Thoughts on Lord of the Flies

I finished Lord of the Flies by William Golding today. It's amazing. One of the best books I've ever read. If not the best book I've ever read. Easy to read, yet quite deep and very true. It portrayes the darker side of human nature in a very fitting way, I think. Also very nice and not too overdone use of metaphors.
For those of you who haven't read the book and are too lazy to read the wikipedia article: It's essentially about a group of boys who are by themselves on a deserted island. While they act quite civilized in the beginning, things turn bad and some of the boys are harmed. I won't tell you more in case you want to read the book and don't want to be spoiled. Anyway, I could go on about this book forever, but the book is only the starting point of my thoughts.
As I said, the book is very true. We can look at psychological experiments (e.g. the stanford prison experiment ) or things that happen in real life (e.g. raiding, torturing and raping in times of war) to see that the book is not a far-fetched story that would never happen in real life. It seems that there is a part in (almost?) every human being that wants to seize and exercise power, that wants to hurt and kill and humiliate. Usually this beast inside each of us is kept in check by society, by culture, by civilization or by law. But if certain circumstances arise - either because nobody else is around or because it's a situation to which the normal rules don't seem to apply - this beast suddenly becomes freed and takes control. This is scary, but not a very new thought to me. However, what I'm wondering is this: If we really are like that, then why don't we all live like that? Why did societies evolve almost everywhere, where there are rules that tell us not to kill etc. As far as I know all of the major religious groups have rules like that and even though death penalty is still legal in some parts of the world, just killing someone because he/she pisses you off is not. Why?
A couple of answers come to my mind (that most people are better off in a society that provides safety for (almost) everyone etc.) but no matter which answer, the next question arises: If people really believed that a system like that is better for everyone or whatever the reason might be - why do they get rid of all these rules so willingly, so quickly, if they get the opportunity?

New haircut again

I got a "lesbian haircut" (as people call it) yesterday. Here are some pictures. They look stupid as pictures you take yourself almost always do, because noone has arms that are long enough, but they should give you a general impression of the haircut. Voilá.

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Some quick thoughts on loss

I have discussed the loss of a person with a lot of people the last couple of years, especially in the time where it was my honest opinion that the best way to go through life would be to never get close to anyone, because you might lose him or her. Most of the time it came down to the question "is the pain that you feel after you lose someone worse than the good things you experienced before were good?". And I never really had a good answer to that other than "yeah, I think the pain outweighs the good things".
Just today I thought that that's not the point. Yes, the pain is excrutiating, but what is even worse, is, that the loss of someone makes every good memory you have of him or her, everything that was good - all the things that people told me outweighed the pain and were worth it - turn bad. You think of something good and then immediately your next thought is "and now he/she is gone". Instead of making you smile, like it used to, the memory makes you sad. At least that's how it is for me.
Just felt like sharing this. Maybe it will help some of you to understand my thoughts on the whole topic better.

Second post in one day? Whaaaaat???

Stolen from a friend, who stole it from someone else. Gosh, I love things like that!
If I wasn't myself, but...
... a month: September
… a day of the week:Wednesday
… a time of the day: 11 pm
… a planet: uranus (haha, might be influenced by Sailor Moon here)
… a sea animal:whale
… a direction: left!
… a number: 9
… a piece of clothing: a pair of worn out jeans
… a piece of jewelry: one ring to rule them all... just kidding. A piercing at a weird place.
… a cosmetic-thingy: Jesus, did I really say I love things like this? Just.. something not too girly, I guess.
… a flower or plant: Rosemary
… liquid: rain
… a tree: an apple tree
… a bird: a stork
… a piece of furniture: bed
… weather: summer rain
… a mythical creature:a sphinx
… an animal: a spotted hyena or a cat
… a color: green
… an element: iron
… a car: an old VW-bus
… a song: It's hard not just to pick one of my favorite songs, but a song that I think is like me. "Silk Road" by Kitaro.
… a movie: a documentary about a serial killer
… a movie character: Magenta from the Rocky Horror Picture Show
… a character from a book: Alanna from the lioness-series by Tamora Pierce. At least that's the character I identified with most so far (even though I was 8 or something the first time I read it, so it might not be an up to date picture of myself)
… a mood: calm
… a body part: eyes
… a facial expression: looking sceptical
… a subject at school: math
… an item: a book
… a word: alas
… a feeling: being on edge
… unhealthy snack? (Knabbergebäck, lacking a good translation): a home made cheese cookie (it's not sweet, but salty and, well, with cheese, and delicious)
… a sport: wrestling (I would be terrible at wrestling, but for some reason I feel like that would be me)
… a drink: coffee
… ice cream favor: chocolate-chili
… a fairytale: nothing with a prince who saves the girl, that's for sure... um... "the story of the youth who went forth to learn what fear was"
… a toy: a Rubik's cube
… a country: Tuvalu (a little country that will be gone when the sea leven rises - Vanitas!)

had a dream...

... you and me in the war at the end times.   . . . not really, but I felt like quoting it.

Anyway, I did have a dream, which was again pretty stressful and not very pleasant. After I dreamed about a friend of mine being pregnant and alone with me (aside from jerks who didn't pay attention to her at all) when she suddenly started to have her baby and me being unable to reach anyone on the phone - neither her boyfriend nor an ambulance -, today's dream was about my family.
For some reason my sister, my mom and my dad, who was still alive even though it wasn't in the past, made a trip to this place called Gleichberg near the town where I grew up. It's a mountan that has the remains of a celtic settlement and the ruin of a christian church on it and a lot of beautiful nature around it. While we were there it started raining like crazy, so my mom and I wanted to go back. My dad and my sister, however, wanted to stay, so we just left without them. When we were home, which looked completely different from any place I ever lived, we watched the news and saw lightning striking the woods at the Gleichberg and starting a fire. At the same time, the news anchor (who by the way looked like that woman who did the interview with Charlie Sheen in which he told he wasn't bi polar but bi-winning) reported that there was so much rain, that mudslides were expected. My mom started crying and I got in the car to go back to the Gleichberg and find my sister and my dad. When I got there it was the middle of the night and I couldn't really find my way. I was calling my sister and at least she called back and then came running to me - I was only halfway up the hill by then. She was very scared and told me she didn't know where my dad was. Shortly after that, however, he came down the mountan on a bike. When he wanted to stop he was to fast and it was to muddy, so he crashed into tree. I was just glad that both of them were safe, but we still had to get back home. When we were in the car, there was suddenly (but not surprisingly in the dream) a friend, Anna-Lena, who used to live next door for a while when we were kids, in the car, too. My dad, who was driving, wanted to take her home but she just asked "how many kilometers is it till Nürnberg?". My dad answered and she said "okay, let me out, I'll walk" - which is ridiculuous. It's 100 km or something. But she wouldn't change her mind so at last my dad pulled over and let her out.

The whole dream stressed me out. Besides that, I slept longer than I expected and am still in a bad mood. Lately I feel like university sucks, I want to quit it and want to do something completely different. Something less think-y. All this academic stuff is just a bunch of people wasting money for fun and for making their careers. A lot of the stuff psychologists (who do science) do is interesting at all but I don't see the point at all. Of course that's not true for all of science or even for all of psychology, but I'm just in a "meh, leave me alone"-mood these days. I would rather open a Café.