I was asked my opinion about Christianity

 I'll have to condense this as I have things to do and the topic has no variables to the "devout".

 I believe you are among the most confused groups of people that walk the planet and here's why > 

 First off, my Lutheran grade school and my Catholic high school plus its preachers, teachers, priests and pastors taught me that "God is Everything". Ok

 Is He an orange, yes - is He dog poop, no - Is He you, yes - Is He Islam, no - Is He your "x", no - Is He Trump, no - Is He porn, no - Is He love, yes - is He hate, no, on and on and on until I get a headache!

 Basically, He's whatever the speaker of Christianity favors and He's not what the speaker dislikes or can't fathom

 Ok

 What is the correct book to see the true God?

 Answer: Depending on how one distinguishes a different Bible version from a revision of an existing Bible version, there are as many as 50 different English versions of the Bible. The question then arises: Is there really a need for so many different English versions of the Bible? The answer is, of course, no, there is no need for 50 different English versions of the Bible. This is especially true considering that there are hundreds of languages into which the entire Bible has not yet been translated. At the same time, there is nothing wrong with there being multiple versions of the Bible in a language. In fact, multiple versions of the Bible can actually be an aid in understanding the message of the Bible.

https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-versions.html

 Wholly shit, I'm sorry I asked.

 Why is it that I had never seen Christians and the Jewish community unit and hold hands before ISIS? Don't answer, screw it.

 If the Bible is the correct book then why has it gone through so many revisions?

 Are we the only living beings in the universe?

 I use to be asked was I ready for the 2nd coming of the Lord to which I answered, "Where in the hell did he go"?

 Why is there always a white Jesus painting in the churches when he was Jewish?

 I believe in God and I curse him out from time to time, care to tell me I'm going to hell? Whatever happened to being honest?

 There are 10 commandments and if I text you a picture of my private area, there's no sin, not in the commandments.

 Do priests that molest little boys go to hell? What if they beg forgiveness after each event?

 *Remember, God is everything! *Until you disagree with it or dislike it.

 Are Blacks going to heaven?, What about Geechies?

 Are American soldiers doing God's work as they kill in battle?

If there was "nothing" here before God and now there is "sin", God must have brought it with him,. Do you agree?

 My puppy is "supposedly" not going to heaven because he has no soul (Nor my Blackfoot Indian ancestors because they didn't read your book) but you actually think I'd wish to be held hostage in a heaven with you pasty faced hypocrites? My puppy is most likely 10 times more loyal than you, more trusted and honest than you and has never told a lie or cheated in a relationship. (Also, physics dictates there is no tomorrow and therefore there is no time or place for a heaven "after death")

Can you say that?

 *I may have ruffled some feathers but a true Christian's spirit teaches him or her to forgive and forget *It's not that they actually do it but this allows them to take an imaginary "greater stance" than the common man because they are better than the rest.

 *Don't feel left out, "All organized religions are full of shit"!

You're poor in the mind before you're poor in the pockets

9 Things A Wealthy Mind Does That The Poor Mind Does Not

The richest 1% of the world currently control 48% of the world’s wealth. The top 80 wealthiest people in the world control approximately $1.9 trillion, which just so happens to be the amount controlled by 3.5 billion people on the other end of the spectrum. Can you believe that? There are 80 people in this world that collectively share the same amount of money as 3.5 billion people!

many of us would like to believe that each one of these 80 wealthiest people inherited their wealth, in actuality only 11 did. The other 69 have built their immense wealth from very little. Look at Warren Buffett, for example. He grew up as a middle class child, but got addicted to the world of business and investing at a very young age. Today, he is worth $72.3 billion.

Nobody gave him this money. He earned it because he has always took actions like the rich would and avoided the actions of the poor. Since he has so much wealth, should he be required to give his money to the rest of us just because we haven’t become as successful? I don’t think so. Instead, we should all be studying the things the rich do and should be actively doing them ourselves!

1. Believe in the Law of Income

The wealthy mindset believe that they will be paid in direct proportion to the value that they deliver to the marketplace. In other words, if they are integral in forming a product that nearly everyone in the world wants/needs, then they should be compensated accordingly. The inventor of the self-dimming rear-view mirror which is now in almost every car in America. Do you think it would be fair to only pay him $15 an hour for the time he put into this invention? Or, since his product has been an amazing success, perhaps he should receive a portion of the proceeds from each sale?

