Day 310 -How Our Beliefs Can Ruin Someones Life

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/muslim-boy-arrest-clock-sparks-outrage-150916143739052.html

A young student from Texas - Ahmed Mohamed - got arrested fro making a clock, because the teacher thought it resembled a bomb.

How is this still a thing?

Why are so quick to judge something based on our beliefs and ideas and perceptions of others ? How can we ever reach a point of equality when are all so judgemental?

Day 293: Don’t Judge a shirt by its Design…

We all have our preferences to styles and types of clothing we like. Sure it’s sometimes mostly based on ideas created behind the point or social influences, other times it’s based on what is practical. For me I prefer wearing simple plain clothing.

 

Back when I was a teenager it was a different story. I was into whatever was cool based on social influences. I was a surfer/rockstar wannabe so that is the clothing I wore.  Had to be branded clothing. But as you know – things changes when you grow up and now clothing is simply soothing to cover my birthday suit.

Throughout the years there was one thing that did not change and something I brought with me since childhood – I will never wear a Vest.

With working around the farm your clothing does not last very long so every now and then I need new shirts. So off I went with my girlfriend and at the store she places a vest in my hands. I immediately and firmly announced my displeasure and told her I will not wear this. We walked og there with a few new shirts and the Vest.

I did not even realize at that point what my issue is with a vest until I looked at it. A memory  came up from when I was very young I found a box of clothes and in there was a vest, I put it on and went about my day. My parents saw me with this vest and they were all like “ wow, look at those muscles” and “ look at how strong you are”. I got fairly irritated with this and decided there I really don’t like vests.

What I did was linked wearing vests to people who want to look strong and show of their muscles. Like an Ego thing. And from There I avoided wearing Vests. 

It was only recently at the behest of my partner that I started wearing Vests again ad I got to say – when it comes to a very hot day a vest is much better to wear that a T-Shirt ( What?! Really?!).  So all those years I was sweating on hot days with my T-Shirt I could have worn a nice vest, but I created this idea and belief about the Vest and lived with that idea for many years.

So what beliefs and ideas are you living with currently? It’s hard to determine, because you already firmly believe it is real. Only way to find out if it’s real or not is to tests it out for yourself .

True Mercy for the Rhinos? A Way permanently End their suffering?

 

We live next to a nature reserve and yesterday I saw 3 rhinos grazing next to the fence of the reserve. I wondered how long they will live and when they will be poached like so many others in South Africa. Why with so many charities already existing to "save the rhino" are rhino poaching's rising?

Rhino poaching is a horrific thing. They shoot the poor animal and then hack of its horn – sometimes the animal is still alive while its horn is being hacked off. All this is done for money, because the worth of that horn is more than gold. For poachers a rhino is basically an animal with golden horns. The horns are sold to those who believe the horn have great medicinal properties.

Let us talk figures. From the year 2000 till 2007 the number of rhino’s poached was under 30 a year. In 2008 the number skyrocketed to 83 which was almost 8 times more than 2007 where only 13 were murdered. Then in 2009 a 122 were killed. In 2010 there were 333 killed. Two years later in 2012 the number doubled to 668 rhinos killed. That is frightening.

Charities

So what is the solution? Is there one? Currently there are a lot of charities raking in money to “save the rhino”, but the figures shows clearly that whatever these charities are doing it is not actually saving the rhino. In fact – many people and companies are actually profiting from this where you donate money and a small portion actually goes towards “saving the rhino”, but most towards companies and people. In the end what the figures show is that the number will continuously increase until all the rhinos are eventually wiped out.

What will we write about the history of the rhino when it’s finally extinct? The rhino was horrifically poached to extinction and suffered greatly based on a belief that it cures cancer and other illnesses. Well done humans.

Dehoring

One method to try and “save the Rhino” is to dehorn them. This requires sedating them and carefully cutting of the horn to make it worthless to poachers. This sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately did not work. You cannot completely remove the horn so when you cut it off there is still a small stump left. That small stump is still very valuably and poachers still killed the dehorned rhinos. Some poachers killed the Dehorned Rhinos simply to make it easier for them to find Horned Rhinos.

Also, the horn grows back. You have to dehorn the poor animal every year to keep it at minimal length. The costs involved to dehorn one rhinos is estimated to be around US$1,000. To dehorn all the rhinos in the Kruger national park only once will cost US$5.8-8.8 million. And not all the Rhinos survive the dehorning process –there are sometimes veterinary complications while the animal is under anesthetic that may result in death. The more frequently the rhinos are immobilized, the greater the risk.

Poisoning the Horn

Another method is injecting poison into the horn so that when people digest the horn it will make them sick, but this requires the rhino to be sedated and not all survive this process.

A Solution?

It would seem that we humans are at a loss. We do not have any way to “save the rhino”. Every year the number increases no matter what is being done to prevent it. No matter what we do the rhinos suffer. Will we give Mercy to the Rhinos? Is there a way to end their suffering permanently? The only mercy we can give them is to kill them all. Shoot them to save them. Kill them before the poachers get to them – because when the poachers get to them they will be hacked to death and left bleeding. Most will protest a solution like this, because it is not humane or morally the right thing to do. But if being humane is being compassionate we can see that humans are not humane. The compassionate thing to do is to make sure that no Rhino suffers ever again – what then would you do to end their suffering?

Day 126 - The Consequence Of Unawareness

 

We hear the expression ''Shit hits the fan'' and ''shit load'' and ''full of shit''. Today we had both - We had a shit load when a shit truck got stuck in the mud. I should have taken pictures, but i did not, sorry.

Today was a very eventful day were we faced new challenges and stared shit right in the face. every year we get a honey sucker - a truck that sucks out the shit in our septic tanks. Today the truck drove over an flow away which is a trench in the ground where the septic tanks overflows into and the front left wheel sunk almost completely into the ground.

Now we had a really big problem - the truck was already full of shit and now weighed over 5 tons. Eventually after 5 hours and jacking up the truck and placing brick under the wheels and getting the tractor to pull the truck we got it out. Yeay.

Now usually when the shit truck comes i make sure it does not drive over any of the flow away's so that it does not get stuck, but today i did not do that. This forms part of my loosing focus blog where I have become less aware in my world and today it clearly showed itself in full force. That lead to a consequence - an event that could have been avoided.

Another point I realized is that doing something for a while eventually there is a belief that I do not have to be so focused all the time - like getting used to something you do not pay that much attention anymore. Its total bullshit obviously.

I got my ''5 hour lesson'' today where the event showed me something about myself that requires direction. So i directed it.

Thanks for reading - ,more on this tomorrow.