*huff* *puff* Is the dust gone yet?

Wow.

I'm surprised I don't see virtual dust on this pathetic excuse for a blog. Oh well, guess I'm not cut out for regular airing of laundry, dirty or not.

Another semester has officially concluded. Unsatisfactory results have come out, and now the next pre-sem hustle and bustle is about to start.

This has been a semester of trials and tribulations, friendships formed and nearly broken. A semester of slacking and cramming, resolutions and frustration.

Sometimes I feel like a rope in a tug-o'-war match. I'm a uni student, shouldn't I be studying? But what happened to enjoying life? I've become so addicted to living (i.e enjoying myself) I don't want to quit and submerge myself in the sea of attempted scholastic excellence. Yet that comes at a price, as reflected in my grades, and, unfortunately, the piece of paper which I will graduate with will determine my future.

But is my future doomed to be static? Study, graduate, work, occasional promotions, start a family, die? What can we really determine for ourselves, and what is determined by other powers? I'm a humanist, I believe humans can achieve whatever they set their minds to, yet I find myself lacking a drive to excel, and the will to challenge the norms.

Then I ask, what makes you human? The ability to think? But animals have demonstrated an ability to learn, not to mention certain animals are born with an innate sense of how to do certain things, which humans do not have. Take the bee, for instance. It performs a dance to inform its hive mates that there is a rich source of food. Did it learn to dance? Was it taught to dance? If it knew how to dance from birth, does that not mean that it is more intelligent as a species? Does a bird learn to fly, or is it taught? Or was it born with the knowledge of how to fly, yet had to wait till physical maturity to do it?

So what makes a human, human? Emotion? Elephants bury and mourn their dead, what makes our emotions stronger than theirs?

Physical power? Don't make me laugh. Based on physical characteristics alone, "the horse is swifter, the elephant stronger, the butterfly more beautiful" (Inherit The Wind).

So why are we now the dominant species? We breed slower than most animals, we are definitely not the most physically dominant of species, what makes us superior? Our "civilization"?

But civilization imposes restrictions, limits behaviour. Can you walk out naked in public anymore? Not unless you are 5 or have a wish to be incarcerated.

We consider ourselves to have achieved a level of intelligence beyond that of the other billion species that inhabit this planet. But won't that intelligence cause our doom? Fettered by arrogance, conditioned by society, we presume dominance, going s0 far as to claim that the ultimate power created us in His image. So our collective self-destructive instincts lead us into further "development", leading us along the path to destroying the miracle of life granted to this planet, blinding us to the destruction we have wrought, and continue to inflict, upon Gaia and its inhabitants.

No matter how globalised the world claims to be, it is still as fragmented as ever. Dictators rule in several countries, authoritarians move towards democracy, democracies move toward socialism, socialists move to authoritarians, all this traps us in a cycle of governmental confusion. Never at any point in its history, has humanity ever united. Never has there been a universal consensus for any issue, unless it be the existence of gravity.

Our fragile social constructs are moving into virtuality, lessening the ties we have to nature, further fragmenting ourselves. Artificial constructs now rule our lives; money is power, the Internet is our saviour. Why do we need nature? For the gifts that we so arrogantly claim for ourselves and ourselves only. To provide fuel for our artificial means of holding a semblance of society together.

I want to return to our roots, to a simpler existence, to divest myself of the myriad demands of society. Yet I find myself too cultured, too ingrained, too addicted to the various constructs I have denounced as artificial. No longer is Nature sacred, it is a distraction from the new gods of the modern world.

One day, I hope to just..... I dunno, be a tribesman in Africa or the Amazon or something, just live life as it was lived a million years ago, to rid myself of modernity and enjoy a life with less comfort, but more realness.

I certainly wasn't expecting to produce a philosophical post, not when I was bemoning my poor grades. Maybe I should have been an Arts student. *sigh* Unfulfiled fantasies, dreams departed from reality, imagination bounded by ingrained attitudes.