Ugliness and Ghosts, anything in common?

This idea just came up to me in a random day, when I was doing a random thing. I think I was watching TV or maybe in the bathroom, doing…. bathroom stuff.
What ugliness and ghosts have in common? Well, the answer is quite simple, they don’t exist. I know it sounds weird, but don’t just judge the book by its cover.
I will now show you my points of view, who confirm what I just wrote.

For this issue, my argument will have something that you can see everyday in the streets. Children. Yeah, children. Those who sometimes unconsciously,  tell the things you don’t want to hear, or answer. Children will help me to solve this problem.

Ugliness, and ugly things or ugly aspects, are constantly present in our days.  If your eyebrows are so big that make only one eyebrow, it’s ugly. If you have big eyes, you are an ugly fish. If you have a little heavier than others, you are ugly. If you have a big nose, you are ugly, so on. Just like ghosts, since you are born, you are brainwashed, hear and see these insults and opinions everywhere. Television, magazines, games, stories….

Children would not believe in ghosts if they never heard about it. Children wouldn’t even think of something like that. Just like “ugly aspects” are only ugly, because all of your life, you have been told it’s ugly. If you were born where big noses or other body characteristics were normal aspects, and nobody told you it was strange or ugly, you wouldn’t even think, that something was ugly or not. Just like ghosts, if a child never had contact with stories of ghosts, she wouldn’t even know what they “are” and wouldn’t think about it. It’s simple.

I do find some things more attractive  than others, but that’s personal taste, it’s not that I find one ugly and the other not, I just prefer one to another. And yes, I’m a bad example, for example I think it’s ugly those “uni eyebrows” but it’s not my fault, it’s societies fault. I’m not trying to escape and blame others because of what I think it’s ugly. But I am sure that if nobody got brainwashed by our society to see an “ugly” thing, that it’s simply something normal, only different from me, I would probably find everything normal.

– Guilherme Pedrosa 

Kony 2012, the Conclusion

I must warn you, that this article is a conclusion to another text I wrote about the Kony 2012 campaign. I recommend you to read first “Kony, the new Bin Laden?” to fully understand this article.

Kony 2012, the campaign that has the face of Jason Russel, wasn’t bad in the beginning. I believe that all of the people who started this project have good hearts, and really want to change something, they wanted to show that “there is strength in numbers”, and for once those who really cared could really help others. Unfortunately, like many others, they were captured by the ego maniac, corrupted and killing machine. The U.S.A Government.

Turning around the good intentions of the initial project, they morphed it into a bridge to get what they really want from Africa. The sweet black gold, who kills millions of innocent humans, oil.
They were fighting against Kony lots of years ago, not just now. And in those times he was still there, he killed.
As you probably know, Jason Russel, had a mental breakdown and was found naked, screaming and masturbating in the middle of the street, during the day. I think that if I was in the same position than him, I would be crazy too.

Here I am, a simple man, without any rich guys to help me, that wants to try to help people from another country, and fought years, and years to actually accomplish something, that would improve the life of others, suddenly my well intentioned dream to help others is destroyed by some Armani suit guys that only want oil, even if it means to kill a whole continent. Jason tried to show his people, they could help others. A few years later the same people who supported him, now hate him, and bring him down. Yeah, I would fucking snap!
The most horrible thing, is that his kid, has the unfortunate possibility to watch his father getting crazy, and depressed.

I’m not a supporter of the Kony 2012 campaign, but I think we made an error, while judging Jason. He, like so many others, was caught, indirectly, by corruption. And instead of helping him, we abandoned him. Instead of helping him to get up again, and fight one more day, we attacked him, just like the elite attacks the people. Sometimes we become like them, those we hate.

Think the Truth, Teach the Truth and Help the Helpless.

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Kony, The New Bin Laden?

Kony2012 is a charity/intervention project, whose objective is to arrest Joseph Kony. Joseph Kony is the leader of the LRA, a Ugandan guerrilla group. He’s in the top 10 most wanted criminals in the world. Through his religious beliefs, Kony and the LRA, kidnapped thousands of children, forcing them to be soldiers and sex slaves. Those children are forced to mutilate others, and kill their own families. All of this in the name of a “God” that speaks through Kony.
In May 2012, his name traveled the Internet, mainly amongst teens. A 30 minute documentary was made, promoting a charity project called “Invisible Children”, and asking the public to make Kony famous, so the U.S.A heard about the story of those children, and sent american troops to arrest Kony, as fast as possible. The website of the project Kony2012 has different kinds of merchandising to sell, and teens felt immediately that they had to help, so thousands and thousands of Kony2012 products were sold.

