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Where are we going? what a question... this question definitely has no answer for me, personally. I have plenty of things that I would like, or even better yet, love to do. But this would result in nothing being completed, of course this is from a certain point of view. Everyone would like to feel as if they have accomplished something in their life, that distinguishes their personal skills and knowledge. This is usually a most difficult thing to accomplish for many many reasons. I would love to play video games all day and night long, or even create my own the way I see a perfect video game. This can be done alone, self-taught, but I am sure it would be a most laborious task. Instead groups of people collaborate to create a single organism to mass produce and sell to the public. Without the potential for making money, these groups would not exist.

Money makes the world turn. At least in the western world. Without money or an accepted form of currency such as gold, we would not be "where" we are today. I'm reminded of this show called "Meet the Natives" where these "Native" men from a place called Tanna, which I believe to be a island somewhere in the pacific. Anyways they visit a cattle ranch, after seeing the hundreds of cattle one of the men comments and says something along the lines of "he has a lot of cattle he must be rich" and one of the other men responded talking about how we are all specialized in our lives because we live off of money, whereas they need to provide for themselves and their family. If they need something they need to barter for it, they can't just walk down to one of the 100 supermarkets/convenience stores within a few mile radius. The different walks of life that still manage to exist within our money infected world amaze me.

Is being completely specialized in your career/life choice a good idea? When it comes to working with a larger group, having specialized people would be the best bet in order to be efficient in accomplishments, just like when creating a video game! We all grow up trying to find our true self and our talents and lack of talents. Eventually we will settle on a career choice, possibly even what's called a career "path" and many end up repeating their actions many and many times over again, some careers allow the workplace to differ, but their overall duty is the same. If our society for some reason collapsed, what would we do then? Life as I, or we see it, will cease to exist. We will be forced to rebuild our infrastructure to form one organism, or we will each learn to be self sufficient such as the natives.

Being able to be self sufficient allows one to not have to rely on others. Which all of us whether we realize it or not, depend on each other so we can live how we wish to live. Millions would starve if for some reason supermarkets weren't receiving food, which would result if millions dying. Those who already have gardens full of food and ranches where they can produce food are more likely to survive and continue on, whereas people such as myself would perish if unable to adapt.
So where are we going? We all tend to be able to see where we would like to be, the roads to this destination almost always tend to be in a zig zag pattern. I have been trying to decide what I would like to do for the rest of my life but with so many choices and thinks I would like to have it is very difficult to see where I am going. Plans change, especially with me, I have no idea what I see myself doing, or where I see myself at. I have been taking college level classes since 2006-2007, originally with an interest in biology, and quickly changing my major to chemistry just because of the options presented to chemistry majors. Being a completely undecided young/old individual my only plan as of now is to complete my degree. After obtaining my bachelors in chemistry I will be the only person in my family with a college level degree. Both of my parents attended college for a brief amount of time, my mother's much longer than my dad's measely 7 months in college.

I have no idea where I am going, and there are so many things that I wish to accomplish in life. My mother's mother died from breast cancer when I was very young, I have one faint memory of this completely awesome individual, I assume she was awesome based on how completely outstanding my mother is. Just this past year my father's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. After losing one of the most important people in my life, I would be absolutely crushed to lose another grandmother. This has made my life goal to cure cancer or at least find a way to help prevent and treat. This, like many other things, requires money, people, and time. There are things that prevent me from getting to where I want to go and take my life. Many paths we all take end up leading no where, or eventually after many zig zags back and forth we eventually find our way. Is that where we want to go though? My major was chosen in order to assure me that jobs for chemistry majors were plentiful and well paid so I will be able to indulge in meaningless material possesions, My dream is to reach a level of wealth similiar to Bill Gates, Just so I could donate money to organizations and people who could benefit much more than I would ever be able to benefit from. Money infects us all and most of us are concerned about money, even homeless people depend on money given to them in order to keep comfortable, eat, survive, or waste their money on unnecessary items such as drugs. Money in my eyes is the most popular parasite of all. We all depend on money and without money we as humans struggle to survive.
This is money seized from a supposed mexican drug lord, my mother sent me this. Just goes to show how greedy people are. Money is what drives us all and has essentially become mostly a part of our daily lives. If I had this quantity of cash sitting in a room inside my mansion(which I will also post pictures of), I definitely wouldn't have anything to do with drugs. Parasites like this will stop at nothing to make money and life is worth nothing to them. If drugs were completely legal and easily obtainable would people like this exist? No, well they would, just in another form such as the tobacco companies, those fat cats make copious amounts of money to kill people and flood their lives with numerous carcinogens on a daily basis. Along with this email my mother sent me contained pictures of many many many firearms and ammunition as if this guy owned his own armory. This individual even owned large cats... Not house cats.. Money has infected this person so much that he now owns none of it, and will be most likely in jail for the rest of his life. The militia have removed a single parasite from our lives and in return we just have another to fill this persons shoes. When will it ever stop?!

