Sheep in the Big City

We are all sheep, deaf and blind, following a shepherd, more or less directly. Some of us consider themselves black sheep, others, like me, consider themselves lonely sheep in the Big City.
While many might now get the cartoon reference, I think everyone understands the big picture: disconnected, lost, simple misfits desperately looking for someone to follow.
That is what I went though when I first came to France for college three years ago. I was still a small town man, used to living in my parent's home in the suburbs of a tiny city in North Lebanon, I was also a bit spoiled; I used to be a leach who lived entirely on my parent's money, and yet always somehow expected more of them, as though devoting their life entirely to their kids, and giving and loving unconditionally was not enough.
I came to France and, for whatever reason, chose to leave all that behind  to go study on my own, and build up my personality in a different country, with different principles and a different state of mind from what I grew up in. I felt like a misfit, but I also felt like I was finally in the real world. Standing on my own, seeing it all from far away, it all seemed weird to me: in the Big City, it's every person for themself. In the Big City, there is no shepherd. In the Big City, you make fake friends you can perfectly live without, not because they're bad people but because you feel the relationship is much less real, as if it were an illusion, sometimes they are lost sheep like you but still you never manage to connect. In the Big City, you are always running, always late and always out of time. In the Big City, you can blend in, but never fit in.

Liberalism and Anarchy

Fear: one of the best ways to control a population.
In 1993, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested a universal healthcare plan for all American citizens. This policy was overruled due to strong opposition from Republicans who claimed that it would be overly bureaucratic and restrictive to the patient's freedom, and thus gain the people's support : "The Clinton Administration is imposing a top-down, command-and-control system of global budgets and premium caps, a superintending National Health Board and a vast system of government sponsored regional alliances". 
Which led me to think, as I stir my coffee: to what extent is the interference of the government considered as limitation to the citizen's liberty?
Sure, some imposed restrictions might be inevitable at some point, for as the state tries to intervene, it might apply a set of rules in order to make out of individual situations some typical ones that are more manageable by the government. I do not have any on my mind right now, but the people surely will have to give up something in order for that to work - but does that mean it's a threat to democracy and liberalism?
The answer is no. Even in a Liberal system the State still has to help the citizens as much as it can, without invading their personal space and without restricting their freedom. After all, that's the whole difference between liberalism and anarchy. In the extreme case we get to the situation of the Welfare State, as we find in the Nordic countries and some Western European countries, which are as we all know some of the most democratic and (still) pretty far from the whole "socialism" concept that seems to scare us sometimes. Obviously, it is over there that we find the highest life expectancy in the world.
It's the state's job to provide minimal care to the citizens. 
Its intervention will certainly have repercussions over the way you live, but it would not and has not restrained the people's freedom.
This intervention does not make it any less liberal, it only will help it grow and help you live better.
[Some last sentence about coffee].

Alcohol explained to my little brother

Alcohol makes you realize you do not know who you really are.

Alcohol makes you bring down all the moral barriers to your mind, all the ethical walls to your soul, and act like you really want to. You will often regret it when you drink. But also, you will be kind of happy about being able to do all of that stuff that you do not permit yourself to do when you are sober. Although you probably will not remember anything afterwards, you will still be happy for yourself; you will feel like you deserve it. And whatever you do will never matter to others: drunk people are drunk, you cannot judge them if they are drunk.

Alcohol will take all your tears away, for a night: it is like a small vacation from life, that you take to visit a whole new place, a happy place, but only for the night. Sometimes you cry, but you still are happy. Your problems might seem either surreal or pretty unreal, either way, you fell this is not reality; you are on a vacation from the real world, and although you might still remember some glimpses, you know you are very far away.

Alcohol will make you want girls you never noticed before, it will make you love every single person around you, you will feel surrounded by love; and yet extremely lonely too. You will be transported into a dimension where only positive emotions exist, and yet you will feel so far from those emotions: you will smell them but never taste them. You will see them and hear them, but never touch them.

Alcohol will make you see life as it really is, but you will do so as an alien watching it on a huge screen. You will see them interacting, you will interact with them, but none of that will feel real to you, as if all your interactions are filtered by a thick glass wall.

