History Always Repeats Itself

Over this past week, while I was sick in bed and not being able to do much of anything except get better, I came to a realization that has finally given me inner-peace. The irony is that these same four words use to be a source of frustration at the injustice of society and the world at large. “History always repeats itself.” It used to frustrate me because it boggled my mind how today’s leaders seem to repeat the mistakes of empires and recessions past and so on. I mean if every empire collapsed within itself because of overextension and maxing out on resources that were eventually  too costly, how can we be doing the same thing again?

The reason is of course that “history always repeats itself”. Nations rise and fall. Most of them become forgotten. Few are ever remembered but the end result is the same. Same thing with people. We live, we grow old, we die. Only a few of us are remembered and only a very minute few get immortalized (at least for now). With this mind, nothing I can do will change anything and so I should cease from needless worrying.

Some may see this as fatalistic and to some extent they are right. However, at least for myself, it’s also a very realistic point of view.  Ideals are good things to sought for but the reality is never close to achieving them. Just look at socialism and capitalism. They’re both idealistically beautiful in their own way but the reality of those societies are more dystopic than utopic.  Suffering and inequality are both a part of our societal paradigms and they can never be expunged.

That is why, instead of constantly worrying about the problems of today and possible problems of tomorrow I now just try to make the best of my days.  Work to eat and enjoy comforts and pleasures whenever I can get them.  Luckily for me I don’t have any offsprings or this mindset would be a lot harder to achieve. And I am human and as such I will falter and gripe about some news headline someday.  But as long as I keep that four-word phrase withing my consciousness (history always repeats itself), I’ll find my path again and continue on my way to the end.

Embracing My Inner Mac Fanboy

I’ve spent quite a bit of money on Apple with my annual membership fees of MobileMe since the days of dot mac and after much time exerted on trying to resist using all of its functions I’ve decided to embrace it whole-heartedly.  Part of the reason of course is the money. If I spend $99/year for a service, I might as well use it to its fullest. The other reason is Google’s exponential growth these past few years.  It just seems that they are spreading their tendrils on every bit of technology available and with the fact that they’re in the business of selling information for ads and my  sudden urge to limit how much exposure I have on the grid, it just seemed like the right time to switch from Gmail to MobileMe.

Also, as it may not be all too clear, my constant fiddling with technology is all for a single-minded purpose and that’s of course convenience and minimizing functions. And since I have an iPhone and MobileMe works seamless with it vs. Gmail it was just much easier to make this decision. Why it took me this long to come to this decision? Various reasons of course. One was that I was trying to weed out of MobileMe initially. But now I’m embracing the fact that I’ll most likely never use a non-mac platform for personal use again, if I can help it.  It has been the simplest and most pain-free computer experience that I’ve had all my life and even though it comes at a premium, most conveniences are at a price.

Just look at cell phone services. The cheapest one is T-Mobile. But the best overall mobile phone and data service in New York City is Verizon. So do you save money and risk dropped calls and faulty internet connection on your cell or do you just pay for pain-free service? At the moment I have AT&T but that’s because of the iPhone (obviously). And with the rumors that the iPhone will be launched under the Verizon platform pretty soon, I’ll look forward to switching to even better service as soon as my contract expires.

So no more Windows and no more dreaming of the possibilities of Linux once I get around to learning how to use it.  Just Apple all the way, with it’s exclusive-all-encompassing yet simple to use service.  Now to bask in my convenience and ease of use.