Category: Kephen’s Commentary
A myriad of articles on my opinions about current events and controversial topics.
Posted on September 20, 2018
by Kēphen
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My name is Kephen Merancis and there’s really no easy way to start the conversation that we need to have. It takes a lot of courage to break the wall of silence that stigma builds. It takes at least a little bit of hope… Continue Reading “Out of the Darkness: My Experience with a Mental Health Condition”
Category: All, Behavioral Health, Human Condition, Kephen's Commentary, MiscellaneousTags: *See All Posts, Behavioral Health, Bi-polar Disorder, Depression, MCRD, Mental Health, Mental Illness, San Diego, Suicide Awareness, Suicide Prevention, USMC
Posted on June 9, 2018
by Kēphen
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To be Acknowledged as Existing 7,432 Americans will wake up today to what will be their last day alive, most of whom will not know this ahead of time. According to the American mortality rate published in 2016 by the National Center for Health… Continue Reading “To Be Acknowledged As Existing”
Category: All, Human Condition, Kephen's Commentary, MiscellaneousTags: *See All Posts, Appreciation, Awareness, Friends, Friendship, Gratitude, Lessons on Living, Love, Loved Ones, Positive Influence, Thich Nhat Hanh, What Matters
Posted on March 19, 2018
by Kēphen
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The Inexplicable Have you ever stopped to think for a moment how incredibly rare your existence actually is? The odds that you would ever come into being are literally on average a million to one. That’s literally a 0.000001% chance that you would be… Continue Reading “The Inexplicable”
Category: All, Human Condition, In Loving Memory, Kephen's Commentary, MiscellaneousTags: *See All Posts, Appreciation, Awareness, Behavioral Health, Dealing With Loss, Death, Delusion, Dying, Ego, Ethics, Existence, Existential, Existentialism, Fulfillment, Gratitude, Happiness, Honesty, Human Connection, Insight, Inspiration, Introspective, Joy, Lessons on Living, Life, Loss, Loss of Loved Ones, Meaning, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Mortality, Philosophy, Purpose, Rarity of Life, Reality Check, Reflecting, Ruminating, Truth, Value of Life, What Matters, Wisdom
Posted on March 19, 2018
by Kēphen
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How To Research Your Family Ancestry So you’ve decided that you want to research your family ancestry, but you don’t know where to begin. Genealogy, the study of family ancestry, is both immensely rewarding and incredibly time consuming. For most people, the time required… Continue Reading “Genealogy: How To Research Your Family Ancestry”
Category: All, Human Condition, In Loving Memory, Kephen's Commentary, MiscellaneousTags: *See All Posts, Advice For Beginners, Building A Family Tree, Family History, Family Research, Genealogy, How To, Inspiration, Learn About Your Ancestors
Posted on February 7, 2018
by Kēphen
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Ben Tre: Keep The Loneliness Warm I hold my face in my two hands. No, I am not crying. I hold my face in my two hands to keep the loneliness warm two hands protecting, two hands nourishing, two hands preventing my soul from… Continue Reading “Ben Tre: Keep the Loneliness Warm”
Category: All, Atheism, Religion and Spirituality, Human Condition, Kephen's Commentary, Miscellaneous, PoliticsTags: *See All Posts, Ben Tre, Bombing of Ben Tre, Buddhism, Buddhist Monk, Da Nang, Destruction of Ben Tre, Facts, Ho Chi Minh City, Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, PBS, Politics, Public Broadcasting Service, Saigon, Self-Immolation, Southern Vietnam, The Vietnam War, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thich Quang Duc, Viet Cong, Vietnam War
Posted on January 30, 2018
by Kēphen
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What the Story of Hiro-Kala Teaches Us If you’re not familiar with Hiro-Kala, I’ll give you a brief glimpse. He is a Marvel Comic Universe fictional character created by Greg Pak and Ron Garney, appearing from 2008 through 2011 in such series as Skaar:… Continue Reading “What the Story of Hiro-Kala Teaches Us”
Category: All, Human Condition, Kephen's Commentary, MiscellaneousTags: *See All Posts, Axeman Bone, Bruce Banner, Caiera, Galactus, Hiro-Kala, Hulk's Dark Son, Incredible Hulk, Marvel Comics, Sakaar, Skaar, Skaar's Evil Twin, The Story of Hiro-Kala, Who is Hiro-Kala?