Alcohol will, at the end of the night, destroy you. You will feel tired and yet you will feel no pain. You will be able to hear the cries of your body's suffering, but from a distance.

Alcohol might, the next morning, make you regret ever drinking it. As your body eliminates it you will feel the weight of each of the lobes of your brain, pressuring against the base of your skull. You will also feel every single vibration of your ear-drum, as sounds will be really amplified. You will feel you are carrying double your weight on each leg, as you drag yourself through a day of non-productivity.

Alcohol is not that awesome after all. Drink coffee instead!

Modern Jesus

"A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education"- Theodore Roosevelt.
I know for a fact that very few people nowadays would agree with this quote from the 26th American president. Many may see through these apparently religious words a strategy meant to make the popular masses easier to control, others may see religious propaganda, either way it is stereotypical Republican behavior, and it's not at all what I'm planning to write about today.
As a Christian myself, I had an intriguing conversation with an atheist friend of mine the other day: apparently it sounded odd to her ear that I'm a Christian who believes in evolution, in the Big Bang, and yet believes in God. What seemed to shock her does not seem at all contradictory to me.
"I believe in both and I do not see the contradiction between religion and science, they are two different forms of knowledge, and they're meant to complete each other and they can not be compared: I know for a fact that science will never be able to explain everything, since we have proved that knowledge will always be infinite and no matter how much we know, and no matter how much we advance in our discoveries, there will always be more stuff we don't know than stuff we know." I knew I had lost her by then, she ended up not understanding a word I said, but I continued nonetheless: "We know, and scientists tell us that there are some facts that can never be explained by science..." As I said that, I remembered my 9th grade physics teacher, telling us: "Science can only explain HOW the stuff happens, and never WHY"... Our conversation ended up in a big blob of confusion, which inspired me to write this blog to maybe make my point of view clearer.
No matter what's your religion, no god ever encourages ignorance. 
The Bible is a text written about two thousand years ago, and although it is the base of Christianity, it is not to be taken by the letter.
Religion, in a nutshell, has two major goals: satisfying the instinctive, innate need of humans to believe in a deity, and setting up basic moral laws. If religious people remember that, and try to surpass the little differences between confessions and religions, the world would be able to beat many obstacles, and religion would actually help us get closer to a perfect social model instead of being an obstacle to social development.
I have so much left to say but I'm out of coffee. Cheers!

Socialism

I hate injustice, especially the kind that slips by undercover.

Currently living in France, a country whose current constitution was created around socialist principles, I learned that too much justice can become injustice. In France, the situation is taken to a whole new level of absurdity, as some jobless people can make more than the minimum wage... The whole concept did not enter my mind, people gaining more than they worked for. 

That is a point of view that many others share with me, and those who do not, well, they at least understand where it's coming from; so it certainly is not the point I want to make.

What I want to share with the world is that I regret preaching the hate of everything tainted with red. Today, watching Michael Moore's Sicko, was the perfect occasion to think about the major contribution that socialism brought, to France at least: free, global healthcare. I too, as a future health professional, feel it is a shame to put a price on one's health, and quite frankly, I feel more sure than ever that moving to France was indeed the right thing for me to do three years ago: Had I to ever be sick, all I would have to worry about would be my health, which is already too much. 

Why is the French system the best all around the world when other countries also have socialized healthcare services? Thanks to socialism, once again: first-rate higher education is provided to anyone who wishes to study in any field. What's more amazing is that admissions do not happen on a citizenship criteria; as long as you (legally) live on the French grounds, you are entitled to all of those services...

Socialism is still something I utterly despise. But every cloud has a silver lining...

So as you drink your last sip of coffee, promise yourself to think again before hating on socialism.

And to France, all I can say is: CHAPEAU BAS!

Overture

I'm a man of few words. 
I was not like that before. I used to argue energetically whenever I had the chance, not to prove that I'm right, but to change what I thought to be flawed minds. However, as I grew older, I realized most people were stubborn, narrow minded and very hard to get to, and only an extreme minority can accept the existence of opinions which don't match theirs. 
This blog is addressed to those people if they ever enjoy, over a cup of coffee in the morning, the random, concise, clever words of an outraged young adult.