2. Focus on Opportunities, Not Obstacles

There once was a shoe salesman that found himself in a far-away country, trying to sell shoes to the natives. The only problem was, nobody there wore shoes and the sale was often quite difficult. The salesman soon gave up in frustration and decided to leave the area. On his way out, he met another shoe salesman. “Don’t bother entering this town.” said the first salesman, “These people don’t even wear shoes.” The eyes of the second salesman grew wide, “No one has shoes?? Then I could sell a pair to everyone in town! How fortunate we are to stumble upon an untapped market!”

It’s all a matter of perspective. The people who are not winning often see obstacles and quickly give up, while a wealthy mindset see the the opportunities and enter arenas that many wouldn’t dream of.

3. Associate with Positive, Successful People

Wealthy mindset people know that attitude is everything. If they continually hang out with people that complain about the weather, bad-mouth the government, and speak negatively about the state of the economy, then they will likely start doing the same thing! If, however, these same people start hanging around individuals that continuously talk about success, opportunity, and the positive things in life, chances are that they will see the world from an entirely different perspective!

Instead of the world being a terrible place to live, it suddenly becomes a glowing land of success and opportunity. A great example of this is United States citizens vs. immigrants into the States. Immigrants are 4x more likely to become millionaires than those of us that grew up here. The main reason? We talk about the negatives of living in this nation, while immigrants see it as the land of opportunity. Quite frankly, it is what you make of it.

4. Willing to Promote Themselves and Their Value

Wealthy mindset people aren’t afraid to tell you what they’re great at. Most of the time, they aren’t embellishing. It’s the truth. People not financially getting ahead might be great at many things, but they always seem to downplay them into nothing (either because they think negatively of salespeople or because they’re not confident in themselves). Therefore, you assume their skills are just that – nothing. If you want to be wealthy, you must learn how to become a salesperson and at the very least, sell yourself.

5. Grow Bigger Than Their Problems

The people who are not financially getting ahead see a problem and they chalk it up to bad luck and quit trying. A wealthy mindset run into problems and might scratch their heads for a while, but they don’t give up. They’ll work and work until they discover a solution to the problem so they can win in the end.

6. Wealthy Mind Think Both, the Think Either Or

Economists came up with the term, “opportunity cost” long ago. Put simply, this means that if you choose one thing, then you are ultimately forgoing something else. In other words, if I have $5 and I buy an $5 ice cream cone, then I am ultimately giving up that pack of gum that I wanted as well.

This is how people who are not financially winning think too. They have a set amount of money and they think that they can either spend it one thing or another, but not both. It sounds logical doesn’t it? But the wealthy mindset focus on how they can get both.

Following along the same lines as the example above, let’s give a wealthy person $5. They too want both ice cream and a $5 pack of gum, but instead of thinking either or, they decide to go for both. To do this, the wealthy mindset would not buy the ice cream or the gum initially, but might instead buy a 24 pack of water for $5. They walk down the road a ways, sell each water bottle to passers-by for 50 cents and earn a total of $12. Now they can enjoy their ice cream, gum, and still have $2 left to spare! The wealthy mindset has a “both” mentality, not “either or”.

7. The Wealthy Mindset Focus on Net Worth, Not Working Income

Financially struggling people often talk in terms of hourly pay, whereas wealthy people know that an hourly income is not nearly as important as someone’s net worth. One can earn quite a lot of money per hour, but if they don’t learn to keep any of it, they will still be broke in the end. The wealthy mindset person knows that a large net worth will net many opportunities and will create more wealth in the future.

8. The Wealthy Mindset Constantly Learns and Grows

Many kids today think that they’ll be able to work just hard enough to earn their degrees, and then they won’t have to pick up another book for the rest of their lives. They might turn this dream into a reality, but they’ll likely “just get by” forever.

The wealthy mindset starve for knowledge because they know that the more they learn, the more likely they are to succeed. The average millionaire reads one non-fiction book a month because they want to grow themselves into the person that they want to be. The average broke person will read nothing and will never change. As I like to say, “the rich constantly learn and grow, and the poor think they already know.”

9. The Wealthly Mindset Doesn’t Mind Taking the Hard Road

The poor often stay poor because they take easy road after easy road, until they find themselves in bum-town. As an example, one person might have the option to work at the local grocery store for $8 an hour and could learn from the very wise businessman that owns the place. But instead, this person decides that making $8 an hour is for chumps and they start dealing marijuana for $200 an hour instead. The hard road could have made them into a successful business person, but they instead chose the easy road and eventually got addicted to drugs and ended up in prison.

