Cav's Place

July 12th… It used to be our anniversary and then it became the commemoration of the start of all the actual life I ever had. But for everyone else it’s just a regular day. I can’t even sit and talk about memories because nobody wants to hear. Nobody cared about that for years. It just doesn’t fit what they see as the normal way to react to something like this and they don’t care…
Seven years, a little more than three together, nearly four since she left. I wonder if she even remembers. Or, if she does, I wonder how she remembers it.

I guess there really isn’t anything left to say after all this time, not to anyone else at least. Just leave me be… For me it’s certainly not just a regular day.

At least it’s raining a lot, so the weather mirrors my mood…

I’ve recently bumped into a few people who were very much against abortion, which triggered a few discussions of varying length, one of them actually being rather long and moderately interesting. That made me want to write this post and explain exactly how I see this issue and why. I also want to use this to point out that, contrary to what those who are pro-life sometimes claim, the term “pro-choice” is really pretty correct when it comes to most of those who use it to describe their stance on this issue, because I’d like the term “pro-abortion” to describe those who have views similar to mine, which are rather different from what “pro-choice” usually means. Actually, what’s wrong is the term “pro-life”, since I hardly see any of those who describe themselves as such showing that same amount of care for all life.
This won’t change anyone or anything, that’s quite obvious, but at least I’ll be able to just give people a link whenever the topic will be brought up again. I’m saying it won’t change anyone or anything because I’ll try to explain things logically, use reasoning to justify my stance, and those who are against abortion rarely make any use of these faculties when it comes to this issue. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all of them are stupid, only that they find it hard to think about this issue logically for one reason or another. Somebody even admitted to me recently that she can’t exactly think it through when it comes to this issue, it just “feels wrong”.

Let’s start with the legal part, to establish why abortion can’t be made illegal due to any concerns for the unborn child’s rights. You see, from a legal point of view, a person thankfully starts to exist only after they’re born. That’s when the birth certificate is issued, that’s the moment their age starts to be counted from, so any rights can only be awarded from that point forward. You thankfully can’t find a fetus registered anywhere, so you can’t give it any rights and therefore can’t forbid people from doing anything because it’d violate its rights! And you also can’t say that the lack of a birth would harm humans in general in any way, because it’s exactly the opposite: Yet another person would use even more resources, leaving less for everyone else, harming the planet as a whole and everyone who currently lives on it. So there is no reason to be against it as far as human rights go.
The next argument will likely shock many, because it is the spiritual one. It shouldn’t have any relevance, because religion shouldn’t have any say in politics, so it shouldn’t affect laws in any way, but I’m including it to counter the most common argument against abortion. You see, if you believe in souls in any way then you also believe that some higher power either actually places them inside bodies or at least establishes the rules according to which this body-soul link is created, right? Such a being would obviously have to be very intelligent and wise in order to be in such a position, so it would need to have a reason to create this link and would also make sure that it’s only created when and where it could actually be useful. Such a link would most likely be useful in order to allow souls to learn things through their experiences in the physical world, so it would only make sense to be created once a body is reasonably certain to be able to have enough of a life to accumulate some such experiences, so the soul won’t be thrown back right away, even more confused than it was before. That moment can’t be before the actual birth, since there’s not too much you can experience inside the womb, and there certainly isn’t anything at all you can experience early during the pregnancy, when the embryo doesn’t even have a brain! That moment could actually come at some point after the birth, such as when the baby is reasonably certain to be healthy enough to survive, which means that this connection could be delayed even further in case of babies who are born with health problems or who simply are too undeveloped. So there is absolutely no reason that a wise deity could have to allow souls to be connected to fetuses and therefore the spiritual argument can’t be used to justify being against abortion!
Lastly, let me handle the generic issue of life too. Those who are against abortion tend to call it murder, but how can something be alive before it’s born? (I also have to wonder how many of them are equally worried about other forms of life far more developed than a fetus, such as most mammals or birds, which are harmed, exploited and killed whenever it suits humans, but that’s another issue.) What’s more, whatever is inside another’s body should be treated as a part of that body and handled accordingly. Within the first three months of pregnancy, before it has a brain, it’s nothing more than a lump of cells growing inside you. So is a tumor! Do you have a problem with removing those too? True, I was given the argument that certain creatures are still living even without brains and of course that’s correct, microbes are certainly like that, so do you also have a problem with killing those by the billions? I don’t think so, and I don’t think you have a problem with killing more advanced parasites which take residence inside your body either. So things can’t really be alive before being born or hatching and even creatures which are alive according to that definition but are inside another’s body, some of which could be considered more advanced that a human embryo, are to be treated according to said body’s owner’s wishes, without giving them any rights. It could perhaps be argued that it is killing if the abortion is done so late that the child could actually survive outside its mother’s body but measures are taken so that won’t happen, yes, but up to that point it’s either similar to a tumor or to a parasite and has no more rights than those, because you can’t take into account what it might become if allowed to develop further, as some do… All life on this planet consisted of bacteria once, and look what those developed into, and yet those which are currently just bacteria are treated exactly as such, and that’s how it should be.

