Life

What I learned from my cats.

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Thought I might try a fun topic for today.

Like cats!

As of October, we’ve added yet another cat to our family.

This one might be my favorite story of how we’ve gotten one

My sisters legit almost stole this cat on Halloween, they saw a black cat along our street, and it came up to them, all friendly like, and they were a little worried about leaving it out on Halloween, because people do terrible things sometimes (I had a friend whose black cat was killed) so they brought the cat home.

I wondered if she was a stray, she seemed pretty well fed, but she was very clingy and affectionate, and seemed happy to be inside. She was only about 5 months old.

Well the next day we take the cat back to the house they took it from, after trying in vain the night before to find out who it elonded to.

The lady there tells us the cat is a stray they’ve been feeding, but she lives outside and doesn’t technically belong to them. And if we want her, we can take her and give her a good home. Because she’s lonely, and they can’t take her inside.

Glad we did too, because it got freaking cold at our house now that it’s Winter.

But of course I gave my sister crap for basically kidnapping someone’s cat, even if she wasn’t officially theirs.

Our grandma didn’t want to keep it at first, but we talked her into letting us at least get the cat fixed and some shots, and by the time she recovered, she’d gotten used to being here, and didn’t seem to mind the dog much, surprisingly. So we just kept her.

All part of my ten point plan of course, mahahha.

So now we have 4 cats. And 3 of them are black. We keep saying people are going to thnk we’re sme kind of cult.

But we didn’t plan it that way. Two of them were just in our neighborhood and happened to be black, mine is the only one I purposely selected the color so I could name her after a character.

I think you could learn a lot from cats, or pets in general, really. But cats act more like humans if you ask me.

I know people, dog people, say that cats think they’re above humans. But if you ask me, cats just reflect how obstinate and self centered most of us really are, if we take all our excuses off the table. Cats would make the same excuses if they could talk.

See, if you like dogs, you’re either an optimist or a pessimist about people, but if you like cats, you’re a realist. The good and the bad.

And each of our cats reflects something different about human nature if you ask me, maybe I read into it too much but pet lovers out there can relate.

So why not, let’s see what I got.

1: Cata

Well our boy cat died, but his sister, our only non black cat currently, is still around. She’s up there but since cats can live 15 years, she might still be middle aged, we’ll see.

Cata, the cat, has always been kind of a princess, as we call it. She never was much for roughhousing, even as a kitten, she loved playing with anything shiny or girly (seriously, it was weird how she went for girly stuff, like a cat shouldn’t really know that right? Could she smell the estrogen?) and was one to want affection even before food.

For real, we’ve seen this cat refuse to eat multiple times unless someone pets her first, or she’ll eat if you sit and pet her, but if not she’ll just ignore the food. Can’t say the others have that problem.

Conversely she’s also the most sensitive of our pets, she doesn’t like being picked up, and is very particular about when she wants attention. But if she’s lying on a bed, she’s usually in the mood for snuggles, she knows that our turf. But if she’s on a chair in the office, leave her alone, that’s her territory. (The office is our cat room so they have somewhere safe from the dog.)

But I remember when I realized that Cata might be onto something was while I was house sitting alone, while my family were all on vacation.

Cata got kind of lonely without all of us there, and would come rub on my leg and sit in my lap while Iw aosn the etoliet (a weird habit all of our cats have for some reason) and get her loving, as my Mom would say.

But I had a revelation: This cat isn’t ashamed of it. She asks for love when she wants it and needs it, and doesn’t apologize.

It reminded me of how very often, I wouldn’t bother to go to God, or even to other people, if I feel sad or lonely, just because I don’t want to admit it, or because I think I can get by.

But can I really? I mean even the dumb cat knows that love is more imporant than food soemtimes, and sehs’ a cat.

Weird right?

But I guess maybe Cata is onto something, what is life without affection? Empty.

True, she’s a diva and has hidden from us for 48 hours straight just to get back at us for ignoring her or getting new cats, and also poops on the floor when we make her mad or don’t clean the litter box fast enough, or she’s just too lazy to bother (she is mobile enough to) so she does have that desolate helpless female thing going–but hey, don’t we all wish we could get attention that easily?

I think Cata’s eccentricness is partly because we’ve had her since she was a couple weeks old. She is our most comfort kitty type. She’s sa with us when we’re sad, even with my grandma, who she ignores the rest of the time, after her dogs died, Cata woulsit in her room…she stopped after a few weeks, and now that there’s another dog, never goes near that room, but it was like she knew we were sad.

Cata also seemed sad when her brother cat was dead, like she knew something was missing. They say animals don’t notice, but I think we did see a change in her behavior. She was more okay with her sibling cat than she was with our newer ones. But she did become a bit nicer to them after that, like she had to fill a void.

It’s odd, but even in animals, it seems like dealing with loss sometimes is easier when you open up to something new. Go figure.

But maybe Cata likes attention because she values company, on her terms, she is still a cat, and that’s something we could learn form, in our isolated society.

2. Winnie

Winnie (Winter or Winnie-the-Pooh, we still argue over which it was originally) is our next oldest cat.

She was dumped in our neighborhood, before we moved, right around Christmas–which in that area is the meanest time to abandon a cat, because it ices over sometimes.

My mom put an ad out for a lost cat, but no one responded, so we kept her.

Winnie is definitely the weirdest cat we’ve ever had…I mean I’ve only had 5, but she was unique.

She’s not mean, she actuall ran righ up to my mom when we foudn ehr and seemed used to people.

But she was pretty brash too. She was only about 4 months old, but when our boy cat, Tiger, tried to get all territorial with ehr, she dug her heels in and gave it right back to him, that was her first day.

Tiger was so surprised that he backed off and left her alone mostly, then they became bffs because Winnie liked to play more than Cata, who was such a “girl” (at least that’s what I think Tiger would have said if he could speak)

Winnie had kind of a cracked out look in her eyes though, and would rush around the house like a maniac, she would play with herself, and my mo is convinced she was nearsighted.

She definitely had her own style, we used to joke that she’d be the atar of an action movie if she could be. We called her “ninja cat” because she’d jump up and do wild poses and swipes.

She freaked out one of our neighbors just because she was black and hada nutty expression.

But despite that, Winnie has never been a mean cat, just odd. She didn’t bit or scratch much (actually Cata drew blood more than any of our other ones) and in her older age, she mellowed out a lot. She’s still kind of funny, but now she mostly just rubs on our feet, and hides in boxes.

Winnie is a little more accepting of new cats than our other ones. And more welcoming of strangers in the house.

And call me crazy, but isn’t that a little like humans too?

Sometime it’s the weirdos who are the least judgmental–not always, but sometimes. Because if you know you’re different, then other people who are different also tend to be drawn to you.

And hey, sometimes feet and boxes are just the simple things in life to enjoy.

3. Saucy

Well, I suppose I have to take full responsibility for how Saucy turned out, since I raised her and all. I mean, it was a joint effort, but she’s my cat.

I got Saucy because someone who worked at the school behind our house had found kittens and offered me ne to conle me because I thought Cata had gone ising (turns out she just hid under a bed for 36 hours behind stuff so I couldn’t see her).

I had thought about getting another cat anyway, for myself, because one of ours haddied (got hit by car really) so I said yes.

Now everyone told me not to do it.

My sister, Mom, and Grandma all said the dog would eat any new cat. They all seemed to have this odd idea that our dog is more viscous than she really is. She ties to herd the cats, about as successfully as most people, but she doesn’t bite them. She’s a sheep dog, so she nips at their heels to get them to move, but it’s not real.

Despite them all saying it was a bad idea, I got the cat anyway, and introduce ehr to the dog little by little, the dog never tried to eat her. While she was too little to run, we kept them seperate, but once she was big enough, she was actually the least afraid of the dog, sometimes she’d rub under her, unlike the other two who avoided the dog like she was a wolf.

