Imagine If You Will…

Imagine if you will…

The most important purpose in life is to find happiness.

Happiness can be relative and subjective to each person, but that would be the only happiness in life. If happiness is defined by a specific act, a goal, an adventure; the purpose has been fulfilled. The only purpose in life is happiness. Nothing else would matter. Imagine that world.

Imagine if you will…

Evil only comes from within and not born from tragedy or taught by another.

I have spent many an hour watching documentaries about hate crimes, serial killers, acts of treachery, and otherwise. I recently finished watching a second season of Mindhunters, a show about the creation of the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) in the FBI, a division that focuses on studying the behaviors of killers in order to better understand and catch them. A majority of the killers investigated by the BAU have all stemmed from abandonment or abuse from a parental figure. Some kind of tragedy turned them into the sick and demented mind that killed all of those people. But what if that evil came from within and was only born of something inside the human brain? Has it happened before? Yes. But what if that was the only way a human could become a killer of that caliber? Deciphering the where, the how, and then when would make catching killers more difficult and possibly more populous.

Imagine if you will…

The minds of people all over the world have become completely apathetic due to technology.

We live in a world dominated by technology. While technology has been a crucial aspect of our lives and progression towards bigger and better things, it has also caused a rift among the human race. While apathy is usually associated with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and physical illnesses such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease, it can also be associated with dullness of brain activity. Apathy is usually defined, ironically, as a feeling of unresponsiveness or dispassion, but it also leads to an unexplained anger. Just a few minutes on social media will show you the anger of people across the world. Some scholars believe that apathy fueled with anger, which seems like a hypocritical oxymoron, has stemmed in full from technology and the constant subjection to its joys and issues. Many would argue that angered apathy actually stems from conflicts around the world and the every day struggle of ordinary people as they adapt to the evolving world of strife. But imagine if it all stemmed because of social media and technology. Video games, computers, phones, tablets, kindles, laptops: apathy or dullness?

Imagine if you will…

The ideal government exists and runs each country perfectly.

One of the few things that have made the world a more controversial entity is the way governments run countries. Yes, each country is a little different and has different policies and ideals, but every country flourishes, or fails, because of its government. In fact, journalism was born in America because of the government. One credence of journalism is to be a watchdog over the government and provide the truth found via that watchdog mentality to the people. But imagine that each government was perfect. They catered to every single person in their country, never made a mistake, and we lived in a utopia. The ideas of a perfect society created by an unimpeachable government might sound ideal, but it has terrible repercussions. Read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley or 1984 by George Orwell. A perfect world doesn’t exist, but imagine if it did. What would happen?

Imagine if you will…

Free will doesn’t exist, and every action you take is predetermined.

I am not a religious person, but I do believe in free will. While the extraneous events around us may happen for a reason, what we do in those situations in entirely up to us. We make our own choices and craft our own stories in a way that each person’s adventure is different. The destination might be the same for some people, but every decision made to get to that point is free will. That destination is not preset, but some people may arrive at the same point unexpectedly. Now imagine those choices you made were already predetermined. Imagine you’re a character in a novel, and instead of getting to make your own choices, some other being or entity is forcing you to make those choices, or those choices have already been prewritten and you’re just acting out a play. What would be the point? Imagine that kind of world.

Imagine if you will…

A world where we respected the living more than we respected the dead or where everybody was respected and not just those in certain limelights.

More often than not, we find ourselves in a position where we give constant and full respect to those that have passed and only partial respect to those still in our lives. We fight, argue, insult, demean, belittle, antagonize, and chastise those alive. Unfortunately, it takes death for us to realize what we’ve lost and how respectful we could have been. This is drastically different in situations involving certain kinds of people. Look at celebrities as an example. If a celebrity overdoses on drugs, you’ll find encouraging messages from all over saying things like, “He/She was taken too young,” or “A true legend forever in our hearts!” However, while that person was struggling through rehab, they would be chastised through the media and by people all over the world. Now take a drug addict, a person relatively unknown that lives in a halfway house. When he/she overdoses, you’ll see messages like, “That’s what happens when you’re on drugs,” or “A lowlife that got what they deserved. Good riddance!” Why is respect such a hard concept? I understand the ideas of “give respect to earn respect,” but I’ve never quite seen the backwards thinking of so many people in the world. Imagine that world where respect is given to all people and not just those that have passed or those that seem idyllic because they’re celebrities.

Imagine if you will…

Every single person in the world is a genius…or every single person in the world is highly unintelligent.

Intelligence, or a lack thereof, has been a catalyst for development and progression. However, imagine if every single person was a genius. Would greatness still exist? Would we honor and study the teachings of Albert Einstein, Plato, Socrates, Steve Jobs, Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, Beethoven, Tesla, William Shakespeare, and Benjamin Franklin? In my opinion, those people would fade into the background if every single person was destined for greatness. On the opposite end of the spectrum, what would happen if every single person was unintelligent? Would we have ever made it to the greatness of our technological advancements? Our world would be antiquated and full of disappointment.

Imagine if you will…

Every person would be required to take a test/acquire a license to procreate.

This has been something about which I’ve joked for many years. Whenever I read a story about a person that committed some kind of crime and it comes to light that they had father issues or abandonment problems, my immediate thought is what went through the parents’ head that led to that? When I see a set of parents that left a gun sitting out and a kid shot himself, I become so angry. I hear stories of kids being left in hot cars, being abandoned at parks, being allowed to stay up as late as they want, pulled out of schools, allowed to eat whatever they want…and I wonder how it is okay for all of that to happen. We have to have a license to drive a car, open a business, own a gun, and drive a boat. We can carry guns with a permit and take the lives of other people. While taking the life of another person is a crime, it is still possible to do. But we allow anybody and everybody to get together and procreate. In my opinion, this shouldn’t be allowed unless you’re licensed. Granted, this will never happen, and the world would most likely be much worse off in that situation. But I often wonder what it would be like if the license/test was required before having a kid.