But this isn’t even about law or morality anymore, it’s about necessity! The population needs to drop and therefore something needs to be done to prevent any significant number of births. Birth control measures which actually prevent pregnancies would be the ideal solution, but when those fail or when the people don’t use them properly (or at all) you still have another, namely abortion. Somebody argued that if something truly needs to be done about this then she’d rather have adults killed instead of unborn babies, because the adults had a chance to solve this problem and didn’t, so it could perhaps be seen as fair punishment, but that won’t work either. Mainly it won’t work because you can’t compare killing something which is alive to destroying something which yet isn’t and also because the adults who choose abortion are actually doing something about the problem, so you can’t take away the solution and then punish them for not using it. But it also won’t work because in order to balance things out you’d need to kill one parent as soon as the child is born and the other some time later, soon enough to compensate for the fact that the child will normally live much longer than either of its parents would have lived. If you do that, isn’t the child punished more than anyone else? So why think of such solutions when you can just prevent the birth and solve the problem before it even arises?
On the other hand, I fully agree that something should be done to those who resort to it frequently, but I’m only talking about sterilizing them permanently and that’s more as a favor than anything else. They’re proving that they can’t even be responsible enough for their own bodies, so they obviously won’t be able to be responsible for a child if they’d ever have one, plus that by avoiding even more abortions in the future you eliminate the associated potential health risks. I also say that an abortion should normally be done within the first trimester of pregnancy and agree that people who have late abortions should be punished in some way, if they can’t somehow prove that they weren’t aware of the pregnancy until then. If we’re talking about terminating a pregnancy after more than seven months then the act itself might become a bit questionable even from my point of view, assuming that the fetus wouldn’t have any significant health problems or malformations, but even choosing to wait until the second trimester should be punished, likely by some sort of fine, simply because it complicates matters and shows that you didn’t really intend to have it done in the first place, so you were actually considering worsening the world’s worst problem. Still, this fine for a second trimester abortion would be quite harmful if it’d end up making people choose to carry pregnancies to term instead of convincing them to have the abortion sooner, so there should be a much harsher penalty for actually giving birth to that baby, which would require population control and that’s another issue, one that I keep ranting about whenever possible.

This should have ended up much better than this, but I rarely can put my thoughts into human-readable form effectively, so this will have to do. At least I assume the part about abortions being a necessity proved what I said at the beginning about wanting to claim the term “pro-abortion” for those who think like I do and thus prove that “pro-choice” is the correct term for the vast majority of those who describe themselves as such.

Final Fantasy VIII, which I just gave up on after reaching Ultimecia’s Castle because it would have been absolutely impossible to make it through with my characters, reminded me of just how weird I find JRPGs in general. There usually is a good story which attempts to relay an even better message, the characters have distinct personalities and you can really get to understand and care for them… But the gameplay is absolutely terrible and the difficulty level makes it nearly impossible to focus on the story while playing. These two parts really don’t seem to go well together.
I do find the Japanese quite strange, and that’s saying a lot when it comes from me, but I wonder if even they truly enjoy these games, with everything they entail, or if they just learned to accept them as they are simply because this is what they’ve been getting for so many years… I really don’t see how can someone truly like these conflicting sides. The difficulty level makes you unable to enjoy the story, the frequent movies and other such elements wreak havok with the game’s pace, the fact that you can’t customize the characters hinders your ability to really relate to them despite their nicely defined personalities and life stories, and the message is just lost somewhere among all this mess!