So where are we going again? Who knows, After a destination is agreed on there will be numerous ways of approaching and tackling our ideas, interests and concepts. We all have a direction we would like to pursue but this makes agreeing on a general direction almost impossible, there are infinite ways we are able to reach a destination, the path is the most difficult part of the journey.

In response to your comment, Joe Kostylo

First of all I thoroughly enjoy your way of thinking! You're thoughts on the middleman being the parasite and the relationships you establish make perfect sense to me. I love how you incorporated Serres "Every society founded on work is a police state… in the end it comes down to eliminating grasshoppers." Your concept on how parasites will always be around cannot be falsified. We see this everyday, as much as our society tries to rid ourselves of a parasite it always manages to exist or pop-up somewhere. This is seen in Dracula, Dracula procreates these new vampires which will repeat the process, but this is also the case for Van Helsing. There will always be a Van Helsing character as long as there is a Dracula character. Analogously there will always be characters such as Dracula's first mistress and characters such as Harker. These relationships are obvious but your thinking thinks even deeper and that's what I like about your blog, your analogies are flawless and I absolutely LOVE analogies. You point out to me the view of a third perspective, that of the middleman.

Van Helsing seems as though he enjoys killing vampires, even if its his best friend, he seems to almost benefit from vampire hunting. But it's hard to comprehend exactly how he personally benefits from this.. I think this is because he doesn't benefit at all from killing vampires, he at least once, if not twice speaks of being able to rid the world of this terror named Dracula, it seems as though he does this for the benefit of the rest of the world. Which we know to be true, without Van Helsing. Dracula would most likely still be alive and we would all be vampires by now(or up on stakes) what a terrible mental image.

Lord Dracula...

Today's film was very interesting as a first time viewer. In the context of parasites the most obvious relationship with Dracula is how he tends to represent a parasite. Lord Dracula in this movie feeds off of other people during the night by biting peoples necks, mostly women, and sucking their blood. Although we never actually see this feeding taking place it is implied in many scenes and then the scene fades away, only to see the vampires with blood on their chin later. This all to me comes off as a perfect parisitic relationship with dracula being the parasite and humans being the host. The host,humans, are the food for Dracula just as in many parasite symbiosis.

This movie is a big conundrum for me, he turns some of his hosts into parasites themselves to live alongside of him, others we assume he randomly feeds off of during the night. What was the point of Dracula fighting off his first mistress to save Harker? I think that is his name. Is it because he wanted to feed off of Harker himself? The film made it difficult to understand what Dracula was doing with his victims. It appears as though whenever Dracula would bite another woman their emotions would be very scattered, they seemed as if they were looking forward to being fed off of yet scared at the same time. The anticipation and hesitation mixed together are hard to interpret. The relationship between Dracula and his victims is also very mixed and confusing.

Van Helsing who is essentially the backup or reserve for Harker introduces a twist into the relationships of Dracula with everyone else in the film. Van Helsing seems to have one focus in life and that is killing Lord Dracula. He is a doctor by profession but his obsession/life seems to be with the destruction of Dracula and saving the world from him. In a certain context Van Helsing can be seen as the parasite getting his thrill or food from killing vampires. He realizes that once Dracula has turned them they need to be killed with a steak. Van Helsing kills his best friend, Harker, once he has found him laying in the crypt along with Dracula's initial mistress that Harker managed to kill. Van Helsing's hosts' are the vampires he manages to kill. The more I ponder upon this thought it becomes more obvious that this relationship seems to exist within the movie. Many different relationships exist within this movie...

We as humans want to just point the finger at Dracula and accuse him as being the parasite because he feeds off of us. Yet some of the characters in the movie tend to feed off of Dracula and his power himself. Others feed off of him to destroy him. Who is the host and who is the parasite? This parasitism isn't a one way road as some would suggest such as Michael.