The wealthy don’t mind taking the hard road because they have a long-term mindset. The current life might be difficult, but they know their actions today could benefit them tremendously in the future, so they trudge along and keep their eye on the future prize. By staying focused and doing the things the rich do, many of them will become successful and wealthy as well.

African Americans Are Killing Themselves, Don't Blame the White Man

 Many other ethnicities have joined the "Thick" craze and are killing themselves as well. So you've decided to be "Thick", you may wish to consult with your physician as this type of mental thinking leads to the physical "eating".
 You're essentially putting yourself at a higher risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, stroke and a ton of other health conditions.

 Do you think these pictures are cute? You may be retarded.

 I got quite a few responses to this post, I wonder why? LOL All I can say is, "To each his or her own", personally I would puke.

Drone attacks are essentially terrorism by joystick

Bernard Hudson is the former director of counterterrorism at the CIA and is a nonresident fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center.

A failed assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday was mounted with explosive-armed drones, according to news reports. Nine days earlier, and on the other side of the world, terrorists claimed to have sent an armed drone to attack the international airport in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. No one was killed in either case, and the circumstances of both remain murky. But a new and dangerous era in non-state-sponsored terrorism clearly has begun, and no one is adequately prepared to counter it.

In Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, government officials said one or more drones detonated explosives above the audience at a nationally televised military event. Several people were injured, though not the president or his wife, Cilia Flores, who was standing next to him onstage. Maduro blamed his political opponents.

In Abu Dhabi, Houthi rebels from Yemen said they had launched a drone attack at the airport. UAE authorities deny the incident occurred, but the greater truth is that it is technically possible — indeed, not difficult at all — for the rebels to have done so. Reinforcing this is the wide belief that the Houthis are being advised by Iran’s special security services, which have shown an impressive capability for such things.

Both of these episodes will encourage other technologically savvy groups and disgruntled individuals to use drones to commit political violence. While news of the events in Venezuela and the UAE was disturbing, the failed attempt in Abu Dhabi is especially worrisome because of the mass casualties that destroying an airliner would cause.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) represent a fresh threat to the traveling public. A concerted effort must be made to confront this threat before lives are lost.

Weaponized drones start with a tactical advantage: Most can fly lower than current technology is capable of readily detecting. Even if they were carrying only a small quantity of explosives, they could bring down a civilian aircraft in flight. Commercial airliners are vulnerable during takeoffs and landings when there is limited time for aircrews to react to unforeseen, and potentially hostile, events.

A simple hobbyist’s drone can down an airplane when joysticked into the airliner’s path. Militarized drones, the kind probably available to groups such as the Houthis, are heavier (but can weigh less than an adult human), and can carry several pounds of explosives at speeds up to 100 miles per hour with a range of 400 miles (about the distance between Washington and Boston). These flying robots can be programmed to maneuver into active airspace and wreak havoc without human guidance.

Airport security, as currently designed, is focused on ways to mitigate threats from people who have access to the facility, such as passengers and staff, and from cargo transiting the grounds. Airports are not designed to guard against purposeful attacks from the sky. More attention to finding ways to monitor low-flying objects such as drones is urgently needed.

One option: Position security drones above airports, looking down with constant vigilance for airborne threats. Another: Eventually require all drones to be connected to local cellular networks so that, at least, hobbyists’ drones can be detected before they collide with commercial jets.

Protecting heads of state from drone attacks will be even more complex, so varied are the leaders’ schedules and public appearances. Not only can preprogrammed drones swoop in from almost any direction, but they can also be used by anyone with the means to buy them. Worse, threats from the sky used to be exclusively the domain of nation-states. That has changed in the past two weeks. Now, a far broader and more elusive menace has emerged and must be addressed.

Weaponized drones are firmly in the hands of non-state actors. No one is safe. Not heads of state. Not the flying public. We cannot afford delay in devising ways to combat this new peril.

Broward schools get security upgrades as new school year nears

https://tinyurl.com/y7b7elpm

Visitors to Broward County schools: Get ready to be inconvenienced.

On the first day of school next year, there will be only one way to get in during the school day at 135 of Broward’s 230 schools. Although many doors will be open for arrival and dismissal, signs and fences will steer visitors during the day toward a “Welcome Center,” where they will have to show their IDs to enter the school.