I believe that Final Fantasy VIII is an excellent example of how to ruin a game by trying to appease two opposite crowds at the same time. I find myself needing to remind everyone of what I wrote in an earlier post about game story modes, because it fits in very well here. I think the hardcore gamers who truly enjoy this kind of gameplay and the challenge of beating a difficult game could really use that “action” setting I described in that post, while the rest of us could use the “story” setting coupled with a lower difficulty. People should of course still be able to choose the “story” setting and a high difficulty if they wish it, but I think the vast majority would pick either one or the other and everyone would be much happier that way.

The other major issue I have with JRPGs is, of course, the fact that they’re made for consoles and even the few that are ported to PCs have awkward controls. I think that if you port a game you should also adapt it to the new platform. Developers who create console versions of PC games seem to be learning that lesson in recent years, at least from what I keep hearing, but it doesn’t seem to work quite so well the other way around. I wonder how much of this is because of the difference between the PC and console gaming markets, as I described it in another earlier post…

This was supposed to be a part of the earlier post about a possibly better political system, but I decided to turn it into a separate post while I was writing that one. Thought I’d be able to pay more attention to it this way, make it more detailed… Considering my current mental state, that seems highly unlikely, but I’ll try to write it anyway. It might not make much sense though.

The citizens of many countries show an increased disinterest in voting and many of those who do vote tend to be uninformed or otherwise unfit to make such a decision for all. A part of this is caused by politicians and another by the people, but I think the voting system is somewhat responsible for the situation as well. Changing the general “quality” of the politicians is hard and changing that of the voters is even harder, so we could get to that a little later, but the voting system could be modified in such a way as to improve the outcome pretty quickly.
These suggestions are based on a democratic system, so they don’t solve the problems inherent to it, the most important being its tendency to turn into a tyranny of the majority, but I already said that politics are less important than actually getting things done, so we could get around to solving those problems later.

The first thing to do would be to turn voting into a privilege, make it no longer be a right. People tend to pay less attention to the things they’re entitled to, so requiring them to earn the right to vote could make them become more interested in it, plus that it would get rid of those who are uninformed or otherwise unfit for such a task. It’d also be interesting to see how many of those who currently refuse to vote would start protesting if this right that they currently make a point of ignoring would suddenly be taken away from them.
This could probably be accomplished by making everyone take a brief test before being allowed to cast their vote. That test could involve asking the people to name three relatively significant candidates and at least two important differences between them. If there wouldn’t be at least three relatively significant candidates, the people could be required to describe the differences between the top two candidates in greater detail. People who fail to answer these questions or who show an obvious bias towards one party or candidate, such as by giving only positive traits for them and only negative traits for the others, should not be allowed to vote.
Since everyone would normally be aware of the existence of the test, they should know what they want to answer and therefore it would be completed quickly. But some separate rooms would be required, as well as additional personnel, because the test would obviously need to be written, so people won’t be able to just repeat what the person ahead of them said. This would increase the expenses and space requirements, but I think it’d be well worth it. The written test would also prove that those who want to vote know how to read and write, which I believe should be an obvious requirement, though now some illiterate people are “herded” towards the voting booths by some who are in positions of authority and who often also instruct them who to vote for by showing them said party’s symbol.

