Our Society

Many believe that it is the Law that protects our freedom.  I think the law itself does not protect us, but a combination of the law with various consequences for actions, and human nature.  If there is a guideline set that is standard, most people will choose to obey it.  At the beginning of our country, the ethical code of the people became the law, but as time has gone on (hundreds of years), society and it's values change.  We are in the midst of that change, where things we thought would never be "OK" and now deemed "OK" and "not a big deal" by the majority of society.  It's a dangerous world, and now with the law not keeping us from doing things we know are wrong, what does?  Our own code of ethics.  When it comes down to it, we are our best filters and governors.  If we don't want to see something everybody else is seeing, we can turn away and "filter" it out.  If we don't want to do something everybody else is doing, most often we can refuse to do it.  We have the ability to see right from wrong, and we have the ability to make choices.  Like Smokey the Bear, we are also the only ones who can prevent the wildfires that would destroy our morals within our own souls.

Tweeting Conference

I had an interesting experience this weekend.  I decided to "tweet" during General Conference.  I normally wouldn't do such a thing due to my lack of a twitter, but I consented and tried it out.  It was a positive experience for me, one in which I was able to better pay attention to the speakers by tweeting my thoughts and the cool quotes I heard.  It caused me to want to write things down too, so for the first time in my life, I took "good" notes during conference.  Most of the time I would tweet from my phone, so while I was at the conference center (I was there for two sessions) I never really got distracted by having my phone out for more than a few seconds.  At home though, I was able to read through the tweets about it during the sessions, it helped a lot especially when I missed a quote or something.  While at the Conference Center though, I wouldn't be able to keep track of the feed, but I would get notifications as people tweeted directly at me about them, "favorited" them, or "retweeted" them.  It was a good time.  I paid better attention than most of my family, and got significantly more out of it than I would have without doing it.

MMORPG's!

I love playing video games.  I like to play all sorts of them! When I was younger, I didn't need a friend to play with me.  I would play for extensive periods of time solving puzzles, beating bad guys, and finishing different games.  I would arise early to play, as well as go to bed late because I was playing them.  This I did purely for the fun of playing, and the sheer wonder of the creation of them, the stories they held, and the experience I had while playing.  But now, I cannot really sit and play a video game by myself.  I'm not all that sure why, I just become sick of them after awhile, and I need to share the experience with someone.  Even the MMORPG's.  I now normally play with a group of friends, either in my neighborhood, or my best "buds" from across town.  We make memories playing them and have more inside jokes than I can list on all my fingers and toes!  I get too bored very quickly while by myself.  Some of my relatives however, are hooked.  Everything in their schedule that is not the game, revolves around the time set aside to play the game.  It's very destructive, and I'm very worried about them.  Their habit is similar to what I used to have, but more extreme (don't get me wrong, I still love playing video games).  Somehow I recognized that real life can be better, and they have yet to realize what they are cheating themselves out of.  I now go to spend time with them and show them what life can really do for you.

Internet Piracy!