To Beard Or Not To Beard?

To beard or not to beard? – that is the question.

Fashion and trends change all of the time.  I have never been a big follower of fashion and I certainly do not stick to any trends.  I like to stand out from the crowd but at the same time not shock.  I like to pick things that I haven’t seen anyone else wearing before but still fit within my usual manly taste.

From an early age I had the luxurious privilege of being able to grow a beard.  I had discovered an amazing ability, I could shave if I needed to catch the bus so I could get on for half fare, and I would grow it if I knew I was going out of an evening so that I could get served at the bar - It was brilliant!

I have always had a shaved head but I started going bald way before my time.  It did not matter to me that my hairline was gradually vanishing because I could sport a proud beard.  The beard quickly became a platform for me to show my individuality.  Most people cut and style their hair but I could cut and style my beard, and I was adventurous.  Various colours and many man hours sculpting and shaving led to a whole catalogue of designs, each one changing the way my face would look.

As I started to get older, the realisation of what a tool I must have looked like began to govern the styles I now chose to go with.  After some consideration I decided I was going to grow my beard long, it had always been something I wanted to do but I used to prefer the variety that could be achieved from shaving and styling.  Of course growing a long beard was nothing new, but it was not commonly seen.

After many months of growing and admiring my new creation on my face I made the decision to cut it all back due to impending job interviews.  Having then landed a new job and settling in well, I think it’s time to grow my beard back.  However, where ever I go there are beards - Beards, beards everywhere. I am no longer that bald guy with the big beard, I am just another face in the crowd.  The beard has become socially acceptable which is great, but it now also appears to be a growing trend and fashionable. 

So the man who doesn’t follow fashion or stick to a trend suddenly looks like he has fully embraced this new wave of beard growing and has jumped upon the wagon for a wild ride.  The truth is, I love my beard, if it means that it looks like I am personally trending then I will have to take it one step further.  I will grow my beard thicker and longer so I no longer look like a beard follower, but a beard leader!!

TO BEARD!

                                                  Hopefully there will never be another instance of the below!!

The Future Of Humankind

Unfortunately, looking at the world today, the outcome for us as a species is not looking good.  We are called humankind for a reason, because we are all the same species.  We should be working together to solve our problems rather than fighting them out with our neighbors or enemies.

Recent events on the TV have made the world open their eyes to the atrocities that are being caused.  The deaths in Paris, School children massacred in Pakistan and these are just the recent ones.  Going back through our history, it has been full of colour, but all for the wrong reasons.

I can completely understand peoples varying views, and the need for action or confrontation based on a given event, but surely there are better ways of solving our problems.  Look at what we have achieved in our history.  We are innovators, inventors, we strive to make the impossible possible and collectively we are a force to be reckoned with.

The way the world is at the moment however, I do not see a way back for certain situations.  Both sides showing force with a strong opinion about not backing down.  What will this achieve?  Whichever side wins there will always be opposition and an uprising.  It is difficult to pigeon hole the world’s problems because they vary in cause but could you imagine a world that works together?  Could you imagine Russia, The United States of America, Chine and the EU all getting together to iron out problems and come up with solutions? 

Unfortunately in my eyes there is only one way that will unite the world and that is when we all face extinction.  Until then I think everyone will keep vying for power, territory and money.  The time will come when everyone has to unite to save ourselves and maybe then people will come together. 

Even in towns now the feeling of working together has gone.  I walk through my local town and it looks like it’s every man for himself, everyone focused on what they have to do and caring less and less about the people around them.  Unfortunately I also fall under this category.  I will think nothing less of putting in my earphone and drowning out the world with my favourite music rather than listening to other people’s pointless conversations.  I do however still behave like a gentleman, I open doors for people, I smile and be polite and I am always courteous.  Some days now I even welcome listening to a little conversation and as I’m getting older I sometimes find myself included in such conversations.

The world will not change overnight, we have to make the small changes and they will grow and combine and make bigger changes.  Start from home, start each day positive, make a little eye contact and give a little smile – you might just get one back!

Ancient Visitors

I go through life with an open mind about everything. There are very few things that I can say 100% that I do not believe in because in my eyes, anything could be possible given the knowledge of its process. I’m sure that hundreds of years ago the thought of having light at the flick of a switch without a flame would have been an impossible thought. The idea of watching a box with a glass front that shows pictures and sound would have been a marvel, yet here we are with it all around us taking everything for granted without giving it a seconds thought.

What if we wanted to think bigger? What if we look to the skies for inspiration on this thought? More specifically out in to space. How could those reported flying discs have made it all the way to our planet? What are they doing here and how did they get here? The theory is that nothing can travel faster than light so disregarding any wormhole theories or the bending of space itself then we have a bit of a pickle.

 

I watched a program on the TV the other day called Ancient Aliens. A lot of it seemed like ‘episode fillers’ in my opinion but there are a few things that stick in my mind.  Particularly the ancient depictions and drawings of the visitors from out of space. They seem incredibly human like in most cases, but what if they were human? How could that be possible? Well here is a curved ball I will throw out there. Given my initial thought that anything could be possible with the right knowledge, who is to say that those ancient visitors and the discs that some people claim to see flying around the world are not humans from the future? What if somewhere in the distant future some clever scientists put their minds together and devised a way to travel back in time? We would not be able to see much evidence of this because no doubt it would be heavily policed. As with any society though there are always law breakers, maybe somewhere, someone decided to go back in time and help the civilizations of the past. It would certainly give an explanation as to how certain things were built or created that seem far too advanced for its time and in some cases too advance for us.

