Cuyler Callahan's Official Home Page

So before I even start this post, I already know I’m going to get flamed. Somebody is going to have an issue with what I’m going to say, and challenge my opinion.

Well really, I don’t care. If you have your opinion, you can share it, in the comments, but don’t expect me to argue with you and respond back. This is my opinion, and I’m laying it out here for all to see. Take it as is, and don’t expect me to respond back to any flames.

So here it goes.

*********************************************************************************

So yesterday my fiance and I where getting some pizza and wings. We were sitting in the waiting area on the couches and reading some papers on the coffee table.

I started reading an article written by a gay guy. His article was talking about how he went to university and is so fed up with the other gay people making a fuss about how badly they are treated and how they are not respected and all that. He thinks otherwise and now believes the gay community is just causing problems with a society that has pretty much accepted them.

His article is not about what I’m going to go on about. But in his article he mentions about how he and his partner and kid live in Seattle and have a pretty good life.

That is what struck me. He, his partner, and “kid”.

My issue is the kid. I don’t bother gay people, gay people don’t bother me. I even have friends that are gay. I don’t think being gay is right, but this is a free country, and they can do what ever they want, I’m not going to cause a problem over it. I still respect them. I’m just not gay, and have no idea what it is like to be gay.

What bothers me is two gay people raising a kid. I know this issue has been brought up in government assemblies around North America. It seems now that some of the states actually allow gay couples to adopt.

But the thing that bothers me is gay people have been fighting for their “Natural Right” to be gay. Okay, they win, they can be gay because it is “Natural” and a chemical in their brain which makes them gay, apparently.

I’m not sure I actually buy the chemical part, either way I don’t care why their gay. They can make choices about themselves, that is fine. The point is they fought for their Natural Right, and to be married.

Okay, thats fine. But I don’t care what anybody says. A kid being raised by two gay people is not natural, and not right. There is no chemical to blame for this. Two guys, or two chicks, can’t naturally have a baby, so why should they be allowed to adopt a baby. That is not natural.

The kid is not of his adopted gay parents blood. Chances are he will have no chemical in him to make him more inclined to be gay. Growing up he will most likely want to meet a girl, but he was raised in a house hold that does not really promote it. This will cause confusion in his mind.

Then at school, the same argument comes up all the time. He will be teased because his parents are gay.

People can be gay, but no matter what anybody says, it is still the second choice nature intended. A child should be raised the natural way, and then can choose for himself later if he wants to be gay or not.

Some people would argue that being raised by just a woman, or just a man, is about the same as a gay couple. But it is not.

A single mother still raises the child the best she can, and still instills the original natural plan in the child. The child grows up knowing she has a father somewhere and that one day she will find a man to love.

Growing up with two gay parents instills in the child confusion. “Where is my father?” “Why do I have two fathers?” “Where is my mother?” “Do I have a mother?”

There is confusion. Gay people can be gay, I don’t think they should raise children.

If nature intended two people to be gay, then nature also intended them to be without kids.

I hate to play the victim game. You know, the one where people say, “Oh I’m a victim of circumstance,” or, “It is not my fault, it’s just the way I am.”

I hate playing that game, or using that excuse. But for once, I think I will.

So first of, what am I the victim of. I am the victim of my mind, the biological process in which my very brain works and processes information. I find I am very much like my own father. My father is a genius. He can read a book and understand it fully, and the best part is, he can apply it in real life. He take what he read, and put it to work with his hands.

I find I am very much the same way. I can read anything, memorize it’s content, and then use my hands to apply the information I have learned.

Now your probably saying, how is this a problem? How are you a victim?

Well I’ll clear this up right here and now. I love my mind. I love how I can read anything and absorb the information. Many people out there can’t. I love how I am able to apply the information as well.

All through my mechanics school I was constantly badgered and stereotype as that guy that is a bookworm, but he won’t be able to do squat in the shop. This really made me angry. It got my boiling inside. I grew a big disdain for those people. But I am also very forgiving, and those same people are really good friends of mine now. But at that moment that I heard them talking about how they would “like to see how I was in the shop” with that attitude about them, I really, really became hurt and angry, and resentful.

Why should I not be good in the shop. I have grow up on a farm working with my hands. I have worked in two shops before I went to school, and each employer loved my work. I took shop class in high school and got great grades. There was no reason that I wouldn’t excel in the shop, applying the information I read and absorbed.

But lets look at society. Society has to stereotype everything. It makes people feel safer, like they know the world and have it categorized. Organization makes people feel safe, because they feel they know what is going to happen next. They feel like if everything is categorized they can avoid injury, gain success, all by making choices on the different stereotypes in the world.

