We Are All Crazy

A lady and a gentleman decide to make a child. Nine months later there is this creature that just evolved from the lady's insides. The lady and the gentleman decide to make another child. Nine months later there is another creature fighting it's way out of the lady's body. The lady and the gentleman decide it is necessary to provide shelter and food for these creatures, whom came to life because of them. All of this makes sense thus far. Nearly all animals do that. But a couple of years later, the children don't need to breast feed anymore. Yet the parents stick around. The children are called siblings. Why? Because they share the same blood. A couple of more years later, the children are fully humanly functional and can perfectly survive on their own. But the parents still get involved in their lives. They also probably live under the same roof. The siblings are involved in each others lives as well, not because of a love bond, they could hate each other for all I know but they possess that weird sibling connection. How is it that we care so much to live in groups because of blood? The world's societies are divided in the sense of having family groups. We are people who decide to stick together and be all up in each other's business because we share the same blood or parents, We are social animals who need to stay in groups to survive. But how the hell did that happen? What went about in the last non homo sapien ancestor's ,according to the evolution theory, brain? Which part of our brain grasps all these nonphysical ideals. I am so confused about the nature of life, consciousness, and reality. Which is awesome. I like confusion and craziness. Humans are phenomenal, dramatic, sensitive, and weird. WE ARE ALL COMPLICATED AND CRAZY.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

I feel it's my responsibility to tell this weatheringnonsensicalglorious world about the amazing not very known gem it possess. I am talking about the video game/ visual novel Phoenix Wright.

Well that was one hell of a long and dramatic intro, so I will cut to the chase. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, otherwise known as Gyakuten Saiban Yomigaeru Gyakuten in Japan, is basically a law game.
The main character is Phoenix Wright, yes his name is supposed to be a pun for always being right. Phoenix is a defense attorney, which means you're as a player a defense attorney as well.. obviously. Anyway, during the game you experience being in and out of the court room. Usually your goal out of court is to investigate, gather evidence and information. Of course you as an attorney shouldn't be walking around as a detective, so that should drag you in some shit, which is fun. Your job in court however, is to listen to the whiteness's testimonies, make cross examinations, and simply make prosecutors loose the cases. And of course the ultimate goal is to save the innocent, because we are "the good guy".

The entire game experience I think is phenomenal, it feels like reading a book with participating in the story line in a sense. The investigation is fun, the characters are memorable and funny, and of course my favorite part is being in court and pressing that OBJECTION button. Ahh that smug look on Phoenix's face when that happens..
Lastly an honorable mention goes to the music in this video game. Phoenix Wright just wouldn't be the same without all the background music.

Phew, I feel much better after sharing this. The world needs to know about this game. Play this video game you wont regret it, and share this post so others can enjoy it too.

The First Two Cultures

Homo sapiens are 99.9% identical. We all consist of the same basic anatomy, meaning there are 7.125 billion genetically identical humans today. On the other hand, there are over 6.500 spoken languages. More than 21 major religions. Too many music genres for our ears to choose from. More dance styles than your body could attempt to try in a life time. And multiple ways to cook the same piece of chicken thigh.

 But most interestingly, we have an unfathomable number of cultures all around the world that have existed, are existing, and will exist. 

 You see compared to the world's age, the time we lived as a whole hardly counts for anything. So how did we evolve and differ so much in the little time our mankind got to live? Better yet, how are we identical yet so different? If our consciousness is emitted from our brain, how could it be any different from any other human's consciousness?

 Beats me really. But here is the deal, we should try to date back the time where the first culture was split. Our first cultural dissimilarity. When the people who used to live together decided they didn't want to live the same way together any longer, the infamous breakup. If of course, that was the simple way things had happened. And maybe from there we could make a cultural map or tree, we could uncover the mysteries of the old cultures and change our current ones.

This might seem far fetched. Surely there were many groups and cultures long before history even began, long before writing and perhaps even speaking. But there is no harm in trying to find the very first cultural split we can discover. I know I will be working on that. And that takes me to our first lead, the very beginning. THE BIG BANG.

CoTW, Anguilla

Anguilla

    If you don't, like I didn't, know much about Anguilla, then be sure you continue reading this; because Anguilla turns out to be one hell of an interesting country!