They say cats reflect their owners, so I suppose it’s my fault that cat has a personality that’s pretty stubbornly independent.

Actually I’ve gotten compliments from our vets that my cat is very calm and cooperative when they examine her. She doesn’t stress much. And I am much calmer than some of my family.

Aso I tend to be bolder, and not avoid conflict, and this cat wouldn’t avoid our older cats, she would go up to them. And the dog.

In fact she was so fearless I worried about letting her outside because I thought she’d go up to strange animals and get bitten. So we waited till she’d had her operation and shots to let her outside.

Strangely Saucy, while fearless, alway understood boundaries fairly well. She used to stand in the doorway when we left it open and looked at us like “I know I’m not supposed to go outside, but I really want to”. She didn’t climb on stuff as much as Winnie did, because she knew she wasn’t supposed to, when she’s inside, she sticks to her furniture we allow her on, for the most part.

Just can’t take th hint with other cats.

But this is like me too, I push limits soeitsm but I also know when to dra wa line.

Once we finally let Saucy out, she wound up being much more comfortable outdoors than indoors, she loves it. And her fao game to play is tag, she wants to be ah all over but she tsy sotu of reach until she’s acut tired and then she’ll let herself get caught and taken inside, or she comes in when she’s hungry or cold.

Despite being bold, Saucy was actually our most gentle cat. She never bit us, or scratch us hardly at all, was okay with being held more than the others, and when I give her bths, put sup way less prost than the older two, she even enjoys part o fit.

She growls and hisses and snap over having new cat around, but usually it’s all talk. (Some exceptions).

I can see myself in this also, I make a big noise and I ep myself, but I really really try to hurt anyone. Forceful but not harmful, that’s kind of my way. Though we all have our moments.

Sh definitely is Saucy, guess I did that one to myself.

But saucy and mean are not the same things. Saucy may be independent, but she’s not antisocial, she just likes to be social in a more active way, and she sticks to her guns about it.

While it can worry me, I have to respct it at times, I like a stong mdinded erson, env i fhteyr a cat.

And it does put me in mind of another truth about life, the worst of liking people who have a mind of their own is that they will have their own way sometimes, and it won’t always be what you want.

But deep down, you love them more because they are more themselves, then you do if someone bows to our every whim. It’s hard to like a personality if someone doesn’t have one, right?

And not everyone who is strong willed is a jerk, they may just be that way, but not mean any harm by it, don’t take their independence as a lack of affection, they may just show their affection differently.

Wow, that go tdep dint it?

Now for the last one:

4. Mimi/Jemima

We still call this cat different things, but she doesn’t care anyway, she really understands “kitty” best.

Mimi still is the most affectionate cat we have, maybe because she’s still getting used to having a home.

But it has changed a bit in 4 months. When we first got her she wanted attention constantly, she seemed worried we’d kick her back out. She didn’t really want to go outside, and we made sure not to let her because we worried she’d run back to her other house.

But she never acted like she wanted out the door anyway, she just wanted food and love.

Now we let her out but she still hasn’t tried to leave us, she sticks close to the house more than the other and comes back in quickly, partly she’s just cold, but partly, she’s just not interested. She’s know the good stuff is here.

See none of the other cats were homeless long enough to remember it, but Mimi was alone, sort of, for 5 months of her life, and she picked up the habits of a lonely person.

ingShe wants reassurance that she’s welcome here, but she also has an annoying habit the others don’t have, she steals our food. Especially bread and chick for some reason.

I get the chick but one of the other cats like bread, it makes no sense.

We think it’s her instinct to eat whenever she can and to take people food because she probably went through trashcans before. She still has that stravation mindset.

She’s getting a little better, but it’s still a problem, we have to hide food from her.

Mimi also likes to play more, since she’s still a kitten, and is slowly wearing Saucy down. Saucy was the baby before, and has the jealous sibling thing, but he’s getting over it. The other two didn’t care as much because Mimi and Saucy look like they’re twins, we think they might have had the same mom, and I think the older cat could tell the difference from a distance and got used to it faster.

Mimi likes people, but despite being very eager to come up to us when we found her, she has not been like that with strangers.

But I’ve seen this behavior before. We had another cat who loiterered outside and went between houses to eat, he a very affectionate to people but it was because he only got attention outside, and he never really wanted to become an indoor cat, just kind of liked to go between different houses.

Most really affectionate cats I’ve known were lonely ones, in fact, they ram as much aatn at hey na ge tinto small sauer of time.

But Mimi, now that she’s accepted this is her home, no longer feel the need to advertise to other people who walk by our house, she feels more secure here so here she stays.

And this, maybe most of all, is like how people are.

Some of us, when we have been alone a lot, we are very needy and beg for affection. It’s hard to help it when you’re empty. Even though Mimi had food from her other helpers, she wanted a family.

Once you have one, you stop looking, but you still may have some “hungry habits” to break.

Even when we know we’re at home, we can still steal food and act like we’re hungry again, it’s hard to go from one mindset to another. And a cat doesn’t have the self awareness to know that, bt we human do, but we can be blind to how nonsensical our habits are.

We need to accept that if we have a home, we can’t act like strays anymore, when you steal food, someone else has less of it, after all, it’s better to take what you’re given and be grateful for it, not to beg for more than your fair share.

We love Mimi anyway, but what’s a habit in a cat, can be more of a deliberate thing in a human being, and something we should try to grow out of it if we can.

Even a cat can learn better, so why not a thinking, person.

I guess that’s my point in all this. Each of our cats has their good and bad points, and they all mirror human qualities in a way, but our cats have no self awareness to know what is good and what isn’t, unlike us, who can choose.

So we can learn from them, what to do and what not to do. And that even if you have your quirks, the right person will love you anyway. But don’t be a beast and not at least try to change, we can forgive a pet, but a human should be willing to learn, but around that, we still need acceptance.

And I guess that’s what I learned from my cats.

Also the more the merrier, in my mind, but that’s a personal preference. It’s not that I have a void to fill, it’s just that I think the more things you have to love, the better life is.

Well was it kooky or profound? You tell me. Maybe both.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha

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What A Dating Novice Knows…

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I know it’s been a really long time.

Sorry, I had the busiest semester I’ve ever had, so blogging kind of got pushed to the back burner.

I’m not sure I’ll have a whole lot to say today, but I wanted to write about relationships again.

Mainly because I finally started dating.

Yay!!!!

Yeah in a culture where thousands of people are saying that dating and relationships are a waste of time, and a lot more are obsessed with calling people toxic, and just overall acting entitled…I’m trying to find someone I can actually get along with.

I think sometimes being “not crazy” can actually make it harder.

I guess that sounds kind of like being a pick-me, so maybe I’m wrong about that.

But the thing is, I don’t know what guys want…and honestly, I’m not sure they know either.

I’ve met a couple of them from a dating website, and got ghosted by a few already.

And the ones I have met up with who are still int ouch, it’s hard to gauge interest.

See everybody is different.

Is it a bad sign if they hardly text me between meet-ups, or is just normal guy stuff.

I mean all you get on the internet is other people’s opinions, right?

Being what I am, a not feminist, not woke, not liberal, 24 year old woman who just wants to find love and start a family–is surprisingly had to match, hard to define.

Because beyond principals, I don’t know what works with me.

I liked a guy for years only to realize he was stringing me along for attention, and didn’t actually like me back…and he was a Christian who was supposed to know better. Amazes me how selfish even Chrsitians can be.

I’m also the type of chick who thinks that sweating the little details is stupid. If I can get around a difficulty by adjusting myself to it, I will. I’d rather change my approach than give up on something if I’m interested in.

And that has made me good at doing anything that depends solely on me. I’ll find a way if I want to do it bad enough.

My siblings and parents like to agonize over details, I just roll with the punches.

I would think that would make dating a cinch for me. I never run out of conversation topics, I’m willing to listen to other people’s interests, and I’m not picky about where to eat or go for fun.

