Category: Questioning the Public Conscious

This category includes our unique perception of the world. One that goes against conventional wisdom, in the attempt to find a closer truth in an unbiased manner. It is advocating for the point of view you were rarely taught, but have always considered.

A Look at Drugs

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Without drugs in my life I would be miserable. To some this may seem wrong or shocking, but the importance of drugs in our daily lives is undeniable. When we are sick we take drugs, when we are bored we take drugs, when we are tired or in pain again we turn to drugs. I believe there is a certain way that drugs should be used, and I feel if all drugs were used in this way, we would see a huge improvement in our daily lives.

So what is a drug? The Oxford dictionary defines it as “A medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.”. I find this definition interesting because it does not specify whether or not drugs are good or bad. I think as the war on drugs continues the connotation of the word “drug” is almost entirely negative. How we should think about drugs goes beyond our ideas of what makes a drug good or bad, a drug like heroin could be used to benefit one’s life greatly, it just depends on its use.

There are two popular views on how drugs should be consumed. One view is that drugs should only be taken only if absolutely necessary. An instance of this would be someone taking antibiotics for a life-threatening infection. The other view is that people should use drugs in order to maintain the level of functioning of an average person in that society. In this case think of someone taking antidepressants to reach a baseline level of mental health. I believe however, that there is another ideology on when to take drugs. What if instead of viewing drugs as a crutch or a harm, we viewed them as tools.

Almost every drug has its use, even the most dangerous ones, it’s important to note this involves more than just illicit drugs but I’m going to touch on them specifically. We have been told to think that drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines are full of negative consequences with no upsides and it’s a lie. These drugs have very serious negative consequences but they also have legitimate uses such as pain relief, short-term, and long-term energy. I use these extreme drugs as an example to show that even the worst have uses as tools, but the less dangerous drugs contain far more uses in our lives.

If done correctly this could really change the way we perceive drugs, but also the way that we operate on the day-to-day. Alcohol could be seen as a social lubricant, marijuana as a relaxant, nicotine could be used to give short bursts of energy for when caffeine is too long-term. We could use adderall and cocaine to help us focus on precise tasks. There could even be therapeutic uses such as inducing anxiety with caffeine in order to train someone to combat it. I know what you’re thinking, and you are right, only in a perfect world would this not have negative consequences.

Addiction, damaged health and relationships, and death are all things that can go along with drug use. It will be difficult to determine the line that is drawn between a utility and a crutch when it comes to drugs. What it comes down to most I think is productivity versus maintenance. By this I mean are you using the drug to become a more productive person, or are you using it just for the maintain the level of drug in your body for no purpose other than to have it. I think people should have the free will to choose what drugs go into their body, that being said I think some more education is in order.

The war on drugs put we as a society in an odd place, we are not fully informed on what real drug use and patterns of addiction are. Before we go about taking drugs as we please we must first come to fully understand what it is to be addicted and what we can do to prevent it. I do believe that with what is available to us we should look at every drug as a way to improve our lives, and use them to make us the happiest, healthiest, and most productive people that we can be.

The Little Things

I guess sometimes life is about the little things.  The moments when you help a friend or make a new one.  The times you talk all night because the person on the other line can’t imagine being alone.  Or when you give a friend a ride home so that they can finally crawl out of their shell and let out their demons.

These actions require both emotional stability and empathy.  In these moments you need to prioritize another human over yourself.  You need to walk into their shoes and feel around. Listen to what they say and touch what they feel.  After some time you will hear and feel clearly through their perspective. You will be a part of them, and in many ways, you will be them.

It is then when you feel the pain they feel, you must also feel the happiness they feel.  It is buried very deep within them, but nonetheless, it is there, just hiding. Their hope, their peace, and most all, their purpose, are all hiding in the back of their minds.  Hiding from the light and being absorbed by the darkness.

When uncovering this light you cannot miss a beat or break a sweat.  You cannot seem weakened or discouraged. You must present their happiness as an equal and allow this person to watch as you hold their happiness with confidence and hope.  You would show this person the light that they believed was nonexistent and offer it to them. Eventually, they will hopefully follow your steps and gratefully take it from you. For those moments, and hopefully many more, this person will be able to hold onto the happiness that they thought they lost. 

As you watch this individual have their moment of clarity, the hardest part follows.  You must take off their shoes, prioritize yourself again and resume how you once were.  Unchanged and stable. This process is difficult but not impossible. And when looking, as yourself, at the happiness your friend now holds, it makes it all worth it.  Because at that moment you see more than they do. You see past this issue and look at the greater picture. You see hope. Hope that the world will grow. Hope that the world has a chance.  Hope that you, yourself, can help heal it.  

