[The 14th Colony]

Here is it, the third act of the 14th Colony Survey series. Mixed in are some questions requiring simple answers, and a few that ask for deep thought. None of them ask for a “Duh, that’s so obvious” response. Like the prior surveys, please copy and paste the questions to your message, so people don’t have to look back at the original questions when they read your answers. Thanks. I hope you enjoy this one.

1- What form of physical contact between friends, family, or spouses do you think the majority of people find most important? Think again. The answer in my mind, IMHO, is not so much pleasure but emotional value.
A) A kiss.
B) A hug.
C) Holding hands.

2- If you could eliminate one thing from the whole wide world that would result in the greatest benefit to mankind, what would it be?
A) Sickness and debilitating diseases.
B) Poverty and starvation.
C) Hatred, intolerance, and indifference.

3- Do you think that our society has advanced in a productive, healthy, conscientious way? Have we really come that far in the last few hundred years? Why or why not?

4- Are you the same person you were when you answered my first survey? I don’t mean your name, DNA, or Social Security number, ect. Your beliefs, ideals, personality, and so on.

5- If you had to evacuate your home in the face of oncoming disaster, aside from loved ones and pets, what three items of particular emotional or symbolic importance would you take with you? What I mean is, what things that mean the most to you as far as your inspiration, your interests, the things that make you or add to what you are, would you take with you if limited to just 3?

6- What films or books, in your opinion, have given a strong message and left an impact on society, either American or worldwide?

7- If you are, or have wanted to be, a screenwriter, name a film that you would have liked to have been involved in because of its uniqueness and/or contradiction to accepted visual styles and methods of storytelling (not the Star Wars saga.). Or in general, for any reason, what film? Why?

8- Your favorite foods, and drinks:

9- Your Top Ten favorite films:

10- Your Top Ten favorite TV shows:

11- Your Top Ten favorite TV personalities, based on their personalities or the character growth you’ve seen in them:

12- Are there any celebrities whom you thoroughly disliked for a long time, only to later start to like them and enjoy their shows, acting, appearances, routine, ect.?

13- What physical aspect or actions, either minor or extreme, of a Star Wars character caught your attention in a way that most people would not notice?

14- Name a personal activity or form of entertainment that you had always looked down upon as obnoxious and infantile, which you are surprised or embarrassed to admit you now enjoy watching or doing?

15- If you could not be of the race, creed, or nationality that you are, what would you have yourself be?

16- Whether or not you saw the Rob Schneider movie The Hot Chick, if you woke up one day and found that you had been transformed into the body of the opposite sex, how would you react? Would you freak out? How would you adapt?

The next two won't be simple. These are the ones you really have to contemplate...

17- Pain is all in the mind. We all know that pain and pleasure, and all of our senses, are how our brain interprets the signals sent by the sense receptors throughout our bodies, which means, from a certain mode of thinking, that all of what we hear, see, feel, taste, enjoy, dislike, are merely how our brain translates the data it receives and are not real. In times of great physical pain, have you ever tried to remind yourself that the pain was not real, that it was merely your brain’s interpretation, and tried to lessen the pain by focusing on separating the brain’s translation of the pain receptors from the wound itself?
Likewise, have you ever listened to music you enjoyed, and really tried to analyze what it was you were enjoying, why you were enjoying it, and how it was making you feel the way you did? Have you ever chewed your food very slowly, pondering why you enjoyed it, how you enjoyed it, and what exactly was “enjoyment”? How about your visual, sensual, and olfactory enjoyments?

18- Michael Corleone said, in Godfather II, “Wealth is just a trick of the rich to keep the poor without it.”
Money makes the world go around. Without it, we couldn’t survive. But we work like dogs and get treated like dogs, by evil bosses who crush us for more money in their bonuses, as ordered by their bosses who do the same to them. Our rents go up or we have trouble making our mortgage, we struggle, and there are many who lost the struggle long ago and are poor and homeless. The more we struggle to buy what we need/want, the more the prices go up and it becomes harder and harder to make ends meet. The more we pay, the more they want; and the more they want, the more we have to make. In many corporations workers are pushed beyond their limits and paid less and given less staff to do more work, in effect crushed by those above them who use them to gain more. Money is saved on payroll and less people have jobs, and managers work harder and get nothing but stress, for the gain of those above them. And the more we struggle, the less we enjoy life in a society ruled by love of money and people intent on crushing others to gain more. But what other choice is there? Can you think of another way for the people of the world to live by, where money is not needed but goods and products are still manufactured and people are able to trade and get what they need to enjoy life without so much struggle and suffering and being taken advantage of by people of power and greed? Could such a world be realistically possible? Is the world as we know it the only way? I am not talking about the Second Coming here or New Jerusalem, for those who have that faith, so please limit your answer or answers to means of human planning and abilities only.