sights that awe our eyes and the simple things that people do that touch our hearts.
For the fault, esteemed reader, lies not in our stars but in our selves that we are underdogs and live sad lives.

Higher Learning....

They say education is supposed to makes us better people, and help in pushing forward the current state of mankind. Yet here I am in an institution where personally I feel I was smarter and more intelligent than when I joined. My mind has been numbed by tons of irrelevant information, outdated and dumb lecturers with no way out and no one to save me. My mind is trapped in a world full of intellectual zombies with no way whatsoever of thinking outside the box. No challenges worth of my intellect are in sight. My mind is thirsty as I wander this intellectual wasteland in search of an oasis where I can quench it with the refreshing waters from the fountain of knowledge. Till then I will cling on to whatever is left of my overstretched hope, losing myself to the world of Hugo, Dostoevsky, Dickens and George Eliot finding peace in the meadows of Middlemarch, the streets of St Petersburg, and taking long walks with little Nell as we cross fictional countrysides of fictional lands. When you see me and I am unable to place a quote from T. S Eliot please do not blame me, my mind was murdered in Laikipia university a useless and dumb institution of higher learning as its name sounds.

Happiness and Meaning.

"To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live FOR the moment. But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life- a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.
"
This words are the opening of the book " The Interpretation of Murder" by J. D Rubenfield and in my entire life no words have ever held more truth. Happiness and meaning can never be attained in one life. A choice has to be made and the selection of one means the rejection of the other. To be honest, such a life is bound to be miserable. Those who seek meaning in life end up giving up happiness and if happiness is your aim then be prepared to live a life with no meaning.
It is however not hard to picture what kind of life to live. My choice is happiness. I careless if my life has a meaning and all because I'm here for a limited time frame. I might be dead by the time you get to read this so I'm gonna seize every second in between and be happy. The meaning of life is relative depending on the current situation and is subject to abrupt change. And to give up happiness is just crazy because,well, there is no afterlife.