The problem is that nobody questioned the cause, before they had bought  the merchandising to help this project. After some research, people can discover that only 30% of the money raised  from the selling of their products, goes to help the children in Africa. I don’t know where the rest of the money goes.
Another  information that all of the viewers of that documentary should know, is that, recently was found an immense quantity of oil, evaluated  in trillions of dollars. And taking advantage of a criminal for invading a certain region is not new, as we seen with the Bin Laden and 9/11 story, and the weapons of mass destruction, that never existed.

Unfortunately we live in a world where all of the stories, news and information that we receive have always to be checked more than one time. It’s really important nowadays, to not trust in anything until a good research is made before any kind of support or opinion. We usually have the urge to help those who seem to be helping, without even research the “back story”, the truth. And that, is being naive. In this world we cannot be naive, or we, or other people will die. And yes, it’s that serious.
Even if the Kony2012 project has good intentions, we and they can’t forget that there are always some guys that always take advantage of good people that really want to help. It’s good to be suspicious, but it isn’t good to alienate an idea  just because it didn’t work the first time, or the people couldn’t execute that idea well.

Fortunately, this Kony thing actually brought something good to the teens who watched the video. It grew an activist inside of them, that they didn’t know. And even some of them learned from U.S.A vs Middle East bullshit, and immediately questioned and researched, before taking any naive and early conclusions. And this the “big boys” (the fuckers with all of the money), weren’t expecting.
They should be scared, because, in the end, we are still animals. And when animals feel trapped and without an exit, they attack. And that is about to happen.
Be careful rich people! 

 

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Compassion Fatigue

Our society faces a real, and threatening problem, that has been growing faster and faster throughout the years. It’s called “Compassion Fatigue”, and it basically means that with the constant development of media and information, and the excruciating bombing of images and news which we receive every day, (mainly), through television, our eyes, brain and eventually our selves, got used to see the most horrible things, with the ability to carry on with our lives, without even thinking about others problems, or feeling almost any compassion during the 24 hours of our days.

It’s not really something that the main public wants to be, but most of us watch, and listen, the most horrible news and still, we are capable to change the channel without making any expression of compassion, understanding, or the urge to do something to change what is bad in this world. We see every day on the news, stories about kids in Africa and their miserable lives, murders, corruption, images of war and this stuff is shown so many times, that our brain got used to it. Just like a few decades ago, if a man saw the leg of a woman, he would jerk off for a fucking month. Nowadays, seeing a naked woman is something banal. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the real problem. Showing what is happening in the world, or showing some tits and penis is not wrong. What I believe it’s wrong, is to put censorship in the middle of those things.

Trying to make people more comfortable when they watch strong images, is going to do even worst. If you want to compassion fatigue to end, end censorship. Censorship, makes something strong, into something banal, that we don’t give importance. If you want to show the consequences of a war, show the dead bodies, show the blood, and the mutilated faces, show the raping, show the executions, show the cursing, show everything. Only that way, people will pay attention, only that way people will find new things, will change their ways of thinking.
Only this way people will want to change the world.  If they puke with disgust, even better, they will remember it. If they get “traumatized”, they will never forget it.
If you want to shake this world, shake the people too. Show them what you can only see if you have a strong stomach. Make people cry and have nightmares about those who suffer every single fucking day!

Show and say everything, maybe people will give everything too. 

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Music, what it was, what it is, and what it will be…

Music traveled with mankind throughout it’s history. When society changed or needed a change, music changed too. Music lacks of spirit nowadays, and needs a transformation. What the fuck happened to music? What caused this?

1. The Past
Music was a form of expressing deep feelings, express anger, happiness, political views and philosophical views, unfortunately we lost that. Music was able to change minds and moods in matters of second. Music told the truth. It triggered the good and bad in each one of us, love, universe, society, feelings… It was ugly and beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong though. We always had lame bands and singers, but even those had some talent. They had morals, they felt what they were singing. Creativity was lost, experiences were always being done with instruments and new ways of expression. Music had a “boom” and you could fit anywhere you wanted. You had Punk, Rock, Grunge, Blues, Jazz, Reggae, Hip Hop and so much more. The Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Kids, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Living Color, Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead, Cake, Anvil, Blur, The Flaming Lips, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joe Cocker, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, The Kinks, Mr. Bungle, The Pixies, Spin Doctors, The Pop Group, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, The Stone Roses, Sonic Youth, B.B.King, John Maher, Howlin’ Wolf, War, Cab Calloway, Nina Simone, Fred Anderson, Bob Marley, Sublime, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and so many more, unfortunately I can’t name them all.
All of them had great musicians, and brought creativity and real and deep feelings to their songs. Why have we lost this amazing fucking bands? What happened?

