Below is a photo that i took outside of Rochester, MN. God is marketed.
My problem with religion in general is that, from a young age, you are taught to believe in a God, to not question your religion or your beliefs, that the religion you believe in is right and all others are wrong and believing otherwise is regarded as sacrilegious. These “absolutes” are dangerous. Good and Evil are broad terms used to over generalize any topic, subject or people. Nothing is that black and white. All people are good and evil. Nobody is completely one of the other.
More specifically, because you were taught when you were young before you are able to think critically about things, this creates a stubborn set of viewpoints that the majority of people refuse to question even in adulthood.
I fear that religion forms the base on which horrible atrocities and war can be committed and even justified in the name of a God or religion, by people blindily accepting it as “truth”. Religion subconsciously or not, instills blind trust in authority, not just God. The belief that the majority of people are good.
Encouraging contentment, and discouraging change or actively surpressing those who wish to cause harm and instead, praying for change and actively living a good life yourself.
Which does nothing but strip you of more freedom, and allow the powerful to further control your lives while keeping you ignorant, and obedient to their agendas and their belief of how the world should be. It takes a special, power loving, greedy, megalomaniac to run as an elected official.
Once in power, they use tools like religion and media outlets to control public opinion and promote fear, in which people in turn hand over more of their freedoms to be “safe” from highly exaggerated claims of danger.
Most people believe, that if it wasn’t true they couldn’t say it. This is a complete lie. The reality is, in the United States you have freedom of speech, As a person who works in marketing, you can say whatever you want about your product. The difference is, people can sue you for false claims on a product. They can’t sue you for utter and complete lies on television, which is protected under “free speech”.
These utter lies are often promoted under a friendly marketing term known as “Opinion News”. Believe it or not, there are people who want to rule the entire world who wish to impose laws and punishment to those who try and stop them. Government sets up many road blocks that makes it difficult for someone to succeed in this, but also to stop it. We often think this is the case with dictators. In America, we are directed to Saddam Hussein or Fedel Castro as an example.
The reality is that, those people exist right here in America as well. However we have the power of press to influence people worldwide. To turn public opinion against other people and counties there by, distracting the masses of people from our own power hungry self. Need proof? The United States spends more money on the military and defense than most other countries COMBINED.
Though I believe the majority of people are good, i believe many of those in power and control are not, and often use their power and control exercising religious dogma to exploit believers to further their power and control. For example, see Republican values – Pro-war, pro religion. This is highly contradictive to religious values. Censorship is another example of control which I wont get into here.
However many who believe in God or follow religion will simply vote for the Republican because he runs on the grounds of religious values and morals. A more rash and highly visable representation of exploitation is with suicide bombers who are brainwashed by those who choose to exploit the Muslim religion and Qur’an. Actually insisting that by killing people you are performing God’s will and you will be rewarded in Heaven for this. People too afraid of questioning religion blindly commit these atrocities. This I believe, is not the point of religion, but you can see how easy it is to abuse people who have strong religious views and faith.
If you were taught from a young age to question things, including religious beliefs and values, i believe the world would be a much safer place, as more people would be aware of evil people and governments hidden agendas. Actively perusing good, for all people everywhere and the planet itself. I am not anti-government, but do believe there is giant room for improvement, and encourage people to wake up to reality, so that we can all align in one unified direction promoting the common good for the earth and all people in all countries everywhere. I think that abolishing religion would be a first step to break down barriers of hate, and realize that we are all the same and we all have common needs and wants and that you don’t need religion in order to do good by people and the earth. Religions divide us.
I encourage your comments on this “taboo” subject, that people are afraid to talk about openly in public. Thanks for reading this in its entirety.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
When what is happening in your world doesn’t make sense, when it doesn’t conform to your beliefs about how things should work, it’s time to ask hard questions. I live my life by the sentence; Always think for yourself, question everything always, and never stop fiending for knowledge. Read, think, and be free.
There is a song that sums up many of my beliefs, these lyrics may just change your life or change the way you think….
Sole – Dumb this Down
puppets, cannibals, satellite shadows,
businessmen, inmates, free thinkers, and cattle.
(dumb this down.)
birds on power lines, lion heads on mantles, pop idol pawns,
dead presidents, live poets, and dust mites.