Anguilla is one of the 14 current British overseas territories. So it's not a surprise that its flag looks a little something like this.

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Anguilla is a Caribbean island located in North America. The main island Anguilla is 25 km long and 5 km wide. However, the overall area of the territory including its collection of cays and small islands is 91 km. Anguilla's capital is The Valley.

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Story Time

Amerindian "Red Indian" tribes emerged from South America 4000 years ago and were the first to settle in the island of Anguilla. Of course they had to give their new home a name, but it wasn't Anguilla then just yet, it was called Malliouhana.

Ooh! Legend has it that the explorer Christopher Columbus sailed by the island and changed its name into Anguilla; because he thought it resembled an eel in its shape.
Anguilla means eel in Italian.

Anyway. Later by 1650, the British, who emerged from Saint Christopher island otherwise known as Saint Kitts, settled into the land and colonized it.
Ever since then Anguilla has remained a British territory with the exception of one year.

Under the treaty of Breda, the French took over Anguilla. But that ended quite quickly when the British restored their territory a year later.

Fun fact, the flag the soldier is holding is  a 17th century French flag. "Because that's when the French took over Anguilla". Pretty cool huh?

The British then brought Africans to work in agriculture in the 17th century. Resulting in having more than a 100 Africans in the island by 1683. Fortunately by 1838, slavery in Anguilla came to an official end. Africans at that point were ancestors to many of the residents in Anguilla, giving the current citizens of the land their African heritage.

Basically, following to the political agreements between the United Kingdom and Anguilla, the island became an "internally self-governing overseas British territory". A mouthful but it is what it is. 

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Things to know about Anguilla

Anguilla's current governor is Christina Scott. She has been the governor since 2013.

According to a 2011 estimate, Anguilla's population is 15,094.

Economy in Anguilla is very dependent on fishing, especially lobsters, salt mining, stock raising, offshore banking, and surely tourism.

The currency used in this island is the East Caribbean Dollar.


The dominant religion in Anguilla is Christianity.

Anguilla's official language is...

*DRUM ROLL!* 

English.

Honestly, if you didn't see that coming flick yourself for not paying attention to the British theme going on here.

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Culture

The beautiful island is known for its mesmerizing nature and most importantly, its dazzling beaches. People from all over the world make it their life's mission to visit Anguilla. How can they not when Shakira mentioned Anguilla's beaches in her song Loca?!
The skyrocketing amount of tourists with their different backgrounds help enrich Anguilla's own culture and make it that much more interesting and charming.

Music

I would recommend the music of a very talented Anguillan musician named Sprocka. Sprocka leads a very interesting style of music, giving it a Caribbean Jazzy feel. He also spreads peaceful and positive messages through his songs. I find that listening to his art is very refreshing and uplifting.

Check Sprocka's music out by visiting this link. http://sprocka.com/#

Festivals

To impress the tourists, the people of Anguilla make sure they always have fun events up their sleeves. There are always music and dance festivals somewhere in Anguilla. Most of these festivals are beside the beach, so everyone could enjoy the breathtaking weather and scenery. So if you're planning on visiting Anguilla, make sure you attend one or two or even twenty of their events!

Food

Anguilla's cuisine is quite similar to the general European cuisine. It shares most of its food with France and Britain. Anguilla's cuisine is also known for its sea food, of course what else would a cuisine of an island be known for?

    My meal of choice was Pigeon Peas and Rice, and Anguilla styled Johnny Cakes. Making this meal was extremely easy. As for its taste, I think it was quite a good meal considering how little time it took me to make it.

Links to where I found the recipes: 

Pigeon Peas and Rice.

Anguilla Style Johnny Cakes.

National Anthem

No country is complete without a national anthem. Listen to the Anguillan anthem below to ensure the completion of your Anguillan cyber experience.

 God Bless Anguilla.

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Thank you for reading, be sure to leave a comment telling me what you think, and to click the little social media sharing buttons.

Countries of The World.

COMING SOON!

Countries of The world.

This is one of my favorite projects, lots of fun and very educating. Let me cut to the chase.

What I do is that I basically gather general information about a country for a week, and then represent it to you people.

I do study them in an alphabetical order.

So does that mean that the first post will be about Abkhazia?

NOPE!

