Things I Love: Full Metal Alchemist

I hate a lot of things. There is also a lot of shit happening in this world, and it’s easy to focus on all the doom and gloom, so every once in awhile I’ll release a Things I Love post. Because, contrary to popular opinion, I don’t hate everything. My first pick is Full Metal Alchemist.

I know this is not a pretentious or even a ‘cool’ pick because Full Metal Alchemist is a manga/anime series. Many people will be biased against it and as a result will write it off and never read it because “that Japanimation is for geeks and kids!”

To all those people, I say, “you don’t know anything! Full Metal Alchemist is fucking awesome!”

I love FMA. I would rate it as the best work of Sci-Fi/Fantasy this decade. I recommend it to friends. Why? Because it’s loaded with great characters, fresh story-lines, and a whole bunch of heart; because it is not pretentious in anyway, and yet it is deep; because the story can be enjoyed on so many different levels; because I love it.

It’s about a fictional world in which alchemy, ‘the science of understanding the structure of matter, breaking it down, then reconstructing it as something else’, is real. Lead can be turned into gold.

But it’s about so much more: science, suffering, sacrifice, bravery, moral ambiguity, belief, greed, wrath, envy, lust, pride and God. Like my blog, it’s kind of about everything.

So, read it. Try something you never thought you would try. I remember someone telling me to watch/read it and I was skeptical because I was too cool for ‘cartoons.’ I was wrong. With all it’s flaws, it’s one of my favorite works of literature. And I encourage you to try it.

You can start reading here: http://www.onemanga.com/Full_Metal_Alchemist/1/00/

— “Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth.”

A History of Christianity: Beginnings (part 1: a work in progress)

“Reading is just as creative an activity as writing and most intellectual developement depends upon new readings of old texts."

Ask any evangelical Christian where do their beliefs come from, and they will tell you they believe what’s in the Bible. In churches all over the world, it’s common to hear the phrase worded in a hundred variations, ‘We follow what the Bible says.’

Beliefs never just come from a book (even a Holy Book), but from the context that surrounds the book… or let me put it this way: The beliefs of evangelicals have not existed since the Beginning, they have a history. In fact, it is a recent history.

This is the first in a series of posts about the history of Christianity. It’s for everyone, Christian, agnostics, pagans, and atheists. But I have certain people in mind who I am writing this for.

In the end, I hope to reform some beliefs.

Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, Christianity has never been static, it was and is always changing.

How people view the so-called ‘word of God’ has also changed throughout the ages, and hopefully… is changing now.

***

A man I used to admire once said, “When you only obey the parts of the Bible that make sense to you, you aren’t letting God be God.”

There’s something in this sentence that seems to stand against a notion I hold very dear; the importance of ‘thinking for yourself.’

When I was little, I remember there was a Bible story that didn’t make sense to me: Abraham and Isaac. I was told that our loving God told Abraham to offer his son to God as a human sacrifice, and Abraham trusting God obeyed. He took Isaac, tied him up and was about to stab him when and Angle came down and stopped him at the last moment. The moral of the story according to my Sunday School teachers was, “Always trust in God; and also what he says in his word the Bible.”

In those days, I didn’t have a problem with that; the problem was that God was asking Abraham to murder his son.

And Abraham obeyed. I thought, ‘What if God asked my father to kill me? Isn’t obeying an order to kill one’s own child… Crazy?

Of course, that wasn’t a valid question in Sunday School. I was told I needed to trust in God like Abraham did: “When you only obey the parts of the Bible that make sense to you, you aren’t letting God be God.”

Years later, when I read C.S. Lewis, I came across the phrase: ‘Who are you to question God?’

I’m just a mortal, so I took that point to heart and now only question men.

I questions their interpretations of what God is saying. The fact is I’ve never heard God speak a word of English to me, but I listened to millions of words—supposedly His—coming from the mouths of men.

When they say, “Who are you to question God?” They really mean, “Who are you to question us?” And so the Bible, like a sword, gets bent to the will of whoever wields it. At it’s worst, rather than challenging the beliefs people hold, it makes them completely and utterly convinced that they are vessels of the Truth. Which is ironically a dangerous lie.