So there I was, the bookworm, the “by-the-book-guy”, that would fail miserably in the shop, as everyone was predicting. I’m very much like my father. And my father loves books, and he also exceeds in the shop. He worked on the rigs and became an operator, in charge of his own crew. He does all his own farm equipment repairs, and everything he has learned by reading on his own.

So now I am working in the shop. Ya, I’ve made a few mistakes since I’ve been working. But I’m also on my work experience time. It is my time to make mistakes as I learn how to be a mechanic, and the best ways to apply the information I’ve learned. When my superiors have talked to me, assessing my knowledge, they were quite suprised by what I could tell them about the subjects they wanted to know about. They told me most students just sit there with a blank look. They can do the jobs to fix stuff, but they don’t really know why.

I like to know why I do stuff, and because of that I ask questions. A lot of questions; which has also gotten me teased a couple times already and mocked. But I know how things work, and what I’m repairing and why. And I think this is a good trait to have. My superiors notice it. I feel more confident in my work. And anybody that mocks me can shove it.

So what has all this to do with the mind and how it works?

Well, like I said, my father and I are very much the same. We love to read, we absorb, we can apply. It’s a good gift. But we also are very much slow when it comes to speaking our mind. I can write my mind out on paper as I am now. So can my dad. When you get me on a subject, I can talk your ear off.

But when it comes to things that are spontaneous, like a witty comeback to remark by a friend, or responding coherently to a question, that is where I fail, and much with my father as well. Like I said we are very much the same.

If somebody asks me a question, I will answer as fast as I can. Because if I don’t then usually people prompt for the answer. Then they get annoyed, or I do cause I need time to think of the answer. So usually I try to blurt it out. I’ll know the answer, but I need to form the words to say them. So lots of times the words will come out jumbled and incoherent. If they just gave me like 10 seconds, I could have the words formed. But people want things fast.

So there it is. My father and I. We aren’t stupid. We are not idiots. We are smart. We just don’t portray our smarts. Most people meet me and make an assumption that I am a big slow guy. That is what stereotyping does. And once you are stereotyped, it is basically impossible to get out of that rut.

So I’m not sure what to call the process of thought my father and I have. But as you can see, inside our minds, our brains are working fast. I always have ideas, I always have different topics I’m thinking about. Get me speaking on the fly when I’m not prepared, and I’ll be a jumbled mess. I need to think about stuff before I say it, or do it. If not I’ll mess something up. I need to organize my actions before I act.

Although as I said, I’m not good at speaking when rushed, I am good at impromptu speeches. Not sure why. But in 4-H, they could give me a topic, and I could talk about it, on the fly, for minutes at a time. I also won awards for my speeches. But I think that is because I was focused on doing an impromptu speech. I prepared my mind for it.

In high school, most of us have done those learning tests that tell us how we learn best. There are those that learn by reading best. Those that learn by doing best. Those that learn by listening. Those that learn by seeing.

There are many types of people out there, and their minds all work in different ways.

Some people have very quick minds, very slow minds. Some people forget things easily, or remember things easily. Other people can’t pay attention. Some people just don’t take a hint and can’t read other peoples body language. Others can read people very well and interact well because they know how to act by reading the actions of others.

The combinations are endless. These categories of the mind can differ so much in fact, that I believe it makes it very hard for certain people to communicate with each other. The most extreme example would be like a dog and a horse trying to talk to each other.

Of course it is not that bad, but as you can see, the communication almost lacks that much. I have had simple conversations with people, where the other person just did not seem to understand what I was saying. I spoke plainly. Nothing complicated. The person would not their head in agreement to my ideas. Then they would speak, trying to compliment the idea with their own, thinking we were on the same page, but totally off topic to what I was saying, or on the opposite end of the spectrum.

This is nothing bad on their part, it is just how their brain works. But I think this lack of synchronization of the minds of the billions of people in the world, is possibly the cause of wars and other man made disasters. When ideas don’t match between two groups of people, often other people get fed up with the other groups interpretation of an idea. They end up fighting, and there you go. Trying to change the other peoples minds by fighting them won’t do anything. It is just the way they believe things should work.

The culture of many people is what develops the mind into what it is. I believe that everyone is a victim of their mind to an extent. I’m not saying people can’t improve. They can always keep learning, they can always improve on their lifestyle. I think though, that we are all victims of stereotyping. How we display our personality on the outside is how people will always see us.

Our minds are our place to hide. What goes on inside our brains, others will not know unless we tell them. How we display ourselves is what people use to put us in a category. But our outside display also will be influenced by how our mind works. I am smart on the inside. My brain works fast on the inside. But my outside appearance is slow. I am slow to react to unsuspecting questions. I’m not fast in the social scene. So my outside appearance is a big slow guy, that sticks to the books. But I’m not. I am good with my hands and I have confidence in my work.