And in some ways, it is easy to do the basic parts of dating.

But the thing is, I still have no idea what I’m doing, right?

I’m coming to realize that most people don’t.

We’re all insecure, we all are under the pressure to be liked.

I think there’s truth in that it used to be easier. I mean, love has never been easy.

It’s a common theme of most tragedies and sad ballads for most of Time, it’s not easy. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be valuable.

But that said, I do think that we’ve made it harder to just get past the stage of being strangers, by being so isolated in our lives. I have the same problem with friends.

I mean, sine we rely on phones now, I get paranoid if I don’t hear from someone within 10 minutes of messaging or calling them.

Part of that is my abandonment complex, thanks Dad, and part of it is just me, being someone who’s quick to worry. I want to get better, but there’s just something about phones that makes it so hard to control your anxiety, ever notice that?

I don’t want to bring my baggage into a new relationship…but if I’m honest, I really can’t help it.

I mean, we all do it.

And let’s face it, when you’ve been mistreated, it’s hard not to look for it again. Like when you have a sore place on your body and you keep touching it to see if it still hurts…yeah it still does.

Before, I spent a lot of time being nice to people I wanted to be friends with. But apparently, that’s a turn off.

You seem too eager, and it’s like your friendship and respect is cheap.

And I think thanks to being both a tough woman with high standards, and ordinary girl who wants love, I ended up this odd mix of easygoing and also sensitive.

Many things don’t bother me, maybe some of you ladies can relate.

Maybe you don’t care about the toilet seat, the restaurant or the size of the rock, right?

But if you feel ignored, or used, it starts to feel so familiar.

And when nothing is wrong you look for something to be wrong.

I don’t like being this way, but I got addicted to it.

My father, being the manipulative person that he was, was the king of scaring you if you thought things were all right.

If I was having a good day, or we hadn’t fought in say, 5 days straight, he simply felt the need to start a fight so that his quota of tension could be met. He fed off of it.

I want to talk about antyi, and he bing up the unpelasnt isde of it.

He used to change our bedtime stories to psychotic tales of people yelling and hurting each other, no matter how innocent the story was.

I mean, it was funny, he had good delivery…but you always felt kind of icky for laughing.

One of my therapists was the first t point out that that’s kind of messed up…who knew?

I had no idea until she said it, how much my paranoia could be influenced by my father’s insistence on making everything dark, suspicious, or perverse. Or just gross.

I don’t mean to say everything is his fault…but the thing is, I can’t account for my personality quirks any other way.

I was fearless mostly when I was a very little child, but my father scared me. Overtime I developed other anxieties.

But now that most of those are gone, I still have the habit of being anxious in my mind.

And par of that is my father filled my head with the idea that things are always about to go wrong.

I actually handle stress well, usually. I stay calm, I know how to take a moment and just let it out…yet I feel this pressure to despair, to think “this is just how my life always goes” and blow things out of proportion.

Some of that I had long before I knew my father was like that…but kids do copy what they see.

And I find his voice in my head a lot, even now.

The thing is, I feel like I have to apologize for that to whoever I’m with.

Like: I‘m sorry, my father messed me up, and I really want to be better, but I don’t know if you’re safe yet…so can you bear with me wile I try to get past it?

Therapy was no help in this area. They just kept making me focus even more on what could go wrong.

Like do I really need to hear this again?

My last one was a real gem, he told me I had a lot of blame for people in my past.

This was after weeks of him not given me any constructive feedback, so I would just keep telling him different stories, hoping he’d figure out something helpful that I was missing. Apparently not…and hey, at any point he could have asked me why I focused n that so much and worked out a solution. Instead he got mad the first time I acted out a little bit because of my issues, and that was it for me.

I’m perfectly willing to admit, I’m not perfect. I do rude things sometimes…who doesn’t?

But that is no excuse to jump on me and make all kinds of claims about my character that you have no way to know from one thing I said.

I mean, I know I’m defensive…

You know why that is? I used to be open to feedback when I was younger, I did my best to embrace it…but it was never good enough.

I learned the hard way then that people don’t always care about helping you, they just want to control you. It’s not about who’s right, it’s about you not being exactly how they want.

Yes it’s hard for me to trust anyone who criticizes me, because so often I cannot please them even after taking their advice, so I gave up.

I literally stopped speaking to my father for years for most of the time I was around him because nothing I ever said to him got me anything but hatred, or was at all pleasant to being with.

I did the same to other adults I knew, and I never heard the end of it from him: “You offend people so much, why do you not answer them?”

You know what happened once my father moved out? And just once I was at a church he didn’t go to? I miraculously stopped doing that.

I now never go silent on people like that, at least, very very rarely, and only when it wasn’t a remark I was sure they wanted an answer to.

Great right?

But it freaks you out to realize how much one person can change your personality.

My sisters even confirmed it.

I used to have “freak outs” or as I called them “moments” when my ahter was around.

Not always to do with him, but I’d be so stressed, I’d just wig out for several minutes, talking too fast and almost crying and laughing at the same time. I twas weird, looking back, I can’t understand it.

But once he was gone, it just stopped. I no longer had the urge to do that.

I do think I project this image of being more together than I really am, but who doesn’t do that if they want to remain employed?

It’s not wrong to act professional…but at some point, with someone, you have to let your guard down.

We can only talk about impersonal things for so long, you know what I mean?

Also, you can’t just trauma dump, that’s not good either.

But really, other people don’t know what works for you.

I’ll say there are guidelines.

In my limited experience with men, I’ve worked out at least a few real red flags. And they aren’t the ones most women talk about.

  1. A guy who makes you do all the work. You text first, you decide everything, he never disagrees with you.

I don’t mean that a guy who is easygoing is bad, I mean that he shows no interest whatsoever in getting to know you, but he craves your attention. I spent years hoping that both my dad, and other men I knew would change their minds about me…it doesn’t work.

2. Someone who never asks you about yourself.

This can also be social awkwardness, but if you’ve been talking for a while and you know more about them and they don’t ever ask about you, bad sign.

But those both are ones other people point out, what baffles me is how rarely anyone I know mentions this one:

3. The guy is just a jerk to you.

There was a really hot guy in my dance class who definitely knew he was hot, and my classmates seemed to think he was into me.

I think he would have if I was interested, but the guy would just be a jerk to me and to my friend in the class. Like he’d say things that seemed like they were to deliberately make me uncomfortable. It freaked me out. Also he was creepy in other ways.

I’m sure he thought it was smooth–and hey, in highschool, maybe it was. Girls have low self esteem in their teenage years. I’m sure being hot and cocky was all you needed back then.

But for a mature woman, who actually has thinks she looks for, like compassion and considerateness, it was unattractive. Canceled out the hot part.

I mean, was I attracted to him? Physically yes, but i was rep by his personality, and not in a “you get on my nerves but I still like you” kind of way.

Nothing ever happened between us, and I’m glad of that. But I was surprised later when one of the other guys I knew in class expressed surprise that I thought the hot one was a creep. This guy was on the uglier side, and said he thought I thought he was the creep.

Other than the obvious play for a compliment, I thought that was kind of a weird thing to say.

This guy didn’t hit on me or anything, really, like I know every one reading this is going to think, he just seemed to want female attention.

I enjoyed the male attention I got in the class, but I felt kind of like it was just about me being a girl, and not personality.

However, it’s worked the other way too, I’ve hit it off with guys over personality, who never asked me out.

I can’t explain it except that there must be some other reason they weren’t interested…and it wasn’t that they weren’t into dating, they were ones who went through multiple girlfriends.

Maybe I just give off the vibe too much of a girl who’s ride or die about love.

I do mange to get a rep for being feisty and opiniated everywhere I go.

Hey, at least I’m not forgettable.

But maybe it’s not me, or maybe it’s something I can’t guess. You know, I get sick of asking.

I impressed the guy I’m currently seeing by being able to tell him how I came to Christ…so that was new.