The second measure would involve adding some other options for the people to choose, besides the actual candidates. This would allow people to still cast their vote even if none of the candidates please them, letting their voice be heard.
An obvious one would be “I vote for a party or candidate whose application was rejected”. In case ballots are used, there should be a space immediately below that text where those who pick this option would have to specify exactly who they mean, valid votes being only those that specify a party or candidate who actually tried to run for this round of elections but had their application rejected, regardless of reason. In case the vote is cast by electronic means, a list of the parties and candidates whose applications were rejected for that specific round of elections could appear once a voter chooses that option, so they would only need to pick which one they mean. This option would obviously only exist if there were any rejected applications. If an application was rejected it probably means that said party or candidate is not eligible for a seat regardless of the number of votes they could earn from voters who choose this option, but they could automatically be allowed to run in the next elections, regardless of whether or not they meet the requirements, if they obtain at least a certain number of votes. That number could either be fixed, such as 1% of the total number of valid votes, or variable, such as requiring them to obtain more votes than the party or candidate who was allowed to run and ranked last. On the other hand, if a party or candidate who wasn’t allowed to run would somehow win the elections thanks to the voters who made use of this option, then the elections would have to be repeated and they would be allowed to run.
Another option could be “I vote for anarchy”. This is a pretty dangerous one though, seeing as people could just pick it as a way of saying that they’re dissatisfied with the way things are going, or just because they’re rebels without a cause. If this option wins then there would have to be a referendum, but even so I’m saying it’s dangerous because if it’d win that vote as well then it would really need to be implemented, and people are very far from being able to govern themselves. However, when it comes to sending representatives somewhere, such as to the European Parliament, it could be replaced with a “don’t send anyone” option and it could work rather well even if the majority would choose it and then confirm their choice in the following referendum (as there would still be one), simply causing the country, region or group to refuse to send any representatives, at least until the next elections. If this option would win a round of elections but lose in the following referendum, however, all the votes for it would be considered as “invalid” and all other percentages recalculated accordingly, without any need to repeat the elections.
And I left the most common suggestion for last, namely a “none of the above” option. If this would be chosen by the majority, the elections would have to be repeated and the candidates that received less than a certain number of votes would not be allowed to run again. That number could either be fixed, such as 10% of the total number of valid votes, or variable, such as one fifth of the number of “none of the above” votes. But even those who would be allowed to run again should think twice about it, because if the majority would once again pick “none of the above” then all those who ran both times would be banned either from running for any public office for a few years or for that specific office for up to ten years. In case the vote would be for party lists and not for individual candidates, only those placed on what would be considered to be “eligible positions”, as determined by an official report released before the elections, would be affected by these restrictions. In case most voters would pick “none of the above” the second time as well, then the elections would be repeated yet again and this option would be removed. In this case, eligible candidates would be only those who didn’t run at all in the first two rounds and those who ran only in one of them and received enough votes to allow them to run again. Also, the number of seats available to them would be greatly reduced, as a significant percentage of them would be reserved for members of non-governmental organizations and other activists, which would require changes in the electoral colleges. In case the elections are for a single position and the previous statement can’t apply, an additional position would be created so a member of a non-governmental organization or another important activist would be able to work very closely with the elected person for the duration of their term. Who would fill those seats or occupy that position shouldn’t be the government’s problem, even a rotation system being completely acceptable.

I’m feeling broken since yesterday. Not that this is something new, but I just slumped all of a sudden.
I was saying these days that now that I finally have something interesting to read again I just want to sit here and read and tell the world go to fuck itself, which is significantly better than wanting to just sit here and do absolutely nothing and tell the world to go fuck itself, but that only works while I actually am reading. If I stop and don’t have something else to dive into right away, everything crumbles again.

I meant to push myself a little and said that I will finish the first book at the end of this week, which was a little hard at first since I’m so “rusty” at reading lately, but yesterday I reached the page I meant to reach quite early and I made myself stop right there, thinking I might not be able to go all the way to the end and it was going to be quite frustrating to stop just a chapter or two short.
This week I also had some work to do for dad, which I managed to finish Friday night after cursing it and him and anyone else connected to it in quite a number of ways, so I was left without something to channel my anger towards as well. (Speaking of which, having to turn them into puzzle pieces sure takes away any sense of satisfaction I might have had for having those environmental news published in that supplement. But I’ve been saying this for a long time now…)
So I was left with Final Fantasy VIII, which I said I’ve been playing lately, and some recorded shows I had downloaded. Chose the shows, only to find that there was nothing new among them, so just deleted all of them and found myself with nothing I still wanted to do, seeing as I didn’t feel like playing…

And that’s when I crumbled and felt really broken… As I said, nothing new, but that’s how it is. And that’s how it will be unless the cause for all of this will somehow, someday, get reversed. And there certainly doesn’t seem to be any noticeable chance of that ever happening, if it’s not actually utterly impossible already, as I keep fearing.
At least I finished the first book of the series today, so that worked out as planned. Let me see now what the next holds…
Forgot all about the Confederations’ Cup third place match though, which is a pity. Seems to have been a pretty nice match.