And that is because I started this project elsewhere.

If you want to see the first eight counties I wrote about you can visit this link: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/359665-countries-of-the-world

By the way that website was Goodreads, and I strongly suggest you sign up for an account there if you're a big reader.

So I will continue where I trailed off and the next country I will write about will be...

ANGUILLA!

A brief halt.

I will pause writing down anything in this blog for a short period of time.

I want to gain a deeper understanding of what I will be discussing and until then I will keep blogging to a minimum.

The blog break should take no more than two months.

Food

        Food diet, religion, and politics are just examples of many "sensitive" topics that people don't usually discuss. And something about the controversy caused by these topics gets me really excited.
So naturally I will, for no reason other than sharing, explain why my food diet is the way it is.

Here are two facts about me:
I adore animals. I love them I am fond of them they are amazing I love them love them lov…
I am an omnivore; a creature who eats a variety of foods, in my case meats and vegetables.

Well, that’s kinds of odd isn't it?
I don't only love pets, but I love animals I actually eat, like cows and chicken etc…
So how can I? What kind of a monster would I be?!
Well… I'm a human being who needs to survive and that’s how I do it.
No! You're nothing but a selfish murderer who exists on the benefits of poor animals.
*sigh*, what abou…
Don't! I'm disgusted with you; you can live perfectly fine without hurting anyone.
How?
… Why aren't you a vegetarian? You would save the animals the pain while still surviving.
And it's okay for plants to feel the pain?
What are you talking about?
What, so plants don't feel?
You lost it.
No I didn’t.
You did.
No I didn’t.
You did, we did, I did…
--
Believe it or not that’s how my brain works, I talk to myself act like I'm someone else and make a little debate. I'm not at all saying that vegetarians are attacking monsters who wouldn't listen to people with other point of views, and I'm also not implying that people who eat meat are those judged and attacked people. It's just a fictional conversation that was cooked in my brain. To be quite honest it bugs me how SOME people who eat meat refuse to listen to the reasons why others don't, and vice versa of course.
   
        As I showed in the dialogue above, I eat meat and vegetables to survive. Just like people who only eat vegetables do. It is in our nature to survive, dot.

It’s a cruel truth that we need to use other living things in order to live. Beyond all the fanciness we live in now, big houses, lights. and all we still kill to eat. And the old fashioned wilds rule kill or be killed still implies.

Hear me out on this.
I asked many people the following question.
If you HAD to make an anatomy examination "in other words cut open" one of the following animals, which one would you pick?
A- a rabbit.     B- a fish.
Everyone without fail picked B. It would still suck but they thought it would hurt them less emotionally to examine the fish. I asked them why, but none of them gave me a complete answer.
I think I do have an answer.

The less we relate to something, the weaker our emotional attachment to it becomes.
In this case we relate to rabbits a lot more than we relate to fish and I will explain why.

We breathe air through our nostrils filling our lungs with oxygen, so do rabbits. We walk around jump around using our legs and parts, so do rabbits. We vocalize, so do rabbits.
We know what it's like when we see a rabbit's leg bleeding. We might wince at the sight, because we can imagine how the pain would feel like.

But fish…? Well they don't even live in the same space we do. They are underwater, sure they breathe oxygen but in a very different way from the one we use. We can't even begin to imagine how to breathe like a fish. We don't understand how the fish's body works. How it has no arms and legs. It doesn’t walk or jump around, it doesn’t vocalize in the way we do. Our relating abilities are so limited that we can only think that it would hurt to have your fin ripped out as a fish not imagine it.

But our inability to imagine how the pain would feel like or how the fish's body works doesn’t prevent the fish from feeling the pain, or moving its fishy body. Our blindness on how it feels like to breathe underwater doesn't change that a lot of creatures still breathe underwater.

So is it fair to pick the fish instead of the rabbit?
Of course not!
Both animals will receive the same amount of pain; the only difference is in our thinking. So whether or not we can imagine how it would hurt to split open a fish's stomach, the fish will feel pain anyway.

Why am I saying all of that?
There is a crucial point I want to come across just hang on a bit.