These moments can happen within minutes and give a lifelong memory.  I have experienced this in many types of relationships. The one commonality I have found with these experiences is what it creates after.  A bond is formed that is pure and true. One that I like to think of as simply a true friend.

I have seen so many people believe that they are the center of the universe and that they must prioritize themselves before anyone else.  In a way they are not wrong, it’s your body, and who else is going to keep track of it if not you? Yet in such a globally connected world it would be nice if we were connected by more than just our cell phones and Snapchat streaks. 

What I describe in the previous paragraphs is the ultimate connection.  The connection between two individuals that for a split second, are closer to being one than two.  As a human race I believe we should strive to have as many of these connections as possible. If we become connected, the world would be a much more understanding place.  When one understands their neighbor, they are more likely to bring cookies, rather than complaints. When one understands their rival’s motives, they are more likely to find an agreement, rather than an argument.  When one understands the pain billions suffer every day, the more likely they are to donate millions to those very people. 

My intended takeaway from this post is to please make a connection.  A real connection. One that involves you to not be you. One that makes you them, and if you do this enough you will eventually come to realize that they are the same as you, and always will be. 

“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” – Maya Angelou

Perception and Death

Image Credit: http://blogs.longwood.edu/

From the time that I was very young it was clear to me that vegetables tasted like shit. I mean you hear it everywhere, your friends don’t like eating vegetables, kids in shows don’t like eating vegetables, and the only reason you’re told to eat them is because they are good for you. Until recently I refused to eat most vegetables, until I realized it would take some conscious effort to get over the mental blockades that I had formed over the years. These blockades we create are often formed by what we experience around us, and for me, that experience was that vegetables were bad.

So there’s no good way to segue into this topic, so let’s just talk about some death. First off let me put it out there, death really fucking sucks, I’m not disputing that, but I think that it may be time to look at death in a different way. Death is tragic in the sense that the person you knew will never have the opportunity to interact with you again, however I believe that death is not all tragedy, on the contrary actually.

When one dies they are relieved of all worldly stresses and duties, of any pain they may have been experiencing, and of the fear of death. Our fear of death is intense, and weighs upon many with great force. Many say that we fear death because we fear the unknown, I don’t think that is true. I think we fear death because all of our lives we are told that death is something that we must fear. We have this feeling of responsibility to be sad after a death, to only speak well of the deceased, and to respect their remains. All of these things makes death a quite scary and unpleasant experience for the living.

 What I propose is simple; let’s take death at face value. Let’s acknowledge the pain of someone leaving but also be happy for the relief the death has brought to the ones who are deceased. Let’s not perform funerals in all black, in dark buildings and graveyards for all to see and wallow in. Let’s change our perception of death. Instead let’s celebrate the lives the dead have lived, speak of them truthfully, and acknowledge that death is just another part of life. If we can get over these mental blockades we have about how terrible death is, then maybe one day we can make the end of our lives seem a little less doomed and a little more hopeful.

How Vulnerability can lead to Invincibility

Vulnerability is the state of being exposed to possible harm or attacks, either through physical or emotional means. Almost nobody wants to feel this, yet arguably everyone needs to. 

With few exceptions, people are born with the need to emotionally connect. This commonality largely leads to our desire for comfort and well-being. In short, we want to be happy. It’s that simple. A way to ensure such happiness is to minimize emotions that go against it. To do this, many of us attempt to minimize our vulnerability, our state when discomfort can affect our well-being. Our intentions are clear cut, but the consequences of these actions are damaging.

To reiterate, vulnerability is defined as a state of possibly being attacked emotionally and physically. Both mental and physical components of our well-being are affected by our vulnerability to certain situations. Yet there is a reason why we, the public conscious, mostly associate vulnerability with mental attacks. 

Humanity has created a society that allows physical safety for us. Yet this is a fairly recent achievement. Of humanity’s two-hundred thousand years of existence, only five percent of that has been spent building civilizations. Before that we spent our days running around, looking for our next meal. In those years of do or die, we learned many skills and ways to think, one of which was to contain our vulnerability from the outside world.

Nowadays, the typical person is much safer physically than his or her ancestors. Because of this, our physical defenses have gone down over the centuries and been replaced by mental ones. The shift in how we defend ourselves has allowed people the ability to close themselves off from others. The issue with this is that people cannot suppress one emotion and leave the rest untouched. In my personal experience and research, attempting to suppress one emotion will result in all of them being suppressed.

The worst part is that our technological innovations have made this work easier. How many times have you looked down at your phone rather than exchanging a slightly awkward ‘hello’ with someone? At that moment we feel insecure because we don’t know our relationship with that person. Instead of addressing it, many of us take the easy way out and ‘happen’ to be looking the other way. We still walk past that person, but it feels a whole lot easier because mentally we are miles away. 