(dumb this down.)
hookers on birth control, men on wanted posters, the women who love them,
dinosaurs, inbreds, and alien holograms.
(dumb this down.)
b-52 pilots and other airborne bacteria,
children born with stds and the sons of rich tyrants…
(dumb this down.)
bewildered herds, sharpen your teeth.
remember these three quotes.
only lie to cameras, cops, and crooks.
see kindness is within our power, but fondness is not.
under the false umbrella of hope, lives are sold, and people are bought.
somebody once told me: all men were created equal.
you’re not created in the womb,
you’re created in a classroom by rich people,
and history is written through the eyes of the butcher.
those who benefit from an ignorant public condescend and insult you.
they built you in the image of slaves; the freemen got locked up.
as long as they control the means of selling beliefs, no man is equal.
if there’s a policeman living in your head, you’re not free.
cuz if free trade were real, everyone would own a company.
all that is solid has melted into air,
it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government will always get in.
all that was once solid has melted into air,
one hundred thousand lemmings can’t be wrong…
people join the army to pay for college.
in California residents go to college for free.
what will you do?
smoke weed on the weekends and go hiking?
or serve a white collar death squad of an oil company military.
everybody want heaven but nobody wants dead.
we are living in a rich man’s heaven, a poor man’s hell.
the middle class is dwindling, the population is doubling,
we are not living in Rome, we have been living in a fiefdom.
so when they remap all the genomes, remember.
it’s a hate free zone…
cuz money doesn’t care who burns it.
the word is a killer virus:
i’m not a happy plant, so i carry diseases.
so the ones who are starved of knowledge can someday flourish
and punish all those who stood between us.
quit your job, start a business and read more.
all that was once solid has melted into air.
they left the door open cuz the best illusions are half real.
puppets, cannibals, satellite shadows,
businessmen, inmates, free thinkers, and cattle.
(dumb this down.)
birds on power lines, lion heads on mantles, pop idol pawns,
dead presidents, live poets, and dust mites.
(dumb this down.)
hookers on birth control, men on wanted posters, the women who love them,
dinosaurs, inbreds, and alien holograms.
(dumb this down.)
b-52 pilots and other airborne bacteria,
children born with stds and the sons of rich tyrants…
(dumb this down.)
Awhile back when hanging out with some friends we decided to go see a metal band at Revolutions in Neenah, WI. I, never really liking metal music found “Bound for Severance” to be an incredibly awesome local group that I had never heard before.
When they first took the stage and played a few notes I was thinking, wow that is REALLY LOUD! After a few more notes and mic check, the sound guy was like, “how we doing?” the band replied, “much louder on everything” …ho-ly $hit. If you’re anywhere near the speakers you will physically feel the music vibrating your chest cavity. No lie. Since the speakers sit on the floor there, the whole bar was shaking. I literally had to lean in and scream at the top of my lungs into the bartenders ear to place my drink order. It was incredibility fun, at one point I step out of the building to make a call and I could clearly hear the band inside!
I was really impressed and had a great time, and would highly recommend going and seeing this group if your looking for something fun to do, even if your not a fan of this genre of music. They are a cross between rock and metal. So it’s NOT just screaming, or death metal, there is singing as well.
I will to make an effort to drive back and see this band again this year. Dates and locations are posted on their site. You can listen to some of their music on their MySpace page.
Also for more music by them and photos of the band check out these youtube videos.
Hey everyone thanks for visiting my new blog! Be sure you update your RSS feeds (I use Feed Demon) and Bookmarks, as I wont ever update the previous one again.
Though the blog doesn’t seem all that different, it really is. I spent all day migrating it to my hosting package. Though it still is a WordPress blog, it isn’t hosted by WordPress anymore. (hence the new URL justinrueth.com/jounal)
This is exciting for a few reasons, first of all, I have the ability to load nicer looking themes, add more plug-ins, and most importantly enable a ton more flash embeds, which many are restricted on a WordPress hosted blog for security reasons.
What this means for you is, I can blog without much impunity and can post a whole lot more things and features and also customize nearly any part of my blog, without a monthly fee from WordPress!
I also spent most of my time, updating the theme, making small changes in the look of the theme, and going through all of my previous posts and updating the video links. I can’t believe how many things I can add with a simple copy and paste script.
