"Snob"

As it seems, this concept - which since the early 19th century has been used to refer to "a person with no 'breeding', wether mere labourers or vulgar social climbers; someone with an exaggerated respect for high social position (or wealth) who looks down on those (regarded as) socially inferior" - has suffered a shift in meaning along the passing of time. In fact, in derives from the latin expression sine nobilitate, meaning 'without nobility' (title, inheritance, of humble backgrounds). It started as a definition of a class to become the definition of (another) class! 

Actually, the word itself, and this is what is funny, whatever the meaning kept on any given time, always acted as an excluding term, in a negative way, from a certain group of people.

People are strange...

"My existence is too noble so that I am but property to anyone. So that I am second in command, or a mere officious instrument of any sovereign state of this world."

Henry Thoreau

Balance

I believe everything has to do with balance, in the universe. Polarity rules every aspect of existence, in terms of quantity and/or quality. We cannot escape our condition of being sort of in between the poles, hence the primordial question "why something, rather than nothing?"

But given the inefficiency of that question, we proceed "why this, and not that?" This is where all things are worthy, decisions made difficult and faith, optimism, pessimism, delusion, sanity... may occur. 

We just have to make up our minds. Achieve some consensus, and stop being the motif of our own demise.

Peace and love

Home

Home is where the heart is.

Many times I've wanted to leave, and most times I still do, but it will always be home. Maybe that's the thing about home - it's a sense of belonging. Maybe you have to feel good about life to feel like you have a home. The world is not the same for an unhappy person as it is for someone who has a sense of fulfillment; in this interpretation, there are as many worlds as there are people. Respect and trust you'll be respected, and everyone should find a home of their own. I wish everybody could experience that sense of belonging, not only to a place, but also to a race - the human race. 

And it's the longest most important race of all, one you can't afford being second to anyone.

Peace and love

D.

Lisbon

On Liberty

"Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five."

 "They who give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither one."

Benjamin Franklin 

The rule of many doesn't seem fit me; if not for anything else, just because the rule of (a single) one is already though and unreasonable enough. In the right light, there is no greater misery than to be subject of a single ruler, you can never trust his kindness, for on him alone depends being evil when it fits his needs. Therefore, having several "masters" is having as many reasons to be miserable.

It's strange enough to see two, three or ten men bowing to one, that squashes them under his boot, yet perfectly possible, even probable, nowadays; they always have the excuse of lack of spirit (animus). But what to say when we see, on a daily basis, hundreds, thousands, milllions and even billions of people, whole cities and countries subjugated to so few... how to call that? Cowardice?

All vices have some kind of limit, a boundary they don't surpass; two, or even ten (men), may fear one, but when a million men, a thousand cities, don't stand up for themselves, this is not cowardice - cowardice doesn't go that far (just like bravery has it's limits...only in hollywood motion pictures it doesn't). Liberty has become but a word in the dictionary, a faint dream of distant conquests of our forefathers, a pitch in pliticians campaigns; How has this happened? Like the romans already knew, the control of the mob needs only two things: bread and circus! And to control the mob is to have power - power to maintain the "status quo", power to create all kinds of illusions to perpetuate the greatest lie in human history - money. What about merit? Oh! I see, that you can't inherit... 

Peace and Love

D.

From nowhere to now here

On time

The past, always passed

The future is never present

and 

The present that forever lasts

Eternity is now; it's always now; right now for instance... Now follows you around all day long, it sleeps right beside you, and when you think it's over, ooops! It's now again! It's still now and always will be. Consider "eternal life" in this new light, and you'll see it's right now, and not in some fairy tale aftermath of this real world - some call it heaven and hell (wether you'll pay, or reap the benefits, for what's done in life).

Woody Allen said it best: " Time is the way Nature devised so that everything doesn't happen simultaneously"

It's always good to gag a serious matter - it puts it into perspective! So here it goes:

Do you know what happens if one sings a pop song backwards?
One gets their girl, house, job and even the dog back!

When it's eternity here (in the old continent) it's still dawn in the big apple.

Nothing happens after. This is it.

Peace and love

D.