I can’t explain exactly why people don’t click these days.

But one thing I have learned is that it’s a waste of your time to go after anyone who has such wildly different views of life than you.

Even if they say they are in your religion, don’t believe it if it’s not in their actions.

I saw a man on YouTube say that we shouldn’t have low expectations, we should have realistic ones.

He’s right.

I can get the numbers of plenty of men if I want to, but it’s not worth it if they aren’t ones I’d want the heart of.

I know that’s chessy, but it’s true.

Love is not all magic and thrills, but it is about being entrusted with someone else’s well being, and we should take that seriously.

I’d rather feel safe with a man than feel thrilled for a short time only to feel empty later.

And I encourage men to think the same way, hopefully many of them already do.

Don’t settle for someone who has no respect for you.

And don’t dump someone for stupid reasons, there’s a lot of that going around too.

See, having the past I do makes me want something better, not the same old thing. I’m not comfortable with being mistreated, and I intend to stick to that.

So yeah, I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I know that much..

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Transphobic

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I watched a video this morning by a Christian Lady saying that this whole Trans craze is the reason she’s finally pulling her kids out of school and homeschooling them.

Hurray!

I was homeschooled all up till college. I do have trouble making friends, but it beats not having a brain.

Not that there aren’t some very smart kids in Public school, the problem is the systme istelf sucks the IQ out of these kids as fast as possible.

I learned something from this video that I should have realized before, I just never had gone to school enough to know it.

The schools slip this LGBT+ whatever stuff ito the curriculum because they clasify is as “anit-bullying” training

See, a very powerful lie because it’s mized with a small amount of truth, alwasy the most effective.

Sure, you can point to the whole pride community and say “They do get bullied”

True…but every community gets bullied. I don’t care who you are, you just have to live around jerks who are from a different circle, or be in the minority in your neighborhood.

The lady made an excellent point, that no other kind of bullying is the solution to pressure everyone else into being this thing.

Just about everyone mainstream had a label in the Pride community now, just because it makes them cool. Just ike everyone has a mental illness.

Humans are infamous for promoting trends that are unhealthy to ourselves, without knowing it. But I never thought I’d see the day, even in my short life, where promoting being unhealthy itself would be popular.

What the heck?

I have a cousin who’s already fallen under this spell, who was always a very normal girl before she got Tiktok. But, of course, she wants to fit in.

The kid is too young to drive, but according to the YouTube lady, that doesn’t mean she can’t get hormones and change her pronouns, without parental consent.

It’s bizarre and insane, you have to get parental consent to treat kids in the freaking Emergency room just in case you give them something they are allergic to, but you don’t have to get it to give them body altering hormones?

That’s nuts.

Even parents who support the rights of this community have an issue with this, but the kids are being taught to ignore their parents, to see them as the enemy if they don’t support this.

I see no real doubt about this being a cult, but I didn’t understand how it got slipped into school so fast until the anti-bullying connection was made for me, now I get it.

Because I hear kids defends this so vehemently, the way they’d say it’s not right to bully someone else, and they never stop to think that maybe it’s not the same thing, because a kid doesn’t understand the nuances between preventing bullying and pushing an agenda.

Hey, China did this once. They said everyone should stop being bullied by the oppressive landlords. Anyone who owned land and wealth had to be stropped of it.

So they made their whole population poor, and completely dependent on the government, which was pretty broke also, and just the most high ranking people had wealth. People turned on each other, because there was no need for proof, you just had to make an accusation. All the most spiteful people are in charge in a society like that.

It didn’t end well for China.

It’s not rocket science to most of us that all this is not going to end well, but how do we stop it?

I figure that in some ways, it can’t be stopped. AS long as parents are willing to allow it, some kids are bound to be victimes of it.

Homeschooling is the best option, to be sure, but not everyone can do it. Still one could pay for a tutor, or try a different kind of school.

But it’s not just schoool, it’s the internet.

No kid should have a tiktok, that’s just common sense. They don’t need to be exposing themselves on line to people when they can’t even legally sign an information release form yet, not that hard to figure out.

I didn’t start my YouTube channel till I was 17 or 18 I think, and I never gave personal information out on it.

I know I’m not saying anything new here, but we just need as many people to be saying it as possible. To do our best to have a counter movement.

But in answer to the guy who commented asking why people feel the need to prove themselves right, and they can’t just live and let live.

This is why, Sir. This freaking crap is why!

Because when we give up trying to prove ourselves right, you know who takes the hit? It’s not us, not right away, not the adults. It’s the kids. They don’t get a choice. They don’t know any better.

And if we adults who do are too lazy, cowardly, or indifferent to speak our piece to these other people and contest them, they will own our kids. Literally, before too long.

It won’t be long before even being an adult won’t be any protection anymore, at this rate. But let’s talk about htat.

I know people at my college who will applaud slipping this propaganda into everything, because they don’t think.

You see, if we thought about it, would we relaly beokay with this?

I know exaclty how it works.

People may call me transphobic for not agreeing with this, but I prefer to think of it as Pride-phobic. I am terrified by anyone exulting pride as something we all should be aiming for. Pride is deadly.

Hubris is the deadly Pride that says “I can do better than God/gods” depending on what religion you are, but it’s pride in oneself and their own wisdom above everything else.

Playing God, we call it.

I can’t think of any more blatant example of this than saying you can change the gender someone was born with, especially before they are old enough to understand what that truly means.

Some people say that doctors play God, to be sure, in some cases.

Yeah, that might be true…so change the laws there, but that doesn’t justify letting kids make these choices, or letting mentally unstable people make them either.

Now if a stable, grown adult wants to transition, I may disagree, but I wouldn’t stop them, because the y have the right to choose what they will do. They have the right to choose to do anything…and reap the consequences.

But that’s not the majority of cases here, that’s the problem.

I know why people take isue with sotpin it.

They say that whatever negative things happen it’s still important to promote this because these people need to feel accepted and loved.

That sounds good.

Until…

Think about it, what culture has ever had trure and complete acceptance of every kind of person?

That would be zero.

But the ones that got closest were the Nazis.

Yeah you could be from any background, if you join the nazi party you were in. You were the cool kids.

All you had to do was be willing to crush anyone outside the party who was in your way. Anyone who as not Germany,or anyone who was German but was loyal to the enemy, that is tot say, the people you were murdering en masse.

Some people will say Gitler wasn’t evn worn now.

I heard the Whoopi Goldberg even said that the Holocaust wasn’t about Race.

I guess all those books the Germans wrote about superior genetics being in the German line, and all that propaganda they put out about black people (you know, ones like Whoopi Goldberg) and Jews was all about something other than race.

I can’t imagine what it would be, if not race, must be something only enlighten people like Goldberg know.

I remember the Rwanda Holocuast really united the country, as long as you weren’t Tutsi. And as long as you didn’t look Tutsi, even if you were Hutu, you were fine.

Yeah…you know mass acceptance comes at a price. Because when people are individuals, some of them will not fit in, they will not be accepted, so you have to sacrifice your individuality in order to be accepted.

Put on their label, dye your hair, wear the make up, wear your pride sticker. Now you’re cool.

But if you want to do anything for yourself, without putting that label on it you can’t get away from it.

Remember that gay ice skater in the Olympics a few yeas ago. The news couldn’t get enough of him, though he was not the best skater in the team, and the one who was didn’t get interview as much. (And I mean by the scores, he wasn’t the best, not my personal opinion).

I really would care if a gay man was the best ice skater, because to me being gay and having talent are two things that have nothing to do with each other, why would they? Does being straight give you talent? No? Does sex give you talent period? No.

But he gets attention just for that.

You know it kind of sucks even if you are gay, because you may have hobbies that you’d like to get acclaim for, and you’ll never know if people are just praising you because you’re gay, or because you’re talented. Since the general public really can’t recognize talent and skill that well to begin with, that makes it even worse. Charisma goes a long way with the masses, but if you say you’re gay, that’s an automatic win.

