If everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other. No. No we wouldn’t.

Another book that was quite enjoyable for me to read. The Host is romance novel about aliens who have mostly taken over this planet and invade humans bodies like parasites. They control their bodies, minds and have their memories and so on. Wanderer (the alien parasite) who takes over Melanie’s body finds that Melanie won’t give up possession of her mind and basically, things happen and they’re in love with the same human and travel to go and find him as he is alive and hiding as part of a rebel group and the adventure begins.

 I could talk about the book and what I thought of it but I thought something else caught my attention and it was basically the treatment of humans to others and their emotions.

Now my opinion on humans is that their greatest strength which is the depths of their emotions is also their greatest weakness. The ability to care deeply for one another and being loving, kind and courteous does not disguise the fact that they are also capable of the most hateful emotions and the likes, but when it comes to hate…see now that is a very interesting emotion.

Do I “hate” people? I like to think that I don’t really in a way as it would be illogical to hate people. To hate is to have an intense dislike to someone or something and quite frankly I think it’s a word that people (myself included) overuse and misuse. To hate a person I think comes from a lack of understanding and perspective, I cannot hate someone for doing what comes naturally to them, nor can I hate something that they cannot not change. Sure a person might be able to change a lot of things about themselves such as hair colour and the clothes they wear but I’m a great believer of the fact that no-one can change what and who they are.

What a person is.

I really despise humans for their ability to come up with the most ridiculous and illogical conclusions and then act on them with solid conviction. Quite frankly, there’s just too much hate in this world. Now I’m a black, British male (In fact, I don’t even see myself as them, but that’s another post) and that supposedly means I’m supposed to take on certain characteristics and you all know the stereotypes, don’t try to pretend, but I purposely reject for obvious reasons, a rebel if you will (another word that’s overused). I like to think that if I like or dislike something it is because myself personally likes or dislikes it and not because of outside forces. If I like something like…oh let’s say the Twilight Saga, it isn’t because everyone else likes it but because to me it is enjoyable and appeals to me, and from the other side if I hate it, it won’t be because it is “popular” to hate mainstream stuff or popular things but because I did not care for it or it wasn’t enjoyable to me. I don’t not like the Godfather because it’s “cool” to but because I can make my own mind up for myself as to what I think about it.

What has this got to do with what a person is? Well, that is simple, as an ‘Englishman’ I’m supposed to hate Scots, Welshmen, Irishmen, Germans, and the French (the cheese eating surrender monkeys), but the truth is, I don’t. Why would I? What is there to hate? A person cannot choose the location where they are born, we can’t say while we’re in the womb “Mother, point your fanny towards England and give birth to me there”, nor can they choose the colour of their skin, or their hair colour and things like that, heh, if we could choose all of this stuff while we’re in our father’s testicles then believe me, I would not have chosen to be a black male with short hair and brown eyes and yet we have so many people who hate others based on that. I know some do it as a joke and stuff, but it’s become so commonplace that I think people are starting to genuinely believe this sort of stuff and that is what worries me. That humans genuinely believe that these factors have an effect on the sort of person you are. If I was white or Swedish or gay I’d still be the same person…in fact now that I mention the gay thing, urgh no, I need to get my thoughts on that out there because that is really something that bothers me about people but I think I’ll leave that for another post or something.

So yeah, hating on a person due to a factor which has absolutely no correlation to their behaviours is just a big no-no for me. It’s not as if a person can choose these factors and yet they get a lot of shit for it which just troubles me. Sad sad times.

Who a person is.

This is the only thing I see when meeting new people, who a person is rather than what they are. So I am colour blind if you will, I don’t see a person’s ethnicity as a guideline for the sort of behaviours they’ll exhibit, I merely see a person, nothing more, nothing less. They say that within the first 15 seconds people will make up their minds about someone and judge them, so a lot of it is based on appearance, the clothes they wear, their body language and so on but me, I like to think everyone gets a fair chance no matter what they look like because I know that whether you wear a pink/blue/bright green/black coloured shirt/vest/poncho/jumper that is too big/too short/too tight/too baggy/just right, that does not affect whether you are a kind, loud, rude or an arrogant person. Hell, even if a person was naked I still wouldn’t judge them on that. And yet I’m told employers will reject candidates if they don’t look right at an interview, we are constantly being told that we have to look good and dress smartly. This world is just one big world of people judging each other.

I’m not going to lie you, when people celebrate diversity and the likes, I’m not celebrating it in the same way. I think if everyone was the same, the world would be a better place. Some might say it would be boring but it would only be that because you know that there’s something more. If everyone was white there wouldn’t be any racial hatred, how can there be when it’s not possible to be different? We don’t get tired of the fact that there’s only 2 sexes because we know that there is no other option, As it stands you can only have sex with males and females, there isn’t any other kind. So if everyone was one colour we wouldn’t get tired if it was physically impossible to be another colour (I’m aware that there’s such thing as hermaphrodites but they only serve to strengthen my point further. Rather than celebrate the fact that there’s another option and hurrah for diversity, mention hermaphrodites in a conversation and you’re more likely to get something along the lines of eww, gross etc, Lady GaGa anyone?).

It’s because there are different races, nationalities, genders and the likes that people start to think…no…believe that one kind is superior to another. I remember watching a Fairy Odd Parents episode where Timmy (as dumb as usual) makes a wish where everyone was the same with disaaaastrous consequences. But I’d like to think that it wouldn’t work out so bad, in a world where everyone is there same the only way you can decide whether you like a person or not would be on the only thing that really matters and affects how one behaves. Their personality.

Now I said who you are can’t be changed but I’m thinking I should slightly reword that. Maybe it should be that you can’t change who you naturally are and your natural tendencies because we have a thing called deception.

Anyway getting rid of positive and negative connotations to traits like arrogance, kindness, jolly, dozy aaaand so on, these traits would be all we have to decide whether one likes a person or not. If I don’t like a person it’s because I don’t like their particular combination of traits. I also cannot hate them for being who they are, just like I find it ridiculous for people to hate me for who I am when all I am doing is being real to myself and doing what comes naturally to me and what I feel comfortable with. Sure you can call me rude, arrogant, detached, anti social or whatever else I’ve been called but the fact is you yourself don’t like those traits therefore you cannot tell me that what I am is right or wrong. I could go to more parties and be more sociable. I could invest more time in listening to peoples problems and come across as a kind hearted nice person, I could change my aura so that it’s one of comfort to others and change things about myself in order to please others but at the end of the day it’s not who I am. It’s not the person I’m comfortable with, concentrating on pleasing others so much that I forget that the only person’s opinion who matters is yourself.

So I change for nobody, I be myself. If I feel like helping another person with something it will be because I feel like it, not because I feel I have to. If everyone is having a blast and I feel like being by myself then I will do just that, rather than pretend to be something I’m not.

If you aren’t happy with the person that I’m happy with being, then that’s your loss not mine.