This phenomenon is also partly why I believe people get mentally addicted to objects and activities.  Whether that be a phone, drug, alcohol, food, or sex, we begin to rely on these things because they make us feel less vulnerable. When under the influence, people enter a different headspace that distracts them from their psychological pain (not to mention most drugs flood the brain with dopamine, a chemical that causes happiness). Addicts need an emotion, or lack of one, and find that relief in something external to them, no matter the consequences. 

I think we can all agree that we would rather feel happy than sad. The harder question is how do we achieve this? How do we, ourselves, minimize sadness, rather than having something suppress it? I think the answer to this question is by allowing our vulnerability to coexist with us, by accepting that it is an emotion that is as valid as any other. Our emotions make us who we are, and we should be proud of them, all of them.

Not just the part you want to see, but the whole thing.  Yes, the glorified Instagram image of you is great, but the picture of you before you understood that hardly anything matches with orange is just as important.  The A you got in mathematics should make you proud, but so should the C you got in Spanish. We should strive to see ourselves for who we are and smile anyways.

Not just that but we also need to take risks.  To not hide in our phones when we are unsure whether to wave at the person walking past us.  We should instead look them in the eyes and say hello. Sure, they may not say it back, and you may feel embarrassed, but who cares.  At least you tried, and maybe next time that person will say hi to you after he or she reconsiders their action. This fear of being vulnerable and looking weak needs to end.  We are all weak in some ways, and we are all strong in other ways. Let’s embrace that and be proud of who we are, who we truly are.

Who is Biased?

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I, like half of the United States, have divorced parents. Seeing both sides on a regular basis, I was lucky enough to be met with love no matter the roof I was sleeping under. So in that regard, I could never ask for more. I have loving parents and I am forever grateful for that. Yet, through this love came a war. A war on who my parents wanted me to be, and let me start by saying, they wanted very different things.

My mom wanted me to know how to survive. She wanted me to be tough, strong, and the type of person who would never be pushed around. Alternatively, my dad wanted me to know how to live. He wanted me to be caring, safe, and the person someone goes to when they need to talk about their feelings.

Both parents loved me, I’m grateful for that, but with these different parenting goals came different rules. Their differences would seem to show in everything I did or did not do. From one saying to fight the bully and the other saying to tell a teacher. One believing in having closer friends, and the other in a closer family. One taught me to get dirty and play rough, while the other taught me to stay inside and keep warm.

As a child, all I wanted to do was make my loving parents proud. Yet this seemed impossible. No matter what I did I seemed to always be displeasing one or the other.

In response to this impossible task I started living two lives. I became two people. I would play differently, talk to different people, and react to things differently, all depending on the house I was living in for that moment. This was my life for quite some time, more than I would like to admit. Yet eventually it came to an end and the two conflicting worlds finally merged.

I still do not totally know what it was, but one day I simply started seeing what I was doing to myself. I realized the duality of my own personality. And I didn’t like it.

Eventually I collected myself and developed a singular Jake West. Through this process an amazing trait formed. I learned to keep an open mind. From years of seeing such different views it became clear that neither side was entirely correct. I learned there is no right or wrong in almost all debates and decisions, there are simply opinions. These opinions form from biased backgrounds and differing childhoods. They form from the limited knowledge we are taught and the limited information we learn. Depending on where we live and who we are raised by, this limited knowledge differs from person to person.

What I write for you right now is not a fact, but merely a biased opinion. A biased opinion that I hope to be as unbiased and as factual as possible, but an opinion nonetheless. What I have found in society is that we treat these opinions as if they are facts and then refuse to allow anyone to change or sway our unarguable facts.

I believe this is, without a doubt, one of the greatest mistakes our species is currently making in modern times. We are treating our opinions as facts and acting on them in certainty. We are discrediting people who have put just as much time and effort into their biased view as the person trying to discredit them. And all of this is limiting our ability to share knowledge and understand one another.

So, I have one request from this post: listen. Listen to your friends and listen to your enemies. Listen to your superiors and listen to your inferiors. Especially listen to your children and listen to your guardians. We must listen to one another because what everyone has to say is important. Everyone. There will always be something to take away from a conversation and there is always someone who can teach you a new bit of information.

We must understand that our views, our opinions and our thoughts are biased. We are all biased and we are all not completely correct on our view on the world. If we can learn this, then we can learn to truly listen. Once we begin listening we will be that much closer to seeing the ultimate truth and that much closer to seeing humanity come together. My childhood taught me this, and I hope one day your experiences will teach you this as well.