A lot of people are milking it on purpose to get famous, or more famous, Like Demi Lovato.

But if you genuinely do feel gay, you may not really want that to be all there is to you. I read an article by someone like that once in college.

And it’s sad. Really. Talent is talent, whoever has it, shouldn’t it be acknowledged as such?

I’ve watched a gay youtuber for years now, because he has talent. But sadly, he has leaned more and more into using his gay label to make content, instead of actually using his creative talents to do it. He used to be real clever, but he doesn’t need to be now. He’s got talent still…but he no longer needs to use it, so he doesn’t.

That’s going to happen to kids right and left at this rate. Why be a scientist if you can get famous by being a sexual orientation, it’s not like that takes work.

I saw this ad for a new show where this Trans person is saying that they hate it when people say they are brave for transition so young, and someone replies “its not brave to be who you are.”

While I wholly disagree with the premise of that sentiment, it’s interesting in one way.

By their own logic, why is this anything to applaud? If it’s just who they are, that’s like applauding someone for liking the color blue. What does my merits as a person have to do with it? Nothing.

Some of them will say t his.

The thing is, the people who are getting into this because it’s popular are really the ones who will ignore that.

Nevermind if it actually hurts the exact people you’re trying to help.

A gay person might like to write a play about something other than being gay, you know, just for once. But they aren’t allowed to, are they? Name one, I’ll wait.

Anyway, I need to wrap this up.

In short, I think pushing this agenda is hurting the gay and whatever else is in the spectrum people just as much as anyone else, and it’s hurting kids too.

And before we decide to ride this train because everyone else is doing it, we should ask if we want to be responsible for that kind of damage.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

My Own Devices

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I’d like to start this post with a song:

I was left to my own devices.

Many days fell away with nothing to show.

… But if you close your eyes Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? And if you close your eyes Does it almost feel like you’ve been here before? How am I gonna be an optimist about this? How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

We were caught up and lost in all of our vices In your pose as the dust settled around us

Eh-oh, eh-oh Eh-eh-oh, eh-oh Eh-eh-oh, eh-oh Eh-eh-oh, eh-oh

Oh, where do we begin? The rubble or our sins?

The rough draft of this post got erased somehow…I guess I shouldn’t leave things on this site…

So starting over from scratch, what would be a good thing to write about?

I know that my original point was how well this song describes us now. I mean us in the Western World.

You know it’s funny how much depression runs rampant in our cultures, considering we have more benefits than we ever have.

But that’s actually something we have in common with animals.

A study was done on rats, where they were given everything they needed, all the time, never had to work for it.

The rats developed depression, as well as other unhealthy habits, for rats…and for humans.

But you might see the same thing with dogs. They’re bred for work, and when they’re kept as pets but not exercised properly or given any tasks to do, they will also get depressed.

And so do humans.

This life of staring at screens and working from home, and not getting outside and having to really work to solve problems that many of us have is making us depressed. We feel like we have no meaning, because there is no effort.

We don’t have to be fighting for survival, to feel accomplished, any creative goal can help, but most especially if it’s necessary.

I know each generation has its issues with how the younger one has it easier and isn’t disciplined.

I do think there’s some truth in that, though. Even I feel less invested in homework assignments since I had to do them digitally, and it’s just a little too easy now. I know it doesn’t prove I’m smart now, if I succeed, it just proves I knew what the teacher wanted. Many times I could have done way more if left to my own devices.

But the education system encourages me not to be creative, because my grade will suffer if I don’t meet the exact requirements of the assignment. Ever get in trouble for going over the page limit? Yeah…

But anyway, my point is, we don’t have to really work. There are people who do, but the ones who are the face and voice of our culture don’t.

And that is every race, gender, and whatever else.

i think that’s part of the reason we spend so much time fighting each other, really. While history shows people would fight each other no matter what, it doesn’t help that we really have all the time in the world to do it now, instead of having to set aside time to go to war.

All this has got me to thinking.

About how few people under 30 even know history now, they really don’t know that much period. Not science, or religion, or how people work.

You have your outliers, like my cousin, who like to do their own research, but they’re not the majority.

Not that this is unusual, in pampered societies, it’s pretty normal, actually…and then they crumble.

That’s what the song Pompeii is about, really. How when we’re left to ourselves, to follow our own whims, we get buried in our sins, until disaster strikes, and freezes us that way forever.

And how can you be an optimist about this? When there is only one outcome ever to societies in moral decay like that.

 “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25, 17:6)

Both those instance talk about someone doing something pretty stupid and wrong. And also it says:

“Be not wise in your own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.” (Proverbs 3:7)

We are wise in our own eyes now aren’t we?

Like all this prattle about not getting married and staying single that I wrote about before. What is that but being wise in our own eyes.

And we don’t seem to care what generations of humans before us said or thought. We’ve got it figued out now.

I mean because with zero experience, zero study, and only the corrupt examples of current culture to go by, clearly we’re well informed on these issues.

But the depression of this age has gone so far now, that a lot of kids don’t even care anymore if they’re right.

Case in point, just yesterday, I was in YT comment thread with someone who said that truth doesn’t matter tot ehm.

I was asking them why they bothered to watch the whole video of a debate if they didn’t care about the truth or what was right.

I got no answer to that so far. I probably never will.

At this point, admitting you hunger for a definitive truth is like a weakness to our relativistic young people–and some older people also.

Of course the dismissive attitude of older people isn’t helping.

I mean, who let the kids watch PBS and Disney Channel and Cartoon network? I noticed the bad messages of those channels when I was a kid. I’m not surprised the people who never questioned it have now swallowed it hook line and sinker.

I mean, you take a whole show like Dora the Explorer, and you go on a quest through a fake map, looking fora fake item, learn a few Spanish words…and you call that exploring?

Nothing against Dora personally, it’s an okay show for entertainment–but it’s not really educational. And it’s not even the worst one.

It’s hard to blame the young, they’re just doing what they were taught to do, and by the time they realize it wasn’t right, they’ll have a lot of regrets.

Still we have our own responsibility. And they do choose not to think, not to try, not to explore for real. And that’s on them.

I bring all this up, but do I have a solution?

I think the solution is the same as it’s always been.

Person by person, the only thing to do is try to get people to understand the condition they’er in.

Debate isn’t always the best way to do that, I admit. Though it works for some.

I’ve had most people just duck out of arguments when they realized I was going to win because I was better informed than them, or just straight up insult me.

But people can’t always be so quick to dismiss if you touch them on a personal level.

We need both.

But it’s hard, there’s so few people fighting these battles compared to the people who are casualties in them.

But that’s how it usually goes. We preserve a remnant of the people. The majority of them don’t want to be helped.

Some will literally say so, I have grandparents who would say that.

We love our sin so much.

We love being able to do what we wnat.

And now it’s not a secret, you’d even hear it hailed from the streets and the theaters and political campaigns that we’d rather die doing what we’d prefer to do, right or wrong, then live submitting to God’s will.

I saw this comment today, it was like this: I don’t believe in God because there’s nothing about same sex relationship in the bible and He’s not okay with them.

First: There’s actually plenty about homosexuality in the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah, the books of the Law, and Romans 1 all talk about it. (It’s called Sodomy in the old Testament)

Second: I find that these types of objections completely misunderstand the nature of God’s existence.

You see, if God exists does not depend on our personal preferences. He either does, or He doesn’t.

If He does exist, He is the final say on what is right and wrong. You, as His creation, don’t get an opinion.

Sure, against other humans, you do. But not against God. If God was in front of you and He told you, that would be the last word. And if you saw God, in His Glory, the last thing you would dream of doing is arguing with Him.

See, the point of contention is not if God supports what we feel is right.

If God is the Reality, then that is the reality we have to deal with. Even if He was the bloodthirsty God of many religions, cruel and spiteful, which would be bad for us. But it would be Reality, there’d be nothing we can do about it.