So how do we keep away from being a victim of our minds, a victim of stereotyping. Well, we are all victims of it to a degree. Sometimes it works in our favor. Sometimes it does not. But if people want to change their outward display of personality, then they have to work on their personality. They have to prepare their outward display, their appearance. In a way, you have to act. You have to act how you want people to see you. And eventually that act, it will become who you are.

But I will say now, it is very much a difficult task. Because twenty four seven, your mind has to be switched on to the new persona. And of course while your mind is occupied with that, you also have to keep up with all your other daily tasks.

People do it. It can be done. But if your happy with who you are, then why change. Besides it will cause a bit of a headache if it is a drastic change, because all the people that know you now, will be wondering what got into you. They may even be a little offended by the change.

It is always a decision that you have to make, and it is an important one if considering changing our outward display.

Now some people will say that changing how a person displays him or herself is not a good thing. That we should “Be ourselves” Being ourselves is being what we want to be. If you don’t like how people see you, how they react to you. How they stereotype you, then change yourself. Your not changing how your mind works. You are just changing how people see you. How they react to you the first time you meet them. How they will stereotype you.

Eventually the new you will become the message of “be yourself” and you won’t even have to try anymore.

But that is enough of this article, or rant, or whatever people want to call it. To some it up, everybody processes things in the brain differently. What we are stereotyped with is the outward display. And often the stereotype will be wrong, because people can’t see into your mind. They can only read the outside. So if you want to fit into different categories- because they will always be there, there is no running away from stereotyping- then you have to change the outside display. You have to change how people see you.

I went and saw that movie that just came out called “Avatar”. It was a great movie. Probably the best movie, I would say, that I have ever seen in my life. It surpassed all my other previous favorite movies.

Why did it make it to the top of my most favorite list? Because it made me think. Almost to a point where I regretted being a human being. It opened up questions about myself that I am now trying my best to answer and get myself back on my feet and in a stable emotional state.
Read the rest of this entry »

I want to explore the ideas I have about people in general. I know that I have friends, and they are all very cool people to be around. I look into myself and sometimes think that I’m different from every other person out there. I am unique and special.

But is there a profound truth that we should all consider? Consider that we aren’t that unique, that we are not all that special. We are all human, we are all mammals, and have evolved through the thousands of years from simple cave men that hunted with clubs, and after the discovery of fire, quickly evolved to what we have today.

Now what I mean by saying we aren’t that unique from every other person out there is just that. When faced with certain situations, we will all follow a set reaction that is instinctual with our minds. Consider the goals of almost every person out there.

What do we all want in life? We all want to be successful. Success is of course all relative to individual people. Now people can be unique in some aspects, that’s what give us different personalities. That’s why a movie stars success is not the same success as a man who just wants to have a family and live comfortably.

We all strive for the same principals, but we view each principal with our own interpretations. But this still does not make us special from everybody else. Humans are indeed the most diverse species out there. Compared to say an animal. You can take any animal out there, and characterize it’s traits and attitudes, and name them. When you see another animal that looks the same and acts the same, then it is the same animal.

Humans can be characterized by looks, and we can be characterized by our instinctual goals, but we go about life all a little differently. I think people have different thought patterns from each other. Or look at it this way, you can take two individual people and put their thoughts into their own categories.

Have you ever spoken to somebody and you explain something to them in plain English, with plane language. It makes total sense to you. But they turn around and interpret it totally off from what you said. And every time you try to explain to them, they still get it wrong from what you said. It drives me up the wall, but at the same time, somebody can explain something to me, and I totally get it wrong over and over again.

I think that is because we have our own methods of thoughts, our own ways of achieving the goals that our species has been instinctively born with to achieve.

Now reading this, even I can see where my idea that people are not that unique is thrown out the window. But I still think that we all are very much the same. Yes we are different enough that you could say we are different from others of our same species. That’s why we have wars. We think differently then somebody else, and we have fights.

But think about it this way. If we were really that unique, don’t you think we could think of a way to not have wars, we could stop fighting, because if we really were that special, we could override our pride, and our instincts to fight?

Well this is where the principals of our species start to seem really shallow. This is where you can look at the world as a whole and categorize them as human. Look at how wars start. People want power, they want to be on the top, they want to rule more, own more, control more.

Look at a pack of wolves, there is always a wolf on top, if two packs of wolfs meet, they’ll fight, the winning pack will either chase the other pack out of their territory, or they’ll take control of the new pack. Within the pack, there is always fights for the top dog.

Look at the world, even with all our individual actions and notions, our unique thought processes, we still have the principal instincts that make us strive for the same thing. We still strive to be on top. We carve out our territory be it the head of a family, to the leader of a country, and anybody that challenges us we fight off in our own way.

