Ideas

As you may or may not know, I am Hungarian and I live in Hungary. I think I’ve had a good education, not school-wise, but from my parents. We lived in the US for 3 years, Ireland for 4 years and Greece for another 3 and my parents were very democratic and understanding in our upbringing. I like to think that I have a broad view on life and I think I can think myself into other people’s shoes quite well.

The main problem with my country is that people have a total lack of this capability, and if they can do it, they only see the negatives. This is paired with a huge dose of envy, which seems to be the only impetus people have around here. Here’s a quick example.

You have to know that income tax up until yearly 1,700,000 HUF (roughly 10,000 USD) is 18%, above that it’s 36%. There are some nuances, but that’s the core of it. One of the parties said that they wanted a unified rate of 18% for all income groups. Someone I know commented this morning that she disagrees because this way richer people pay less tax and poor people will not be better off, so the richer will just have another reason to laugh. Well, this is the stupidest comment ever. I mean you can judge and comment on the actual plan, but isn’t it stupid to argue against something by saying, I don’t want this, because people other than myself will be better off? The other problem I have is that this person (who I like very much apart from this) would be the first to let hell break loose if she would be paying 36%, because this is disproportionately larger.

So my problem with Hungarian society is that for most people there is an equality between “I’m better off” and “the other one is worse off”. This is a quality I hate the most in anyone, just because my blog performs worse than others I am happy for those guys who do better, and help them if I can. Everyone would be better off doing this, since mostly people do better because they know something you don’t, or they are simply better at it. Instead of wishing them to do worse, why not accept that they are doing better, and try to catch up.

This is the huge difference between US culture for example. People are brought up to be hugely competitive, in an environment that thrives on competition. Some people seem to have a problem with this, and while it does have faults it does provoke thought, and breeds the kind of people who do not give up after one failed attempt. People also tend to have a more open mind, not thinking of competition as the enemy, but simply as competition.

Everyone wans to live better in my country, but all they can do to achieve this is to bring down those who actually do live better. While this is theoretically a viable route to take, I don’t really think it’s the good one. Instead why don’t people try to do better themselves?

I was driving home the other day when I heard that Iran has called for a boycott of European products because of a movie depicting Muslims in a negative way. I am actually quite happy because of this, and here’s why.

The main reason is that this is what civilized people do. You don’t go around threatining to drive planes into peoples’ homes just because you’re pissed about something. I am happy that Iran is choosing this style, a boycott, to go against this movie, and not terrorism, or some other stupid act.

The film depicted the Koran and the Muslim faith in general as being violent and violence oriented. Now this is just totally not true. I mean sure, you can call it violent, but then again you can call the Catholic faith just as violent, of not more so. Oh sure, the Bible is all nice and teaches people good things, but in the end this is not what counts, just as the Koran doesn’t count for them.

Oh, I know, 9/11 was horrible, and we all know that those nice people in the crusades gave a gentle spank on the bottom to the infidels right? An estimated 200.000 people were killed in the crusades by Catholics, I don’t think the Muslims are quite there yet. Oh also, don’t forget the happy times everyone had with those nice people at the inquisition. The comfy Judas Chair and the workout you got from the rack were second to none. They killed around 5,000 people by the way.

My point is, that while I am not a huge fan of religion, there’s nothing bad about the content of the religions themselves, neither of them. It’s the people who are the problem, as always, twisting and turning the words of their sacred books and brainwashing people to do bad things.

What I was trying to say is that Iran is doing the right thing with this boycott. You can disagree or agree with the subject matter all you want, but the reaction was the right one. It’s a glint of hope that we are going in the right direction, that the other side of the word can also act rationally. I don’t know what Iran is up to with the nuclear stuff, but this is a step in the right direction.

It sounds pretty sad that I would write that as I title, but there you go. My birthday was actually quite awesome. I started the day by going to the store, my mother and my girlfriend needed an alibi so they could set things up. I arrived to a yummy cake, my favorite that my girlfriend can make.

We then proceeded to go upstairs where I had the task of finding 23 presents (I turned 23). Each present also contained a card which had the instructions for the next present. I got loads of cool stuff, many of which were geared toward my stomach, yum yum! I also got a 3D puzzle ball, poker cards with a Cars theme (awesome), dealer and blind buttons, a cool series of drawn pics, incense, a candle I wanted to buy for some time, and a load more.

A after we were done we had my favorite food for dinner and played some poker with my Mom, my brother and his girlfriend. They deal me a dummy hand after I took a toilet break, with me having two kings, with two more on the table. Unbeknownst to me, my girlfriend had two aces, with two more on the table. I suspected she had Aces, so I didn’t go all in, but I did loose fairly much with a big laugh, they gave me my money back though.

Following that everyone else came and I got some more presents, the main one was a Nintendo Wii, which has since been heavily used. I decided that I won’t download games for it, I will simply buy one new game each month and this way I’ll have loads. I hope I can keep myself to this, I already want my next one! The first game was Rayman, Raving Rabbids, a very funny and fun to play game.

The five of us played the Wii for ages, until 1am about and we all went to bed with a warm fuzzy feeling, although my birthday was over. Bummer, never mind, there’s always next year.

I have to say the title looks a bit EMO, but let me explain a bit. I am not against saving the environment or trying to cut back on needless waste, but I try never-ever to participate in these things. Instead, I try to do my part every day. I recycle, I turn of the lights if I don’t need them, and I also use a lot of candles, which help reduce lighting and also look good.

The reason I hate these “once every year” things is that they give normally wasteful people a chance to clear their conscience. They waste electricity all year round, but it’s ok, since on Earth Day they switch all lights off for an hour. How convenient! In reality that one hour means nothing, if you turn lights off you don’t use every day you will probably save that much electricity in a few days.

My point is that you don’t help the environment by being really loud on that one day. I never advertise environmental friendly views, but I try and use less water, always recycle and do some other small things I can. Instead of switching off all your lights for an hour that day switch them all on, and on all other days try and conserve some more.