Thankfully, God is not like that. But He’s still unchangeable. Your preferences donesn’t come into it.

You may not like it….and God has never said we have to like doing what He says…but He does say we need to do it.

As a Christian, I do find that the rewards of serving God is that if you do it long enough, you will start to like it, and then eventually, you won’t be able to do without it. But that’s sort of an insider bonus. The bible promises that one day everyone will have to submit to God’s will, whether they like it or not.

It’s a bit like Gravity. Many of us wish we could fly, and though we can sort of, using machines, we have to borrow that from things God made that can defy gravity, we ourselves can’t defy gravity more than a few feet in the air before it yanks us back down.

In the same way, we can’t defy God’s design for very far in our moral lives. Maybe if we had the “help” from the devil, we can go farther…gross.

But that’s short lived, and on our own, the consequences of our actions will always pull us back down to the ground eventually.

Christians believe that one day God will set us free form the law of Gravity, just as one day, we don’t need the Law of morality anymore…because we’ll become things that don’t need gravity, and things that don’t need law. We’ll have a new nature.

Like a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.

But until then, this is what we’ve got. We have to work with it.

I’m not an optimist about Mans’ ability to fix this world. I think we’re as doomed as Pompeii.

But I always knew that.

But I still have hope. I hope in God’s ability to always save some people, as He promises to do. And in that hope, we keep trying to be a part of that.

I think that’s about all for now.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Loving Ourselves

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Well my last post seems to have gone over well, so I trust I’m striking a chord with some people at least.

I talked a lot about being arrogant in that post.

What I don’t want to do is come off like I’m blaming Gen Z and Millennials for this.

While I do blame them in some capacity for making their own decision to embrace all this insanity, I can’t say they’re particularly stupid or evil compared to the rest of humanity.

It’s been pointed out by smarter people than me that the age of Moral Standards we’ve lived in for the last 200 years in the West, give or take a few decades or centuries depending on the country, was not a usual thing for humans. It’s the anomaly.

From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to the Revolution era, it was a very unusual period in history compared to before, especially the pre-Christian era.

Up till then, the general consensus from all people’s was that everyone else was corrupt, and only their culture stood out, and some of them didn’t even go that far.

If you read what the Bible describes people doing, it would shock you how sick it was. Even now, we haven’t gone that far–as a whole–though some of us have.

And God somehow still had hope for those people. It boggles my mind. But He was always looking for the Remnant.

What big movement preachers tend to overlook, though they mean well, and I wish what they talked about was more frequent than it is–is that Positive Change, as well as Ethics being Preserved, is usually the work of small amounts of people.

A few thousand out of many thousands, is usually the biggest amount of people who work together on it.

It can be as few as 8, like the story of Noah (the legend is found in almost every culture in the world by the way, often with the same number of people surviving as the Bible says.)

God has His eyes always on the few.

Jesus even told us “Straight is the gate and narrow is the way to Life, and few will there be that find it.” (Matthew 7:14)

Which seems harsh…but Jesus is just telling us how this works.

The Masses of people are not concerned with morality that much, and if they ever are concerned about a few things in general, it was the phenomenon of the past thousand years to see that, it wasn’t common before.

That’s why some historians have the idea that Man’s Consciousness is evolving. They look at our moving toward higher and higher ethical standards, and or at least more discussion about them, and they say we improved.

But if you look at the bare facts of history, you’ll see each age has its own problems, and they repeat. We’re not smarter as a whole, it’s isl that those of us in each generation that do See Clearly, see a little more, because wise men learn form history and they build off of it, but foolish ones ignore it and they always have.

That was part of the thought that’s been rolling around in my head for several months, which is just this:

Things that people predict will happen if a country doesn’t change it’s course always do actually happen.

And no one listens because no one ever has listened.

You see, a lot of social commentators say that the problem is people just don’t realize what is happening.

But that is not true.

Sure there’s secrete scandals still, there probably always will be as long as mankind is in power.

But the problems that are eating away at us are ones people predicted and called to attention for years, and decades, and even centuries.

Just like in the Bible the Prophets told the Israelites what was happening. And the Israelites didn’t listen.

It’s so hard for us to admit this, isn’t it? That we do what we do, knowing exactly what will happen, and we do it anyway.

Example:

If you got any person to answer you honestly on the subject of depicting violent in movies directed at kids as much as we do, they’d have to acknowledge that statistics do point to violence in entertainment having a bad effect on kids and their development.

[See articles here: https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-And-TV-Violence-013.aspx#:~:text=Extensive%20viewing%20of%20television%20violence,to%20imitate%20what%20they%20see.

https://www.bartleby.com/essay/effects-of-tv-violence-on-children-F3CEVXSZTC%5D

But would they stop promoting that stuff by watching it, talking about it, reviewing it, and in many cases, showing it to their own kids.

My father did, and he’d be one of the ones to say it was a problem.

You see? We know…we just don’t care.

That’s always the way.

I’m glad that my faith was never in humanity to begin with, because living in a world where everyone’s corruption is exposed so much via internet would kill anyone’s faith in humanity.

We hope for the best from people, but we cannot depend on it, unless we know them very well.

But that’s not really mean to be a depressing thought. The Bible has said that for years. All these angsty pop culture hot take people are just agreeing with an old teaching, that’s all.

It’s like G. K. Chesterton said, if we try to hit on anything original an good, we’ll only find it was Orthodoxy the entire time.

Even the idea of Self Worth is Christian, though it’s been taken way, way out of it’s proper context, as always.

I don’t know if there’s a better or worse thing to worship other than God. One could make the case for it, but it’s kind of a matter of opinion whether the worship of success and domination of a few hundred years ago is really better or worse than the worship of tribalism and self fulfillment is now. Often both at the same time.

Humans are not better or worse than we’ve been in the past.

But we are regressing out of the progress the last centuries brought us in at least realizing how messed up we were.

People used to admit that there was a lot wrong with human nature, even if they didn’t see it in themselves.

But now we’re really trying to deny that Human Nature is corrupt.

Telling people to “Be themselves” no matter what.

Yes,the message to be genuine is a good one.

But predictably, since other messages were neglected, it’s become “be yourself even if that you is a terrible person.”

Women will admit to be aggressive b—-s publicly now. Like ti’s something to brag about.

“I’m so mean, yay!”

Or “so evil” I hear that one a lot.

“I have no soul” guys say that one too.

“no heart.”

Wow, so brave of all of you to admit to being inhuman. Hip hip hurrah.

I think actual people who are jerks have always been proud of it, if they weren’t arrogant, they probably would be jerks.

But at least it wasn’t approved of by the entire culture before, not for a long time, but we’re swinging back that direction.

Let’s just remember that in Greek Culture, which is where we get a lot of our ideas, rape and kidnapping were normalized parts of their mythology that no one thought twice about. It’s possible to be completely blind to the obvious.

Actually we’re blind to the obvious most often, because we just don’t want to see it.

2 Timothy 3 says this about it:

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

Even if we ignore the ones I didn’t emphasize, though they are still prevalent, look at how much those words sum up not just our complaints at a culture, but the things we actually praise.

Romans 1 says that people, known such thins are wrong, not only practice them but approve of those who do.

In 2000 years, nothing has changed.

Ecclesiastes says there is “nothing new under the sun.”

It’s been dawning on me that while I appeal to people’s desire for morality when I debate them, I am assuming they care at all.

But I think less and less of them do.

Aside from the SJW crap that they are programmed to react to, without understanding it at all, they really don’t care about higher thought.

These things have no value to them. They live for entertainment and pleasure. For Self. And no one tells them this is unacceptable.

It’s not a mystery why the Media promotes this. Selfish people buy more things, and care less if you exploit others to provide them with those things.

But it’s sad how the schools and churches have promoted it so much also.