They also will have to wear a badge as they travel through the campus.

Visitors will see an abundance of these new safety features when school starts Aug. 15, including new fences, double-doors, cameras and security staff. The school district is spending $26 million to create single points of entry at all its schools, with completion expected on all campuses by early 2019.

Expect many new procedures as well as delays and disruptions, Superintendent Robert Runcie said on Wednesday.

“There is no way we’re going to implement security measures the community expects from us and not inconvenience visitors,” Runcie said.

In addition: “Don’t expect perfection on the first day.”

He said there could be confusion about the new rules and long lines as students and parents figure out new routines. Students also can expect more “Code Red” drills next year, which allow them to practice how to behave in an emergency.

The massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14 spurred a spate of new safety measures in Broward and a national conversation about safeguarding schools.

Among the efforts has been speeding up the completion of “single points of entry” for campus visitors, which rely on fencing and door systems to limit visitors’ access to one entrance. Runcie on Wednesday showed the news media a newly completed single-point system at Miramar High School, which got new gates, a full-time security monitor at the entrance, and cameras that staff can monitor from their mobile devices.

“I’ll be able to see students really clearly with this upgraded system,” said Miramar Principal Maria Formoso, who added she got a large real-time video screen in her office.

The school district budgeted $26 million for the single-entry-point systems, an effort that started about two years ago. The plan was expedited because of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas.

The shooter at Stoneman Douglas arrived near the end of the school day, bypassing security. The school district, aware that arrival and dismissal times are vulnerable to intruders, said the presence of school resource officers and the requirement that students wear ID badges will improve safety during these times when lots of people are coming and going.

“I feel very confident about these measures we are taking,” School Board member Patti Good said. “It’s going to become our new normal. Collectively, I hope they make a difference.”

The district also plans to use metal detectors at Stoneman Douglas, but Runcie said details, including who will monitor them, have not yet been worked out.

A retired Secret Service agent has been hired to review what role school administrators and security staff played on the day of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas.

The retired agent, Steve Wexler, will review the actions of school employees during the massacre in which a shooter killed 17 people, school district officials say. The review will go further to include which procedures and circumstances may have affected the tragedy, Runcie said.

“We’re looking at the entire school so we can get some lessons learned and look at what we need to change at that school and any other school,” Runcie said.

"ReWalk", allowing paraplegics to walk again, Awesome

http://rewalk.com/

The "Status Quo"

 I reference the "status quo" often and I admit, I don't think much of them yet they are needed. The herd needs the feed, herders need the herd, the kings need the herders and the gods need the kings. The relationships are all symbiotic.

 There are women that buy the ugliest dresses on the planet but they purchase these dresses with no adherence to fashion and or peer pressure, I respect that. There are men that wear a toupee and they know everyone knows it's not their hair yet they don't care, I respect that as well. There are individuals that walk away from it all and live off the grid with no cell phones, no craptops, very little contact with the masses. etc. and I respect you the most.

 Whether I respect you or not doesn't matter as long as you can live with what you are my opinion is irrelevant.
Me? I do what I do and say what I say as I damn well please because I don't need anyone. My dad / sperm donor once told me, "No man is an island".  (Was that original pops? RIP) I may not be an island yet I live on yachts in the physical world and in my mental world and can visit the masses as I please.

 If you're a follower and you're happy, be a follower. If you're a leader I'll tread lightly because I am not easily led.
 At the end of the day we are "all" just monkey's attempting to gather "what we consider" to be the ripest bananas.

"I know one thing; that I know nothing" or I know that all I know is that I do not know anything", Socratic paradox,

118 Mile March from Charlottesville to DC

 Some things are simply stupid and that's why you have Trump as president.

 There are a group of whites that want to march, chant, dance some bullshit in DC, so fucking what, let them. There's an opposition group of individuals that want to "peaceably" meet them to express their views, once again stupid!

 Here's where we separate morons "and educated" people from enlightened people. The morons and the educated will show up to show and voice their opinions while "enlightened" individuals will go anywhere but there!

 For some you may have to dig deep into your mental wallet and when you do you may arrive at an Accomb's Law type of question > "What if no opposition showed up"? That's right, go fishing, to the mall, play with your children, etc. and simply let them march, demonstrate or whatever bullshit they do.
 I can guarantee you that within 3 years there would be no more marches, your showing up perpetuates the problem.