Needless to say I have never done this before (migrating a blog) but it was easier than I thought it would be and took a mere 6 hours to do. Thanks to helpful documentation online, I learned a lot about my blog and the added abilities I should now have.
If your interested in setting up your own WordPress blog, I will be happy to help you.
Thanks for continuing to visit this blog! I check the visits once a month or so, and I appreciate all of you who have left comments in the past. I feel more encouraged to update when I see people commenting.
Remember: Update your bookmarks and subscribe to my new RSS feed!
Hey if your looking for new music, check out a cd by Tobacco called Fucked Up Friends. This album was recommended to be by an old roommate in college. The whole album is full of good tracks. and the music videos are incrediably strange, often times containing stange video footage from the 80’s like this one. The music is great but some of the music videos are a little to weird for me. LOL.
Ok so, this post was inspired by a friend of mine Dustin DuPree. Awhile back he did a post to let his readers see what he sees at work all day and well, I don’t have a webcam, but I felt inspired to take photos of my desk and such and show you a little tour of my office. I took these photos about a month ago. I have a ficus now, and I no longer drink from that green polycarbonate bottle, or drink diet coke, so pretty much I WAS INSPIRED but also lazy. Ok, here we go…
My Desk
Clean!
Ideally my desk would always remain this clean but I get caught up with other work and find more organization is chaos…
I also recently (2 months ago) bought a zen garden. A zen garden is a little wood tray with white sand in it and a few rocks and a rake. It’s popular in Japanese culture, and the idea is you use the bamboo rake to make designs and patterns in the sand. The sand is supposed to represent water or oceans and the rocks are supposed to be landforms or continents. I first saw a Zen Garden at Rock Island Cafe in Neenah, WI where they have them on all the tables, and while they seemed pointless at first. they are amazingly fun and have a great calming effect.
Years later while watching House MD I saw House playing with his colleagues zen garden…
This re-sparked my interest in them, and so, after traveling to Lowes, Micheals, Staples, Office Depot, Walmart, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Pier One, Hobby Lobby and a couple other places and finding NOTHING, I ended up buying mine online from this site, for about $16. The day it arrived I ended up buying some different sand for it and also some different rocks. Someday I hope to build my own.
Zen Garden Box
My Zen Garden
It’s great stress relief, and fun outlet to express creativity when work is crampin’ my style. You feel in control of a little world, and the designs you can draw in the sand are infinite. It lets you take your mind off of your stressful life or work for a moment and really helps you just clear your mind. I know it sounds stupid but TRY IT! I love this one and would highly recommend buying one if you work in an office.
Cans of Ambition
Addict.
A garbage bag full of diet coke cans under the vacant desk next to me. Yes, I drank ALL of those! Since about 3 weeks ago I quit drinking Diet Coke forever. For real this time. I don’t even consume much caffeine anymore, and mostly just drink iced tea or water all day.
Caffene, Stevia, Tums, B-12, Ginkgo Biloba, Fish Oil, Lipton Iced Tea, Twinnings Earl Grey (thanks for the heads up Dustin)
Here’s my new Ficus!!!! Sadly this one had like twice as many leaves last week as it does in this photo. I hope it stays alive.
New Ficus!!!!
TPS Reports
Over Exposed
Well folks that’s pretty much it, and just like that 5 hours later the post is complete. Bing, bang, boom.
Hey everyone you can now get to my blog via a subdomain. Hopefully these will be easier to remember.
blog.justinrueth,com
journal.justinrueth.com
I have created subdomains for other pages of my site as well. For instance.
portfolio.justinrueth.com will get you to my Enlighten Design portfolio.
archive.justinrueth.com will get you to my Network page within the portfolio. From that page you should be able to access the other pages in my portfolio.
Please be aware that at the moment my portfolio is embarassingly bad, and hasn’t been updated in almost 3 years. Ouch! No doubt there are many problems with it. I am in a limbo state of deciding weather I should ever build a new version (really no reason to). If I do should I just focus on photography, or should I put some web stuff and other graphics stuff in there as well. Should I have 2 seperate sites? One site for each? or a single site with all that stuff smashed into it? I don’t know. So I am at a standstill. From time to time I get motivated to update it but my intrest wanes fast when i think about how much work it will take. I am not unbelieveably lazy, I just shy away from it after 8 hours of websites at work each day. The motivation is gone for personal stuff.