Now we look at that as natural. If somebody threatens our family, we fight back, somebody threatens our country we fight back. It seems natural. And it also seems natural that we will have challengers to fight. Or it seems natural to be a challenger.

That is just one principal of humanity we can characterize as human. It’s also in every other species out there. Though the unique part of humanity is how we go about being the boss. We go about it in different ways, we can be tricksy, bold, or we can use brute force. A pack of wolves will just beat each other up without much thought of when, or how.

But needless to say, that is something that characterizes humanity. When I am in any city, you can tell that each city has it’s own unique hum. Live in or near a city for a while and you will tell if you like it. Why would you like one city more then the other. It’s the unique people that are in the city, with their unique ways of thinking. A city is a melting pot, and the people melt to make up the soul of a city and give it it’s feeling, it’s vibe.

Though we have unique cities, once again, there are still the principals of a city that make it shallow. People are still striving for the same things. You have your males and your female interactions. You have your crime bosses, you have your business owners. You have your nice and mean people.

But the end goal of all these people is to achieve their end goals of success and no matter how nice a person is, they still have their end goal. Why do we become friends with somebody. Not that it’s bad to have friends, but if a friend is not contributing to you, there is only so long before you kick them out the door.

Friendships work when two people contribute to the relationship. You are both trying to get somewhere, and if your being weighed down, no matter how nice of a person you are, you will tell the other to go away or you wish they will go away. So there is something that is shallow, but makes sense. That’s why nobody trusts anybody to a full extent in this world. You can’t tell if somebody is going to be beneficial to you, or if they are going to use you.

People use each other to their own ends. We might contribute our time to help our friends, and they to help us, or we might use and abuse. It all depends if your nice person or not. But you’ll never see anybody who just helps to help. Even if it seems they are, somehow they are getting something out of it, even if it’s a good feeling they like.

If you were to help somebody on the side of the road, maybe give them a ride into town, and they offer to pay you. You might say “No, don’t worry about it.” You drop them off and drive away. You’ll feel good afterward. This will contribute to you. Maybe your religious and think it’ll help you get back to God.

Whatever the reason is, if you didn’t think it would help you out at all, you wouldn’t help that person. If you stopped to help and you knew you would feel like shit afterward, and you wouldn’t feel at all good, or that you should do this good deed. I know people wouldn’t help out.

That is a shallow concept about people, all our actions lead to our own success. Now don’t think I’m being a hater of the human race. All I am trying to explain is that the human race isn’t this Godly race. We are mammals with instincts we follow.

Look at any interaction of a person, and sure they solve all interactions with their own unique ways, but the goals are always the same, always for the same reasons. The human race isn’t so unique from the other species. In fact watching the human race interact and do its thing can sometimes be boring.

Go to a mall and watch people walk around the mall. I can classify people into their groups. There are you pre-teen mall rats. They hang out at the mall because they hate their parents and think their life is ruined. You can tell the rich people, the poor people, the tech junkies, the nerds, the cool kids, the mothers, the divorced singles, the lesbians, the gays, the mid life crisis people, the dads, the office workers,etc. It’s not that I sit there and just start naming stuff off, I just look at people and my mind automatically labels people.

People look at me and probably label me. We all label each other, it is just an instinct. We can use this ability to find people that will help us with our needs and goals.

Sometimes it’s nicer to watch the nature. Animals are indeed more simple then humans. They are not as unique in thought as humans are. They do have their own unique attitudes. I know this because I used to work on a diary farm and I could classify the cows into their own little groups based on attitude. But they aren’t that different from each other. Not as much as people.

Yes people are unique in thoughts, unique in how we go about reaching our goals. But our goals, even though different from each other, they still are just tools to the bigger, simpler, goal of success which is part of every animal out there. Even if the idea of success is to be the leader of a country, a rich millionaire, a movie star, or just having a simple family with the comfortable things.

The lion wants success, the cow wants success, and ant wants success. We all go about it differently, but all our actions are to lead us to success. That is what I mean by a shallow world. It is easy to read, easy to categorize. People don’t really seem so special as I was raised to believe they are.

I think I’m special, I think my friends are special, I think my family is special. But that is an instinct once again. And it won’t change. I can’t change it, it’s just how I think. Every person out there thinks there are special people with special abilities, talents, and ways of going about life. Really they are doing the same thing as you, trying to reach success. Success which from the beginning of our race has been the motivation of everything we do from finding a food source and a mate to starting wars. It’s just our animal instinct.

No matter what state the world is in, our instinct to succeed will change it and make it evolve into something else. The world is special in the fact it holds life and holds our species which is the dominant species on earth. From the beginning when our race evolved our race succeeded above the others to be dominant. We were the smartest.

But we are still just that, a species. We can be categorized, even by our own kind which leads to the question:

If we can be categorized and sub categorized, how special are we really?