 Did you have enough in your mental wallet to grasp that?

*I don't blog to make friends, I blog to share a "non-staus quo point" of view.

Are you smacking God, Allah, Buddha, Jehovah in the face?

 I often hear people say that "He, she, it completes me". Is this your "true" sentiment or said figuratively? For this to be said from the heart suggests that your deity of choice created you "incomplete".

You need a license to drive, to fish & to have a dog BUT (You may be retarded)

You do not need a license to have children. How fucking stupid is this? I can count 100 people non-stop that shouldn't have children, they are children themselves.

My opinion jumps right into "inalienable rights". Has anyone considered the inalienable rights of the child? A pill head, crack head, drunk, HIV+, irresponsible, plain stupid, broke, homeless, lives in their mother's basement playing video games individual should be allowed to breed? If you can answer yes to this you are retarded!

 In order to have a child a couple should have to pass an "easy" test for a license.

 - How often should a child eat?

 - How much water should a child drink per day?

 - How long should a child be left in a car?

 - As a parent are you always correct?

 - At what temperature is a child running a fever?

 Many of the individuals "attempting" to read this post have failed miserably already.

Yes I use the word "retarded" I am not politically correct. To place the word "correct with political" is a mental conundrum within itself.

You Aren't A Crutch: You Can't Save People Who Won't Save Themselves

No matter who you are or what your situation is, your life is going to be a struggle. Some struggle more than others and in different ways, but in the end, we all struggle to live.


It's the true reason human beings need each other -- because without one another to rely on, most of us wouldn’t make it. Arguably, none of us would. People need other people in their lives, and good people are always willing to help friends in need.

The problem is understanding what will help -- and what won’t -- can often be difficult. More often than not, a helping hand turns into a crutch. While crutches are sometimes necessary, relying on them for too long weakens you.



Not using your legs for so long only means you’ll find it much harder when you finally have to.

When we find ourselves in tough situations, we take whatever help we can get. The problem is we often take more than we ought to; it’s human nature. So if you’re the one helping your friend get back on his feet, you need to make sure you help him in a way that actually helps him.

Being supportive is helping someone help himself -- being someone’s crutch is helping him as if he couldn’t help himself.

I believe you should do your best to rely on other people as little as possible. While some might differ, it's what I believe. If you can avoid relying on someone, you’re better off doing so.

My belief doesn’t stem from the thought people shouldn’t be trusted, or we should do our best to live our lives in solitude. Instead, at any moment in your life, you may find you relied on the wrong people. It happens. When it does, you’re the one who ends up paying for it.


Sometimes, however, we have no choice but to ask for a helping hand. Sometimes we’re hanging off the side of a cliff and find our arms are too weak to hold on to the cliffside. It’s moments like this you'll be glad you have someone in your life you can rely on.

It also may be times like this when you’re glad you hadn’t been asking for handouts the entire time. People aren’t so willing to help those always looking for help.

Being a crutch is a full-time job -- and it only gets more demanding as time goes on.

In the book "Toxic Charity" by Robert D. Lupton, the author does charity work for decades and compiles his findings and observations.

After years of charity work, he realizes how useless and even counterproductive traditional charity actually is. Instead of helping people, traditional charity ends up leaving them worse off -- always.

Lupton found giving people handouts only led to them wanting more handouts. And over time, people learn to expect such handouts as if they were entitled to them, fully relying on them for their livelihood with no plans for making life changes.

If people can avoid doing work to get what they need in life; they will. If you decide to become someone’s crutch, you may very well find that person sucking you dry. It’s human nature.


People will never change the way they're living unless they feel they have to.

Being supportive allows you to help your friend become the person he deserves to be.

What Lupton did find, however, is allowing and teaching people to help themselves did make it possible for a lasting, positive change to take place. As the adage says...

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
This is where you come in. When your friends or even family members come to you for help, don’t help them by trying to fix their lives or their situations. All this will do is put a Band-Aid on a wound that needs better medical attention.

The only way to help people is by helping them help themselves, by helping them understand how they can best get out of their situation and stay out of their situation.

Real change only occurs when the way we see the world, the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our future, changes. Such changes are difficult to make because they often require a complete overhaul of our current reality.


Thankfully, your friends have you in their lives to support them and help them get their lives on track. By being your friend’s crutch, you’re only ensuring their continued failure.

