Giving blood

18 Nov 2006 I'm an idealist.
I believe in the ideal society. One where everyone can be happy and everyone is equal.
Such a society would undoubtebly be a democracy: a society governed by itself, with noone better than the next. A democracy with freedom of speech: a prerequisite for a democracy. Unlimited freedom of speech that is, because everything should be open for discussion and argumentation.

It is unfortunate that I had to realize how far away we are from such Utopia.

Some newspaper did a poll.
To the question "Do you think it should be possible to ban certain books ?", 54% of this country's population answered "Yes"

Why does this scare me ?
I don't want to live under censorship. I enjoy my free speech. But apparently, 54% of my fellow citizens believe otherwise. This leads me to conclude that we don't deserve democracy because we are too stupid to handle free speech.

But I digress from the topic.

Some time ago, I was planning to do some work for a good cause. But I had some doubts towards my motives. I came to the following conclusion:

It is better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons,
then to do nothing at all.

When I think back, I've done a lot of things to help others with the hope that they would like me.
Most of the time though, these people were not so grateful (if they cared at all)
I consider it a flaw in me. It's easy to take abuse of my good intentions. And maybe this is the source of my distrust against all people.

A friend once said:

Gratitude is one of the worst reasons to help people for.

And I can only agree with him. I should stop doing things for people in the hope that they will thank me or be nice to me.

But I still like to do good.
I still plan to work on good causes.

And giving blood last week, is one of those causes.

Twice every year, 2 studentgroups organise a blooddrive called
BloedSerieus
This year I participated, because I believe my blood can do some good to some poor sucker in a hospital somewhere.
The good thing about giving blood, is that it is it's own reward. I don't expect anyone to be grateful for my blood.

I plan on giving blood on a regular basis now...

Since I noticed that http://www.bloedserieus.be
had not been registered yet, I took the liberty to do so.
At first, I pointed the URL to the original BloedSerieus website. But since the blooddrive is over and the site didn't contain information on where to go to give blood if someone still wanted to, I made a small text and pointed the URL to that.

Now all it needs is a couple links and google will index it :)