Posted on December 24, 2017
by Kēphen
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When A Parent Dies Sometimes we avoid things we don’t want to accept or acknowledge as true, a futile attempt to hold onto the bliss of unknowing. Days after my mom passed away last year, I sat down and wrote about what I was… Continue Reading “When A Parent Dies”
Category: All, Atheism, Religion and Spirituality, Human Condition, In Loving Memory, Kephen's CommentaryTags: *See All Posts, Closure, Dealing With Loss, Death, Dying, In Loving Memory, In Memoriam, Loss, Loss of Loved Ones, Remembering, When A Parent Dies, When Mom Died
Posted on December 13, 2017
by Kēphen
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The Passenger: Commentaries on the Nature of Consciousness What is consciousness? It is defined as a subjective experience, an awareness of self or one’s surroundings and the ability to react to it. Right now, as you are reading this, there is someone inside your… Continue Reading “The Passenger”
Category: All, Human Condition, Kephen's Commentary, MiscellaneousTags: *See All Posts, Buddhism, Callosotomy, Christof Koch, Corpus Callosum, Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emergent Property, Gregory Matloff, John Wheeler, Left Hemisphere, Multiple Personality Disorder, Nature of Consciousness, Neuroscience, Panpsychism, Philosophy, Physics, Right Hemisphere, Roger Penrose, Sam Harris, Split-Brain Theory
Posted on December 9, 2017
by Kēphen
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“The mind withers and the soul may fade, but the heart will always beat in sync with the one who carries it.” – Colin Madsen February 18, 1991 – April 04, 2016 His Light Carries On: The Life, the Loss, and the Love of… Continue Reading “His Light Carries On”
Category: All, In Loving Memory, Kephen's Commentary, MiscellaneousTags: *See All Posts, Abduction, Adventurer, American Medical Examiners, Arshan, Buryatia, Cerebral Wayfarer, Closure, Colin Madsen, Compassion, Death, Evidence, Facts, His Light Carries On, In Loving Memory, In Memoriam, Inspiration, Irkutsk, Justice, Loss, Loss of Loved Ones, Loving Kindness, Murder Case, Nature, Peace, Remembering, Russia, Russian Investigation, Siberia, Torture, Truth, Tunka National Park, Unsolved Murder, Violent Interrogation
Posted on October 10, 2017
by Kēphen
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The Macrocosm Perspective Siddhartha Gautama taught that in order to see what matters we must first remove the ego from the equation. Nothing rips apart my ego or sense of self more than the Universe. The above photo is a compilation of the center… Continue Reading “The Macrocosm Perspective”
Category: All, Kephen's Commentary, Miscellaneous, TechnologyTags: *See All Posts, Andromeda Galaxy, Betelgeuse, Black Holes, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Dark Energy, Density, Earth, Ego, Eta Carinae, Event Horizon, Facts, Fun, Gravity, Hubble Space Telescope, IK Pegasi, Interstellar, Laws of Physics, Light Years, Mass, Matter, Milky Way Galaxy, Proxima Centauri, Red Dwarf, Science, Singularity, Sirius, Space, Spitzer Space Telescope, Stars, Sun, Supermassive, Supernova, Universe, Virgo Supercluster, Void
The Ardent Axiom 
Out of the Darkness: My Experience with a Mental Health Condition
Posted on September 20, 2018 by Kēphen
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My name is Kephen Merancis and there’s really no easy way to start the conversation that we need to have. It takes a lot of courage to break the wall of silence that stigma builds. It takes at least a little bit of hope… Continue Reading “Out of the Darkness: My Experience with a Mental Health Condition”
Category: All, Behavioral Health, Human Condition, Kephen's Commentary, MiscellaneousTags: *See All Posts, Behavioral Health, Bi-polar Disorder, Depression, MCRD, Mental Health, Mental Illness, San Diego, Suicide Awareness, Suicide Prevention, USMC