The only way to help the people you love is by showing them how strong and intelligent they are, and how much potential they possess.

Most people don’t fail because they don’t have it in them to succeed. On the contrary, most people fail because they honestly believe they aren’t capable of succeeding. People who succeed don’t succeed by accident; they succeed because they know in their minds their success is inevitable.

These individuals aren’t gypsies with the ability to see the future. The only thing that truly differentiates them from the rest of the herd is their ability to create the future.

And the only way to create a beautiful future is by first seeing it in your mind. Michelangelo saw David in the stone and released him.

You need to know the life you wish for if you hope to have it. More than that, you have to believe your ideal life is a possibility -- a good possibility. It isn’t always easy to have such strong belief in yourself. How can you believe you'll succeed -- truly believe it -- if life has proven you wrong time and time again?

As a friend, it’s your job to remind, convince even, your friends the lives they've always dreamed of are lives they can one day live. This is really all the support anyone needs.

Nearly all people can take care of themselves -- what most people really need is a reminder they could be great if they choose to.

Do you have true friendships? Aristotle thinks you don't

Name your five closest friends, I’ll wait. Think of the people you can talk to about anything, the ones you’ve known for a while, the ones you can always call. Now, think of how many people on Facebook you can really say are anything like that group. We all still have a guy from high school on our Facebook that we don’t think about until his birthday.

Dunbar’s number, the supposed maximum number of meaningful social relationships you can have, is 150. The median Facebook user has a much higher number of friends than that, how many of them are really people you still know? How many of them are people who you would want to see for no other reason than that you enjoy their presence?

How many of your friends are really your “friends”? How can you know the difference? What is that difference?

In his ethical masterpiece The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle turns his brilliant mind to the problem of what friendship actually is. Aristotle views the good life as requiring not only virtue, an internal good that you are largely responsible for; but also requiring external goods which facilitate virtue and are enjoyable in themselves. Such things include being Greek, male, well-off financially, educated, reasonably healthy, having decent luck, and having good friends. The question of what a friend is takes on a new importance for him.

In book VIII of this work he defines three sorts of friendships, and one virtue of friendship, “Philia” or brotherly love. As with all of Aristotle’s virtues, Philia is the midway point between two vices. A lack of brotherly love leads to the vice of egoism, while the person who is too friendly with everyone is also vicious in their own way. Aristotle would agree that “The friend to all is a friend to none”. To be a self-actualized person, in the Aristotelian sense, you need to master the art of friendship.

But, what are the three kinds of friendships?

The friendship of utility is the first kind of friendship Aristotle covers. These friendships are based on what the two people involved can do for one another, and often have little to do with the other individual as a person at all. The person you buy a drink for so they can score you tickets, put in a good word for you, or even just make you look better by comparison. Such friendships as this include offering hospitality, so he claims. These friendships can end rapidly, as soon as any possible use for the other person is gone.

The second is the friendship of pleasure. These are the friendships based on enjoyment of a shared activity and the pursuit of fleeting pleasures and emotions. The person you drink with but would never have over for dinner. The guy who you go to a football game with but would never be able to tolerate seeing anywhere else. Aristotle declares it to be the friendship of the young. This is, again, an often-short tenured friendship as people may change what they like to do and suddenly be without connection their friend.

In both of these friendships the other person is not being valued “in themselves” but as a means to an end. Pleasure in one and to some useful thing in the other. While these are listed as “lesser” friendships due to the motive, Aristotle is open to the idea of the final, and greatest, form of friendship finding its genesis in these categories, however. 

The final category is “True” friendship. The friendship of virtue or the friendship of “the good”. These are the people you like for themselves, the people who push you to be a better person. The motivation is that you care for the person themselves and therefore the relationship is much more stable than the previous two categories. These friendships are hard to find because people who make the cut of "virtuous" are hard to find. Aristotle laments the rarity of such friendships, but notes they are possible between two virtuous people who can invest the time needed to create such a bond.

While Aristotle encourages us to seek the “pure” form of friendship. He doesn’t necessarily think you are a bad person for having friends of the previous two sorts. We all have them. While he admits that some pleasures are bad for you, he also calls pleasure a good which people do want to enjoy. The real problem in these friendships is when you fail to understand that they are of the lower kind and make no effort to find better friendships.