Is it possible that the pictures and carvings we see of the people of the skies are actually humans from the future? Well all I can say is it's certainly not impossible!

The Be All And End All

We live in this crazy place where absolutely everything around us emanated from the planet.  Everything old and anything new was and will be given birth to by mother earth, and each one will eventually die and go back to her.  Over millions and millions of years, life has diversified itself spreading out and colonising previously unreachable places to the extent that certain forms can only be found in specific environments.  I’m not just talking now about the things you can see however, I'm talking mainly now about viruses and diseases.  Even life forms like these have been created in the same way and are programmed to survive and reproduce. 

There are many forms of disease and virus’s which we have no known cure for.  They can evolve or mutate just like any other species but on a much faster scale.  I believe that just how everything was created by the earth, everything can be destroyed by the earth.  We are not all created the same, each life form is as different from one another just like an alien species.  Some things are toxic to one species but are edible to another and it is this variation that leads me to believe that everything has its kryptonite and it occurs naturally in this world. 

Take this article on the deadly venom of the death stalker scorpion and the black widow for example.  It is claimed that the venom of both are being used to create various medicines and are even being looked at for treating Cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.  Now I know we are a very long way off anything being remotely usable but the science is there.

Or for something a little more lighthearted there is this article about how the toxins from the venom of the Brazilian Wondering Spider could potentially treat erectile dysfunction.  Not really as important as finding a cure to a disease but again this proves the science in the theory that every problem could be solved by using ingredients from some of mother natures own recipes.

Every life form is put together using unique mixes, to the extent that some animals can even regenerate their cells so that entire limbs can be grown back.  All we have to do is look in the right places and i believe anything is possible.  It is just a matter of finding, extracting and implementing the necessary solution.

Creation Of Life

Creation of Life

For thousands of years man has looked to the skies for answers, and even now with all of the technology that we possess as a planet, we still have more questions unanswered than answered.

Where did we come from? How did we get here?

Well if you have read my previous post about the meaning of life, then you will already have an idea that I am not a religious man.  I am in no way a disbeliever, I keep an open mind about most things, but the whole concept that God made everything, for me, has been far outweighed by science.

I once had a sit down meeting with a Jehovah’s Whiteness leader.  I was interested in what he had to say and how he would explain his beliefs in regards to the questions I would ask.  He was more than friendly, he took me back to his home to meet his family and I settled in to one of his big comfy chairs with my ears wide open and my brain ready to take notes.  If I had not of known any scientific facts, then he would have sold it all to me that day, his words were compelling and his answers were drawing me in.  He sat across from me with his eyes focused on mine, perhaps he could sense that I could understand his perspective. After he had finished I asked him one final question; "science has gone so far as to prove that the whole universe was created by the big bang.  How does this sit with your views on the creation of life?"  His answer was simple yet compelling.  He said, “I cannot believe that everything so perfectly formed could have been created from the big bang, just as you would not believe me if I said that my watch was created as a result of falling parts fitting together from the explosion of a watch factory, or that my home was built as a result of an explosion at the builders merchants.” 

I went away that day thinking about what he had said, he was right, I would not have believed his watch or house was crafted in that way, and how could the universe have formed all of this from one explosion? 

A few years later I was back on the case after watching a program on TV.  The program was referring to the expansion of the universe.  2 questions started rattling around in my head that I just could not comprehend.  What was before the big bang? And how can the universe be infinite?  Both of those questions on their own are hard enough to wrestle, but the two together started to drive me mad.  Then I had a thought after something was mentioned on another program.  They explained that eventually all of the black holes would consume all of matter in the universe and could leave just one super black hole on its own, harboring so much energy and resources that disaster would surely be imminent.  Thinking logically about it all, and listening to many theories about the universe expanding and then contracting, this black hole theory made sense.

You have to ask the question, if the universe contracted and began to apply pressure to the super black hole, then a possible outcome surely could be a massive explosion, again releasing everything that was once sucked in, out into a brand new universe to start again.

You have to admit, even if you are not a believer in this theory, the argument is there to still be at least possible.  Now rewind back to the watch and the house analogy that was used.  It still seems very difficult to believe that everything could slot together for life to exist on this rock.  Or does it?  Going back to the expansion and contraction theory, this surely means that the universe is stuck in a loop, destined to keep resetting itself over and over again. Take time out of the equation, this constant resetting of the universe could have happened billions and billions of times.  The probability of complex life forming on a planet might be extremely small but never the less it is still possible.  If you had a dice and needed to roll a six, you could do it easy.  If you had 100 and needed to roll a 6 on each one at the same time, it would still possible, but will take many attempts.  The same can be said for the universe, if you throw life building blocks out into space enough times, somewhere along the line they are going to sit together at exactly the right stages and begin to flourish.

I do not believe that a God created this world and then created us.  I believe we are the product of a random course of events that could have been interrupted at any given point, but this time it was not, and we were left to continue untouched.  Life may have even arrived crashing to earth on an asteroid or a comet, but this time everything was in place to help nurture it to grow and evolve.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post as much as I have enjoyed writing it.  It’s made me think back to many questions that I have asked myself along the way and has set my brain thinking again into the possibilities.  I would love to see your thoughts or views so please comment and let me know.