What have you done lately?

Hailing from Agoura Hills, California, Linkin Park is always one band to talk about our green planet. They have held charities to help victim of Hurricane Charley in 2004 and also Hurricane Katrina the next year. Here is the intriguing part. They also donated $75,000 to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in March 2004, and this foundation helps the surviving children of Special Operations personnel who were killed in a training accident or in action.
In their most up to date music video, "What I've Done", shows animal species being poached or being slaughtered. I also seems to have an underlying message, the cause of human population is killing all our valuable inhabitants. Enstein once said, "If the whole species of bees disappeared of the surface of the globe, man would only have four years of life left." This is a very thing that our government should have an interest on. They fail to notice the little things that can be resolved. Yet they so willingly fight wars that are meaningless, and always lose.

Is the Sky over?

As time passes, I see that this government doesn't care about the present problem affecting every nation on the globe. A world surrounded by pollution is not good for our legacy's life expectancy, and as the earlier generation we must find alternatives to our everyday resources. Now, pollution is not only described as the harmful chemicals found in the sky, but it is also classified as light energy, heat and noise. The little things that we think are unimportant are the ones that are affecting us the most.for example,noise pollution encompasses roadway noises, aircraft noises and industrial noise, as well as high-intensity sonar.

The other day I found a song by Serj Tankian called Sky is over. In this song, it describes how civilization is destroying nature with pollution. There is this specific exerpt from the song that caught my attention,



" Behind closed eyes lie
The minds ready to awaken you,
Are you at war with land and all of its creatures
Your sick persuasion has been known to wreck economies
Of countries, of empires, the sky is over".

This song had me thinking.
What would be a world without a sky?
Would we still be able to go outside and do the very things we are accustomed to do?
As a kid, I would always stare at the sky and wonder what would happen if we had a huge cloud of smog instead of having our blue sky?

At the end of the music video you can see "Civilization is over" in the sky, but is civilization really over? Not the inhabitants?

I am Iron man

An amazing song by British band Black Sabbath, Iron Man is known as the song that put Black Sabbath on the charts. But, who is Iron Man? Some people believe that this song depicts the life of Jesus and the coming of the apocalypse. In the lyrics,
"He was turned to steel,
In the great Magnetic field,
Where he traveled time,
For the future of mankind,

Now the time is here,
For Iron man to spread fear,
Vengeance from the grave,
Kills the people he once saved."

it is believed to be saying that Jesus was turned to flesh to die and save mankind, but at the same time, kills the very people he was sent to save.

I, however, don't believe this. I believe that this song talks about a person who is extremely different, maybe a little crazy, but good, sacrifices his life(literally or not)for humankind. On the other hand, the very people he died for never acknowledged his good deed. After sacrificing himself, he sees how everybody treats him, nobody cares that he gave his life to save the lives of the people he loved. As a result he sees that his sacrifice was in vain. This guy had everything, but he gave it all away to let humanity live. Since then, he has held a grudge against humanity, despite his best wishes to help he comes back with a new found rage and takes the anger out on the very people he once saved.

War?

What do we know about war? Does it only have to do with guns and explosions? Is it only seen in foreign lands?

The answer to these three questions is that we don't know war so we can't answer the other two. In my perspective, war is a never ending enigma that will always exist as long as we exist. It is the effects of our negative connotations that we have what we call war. The truth about war is that our very governments do not fight for freedom or glory, they fight for wealth and other valuable resources. In a pamphlet that I found in a System of a Down album, before the lyrics, are notes from the band saying that "We first fought the heathens in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism, our excuses for world domination always change." The only time freedom is attained is through death.

American Dream Denial

"There is no flag that is large enough
to hide the shame of a man in cuffs
you switched your signs then you closed the blinds
you changed the channels and you changed our minds
your remainder is an unjustifiable egotistical power struggle
at the expense of the american dream
of the american dream
of the american.."


Above was an excerpt of the song American Dream Denial by System of a Down.
The truth about the American dream is that there is no dream. It is just an achievement one succeeded and now more and more people want the same. My parents immigrated to the U.S. 18 years ago in search of the American dream. They, however, didn't find it. Instead, they found each other and decided to live together.
You see, the "American Dream" is a mere dilemma. You have two possibilities of an outcome. Depending on what you do, it gets you to a certain point. The consequences of which option you choose will eventually predict what you will do or have in the future. For example, you drive your car until you get into a fork in the road. You are trying to get back home, but you don't remember your way back. You decide to take the road on the left, you've been driving for hours, and you're starting to suspect that you should have taken the other road. Now lets say that you take the road on the right. It too feels like if you've been driving for hours. Eventually though, the road on the right takes you back to civilization.
In a way, the idea of the "American Dream" is only acheived through probability not ambition. It depends on which option you take that take you to a certain road, only to find more forks in the road.

The internal System

Events that happened in the past are somewhat subliminal in the future. People can't understand how these causes foreshadow the effects in the future. In a way, people that think like this can be called simple minded because they don't think the way they should. An alternative rock group, known as System of a Down, made a song called Hypnotize. This song speaks thoroughly of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. It utilizes the very feeling of the people who protested to have their own voiced calls for economic freedom.It was a harsh time to live in China. After the death of Hu Yaobang, many protests broke out. These people wanted the same thing that Hu wanted, liberalization. Only one rebel had the guts to stand infront of 3 tanks en route to Tiananmen Square.

The Music Within

Very few people surrender their lives to music. One of these people who devoted their life to music is Jimi Hendrix. He had a huge impact in the 60's because he influenced alot of hippies to have peace of mind. He had a bigger impact with the Black Panther Party who used his fame to further their cause. Hendrix was a supporter of Martin Luther King, and spoke several times of his support for the Black Panthers.

The Unthinking Majority

Knowing the fact that the soldiers going to war to fight for democracy never have a mind of their own. These soldiers only do what they are told to do, and when they don't follow orders, they get punished.
Sometimes soldiers are assigned to kill all exsisting hostiles within an area, making all the higher ranked corporals, lieutenants,CO's, etc. sure that no existing life can carry information to the enemy. But when this enemy happens to be a non-hostile being forced to retreive and send information, these soldiers still attack. I know for a fact that at least one soldier will do the right thing and wont attack, but as a consequence he shall be punsihed for doing so. I call these few soldiers the "Unthinking Majority" because they actually think outside of the box and think about how their services are affecting their mission and if it is a negative one.

Music and Politics

When you hear the lyrics "Why do they always send the poor?" and "I don't need your civil war" does that make you think of the present problems this country is facing? Some people believe that music is a way to release one's ideas on our government and how their mistakes have affected us all.

There are many reasons why music groups make these songs. I believe that music is the only way to release your views on the world, and also a way to express yourselves on these views.