And then…

“We shape our gods. Then our gods shape us.”

(Up next: Columbus and his God)

The Future of Relationships

Did you know I got a story published on a crap website called "short-fiction.co.uk"? Probably not, because I've never told anyone till now. The story was called, "24th Century Romance." The tagline: Computers that offer unconditional love and mind-numbing orgasms are the crack cocaine of the 24th century.

It can be found here: http://www.short-fiction.co.uk/member_profile.php?username=RawKStar77
(Click on the link: "24th Century Romance")

The story argues that in the 24th century (when virtual reality and simulated sex get good enough), some people might become so inept interacting with other human beings that they will be incapable of sustaining "real relationships" and instead fall in love with computer programs.

This may or may not be a little extreme, but computers are fundamentally changing the way we interact with other human beings. This is largely because we don't interact with human beings. We interact with profiles and search engines.

Somedays, we spend more time on Facebook than we spend with our real friends in real life.

Of course this interaction isn't always a bad thing:

This is of course a happy ending, but it has a certain truth to it. One of the good things about the internet is that it can help us get connected. 

And with dating sites like eHarmony, we just might find that special someone. 

"Matchmaker, Matchmaker,

Make me a match,

Find me a find,

catch me a catch

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Look through your book,

And make me a perfect match"

But is the internet really just helping people get together?

Will there someday be an eHarmony for best friends? For example, you fill out a profile and the website suggests a group of people who will likely be good "matches" for you.

Will there be an eHarmony for pets?

For adoptions?

For mentors?

For musicians?

Of course, there are sites for all these things and more. It seems to me, the future of human relationships will be filtered by search engines. Which means that a lot of life will be filtered out. 

Yes, Google and eHarmony may be the death of serendipity!

Or let me put it this way: have you ever met a person who was completely oposite to you in every way? And yet somehow you still connected, and perhaps that person challenged your beliefs and changed you for the better? Just think, that person, your friend or lover you have nothing in common with, that person might not have made it into the top 1,000 search results. 

How much of life are we missing? Will people someday talk about Algorithms like they talk about Fate? The internet is like a huge filter; it only lets somethings get through according to a complex mathematical formula. And as we live more of our lives online, algorithms will profoundly influence our lives.

Sometimes, I don't want the filter. 

I want unfiltered, unadulterated, life! (If there ever was such a thing.)

I want to be surprised, with the good, the bad, and the ugly....

Because perhaps even the 'ugly' will shape me.

Change is Loss: How the internet liberates and enslaves… and why I started a blog.

Change is loss.

When something changes, some old thing is lost and replaced by something new, and then accompanied with that loss is sadness, pain, happiness, or simply nothing. It's like the last day of school: you're an hour away from being free for summer, and yet this will be the last time you sit in a class with those people, this teacher, that classroom. Bam. Smack dab in the middle of gaining the freedom of summer, you are losing everything else.

Which brings me to the internet.

I hate the internet.

It's changing us.

For better or for worse, I now live a significant portion of my life in front of a computer screen. Born in the year 1987, I am part of the last generation to remember what life was like without computers. It seemed to move slower. Riding my bike, playing outside, water-gun fights, swimming, Legos, taking apart lawn mowers; there was a physicality to all that stuff, and a vague sense of life. Now, I live my life on the computer... people know me, not by knowing me, but looking at my Facebook Profile. Sometimes, I worry about not taking enough pictures to show and "share" how cool my life is. I read materials for class on my computer, edit videos on it, write on it, and even interact with my friends on it. My computer is my life.

Your computer is your life.

What have we lost? A lot. We should mourn it, but at the same time you can't stop the course of History. It's like standing in a strong current of water and trying to push it back with your hands. It will rush through your fingers.

So, in the name of progress, I got a blog. It's great because I can share my thoughts with the world. It's great because I can use it to promote myself and perhaps get a job. It's great because I can create my own content.

But I miss the days when I use to write letters. It was much more personal, powerful, and rewarding in my opinion. And there was something physical about it.

[sigh]