On responsibility

On responsibility.

There is this common belief that I hear people say pretty often in regards to protestors.

Grow up.

Stop being a rebellious teenager and just get on with your life get a job and stop trying to change everything.

I don't buy this idea that protestors are less mature than their status quo loving counterparts.

One of the ideals of becoming an adult is that one has to accept responsibility for ones own mistakes and work to fix them.

I heard a song once say “neutrality means that you don't really care because the struggle goes on even when you're not there”

Say you are an engineer who inspected a hundred buildings before the earthquakes in christchurch. You find that all of them dont live up to the requirements that the government set for a safe building. If you say nothing and the building crashes and kills hundreds of people can you held responsible?
Well i've heard of a few engineers being caught out by this and bought before court for this reason.

You might say that we are not all engineers. We don't all know what makes a building unsafe.

To that I say it doesn't take a genius to see the girders bending, it doesn't take a genius to see the walls crack and when the ground rumbles slightly it doesn't take any education to know the way the building is swaying is not how a building should look like.

The point of this analogy is that if you see something is wrong it is your responsibility to change it.

The bystander effect does not invalididate your hand in the crime at hand.

If a woman is raped within your sight and you do nothing to help or even try to do a thing you are no better than he who raped. You aided the man in his act because you could have been the hand that stopped it yet you did nothing.
Doing nothing is often times just as good as aiding the other side. Think of any sport and how good it would be for the other team if one team member sat down and refused to play.

Maybe it wasn't you who caused the problem.

You still live in this building and if the building crashes it wont give two shits who's fault it was.

Maybe you don't know how to fix the problem.

A common problem. Hell, I don't know how to fix the building its far too big for me to know exactly what concrete is needed where or what type of weights a floor can hold or where we will get the resources to fix it.

But again. Neutrality means that you don't really care because the building keeps crumbling even when you're not there.

Maybe you are going to go somewhere else? Live in the forest or another building all together.

Living in the forest is fucking hard and none of us have been brought up with the skills necessary to survive in the wild alone. My main problem with this, however, is that you are leaving everyone who every helped you get where you are in the dust. Essentially leaving them to fend for themselves.
What wonderful thanks for all the good times and experiences that made you who you are.

Maybe you think that the building has gone to shit and there is no point because no matter what we do its going to collapse and kill us all.
What is easiest when faced by a problem is to just ignore it. To say its impossible. You might a shitton of evidence behind you as to why it may not work but I have the surest possible way of making sure something wont work.
Don't even try.
When in your life have you ever got something you really wanted without even working towards it?  When have you sat on your ass and everything just magically got better?
Perhaps thats not your argument. Perhaps you really don't think anything can ever change. To those people I say:
Man. It must be hard being a clairvoyant. It must be hard being blessed by god with the ability to see into the future. It must be hard living knowing that no one will win the lottery because every time it comes round you just win because you already know the numbers. Fuck it must be hard knowing everything in advance you special little snowflake. You are burdened with more knowledge than any human will ever have.
Get off your high horse. You don't know shit. You don't know when anything will happen in advance. You might have an idea and you may be very knowledgable about the psychics of weight distribution and you might know the exact breaking point of every part of the building but you can never bank on knowing everything. You can never know how every person will act or how each part might break. You don't know shit.

The only way anything will get done is if we have as many people doing as much as they can. Any little bit of help is a blessing for the whole.

Many people I know see this building we live in crumbling. We can see the cracks and hear the creaks. We all know that the building is unstable. Every day a block falls off or maybe even someone is killed by the stability of this building.

The question isn't when is the building going to fall because that implies we cant do anything to stop it falling. It implies that we cannot raise a new building ourselves.

The immature define themselves by what they cannot do and try to project what they cannot or are not willing to do on to you and bring you down to their level.
The immature shit their pants and expect the mature ones to clean it up time and time again.

So why in the hell would we listen to those who are still in diapers?

Bit of an update on me.
Its brief because there isnt much to say. My passport application was stalled because some stuff on the application wasn't finished (it fully fucking was.)
Anyway im a bit afraid I wont make it back in time for the start of lectures. Also I was wondering if anyone was looking for a flatmate? I very much would like to flat with friends but if not it would be great if I could crash on someones couch until I found a flat (shouldn't be hard i'll just look on those walls in the library where everyone advertises flatemate wanted.

I have been writing a lot. This is the first post in a while but thats only because my piece of shit laptop now doesnt do the internet and is a rather large digital typewriter.

I really just want to go home and it fucks me off how hard it is just to get back to your home country.

They should have emergency passports good for one trip and signed by the NZ embassy.
That would make things easy.

Yeah. I've been busking most nights making about 50 bucks a night over about 1-3 hours each night. Its good money and im fucking good at poi now. You guys should see. Its gonna be nuts.

I apologise to all those that I start talking to on facebook and never get a good conversation going. The only times im on facebook are when im at the internet cafe and my time is limited there. Often I just start talking before I realise I came here for a reason (sending emails stuff to do with my bond tenancy shit or trying to keep up with current events (mali is really interesting.) and way too much league of legends) Yeah so sorry bout that. Ill get proper internet soon.

At first I thought frances mali intervention was going to be another imperialistic shitfest but I heard a story about how before leaving the salifis burned down a library full of priceless original source histories of timbuktu and the region. A huge chunk of knowledge about empires and life in that region is lost.
I fucking hate salifi islam. Fuck their education hating bullshit. Fuck their hatred of women. Fuck the regression they brand as bringing them closer to god.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again. It can't come soon enough!
Cheers
Cam