Top 5 Songs By The Shins

The shins are one of the best bands around.  Their lyrics are incredibly deep and their songs are played with an immaculate expression of feeling(This is a paradox but listen and see for yourself):

Top 5 songs:

1.  So Says I:  This song explains how society can never achieve a utopia, and with each type of societal system, new problems arise. Now that we have capitalism and free market economy, we overemphasize money thus leading to materialism and corruption.  Plus the tunes not too bad
"Tell Sir Thomas Moore we have another failed attempt"
(sir thomas moore is the creator of the phrase-utopia)

2.  New Slang: Ignorance is bliss..  Once you can start thinking on your own you'll realize there are a lot more questions than answers
"Turn me back into the pet, I was when we met, I was happier then with no mindset"

3.  Sleeping Lessons: This song puts you into a dreamlike state.  The chorus will make you want to ditch your life and just start driving anywhere and everywhere.
"And if the old guard still offends, hes got nothing left on which you depend'

4. Young Pilgrims:  Emphasizes James Mercers atheistic beliefs.   It is better to be religious and follow everything a culture dictates, since when you look at life from an objective perspective there are too many questions and too little answers and it will drive you to insanity
"I became the kind of boy who goes down chutes too narrow"

5. Simple Song: Just an amazingly enthusiastic love ballad.  The sound is great and it being played in last seasons how i met your mother finale is the only good thing that shows produced in its last 3 seasons.
"I made a fumbling play for your heart, and the act struck a spark"

the means have become the ends part1: What is the meaning of life?

The means have become the ends because nobody could find the real ends:  pt 1


Try the following. Go over to someone you are close with, and ask- what are you doing?.   When they answer, respond with- why are you doing that?.  When they answer that, keep responding with "What will that do for you?.  Eventually, they will have nothing left to answer.  Because there is no purpose of life.  Even the people who say that their purpose of life is to change the world and help the oncoming generations are wrong.  Ask them- why are they helping the oncoming generations come into existence?  They wont know the purpose of life either!  So what's the point of them ever being born?  To continue this cycle of meaningless propogation!?  I believe there are three answers to this question.

1.  Evolution: We don't know life's meaning, but our kids might:  Purpose: Have Kids and raise them to have kids

 The first answer is that it may be that we are currently in an in-between stage of human evolution.  When humans originated, life was instinctual and people only lived to survive.  Survival was the purpose of life.   People could not remember the past or anticipate the future because all that they were conscious of was the present.
Now we know that evolution occurs because favorable traits are added to the gene pool to help a species survive.  So what is the most significant tool to help human survival?  The answer- Conscious thought.  For example, because humans are conscious of their past actions they could distinguish between actions that have supported life in the past and actions that have discouraged it.  If a man encounters a choice of two berries to eat, one being healthy and the other being poisonous, how will he know which berry to eat?  Without conscious thought, there is a 50% chance the human chooses the poisonous berry and dies, and 50% that he chooses the healthy one and lives.  However, with conscious thought the human could say something like: I saw another man die after he ate the red berry, therefore I will choose the blue berry to help me survive and avoid death.  The man was able to survive because he had conscious thought.  Therefore conscious thought was added to the human gene pool by the expansion of certain areas of the brain and neural pathways.
 After humans developed consciousness, they started to live longer.  As they learned more about the world, they started recording things that would encourage and discourage life and passing them onto their offspring.  Then humans started living even longer.  Now, the purpose of human life is changing from- survival to something more than survival.  However what is the new purpose of life?  We don't know.  We are in an in between stage of our purpose being survival and something more.  Perhaps over coming generations our children will be treated with new evolutionary traits which will allow them to understand a new meaning to their lives and therefore fulfill it.  So if we want humanity to achieve it's destined purpose and "it's endgame", then we must keep having children and raising them well in order to promote the survival of future generations.  Since those generations will be able to know and therefore fulfill a meaning in life.

2.  Religion:  We don't know.  So lets do good deeds so we can go to heaven and ask god 

Why was religion formed in the first place? To promote moral behavior and to give people reason to live.  I will only be focusing on the latter one for now.  When humanity developed conscious thought, they wanted to know- what is the reason for existence and our survival? So they searched, and searched, and searched, but they could not find it.  So they started to create their own purposes in life.  One of these being religion.  This new purpose in life would be to obey a being- who does know lifes destiny and meaning, and therefore that being, or god, will impart that wisdom unto you.   That god will tell you the meaning of life, if you do what that god wants you to do in your current life.  Now depending on the religion, god wants different things from all of us.   So we must do those things that god wants to go to an afterlife after we die, where we will then find out humankinds meaning.  Therefore, religion remains a very real possibility for the meaning of life.

3.  Enjoy: Have fun while you're here

The last possible purpose of existence is also the most simple- enjoy life while you live it.  The purpose of human survival is for lack of a better term- "to continue the fun".  You live because life has things that satisfy people.  Whether these things be sex, power, food, relationships etc.   Therefore you keep living to be able to enjoy things in the future.  Plus have children, so your children could also "have fun" and enjoy life.

Best songs that will do the job of drugs without their side effects

Here are some songs that will allow you to achieve an altered state of consciousness. Close the lights in the room, close your eyes and blast these songs and experience what it feels like to be uplifted to another dimension and realize that nothing in the world matters except for these songs.  (no drugs necessary).

District Sleeps alone Tonight; Postal Service

Blacking Out The Friction; Death Cab for Cutie

Brothers On A Hotel Bed; Death Cab for Cutie

Sleeping Lessons; The Shins

Come Downstairs And Say Hello; Guster

Ruby Falls; Guster

The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is out to get us; Surfjan Stevens

Welcome To The black Parade(instrumental); Vitamin string Quartet

Welcome

Welcome to "where are the scissors".  Many times in life we wonder if there's anything more than what is around us.  What actually matters in life, if anything?  Everybody around us seems to be living their respective lives following cultural norms and acting like soldiers to society's way of thinking.  Others who wish to surpass the way of "natural thinking", turn to either religion or drugs.  Religion gives people a sense of purpose (whether true or false) to maintain their sanity, while living in a natural world with a promise that if they are righteous they will be able to achieve a  supernatural experience in an afterlife.  People who take drugs may take them because they are trying to achieve an altered state of consciousness through them thus surpassing natural consciousness.  At the end of the day, people realize that they must follow cultural norms and live average lives, because in reality there are no alternatives.  We are all puppets, being controlled by nature and it's limitations. However, where are the scissors to cut our strings?  In this blog I will be exploring some of my philosophical ideals along with good music and movie suggestions that can help us make the most of this natural life, and veer as far away from our strings as possible.