When we kill animals we hurt them. When we eat plants we….?        
What I believe is that plants feel pain just like any other living creature does. What I also think is that we justify hurting them because we don't understand how that would happen.
I can't break a plant's stem and expect you to feel it in your leg. However perhaps if I did that with a dog's leg you would feel a lot worse.

Plants don't have brains don't have nerves that send signals to indicate that there is pain. But isn't it weird that we think they need those things?
They are living creatures, why can't we spare them the thought that they actually have a whole other living process that is quite different from ours? Why do we think that in order for any living thing to feel pain they would need brains and nerves? That they need to be complicated? Can't our brains think that there is something entirely different out there? Life doesn’t work on the "my way or the highway" rule. Just like our organisms exist in humans and animals and insects, other creatures may have a completely different way of life. So just because we can't fathom or imagine how being a plant would work or feel, it  doesn't change that a plant is a living existing creature.
 Plants most probably feel. How that works beats my imagination but it's cruel to dismiss the fact that they do, only because I don’t get how it works.

        When people question plants feelings, they look for aspects existing in us humans. They try to find something they can relate with themselves. Some may say that plants aren't complicated enough to feel. But that’s my argument. We need to stop looking for things we find in ourselves because guess what, not everything implies on us. No one can say plants aren't living creatures, and whether there is pain in the process of eradicating them from the ground or not, we are still ending their lives.

So it is just as unfair to pick plants over animals as it is to choose experimenting on the fish over rabbits.

--
        My point is that we are murdering animals and plants. I'm not using euphemisms if you noticed because I'm sending a message. In our raw complete human nature sense we kill to survive. That doesn't change when we are living in fancy glass houses and whatever. We are still eating things we murdered. In the end it's either we accept that fact or die of hunger. I chose to accept it.

        I want to add, it's nobody's job to monitor what others eat. And I know that not every vegetarian or vegan is the way they are for animals; some do it for health. Whatever the reason may be I personally don't think anyone is wrong for believing or doing what they do. But its fun to express opinions isn't it?

The Invisible Binoculars

Random Theories #1

If you wear spectacles you might find yourself relating to this, if not ask a friend or a relative if they do. I am quite a bit curious about this, naturally since I have been wearing specs for at least eleven years now.
This is the part where I tell you what I am talking about it seems? Right it is.. I felt like fooling around a bit but nah I am excited to share this so here I go!
When I am not wearing my specs and I'm in a situation where I have to look at something, I find myself curling my fingers into a circle and holding my hands around my eyes. I look like I am holding invisible binoculars really. And what this does is that it helps my sight ever so slightly and makes things a bit clearer.
I also found that I wasn't the only person who did it. The majority of my friends who wear specs.. lets call them my "spectacles community", do the exact same thing.
The natural thing to do is to dismiss the probability of sight enhancement and say that our mind is playing tricks on us, making us imagine if we had "glasses like" things around our eyes we would see better.
But I think otherwise. Because I really do notice a difference. Let me explain..
People narrow their eyes when they want to see better right? Making them focus their power on the thing they want to see. I think its likewise with the circle fingers action. Our sights are generally bad and the power is distributed across the distance of whatever our eyes are facing. But if you do the finger circle action you will only see whats right in front of you, completely shutting our the unnecessary scenery on the sides of your sight. Making you focus your vision on the thing you want to see. So instead of having your eye power distributed on a large area it would be focus on the little area you want to see. Enhancing your sight ever so slightly.
I have not searched about this for I wanted to write down my own uninfluenced thoughts, but I am excited to search if others have theories or maybe answers about this... what to call it..? The invisible binoculars thing! I guess I will discover others opinions once I post this.

Mind and Body Connection.

I was watching a show called "I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant" the other day, here is a quick synopsis of the show. The show tells the stories of some ladies who for medical reasons would get pregnant and wouldn't figure it out until they are in labor.  You can watch the show or read about these women if you're interested, but the point is that the show got me thinking… how can we be so unaware of major changes in our bodies? How unfamiliar are we with the only thing that has stuck with us since birth? What causes this disconnection, and is it possible to be more accustomed towards our bodies? 

This isn’t a post for me to explain a theory or answer my questions. I was introducing the thoughts that got me to decide what I will be doing for the next two weeks, and that is mediation and any other thing that could strengthen my mind and body connection. After I gain a little bit of experience on how it feels like to be aware of my body, I will then attempt to find answers for my questions.

