i'll admit that the video had some very powerful pictures and quotations, however even as an American I can realize that they are cases of a very small, vocal part of a much larger group. Yes, those events happened, and yes, there are people like that, but the same could be done with Americans to make us all look like fat, ignorant whores. Which I know would offend quite a few people. Actually, that sounds a lot like what the people in this video think of us. Now, i'm not saying that these people are nothing to worry about, because the effect they have is very real - just that we don't need to worry about every single Muslim we meet. In fact, there are a lot of non Muslims we should be worrying about, even American citizens we should be worried about. The way I see it, there will be good people, and there will be bad people, and they will appear in all race, gender, creed, and nationality. I also try to think about what it would be like living over there, i myself don't have much faith in the media, the way i see it everyone has their own agenda and their own bias, and I assume that as much as our media made all muslims look like suicide bombers, their media made us look like an evil army coming to burn their villages and rape their women, children, and probably men too. If this is what they're learning from their only source of information, how are they supposed to know any better? like in the book 1984, history is made by the people who write the history books, the only way to know what is really happening is to be there in person, and know all people involved, and their thoughts and goals.

However, I don't think it would be a good idea for someone to tell his/her significant other that if (screw it, i'm not going to type out every he/she. For the point of conversation im just going to assume from now on that the person I am talking about is a heterosexual male) he didnt have her he would have someone else and probably be just as well off give or take. She wouldn'nt like hearing that very much, like in an episode of American Dad where Francine (the main character's wife) asks Stan (the "american dad" the show is centered around) about what he would do if anything happened to her, and he replies "oh, i'd just marry my backup wife". I don't want to get too much into what happened in the episode, but I can say that by the end multiple people ended up both maimed and dead. Point being, observations like this are very good to realise, but will probably yeild better results if you keep them to yourself.

Its pretty funny how the singer used was able to take a commonly held assumption and tear it to shreds with some statistics. after he said "if i didnt have you i would..." i doubt anyone who hadnt seen the video was expecting him to say "have somebody else". I think that even though statistics show that everything he said in that song was fairly accurate, most people tend not to think about the possibility of it happening... From what i've seen, when someone is in a relationship, that person tries to avoid thinking about the possibility of that relationship ending, even though the chances of it working out perfectly and for ever are very slim. The people I know all seem very optimistic in this area, acting like talking about the 160possibility of it not working out will jinx them worse than just the probability being stacked against them.

and maybe at that moment they truly have? but will the lessons learned in several years in prison be forgotten again after several years back in society? I take a bus back home every once in a while, and almost every time, i've sat next to at least one person who just got out of jail. One had been in for seven years, and asked me if he could borrow my phone to call some guys from a gang he was a member of to pick him up. Another one, who had been in for a shorter amount of time for posession and a parole violation, had already managed to pick up a quarter ounce of pot on his way to the bus station, yet another, who had been in for narcotics, had plans to go to a rave that very night to celebrate getting out of jail for good behavior... nothing changed with these guys. Then again, they hadn't been in for life, it would be pretty hard to see what a guy who just got out of jail after a life sentence was planning on doing other than being buried.

when I read this something clicked, and for a second I thought about what it would feel like to know that my life outside of a small concrete box had ended. It sounds like to everyone this man knew, he was already dead even though he was still just a kid when he went in. And now he's about to turn 50, he's been in jail over half his life, and missed out on so many things. All because of one decision I think he'd give anything to reverse. In the heat of the moment it might seem like the right thing to do, or the best course of action, but after having twenty six monotonous years to think about it the reasons become meaningless, as he said. If he was released right now, would he leave a changed man? or would he fall back into old patterns, and even though he isn't violent while sober, get drunk again and kill someone else? because i'm sure for some people, 26 years would be enough- yet for others a thousand lives couldn't change them. Theres really no way to know, anyone can act nice. anyone can make people think they've changed..

A rational approach would be to ask around and see why all the people are running, perhaps it is a fire, in which case i would not enter the building. or maybe I would discover that a group of people had met up inside to have a screaming and running out through the door contest, in which case i would continue on my way in. But either way, my initial reaction would be to follow the crowd. It seems safer doesn't it? Lemmings aside, if all my friends jumped off a bridge, I probably would too after I can see if they make it. And I guess if someone goes along with a huge group of terribly misguided people they can still rationalize that because so many other people were wrong, it must make them less wrong somehow. Not less dead however, as evidenced by the heavens gate cult. (too soon?) Anyways, my point is that even if someone tries as hard as they can not to conform, the best they will ever be able to achieve is not conforming to the mainstream ideas, at least for now, because it seems non conformity is becoming more and more mainstream every day.

Growing up, I associated with a group of non conformists (The phrase "group of non conformists" being an oxymoron). And it was through this group that I realised that it's not possible to not conform. Well, possible maybe, but I have yet to see it. If you read into it, everyone who wears pants is a conformist! And if someone knows that and then decides not to wear pants, they're still conforming to a group of non conformists. I know several hipsters and goths that call themselves non conformists and it takes massive amounts of control not to just laugh at them as they stand there dressed in outfits that are all but cookie cutter replicas of everyone else within their group. In the video, it's funny to see how the person who isn't in the loop blindly follows the people around him with no instruction at all, but at the same time, I think it's deep in human nature to follow the crowd for survival. If i'm about to walk into a building, and just as I open up the door one hundred people come running out screaming, chances are I would not go in.