Heart of Darkness has got to be one of the most confusing books I have ever read. The story is pretty straightforward in my opinion, but the way the narrative frame changes back and forth gets pretty confusing. It reminds me of Catch 22, which severely hurt my brain. I do feel pretty lame compared to everyone else, because it seems like they’re all grasping it a lot more than I am while I just sit there like “uuhhhh yeah okay”.  I probably re-read each section at least twice, and still end up being confused and frustrated.               

                Other than that, I really like the message behind the book. The fact that the depravity of human nature leads us to commit savage acts is a very central theme of this novel. For me, this means the harvesting of ivory, something that in recent years has led to the extinction of the black rhino, and the endangerment of many other species. There is a lack of respect paid to exotic animals, and in many countries you can pay large sums of money to hunt them. While this does help the local economies, it’s still a very morbid thing to imagine.

                Now that I’ve gone off on a tangent, I’ll get back to the book. It’s confusing as hell and I’m a little frustrated, but in all I like where it’s going and think it’s extremely interesting and pretty cool.

More Rants

There’s been a concept haunting me a lot lately, and that is that family is family and blood is sacred. I've cut ties with many of my family members due to them being poisonous and bad people. I get a lot of crap for it from my other family members though, warning me that it’s toxic and unhealthy to cut family out of your life. But I beg to differ, for me personally, cutting these certain people out of my life has made me a better person and saved me a lot of hurt and stress.

 I don’t think that anyone has the right to tell you who you should and shouldn’t keep in your life. Blood is not a binding factor and no one should have to deal with any kind of emotional, physical or mental abuse and have it justified because that person shares DNA with them. If someone is not being a healthy influence in your life, don’t let them be a part of it. It may not be easy, but the outcome will be worth it and that negative person will no longer be able to feed off the negativity from the pain they caused you.

                It’s true that you cannot choose your family, but you can choose who you let into your life, and if people want to make you feel guilty about it, then that’s their issue. Removing poisonous people from your life is no one else’s choice but your own.

Being in Colorado for 2 weeks, I’ve been thinking about the legalization of marijuana and the reasons I support it. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding this topic for many understandable, but invalid reasons. First of all, marijuana is an all-natural substance, as opposed to substances such as alcohol and cigarettes, which have proven negative effects on the body. There have been no known pot related deaths, yet many have been caused by and involved alcohol and cigarettes, which are entirely legal. In my opinion, it’s complete crap that 2 extremely harmful substances are easily accessible and normalized, while marijuana which has been proved beneficial to numerous medical conditions is criminalized. Not only does this make it difficult for people who could actually benefit from occasional use, but it incarcerates an unnecessary amount of people and fills out nation’s prisons with “criminals” who have committed petty crimes.

Another aspect that people tend to overlook is the use of hemp. Hemp is a precious resource that is ignored because of its relationship to pot. Hemp can produce paper, clothing, oil, medicines, food, and plastics and grows at a much faster rate than trees and other resources currently used, making it an optimal resource for an abundance of products.

If people could just stop making marijuana out to be an evil, life ruining substance and realize all the good it can do, the world would be much better off. Although it has negative connotations, the drug does a lot of good things for a lot of people, and we as a society need to start looking at it in a different light.