Aaand mediation starts NOW

The Stockholm Syndrome

        Let's talk creepy. The Stockholm syndrome has always been something I heard of here and there.  But my first time being really introduced to its concept was while reading a book called Stolen a Letter to My Captor. Which Stolen is a phenomenal novel, I do recommend you check out. The author of the novel, Lucy Christopher, succeeds not only in portraying the idea of the syndrome, but in making the readers experience it as well. Now I will stop talking about the book before this post turns into a book review.

       This syndrome has been named after the Norrmalmstorg bank robbery that occurred in Stockholm Sweden 1973. A little background on the events, several bank workers were held hostage for some time while the criminals negotiated with the police. When the police came to the employee's rescue, they were shocked to find that the hostages accumulated emotional attachment towards the robbers. The workers were defending their captors and did not wish to be freed.

        So, what exactly is this syndrome? The Stockholm syndrome is a complicated psychological case, where a victim of some sort possesses emotional empathy or connection towards their abuser.  This case is quite common in hostages; hostages might eventually have some positive feelings towards their captors, they might think of their lack of physical abuse as kindness. This emotional connection is very strong; it could lead the victim to actually defend the criminal. The emotional attachment is called "traumatic bonding".

         Does this syndrome occur in every traumatic case?
Not at all. 73% percent of kidnap, hostage victims and others feel absolutely no attachment towards their criminals.The slim percentage that does however, still manages to blow off the minds of common people, but it has become a normal maybe even an expected case for psychologists and police. So, what exactly triggers this syndrome? And how does it happen?
Well, after dealing with these cases for a while, psychologists have been able to notice a pattern; some particular events or aspects that happened to each of the victims. And those aspects are the following:

• The victim's abuser must have shown some sort of kindness at one time or the other.
• The captor would feed the hostage and care for their wellbeing. 
• The captor would not hurt them physically.
• The captor might share his past or emotions etc…
• A relatively long period of time must have passed.
• The victim must have acknowledged their inability of escape.  

Of course we can always be more specific, but we are speaking in general here.
With those aspects, its very well expected of the victim to gather some sort of connection with the captor.
Other victims also prone to this syndrome would be:

• Abused Children
• Battered/Abused Women
• Prisoners of War
• Cult Members
• Incest Victims
• Concentration Camp Prisoners
• Controlling/Intimidating Relationships   

     Why do victims feel this way though? Why would any person in their right mind sympathize with a criminal?
The answer for those questions doesn't quite exist sadly. Psychologists could guess, policemen could guess but sometimes no one can know for certain why our minds function in the way they do.
I on the other hand, have allowed myself a guess and it is as follows.
It is easier to live not hating the people around you.
If a victim truly needs to acknowledge their inability of escape in order to develop this syndrome, doesn't it mean that they are kind of working with what they have?
Maybe the victims are trying to increase their survival chances by accepting their situation and trying to live with it. Resulting in not hating the criminals then maybe understanding them, then loving them?
That’s my guess, I mean if I were to live in a certain situation forever… I might as well make the best of it, right?

        What is really interesting though, is the switch which flips in those victims. I would like to have the power to bring the victim's former syndrome self to talk to its post syndrome self and see what happens. I would want to know if the former syndrome victim would feel as if they turned into a brainwashed mess or something. This makes me wonder… If people with the Stockholm syndrome don't really know they are experiencing inappropriate feelings… if they don’t know they have the syndrome… what makes me so certain I am not one of those people?  Or...what makes you certain you aren't either?

Do Animals Have Free Will?

I have become very interested in philosophy for quite some time. And one of the most important basic arguments in philosophy is whether human souls exist or not. Now, this post will not be on the topic of souls for I will be doing a separate post concerning that matter.  The reason I brought soul philosophy up, is because of something I heard in one of the philosophy lectures on death in Yale's University. The professor mentioned one of the famous arguments supporting the soul theory, which explains that in order to have free will there must be a soul. The word freewill triggered a spark in my brain. It made me think, do animals have free will? Do animals have souls? 

To answer that, we need to fully understand the meaning of the word "freewill".
Freewill: (adj) the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
In other words, have a mind of your own, choose for yourself, speculate, and think for yourself.