2. The Present
The real reason music has lost it’s meaning is simple. Money and society. I believe this two things rotten music. Before this world crisis, we had money, everybody was happy and blinded by the capitalist dream, at least the ones that could actually hear music, because some had nothing. The industry of music changed, minds changed, and instead of personal expression and meaning for the music, we wanted money. Money caught music. It was the first priority, to make money. Adding that with the lazy fat and “puppetish” society, music started to die.
Music has no creativity and has a plastic false content. It’s all about, how you are not alone in this world and how you will be happy, we all know that is false. They don’t mean anything of what they say on their songs, they don’t care.
While music channels had music and accepted new music, nowadays MTVs and shit like that only have stupid reality shows, and only accept music that have boobs, or a guy with a six pack that looks like a girl and reads lyrics from a paper. We actually got to this sad point, where music is weaker than ever. Fortunately, there are some  bands/singers that actually can make good music. The Black Keys, Jamiroquai, Gorillaz, At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, Blood Red Shoes, Cage The Elephant, Das Racist, Dead Weather, Death From Above 1979, Death Grips, Efterklang, Every Time I Die, Johnossi, Justice, Lightning Bolt, M.I.A, Mumford And Sons, OFWGKTA, The Rapture, Seasick Steve, Streetlight Manifesto, Tom Vek, Willy Moon, The Subways, Tame Impala, White Stripes, Yeasayer and many more, but, once again, I can’t name them all.

3. The Future
What will happen to music? I strongly believe that music will not die, and will actually rise up again. We are facing the greatest problems of humanity, people are dying, people are changing, people are mad, and are getting tired of this capitalism bullshit we live in. All of this will be reflected in music, the anger, the agony, and all of this shit we are surrounded by.
I think we will face another “music boom” and music will be born again. Good, and real music, will be heard again.
With society (r)evolution, we will have a music (r)evolution.

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Suit Up

Believe it or not, people still have doubts on the subject that I’m going to analyse in here.
I was once watching the news on the TV, where top politicians were all together smiling and shaking each other hands, wasting time taking photos, instead of trying to find solutions. Back to the issue, I noticed that all of them have fancy suits, super shining shoes, and incredibly expensive cars.
So, I shared with my family that if they wore less expensive clothes, and had affordable cars, maybe that money could help their own countries. For my surprise, someone answered me that, they need to dress up nice, after all, they are representing our country. I was overwhelmed by such stupidity.

I came up with a simple question, would you prefer a president that had solutions but dressed up like a homeless, or a president that doesn’t do shit but is always “well dressed”?
Believe it or not, people actually stopped to think about it, when their answer should obviously be, the president that can actually solve problems. Instead, people told me that of course they would want a president that could solve their problems, but he had to dress up nice, a president can’t wear a t-shirt and some jeans. I couldn’t believe in what I was hearing! People actually cared about the looks of the president.

First of all, most of government representatives, that represent different parts of the population, don’t actually represent us, but themselves. Most of them just spend their time insulting other members of the parliament. Nowadays, government is just like football (soccer). They gain millions, and the only thing they do is just bitch about how they are better than others. Football stars gain millions and millions, for buying mansions and sports cars, and do they do? Run after a ball for 90 minutes.

I think a maximum wage could be a really good solution for this kind of problem. Money will be saved for important things, like the fucking country, not some rich people. Waste of money by the members of the parliament would be stopped, and minimum wage, could actually raise. We would have a more just distribution of money and people would learn how to behave with money on their hands, without spending everything in expensive cars and Armani fucking suits.

“Think rich, look poor” – Andy Warhol
This quote just resumes the whole message I am trying to share. You have to think and innovate and you don’t need to be dressed with a suit to do it.

– Guilherme Pedrosa 

Circular Society

Throughout history, if we look closely, despite religion being always present, society didn’t always had the problems that we face today, and on the other hand, have faced  todays problems too.
Since the beginning exists – just like in most of animal species that live in our planet – a hierarchy. There ‘s always those who have more power and who have less.

Society is something that doesn’t go forward in a straight line, but evolves in a circular shape. The rights that exist nowadays in our society of  women, homosexuals and different races, where rights that actually existed in the past. Greeks and Romans tolerate homosexuals, actually, the first sexual experiences that greek boys had been with males too. Romans practiced homosexual sex, in an era where sexuality was very important and explored. The Egyptians had female governors, queens and Pharaohs, whatever you want to call them. And, it seems that human evolution started in Africa, and, due to its climate humans had dark skin, I bet no one was racist back then.
We already had a society tolerant to homosexuals, but now in our present society, they are considered by many inferior. In ancient Egypt, women possessed power, and in other civilizations, they were adored by their incredible beauty, however in an allegedly more sophisticated society, women were consider inferior to men, and colored people started to get discriminated.
Obviously, ancient societies had their problems too, just like the Mayans that decapitated people to honor their Gods.
Even fashion is a circle, where we can see that clothes wore in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s are brought back to life.