They have us so much under their spell, the Overlords’, that we can be told this point blank, even by our own commercials on TV, and we simply don’t care. Just keep distracting me. The world is a dark place.

Well in Quasimodo’s words to Frollo “Well now I see the only thing that’s dark about it is people like you!”

See, the people who tell us to stay away form the world because of its evil are the same ones making it evil. They don’t want us to catch on, do they? Called Gaslighting.

Because if we did catch on, we might stop them, and evil men fear having their deeds exposed, don’t they?

They hate and fear those of us who know better and have pure hearts. And like Fagan from Oliver Twist, they want to make sure anyone who does is corrupted.

A lot of anime has this theme also. What is Japan trying to tell us, huh? That people who are naturally more inclined to do good than the rest of us are feared the most.

Don’t you fear someone who seems like a better person than you, sometimes? I know I have.

I’ve mostly given up thinking of it that way, we’re all human. But I can do that because I have grace, the people who don’t are still afraid, we remind them of their own death the Bible says.

People have accused Christians of that ever since they first appeared.

I have to recognize as I write this that a lot of people may not even be ready to hear what I’m saying.

They may not even be to where they see a piot ot all this.

I can hope it resonates with someone who is ready, who needs it.

Like “wow I’m not crazy!”

My advice, if i’m qualified to give it, is if you have found yourself noticing all these problems, don’t waste time being chocked by them.

Try to find that remnant of people who still believe in the old values, and stick with them.

And reach who you can. There’s always some wheat among the tares of each generation, perhaps more than we realize, since many of us give up trying to reach them.

It’s not our job to decide who can receive truth and salvation, we are supposed to shoot our shot, and let God choose how it lands.

I don’t know what all our fates will be, and I ‘m not suppose dot know, but I know that we can’t control destiny, only how much we want to take an active role in it. There are still things that will happen no matter what, but there’s a lot we can change also. So we are still supposed to try.

That said, for now I’m done, so until next time, stay honest–Natasha

Content With Singleness

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Wow it has been a while.

I’ve been working on other stuff, so I kind of neglected this blog for a bit, but, it has given me time to think about some new topics of conversation.

Like for example:

Isolation.

So I like to write about relationships, as you know if you’ve been here a while, and I like to write about the nature of love, fear, and so on.

But with all this, the global spy search engine tends to recommend me videos of people talking about their opinion on relationships.

I might think they were outliers, except that even in my own college classes people express the same views.

In my last class, I heard people talk about how being in committed relationships was hard, expensive and so on.

In the same class, a guy also asked some of the girls in the back row if they’d ever consider getting a Sugar Daddy (not him, he was just weird and the topic had come up in the lesson for whatever reason).

On said no way, it would be too awkward, even if it was just to fake date.

The other said she’d do anything for the right amount of money.

I thought “I can’t believe I’m listening to this conversation in the middle of a class.”

What happened right?

I blame the internet mostly.

To use the clice phrase, we’re at a point wehre this is reality? MEn think it’s too much effort to commit, and women think they’d do anything for money in some cases.

Now sure, that’s just one girl…but her attitude is becoming more prevalent.

I don’t know how this happened, where we’ve taken the shame of the diea of doing sex for money.

People call that “slut shaming” now.

Liek being alsut is someting to be proud of.

Even if you had no moral obligations, i’s apoor healthy chioce at the very least, so that’s like saying peope should be proud of smokin gor drinking ro drugs.

That’ll be it next, watch. “Junkie Shaming” the new crime.

IT always baffles me how poeple never stop to think that the reason orgarian might be pushing for this “no shameing our poor decisons” is because they make money off our addictions.

Anyone notice those ads that are oopenly mocking us for our addciotn now?

The ones that are like “You can seek social validation wihtout lagging out.”

“You can game all night etc.”

“Lose to a 12 year old.”

Ha, ha, ah.

Why don’t they just say:

“We know you have no self respect, no purpose in your life, and no value as anything but a consumer to up our numbers, please keep paying us to feed your addiction to screens so that you never think about the world outside your little bubble that might actually have real problems.”

You know in the classic “Fahrenheit 451” the people live in houses where the walls are TV screens, and some you can interact with, making your life more and more into a work of fiction, till they can’t even understand the format of a book, or have a real conversation with a real person anymore.

In an anime of all things, “Darling in the Franxx” People replace real human relationships with a machine-forged connection, and replace sex with happiness stimulation, and food with this weird energy they input into their bodies directly.

They become immortal…but at the price of ceasing to be human beings. At the end they all turn into pure spiritual mental energy and become part of the hive mind. [Sorry for Spoilers, but I doubt anyone reading this would care about those.]

The show isn’t that good at exploring the concept intellectually, but it’s certainly unnerving.

It used to be a joke that we were becoming like machines, but, now people are really starting to just take that seriously.

At least here, to be fair, it’s not global.

But I’m talking about the West, were I live, naturally.

You don’t need me to tell you this, though, you can see it yourself.

If you watch our shows now, even actors are becoming more robotic and fake in their delivery. The goal isn’t to come off as a real person anymore, it’s to be quippy and mock modern culture.

It’s actually become modern culture to mock ourselves, anything and everything, and nothing can be taken seriously.

I listen to people talk sometimes, and it’s like they don’t even know how to be serious at all.

Their tone, their facial expressions, they seem devoid of real purpose…you wait for the joke to be over, but it’s like it never is…until you offend them, then no one has any sense of humor.

I’m not sure how we compartmentalized our lives to this point, it seems like someone took great care to ensure that we did, however.

I can feel the draw myself too. I live in this culture, and I’m tempted by it, same as everyone else.

But at least I still know I’m tempted. As C. S. Lewis pus it, if you can feel the spell working, then you’re not fully under it yet.

Which is found in the Silver Chair, which is actually a book that coves the temptation of distraction and dulled senses a lot. I never liked it, it was unsettling, probably because it hit too close to home.

Actually Prince Rillian in that book acts a lot like people do now. Unable to take anything seriously, unless it’s an insult to the very witch who’s keeping him under her spell. Then he becomes very angry.

He’s easily distracted. Flippant.

But when he breaks free of the enchantment, he becomes clear headed and implores them to help him.

Later the witch tries to re-enchant them all, dulling their minds again, but their friend Puddleglum uses pain to clear his head, and tells her off. Freeing them all finally so they can kill her.

The moral of the story?

Real sensations are what block out the fake ones.

All of us can go along the way we do, until something truly bad happens.

But it seems the Overloads known as the entertainment industry are trying to take great care to tell us that suffering in the land can be remedied only with more distractions.

How many people got movie streaming services during COVID?

A lot of us realized the value of real interactions, but a lot of people, especially younger ones, fell more deeply under the spell of using screens for everything. (I say with irony, because I’m using one right now.)

So let’s talk about this: Why did this happen?

How did we become so distracted?

I think we all know how it slowly became more and more normal to stare at screens.

But let’s talk about the real reason it’s so appealing.

People now use the excuse that they have too much social anxiety to want to make friends, leave their house, and try anything really.

But that’s not it.

I’ve no doubt that many people do have anxiety, but most of the ones I talk to don’t really have anything that crippling, they just have insecurities, and we all have those.

If you can talk and read emotional cues like a normal person, I wouldn’t say you have anxiety, per sec.

But I don’t believe even the insecurities are the real reason.

To put it in blunt language, people of the younger generations–which is starting to see anywhere form 12-40 years old, who voice these views, are often arrogant, self absorbed twits.

It’s not really that we’re afraid to socialize, it’s that we’ve decided three fundamental things.

1: Other people are a lot of work

2: Other people are annoying, and they sometimes find us annoying,

3: Other people are just not worth our time.

Why is everyone we don’t like toxic now?

You notice that?

Some people are toxic, but we’re slapping that label onto every single flaw.

Throughout human history, many individual have not particlayr liekd ohter humans, that’s not new.

What is new is broadcasting that fact with so much flippancy, and so little remorse for it.