Now, we all know what an innate behavior is. It is the basic sort of program in every creature; humans, plants, animals, and all the little creatures too. It is what a living thing does without having to be told to do or taught how. Examples of this in animals are, eating, flying, crawling, vocalizing, etc…
But we also know that animals have learned behaviors too. Simple example is training dogs some tricks. Moreover animals have the capacity to learn new things that are out of their nature, like the many chimpanzee experiments. Animals also have the capability to be conditioned to certain things, like in the dog experiment done by the psychologist Ivan Pavlov; where he rang a bell every time a dog could smell his food. Initially the dog only drooled in response to the food cent while the bell noise was insignificant to it, but eventually the dog made the connection between the sound and the food smell so whenever Ivan rang the bell, the dog immediately started to drool.   
So as you can see, a dog drooling in result of ringing bells is something unnatural, not a response a dog is born with.
But that does not at all mean that animals (dogs in this matter) can reason and choose for themselves. Meaning even the behaviors which aren’t innate, do not prove free will in 
animals.

To make this a bit clearer, let me give some free will examples in humans that are sort of relatable to animals.
To choose to kill someone, not out of instinct.
To choose to stay up all night staring at the stars.
To choose to end your life. Aka commit suicide.

We know animals kill each other. They can kill for food, pride, territory, mates etc…
But once again it all comes back to instinct. They do not kill because one lion is jealous of how cool the zebra print is. (Not that humans kill for these shallow reasons either, it is just an example.)
So, free will in killing in my opinion is ruled out.

Animals only stay up through their natural sleep time if they have something to do. Hunt, play, and eat and so on. But they certainly don't choose to stay up to watch stars, movies or any of that.
That is also ruled out.

The third example is kind of the soul reason of this entire post.
I want to know whether or not animals have free will that allows them to commit suicide.
Till now I am almost convinced that animals live on instinct and not freewill. They are more like a complicated living program. But finding out the answer to animal suicide may change my mind.

In order for a creature to commit suicide they must know that they are mortal. So now, the question is… are animals aware of their mortality?
Well, humans themselves might not have been aware of their own mortality at first until the first human died. Only then did we understand death, or did we? We will leave that for another post, but for now let's think. Animals witness others deaths of their kind. But does that mean they understand what it is? According to a newspaper an 11 year old gorilla named Gana was holding a dead little monkey baby and looked like she was grieving. People argue concerning the article saying that only because animals sometimes act like us doesn't mean that the same complicated reasoning underlies their actions. Well, we can safely look past that argument by reading another incident where a mother elephant was grieving for days for her stillborn baby and trying to wake the baby or get a response. If the elephant was really grieving for her unresponsive baby, it is a good chance that the elephant mother understood that there was no coming back.  Meaning that at least some animals have a gist of what death is.

Now that that is out of the way and we can hypothetically think that animals are aware of their mortality, does it mean they can choose to end their lives?
In some cases, mother gorillas have died right after their children died. Well, that looks like suicide doesn't it? But is it really? The answer is, no. The gorilla mothers did not mean to end their lives. They were in so much sadness that resulted in neglecting one or more of the basic survival actions like sleeping, eating, self-protection etc…
The gorilla mom death might have suspiciously looked like suicide, but it wasn't really; because the mom death was in result of grieving and what accompanies it of neglectance and not the result of intentionally not wanting to go on as a living creature.
Other than the grieving death incidents, no other "suicide like" deaths have been ever 
noticed in any of the animals.

In conclusion, there is no conclusion. This is an ongoing search for answers, what I have is 
only a clue to start looking into the freewill suicide animal matter. Although I am slightly convinced that animals are intelligent instinctive programs, there is hope that they also 
have free will and souls. So I will be clinging to that hope and continuing my search.

Why start a blog?

           I'm simply using this as a medium to write down what I learn. You can consider this dear random reader as "self talk"; a way to keep track and remember some of the things I got to perceive during my lifetime. I see myself doing something important one day, but with me lazing about on my bed watching series all day long, that will sadly only live in my imagination. So, I will unleash my philosophical side of me here, and will keep my nerdy side satisfied. If anyone is reading this, hello! I'm Aisha or "Aicha" Lariani, and you're checking out my learning journey.