Society evolves, in a circular shape, that when gains knowledge adds it to the circle, and realizing that some of the ideas are wrong, takes them out of the circle.
Unfortunately, lots of problems present in society were created and brought by religion, that in a way shuts down the brains of people, allowing them to see, what only one man sees.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
And that’s exactly the problem of our society, we always try to solve our problems the same way we started them. Religion is the source of lots of problems in the world, then why people use religion to solve those problems, that religion once created?

– Guilherme Pedrosa 

Religion is a Fantasy

The beginning of mankind was so spectacular, as stupid. It was a complete paradox, one of the most fantastic evolutions and, at the same time, one of the most catastrophic known to this day. Knowledge was actually what distinguished us, from others.

The discovery of fire, tools, art. The passage from nomadism to sedentism, was probably  what changed us for ever. But something had a tremendous impact, felt even today, in our constantly changing society. It was the phase of fears and fantasies, not to call them something more aggressive like, ignorance. I am referring of course, to religion or religions. Just like in the present, we all go through a time of our life where we start to question everyone and everything. Death and birth, the land and the sky, us and others. All of our ancestors have been through that too. And because in that era, our knowledge was still small and limited, fantasies predominated.

Human mind has some kind of “hunger” to know and understand more. And it’s that will, that distinguish us from other animals. All living beings, those that have the ability to move, have the instinct to know the unknown, all animals want to see and learn about the territory where they live, but humans have an additional  instinct beside this one. Humans have the will and the need to understand and find an answer to what doesn’t seem to have an answer.
But not always that will bring the right answers, instead, it brings the answers we want.
Religion and it’s beliefs were born, from the moment that humans felt fear, and so, a need to know why they were afraid, and a way to overcome that fear. Fear emerged from the unexplainable and in what harmed both physically and psychologically these humans. Death, stars, universe and disasters, like natural catastrophes began to be represented by something bigger, by gods. Gods were created for good and evil, just like in a super hero movie. There were gods who harmed and scared humans, and gods who fought the bad ones and protected humans from these mean and powerful villains.

But these fantasies created different religions, despite all of them have the same base, ignorance and fear, that is what brought us here today.
Beliefs in something, or someone superior, formed the society in which we now live. The different ways of thinking, good and bad ones, the fantastic explanations to explain the unexplainable, the acts committed in honor of religion and art itself, were tremendously  influenced by religion.

But what we have to understand, is that religion is something from the past, we have more knowledge now, and we have to understand that religion is nothing but lies. It’s only false speculation to understand what humans couldn’t understand at the beginning of their existence. God doesn’t exist, we exist, humans exist, and praying will not solve our problems. We have to solve them. Humans worst enemy, are humans.

 

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Freedom?

What is freedom? The word, the feeling and the meaning of freedom is really hard to achieve nowadays. Different people have different views on what freedom, really is. For some, freedom is if they are simply happy with life and nothing goes wrong, for others is if they can think freely and express themselves in the way they want to. Some, even tied by the many rules of different religions, consider themselves free. So what is freedom after all?

Let’s begin discovering the meaning of the word, “freedom”. In a very short sentence, freedom is the exemption from external control, interference, regulation and dependence.
Reading carefully the description of freedom, we see that it is, actually absent. Everything in this world, is connected. And I really mean everything, I challenge you, and anyone here to point out something that isn’t somehow dependent of something else. It’s really a tough challenge, because everything is dependent of something.

Now we get to the point where we have just realized that the word “freedom” is actually a paradox. But we can’t let this feeling, this word die like this. Millions of lives were taken to achieve and defend “freedom”. You may ask yourself, if there is nothing free, then why do people fight for it?

I personally like to call it “Human Freedom”. Human freedom does not have the same meaning as the word “freedom”, I added the word “human”, to complete it. With human before freedom, the meaning of the word totally changes. Instead of referring to the absence of dependence overall, it focus only on human connections. Being able to express yourself freely, not being a slave to someone else, the choice to be whatever you want is what human freedom really is.

Freedom itself does not exist, but human freedom does, our freedom. Because after all, humans worst enemy are humans. Don’t get me wrong and think that I believe in Governments crap, I am a supporter of logic, and our laws and society are not working, we need to change and fast. I am a great supporter of The Zeitgeist Movement, and I believe that not even one side of political views can be totally correct, there is no such thing as perfection.

Think!

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Brain

Our minds accomplished amazing and horrible things together.

The beauty of the brain has given us amazing ways to see the world and live in it, but it also has killed millions and millions of people.

Think carefully, and for the good of the world!

You are free to use this wherever and whenever you want it.

Think the Truth!