But, friendships of pleasure are all I have right now. Am I a bad person?
No, but Aristotelians would encourage you to move up. Start thinking about your friendships. Are there any friends who you think you'd like to know better? Do it! If it doesn’t work out, try again. Aristotle is clear: friendships of virtue are rare, it might take a while. Before anything can work, you need to be virtuous too. You needn’t be a paragon of virtue right away, even Ciceroquestioned how virtuous you needed to be to make true friends, but an understanding of Philia would be useful.

In a world of ever increasing social connections, the question of what friendship “really is” is an important one. The guidance of Aristotle, with his views of differing friendships and the possibility for improvement, are one much needed suggestion in our modern world.

Your smartphone📱is making you👈 stupid, antisocial 🙅 and unhealthy 😷.

A decade ago, smart devices promised to change the way we think and interact, and they have – but not by making us smarter. Eric Andrew-Geeexplores the growing body of scientific evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds.

In the winter of 1906, the year San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake and SOS became the international distress signal, Britain's Punch magazine published a dark joke about the future of technology.

Under the headline, "Forecasts for 1907," a black and white cartoon showed a well-dressed Edwardian couple sitting in a London park. The man and woman are turned away from each other, antennae protruding from their hats. In their laps are little black boxes, spitting out ticker tape.

A caption reads: "These two figures are not communicating with one another. The lady is receiving an amatory message, and the gentleman some racing results."

The cartoonist was going for broad humour, but today the image looks prophetic. A century after it was published, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone. Today, thanks to him, we can sit in parks and not only receive amatory messages and racing results, but summon all the world's knowledge with a few taps of our thumbs, listen to virtually every song ever recorded and communicate instantaneously with everyone we know.

More than two billion people around the world, including three-quarters of Canadians, now have this magic at their fingertips – and it's changing the way we do countless things, from taking photos to summoning taxis. But smartphones have also changed us – changed our natures in elemental ways, reshaping the way we think and interact. For all their many conveniences, it is here, in the way they have changed not just industries or habits but people themselves, that the joke of the cartoon has started to show its dark side.

The evidence for this goes beyond the carping of Luddites. It's there, cold and hard, in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say – and what their research shows – is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time.

They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes.

Consider this: In the first five years of the smartphone era, the proportion of Americans who said internet use interfered with their family time nearly tripled, from 11 per cent to 28 per cent. And this: Smartphone use takes about the same cognitive toll as losing a full night's sleep. In other words, they are making us worse at being alone and worse at being together.

Ten years into the smartphone experiment, we may be reaching a tipping point. Buoyed by mounting evidence and a growing chorus of tech-world jeremiahs, smartphone users are beginning to recognize the downside of the convenient little mini-computer we keep pressed against our thigh or cradled in our palm, not to mention buzzing on our bedside table while we sleep.

Nowhere is the dawning awareness of the problem with smartphones more acute than in the California idylls that created them. Last year, ex-employees of Google, Apple and Facebook, including former top executives, began raising the alarm about smartphones and social media apps, warning especially of their effects on children.

Chris Marcellino, who helped develop the iPhone's push notifications at Apple, told The Guardian last fall that smartphones hook people using the same neural pathways as gambling and drugs.

Sean Parker, ex-president of Facebook, recently admitted that the world-bestriding social media platform was designed to hook users with spurts of dopamine, a complicated neurotransmitter released when the brain expects a reward or accrues fresh knowledge. "You're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology," he said. "[The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway."

Peddling this addiction made Mr. Parker and his tech-world colleagues absurdly rich. Facebook is now valued at a little more than half a trillion dollars. Global revenue from smartphone sales reached $435-billion (U.S.).

Now, some of the early executives of these tech firms look on their success as tainted.

"I feel tremendous guilt," said Chamath Palihapitiya, former vice-president of user growth at Facebook, in a public talk in November. "I think we all knew in the back of our minds… something bad could happen.

"The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works," he went on gravely, before a hushed audience at Stanford business school. "It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave."

None of the Bay Area whistle-blowers have been louder than Tristan Harris, a former star product manager at Google. He has spent the past several years of his life telling people to use less of the technologies he helped create through a non-profit called Time Well Spent, which aims to raise awareness among consumers about the dangers of the attention economy, and pressure the tech world to design its products more ethically. Judging by the momentum his movement is suddenly building – he receives hundreds of requests for speaking engagements a month – his message is being heard.

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