Welcome to my Current Thoughts, Where Some Things are Made Up and the Points Matter a Lot to Me

Things that are made up:

1. Language
2. Gender and gendered preconceptions
3. Money
4. idk, Trump, probably

Things that are not made up:

1. Science
2. Mental illness
3. Global warming and climate change
4. My hatred for selfish politicians and corporations

On things that are made up 

(1) It should be obvious that language is made up, given that it is constantly changing, and there are thousands of languages still spoken on this Earth. In fact, children constantly make up their own language between their siblings. Some people still try to impose strict rules on their language, however, potentially out of a fear of change. My suggestion is to just chillax and be fascinated by its evolution. As long as the idea is communicated accurately, then the language has done its job.

(2) So sex is a real thing, though it exists in a way that you probably don't fully realize (that is, it's not as binary as you think). Gender, however, is another thing made up--much the same way language is made up. The fact that other cultures have words and terms and concepts for some genders that you don't should clue you in to the fact that gender is a culture construct. The example that comes to mind is the concept of Two Spirit (I am no authority, so I'll just let you Google that). This doesn't mean that gender identity is made up--a person's identity is real and should be respected. It just means that you should stop policing how other people feel about themselves.

(3) Money exists because we all agreed that it's worth something. In reality, the little paper dollar isn't worth anything, but the government and societal structure in place make the numbers printed on it mean something. Hell, most of our money isn't even in a tangible form right now, but are just little numbers on a screen. Money is yet another societal construct. It ain't real.

(4) Ha ha, funny joke!

On things that are not made up

(1) If you don't believe in science, I don't know what to tell you. This isn't to say you should blindly accept everything the newspaper or a blog post tells you about the sciences--you need to understand what a reputable source is and how to recognize it, not to mention that our understanding of science changes every day. Scientists are human, so sometimes they make mistakes, and sometimes they discover something that changes what we previously found and assumed.

(2) Mental illness's existence is indisputable by science. Depression alone affects more than 6.7% of Americans each year. And yet there are still people who think you just need to struggle through it and "get up anyway." Just remember, if you wouldn't say it to someone suffering from the flu or from cancer, don't say it to someone suffering from a mental illness.

(3) Global warming is also indisputable by science. We need to be doing more to lower our impact on the environment and to promote healing the mess we've made. Seasons are changing, weather is changing, Earth is changing. And we're directly responsible. We have been for years. Those sciences studying the real science? They've been telling us this for decades.

When I burst into tears in front of my parents because I couldn't stop thinking about how much damage we were doing to the Earth, and how the human race was killing themselves and all the other species on this planet, and how I might live to see the decline of nature and there was nothing I (but a single powerless person) could do, my father asked me what I would do about it. And then he told me that those changes would have to make economic sense in order to be implemented.

One thing that makes economic sense includes growing hemp, so then we stop growing so much cotton and stop the mass deforestation in order to make clothes and paper. Hemp can make both those things and has a much shorter maturation period than trees. Like, measurable in days and months. We used to make paper out of animal skin--it's time to change how we make it again.

Another thing that could make sense if we just provided a little incentive is to move further and more quickly away from using oil and coal. No matter how massive the source, it's finite, and its refuse taints our skies and earth and water. There will always be sun and wind, and we can probably make something better out of plants if we just focused. It's only makes economic sense to keep using oil and coal because that's what we're used to. But that's also why we have a government. So that we can implement necessary changes and provide artificial incentive so that the economic sense shifts to a greener source.

(4) But most of all, money is fucking fake, and politicians and corporations need to get off their selfish asses and think about how their actions affect the environment. It is irresponsible and misguided to put the onus of climate change on the common people. Sure, the people should recycle, conserve energy, carpool or take public transportation when possible, and cut back on meat consumption.

But it is nothing to the scale of what corporations are capable of. The corporations are stagnating us and doing us and the Earth harm. And you know what? I think they fear change, much like the people who try to enforce rules on language. They're set in their ways, sitting on their money. They don't want to lose their jobs or their companies. Sure, that's understandable. But when that translates into lobbying against hemp, green energy sources and other solutions, or when it translates to flat out denying climate change or diminishing its seriousness, that's when selfishness needs to be put aside. Time to get a new job.

So if any politicians or corporate leaders happen to read my blog post, get off your butts. Global warming isn't going to hinge on whether or not little Timmy recycles his milk carton at lunch. It hinges on you pulling your heads out of your asses and changing how you operate. Think about your impact. And if you're not one of those people mentioned, then at least donate to green charities. The onus shouldn't be on you, but it still helps.

The green we live on is more important than the green in our pockets.

On "Talented" as a Compliment

Here is a picture I drew very recently, on 8/29/2017. (Okay, technically it was 8/30 because I finished the picture at 1:00 AM, but let's not talk about those particular semantics.)

Pretty nice, right? You might call me talented. You might mean that as praise.

Now here's a picture I drew when I was much, much younger. I'm talking middle school. I'm talking around 7th grade, when I first got into Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. I'm talking my talented little adolescent hands picking up a pencil about ten to twelve years ago.

Personally, I'm fond of the screaming girl in the corner.

But does that look like talent to you? Probably not. You'd probably smile and tell me I did a good job. If you yourself were more artistically inclined, you might give me a tip or two, pack me a lunch and a How to Draw book and send me on my way.

I am no stranger to art. Mom signed me up for a bunch of traditional art classes in my youth, where I drew a lot of pastel animals and landscapes, as well as a couple non-pastel animals. When I started getting into anime and cartoons, one of my teachers gave me one of those How to Draw Anime books. You know the kind. One of the early ones by American artists that people all make fun of nowadays for being bad art because they were some of the first of their kind in the American markets. But it started me on my way.

This is not "talent." None of it is. One could argue that having "an eye for it" is talent, but I can tell you with confidence that my 7th grade eye thought that pencil drawing was absolutely good. Maybe someone else has a good eye for color, for arrangement, for whatever you think goes into art. I'm about to blow your mind, though. None of that matters.

The eye can be trained. Even someone with a knack for proportion can't pick up the pencil and draw like Da Vinci without tutelage or hard work. Art is a skill. Whatever your art is--drawing, painting, sculpting, dancing, writing, poetry, music, cake decorating--all of that is skill. Skills are learned, and skills are hard work. To boil it down to talent is to boil down years of dedication to learning a craft into an innate ability. It's like saying a wizard popped out of a womb casting magic missile into the darkness. It's like saying Robin Hood was born with a bow in his hand splitting arrows down the middle. It's like saying George R. R. Martin never wrote a ton of shitty short stories in college before writing A Song of Ice and Fire (more commonly known now as Game of Thrones)

Worst of all, calling it talent implies that if you're not automatically good at it, you never will be. So you get people who are 18, 23, 42 years old and always admired art, always said "All I can draw is a stick figure!" They really believe that they will never be able to make art. This is inherently and 100% not true. No one got to their skill level without dedication and hard work and a little support from family and friends and teachers. Granted, if you start later, you'll probably have to unlearn more things than someone who had started earlier. But it's never too late to train a skill.

After all, as YouTuber and artist Arin Hanson once said, [foul language warning] "You think I came out of the pussy drawing Mozart?"

3/10 eliminate "talented" from your praise vocabulary