I mena, there’s been many cruel societies, but they had families, they had gatering to celebrate, and not showing up still made you kind of an oddball.

Now u can laugh it off.

What I find particualrly delusional about this new way of thingkin is taht poepel ac tlike it’s speical.

Like, “oh wiat, human interaciton is hard? Who knew? It’s not liek we’ve writtne, sung, and performed aobut htat for hundreds of years.”

Yeah, it is hard.

Everything worth doing is hard.

But you don’t duck out of doing it just because of that.

See, we’re not shying away from each other because we’re scared–we’re doing it because we’re spoiled.

We can have a fake form of humanity projected into our homes at any minute of any day at any given time.

We can have porn, and pay for sex if we want the real experience (real being subjective there), so we don’t need to commit to a willing relationship. It’s normalized now to pleasure ourselves if nothing else.

You know. I don’t do any of those things…and I don’t feel I’ve lost anything in my life. I’m kind of glad actually, I feel like they create weird habits.

I guess I’m writing this because I think the real wake up call we need might not just be about politics and religion.

To even get there, we need connection.

The Bible says that God Himself said, even before there was sin, there was one thing that was not good.

And that was: “It is not good for Man to be alone.”

God said man needs help. A supporter. A life saver. Something we need desperately.

Man wanted companionship, but he also needed it.

Don’t we all want that? Most of us don’t admit it, but just being wanted can feel cheap. We want to feel we contribute something also. But just being needed can feel hollow. We feel like it should be both. And it was supposed to be both.

As always, we’re ever rebelling against our Creator.

One would think that we’d at least want to be around each other.

But we should remember that Adam and Eve turned on each other immediately after they turned on God.

People ask sometimes how Christians can believe something that sounds that much like a fairy-tale. The fruit, the trees, the snake.

I don’t find it so hard to believe, because I see all this played out all the time, every day. Even if the facts weren’t true, the principles are on point.

The story of Ed gen isn’t actually about knowledge being a bad thing, like some people say.

Ir’s about trust.

Do you trust God, or the devil?

Do you trust your spouse? Or God?

And when you break the trust of God, and your spouse, guess who wins? Not you. The devil.

Love is about trust. You can’t have love without trust.

And we are so determined not to trust anyone now.

I watched one video, where a woman said she got divorced after 5 years.

I’m thinking “Five years? Unless he was a deadbeat, a cheater, or an abuser, what problems would you have in 5 years that couldn’t be worked out if you were willing to grow?”

You can grow out of a lot in 5 years, so if things weren’t working out, the problem was probably one or both of them didn’t want to change at all.

And what is the idea with expecting to get married, and not have to change anything about yourself?

The idea we’re fed is that people who love you accept you the way you are.

Well yeah, they do.

But that doesn’t man you wouldn’t have to change.

You may put up with someone’s flaws, out of love, but that done mean you like it, or that you should. Flaws often hurt us more than anyone else.

And then there’s the things that aren’t sin, but you still need to be able to let them go.

For example, what if you’re allergic to a food? Should your spouse eat it in front of you? Maybe if you’re okay with it…but what if you aren’t? It’s not a flaw to eat food…but it can be a point of contention.

I’m just using this to illustrate. And yeah, I’ve seen couples fight over things that stupid. Who hasn’t?

I’m not saying someone should be telling you how to change. But if you annoy them…you might want to think about compromising.

And you now…not all of our personal habits are worth hanging onto.

We’re told now that “Self” is the most important thing.

There’s fear at the base of that.

“I can’t trust anyone else to love me, so I have to love me.”

My therapist once told me to try to give myself the kind of parental validation I didn’t get.

That didn’t work. It did work when God helped me.

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If everybody out there is so busy loving themselves, they won’t try to love you.

Someone has to be willing to be different. But more people were willing to in the past, when an relationship based on helping each other was considered normal and healthy.

Now people say you shouldn’t need your partner.

And then it’s okay to bail on them. Because you don’t need them anyway.

Like…you can need someone and still learn to live without them. If they do leave, or die perhaps. Things change. But then you learn to need someone else. We’re not made to not need each other. Literally.

And if you don’t see why you need other people…That’s proof that you do.

Anyone who is arrogant enough to think they are doing fine on their own already needs others way more than they realize. It’s just insane to not need anyone.

I’m not here to say you can’t live alone, sure, you can live alone in a house, or apartment. That doesn’t mean you’re alone all the time.

Being alone is supposed to be a punishment, in the prison system. It sounded like a lot of people wouldn’t even mind it, if they had WiFi.

Ugh.

I’m so sick of this.

You know, I consider myself an independent woman. I don’t let other people make my decisions for me.

But I rely on my family all the time for things.

I don’t mind relying on men either. Not for everything, but it’s reasonable for some things.

And I really, really don’t see what the big deal is about it.

Why is it so bad? We’re all born needing everything done for us. All we can do is relieve ourselves, which is a metaphor in of itself.

And we learn our whole life to do more things for ourselves, but we do them with other people. If we stop learning form others, we’re saying we arrived.

I think in marriage you have to learn from each other. That used to be the philosophy of a lot of people. You can’t remake your spouse (at least not without breaking them) but you can teach them, and any decent person was expected to learn.

Not now.

And it’s not good for us.

Depression is at an all time high, mental illness of every kind, low self worth.

But our arrogance is through the roof.

You can be arrogant and still have low self worth. You have an elevated idea of your own rights, but a low idea of the value of you even existing to exercise them.

Figures, as soon as we believe we’re the only ones who have any say in our lives, we feel like they have no meaning.

Men especially need other people to feel like they have meaning in their lives. Women do better amusing ourselves even with indirect contact, and having hobbies, but we still need other people too. I do think we tend to cut ourselves of from them less in general

Also, little tip ladies. if you’re gong to complain about the bar being low for men, maybe you should make sure you’re giving them something to actually impress anyone for. Do you really want it to just be about sex?

I have high standards because I have high ones for myself.

This is what I aspire to be:

  1. Kind
  2. Honest
  3. Smart
  4. Interested in His ( and other peoples) interests, at least enough to be supportive.
  5. Brave enough to confront a problem and also to admit when I’m wrong.
  6. Humble enough not to take myself too seriously.
  7. Confident enough never to not value my part in a relationship or my worth as a person
  8. Determined enough to always try to find solutions, not just gripe about problems.
  9. And relaxed enough to let stuff go that doesn’t really matter.
  10. Not ever thinking I have all the answers, or that I have none of them.

This is just the short list.

I am not all of these things all the time, but I do try to be them.

I’m not expecting someone else to always be like this, but I do expect them to think values are important, and to act be trying to meet them, even if they have slip up.s

I’ve seen enough of people claiming they have values and then not doing jack to fulfill any of them.

And I’m even more scared by people who now don’t care, and don’t think they need values. Except spitting out the SJW programmed ones.

I wouldn’t even mind as much if most of them were honest about it.

Like, I’d rather have someone who is fully convinced that Pride is a moral cause, but at least really believe that, then the many people I know who just say it because it’s what everyone says, they don’t know why they believe it, they don’t care either.

Someone once asked a man on the street what the two biggest problems in our society were:

The man answered “Don’t know, don’t care.”

The questioner said “You’re right, those are the two biggest problems.”

And they are.

We don’t know what’s happening, we don’t know the facts, we don’t know each other.

And when you don’t know, you can’t care.

And we choose not to know, and we choose not to care.

So if I have anything to add to this, it’s that there’s only one solution.

Make a different choice.

That’s literally all you can do about this.

Then teach others to do the same.

We may not stop the culture from doing this, but we don’t have to do it ourselves.

As an aside, i found an article while I was trying to find the quote for this chapter that sort of confirms what I was saying about trust, if you want to check it out:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/01/28/americans-losing-trust-in-each-other-and-institutions/35525131-ce9b-4815-81a4-cc7a6ab2aebc/

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha