Week 2: Are my ideas not good enough?

Most of my life I have had some crazy ideas, from political ones to ideas about where to put the picture on the wall. I like to be heard, and for most of my life I have not been heard. I was always the guy who people would shut up, or shout over, or berate into submission when my ideas were deemed too "stupid" or a "waste of time". Having heard this for years on end I would after a while start to down talk my own ideas and tell myself that "you need to shut up, stop being so stupid". Anyone who has experienced this will know what I mean, and for everyone who doesn't picture this. Imagine that every time you speak there's this voice in your head screaming at you, down talking your ideas and telling you that your ideas hold no merits. this is what I experienced throughout elementary and middle school, and it was hell.

Ideas are an interesting thing to me. Some people are paid for their ideas, they are expected to lead us forward with their ideas and we hold them in such high regard. But where does that leave the rest of us? Anyone who is not an idea maker is relegated to the back burner, and we are just expected to go along with what the idea makers say and not question it. That is beyond ridiculous to me and is completely going against the ideals of America.

Going into high school I decided that I would stop letting people tell me to shut up, so I started to speak out and give my opinions whether people wanted them or not. I began to identify with the anarchist school of thought, and I made it very clear. Now let me explain what that means so no one gets the wrong idea. Anarchism as a school of thought is all based around the idea of systems and people serving the overall needs of the people, and having the ability to dismantle those systems that do not help the people. This thought system revolves around the belief that the people need to help each other and should not rely solely on a system or a group in order to survive. People often think that it's all about pure chaos and hell raising, but in reality it's about controlled chaos in order to better serve the people.

Nowadays I find myself much more able to share my thoughts and opinions because I realized something. Ideas are things that people owe to other people. You owe your ideas to the world and the world owes it to you to listen. If we all of a sudden started to shut ideas down and ostracize people for their ideas then we begin to fail as a society. I learned the hard way that you need to share ideas and opinions, even if it means pissing some people off. If you don't, then you're doing yourself and society a disservice.