Blogalization

Though it's natural to fear the unknown, the globalization of society is usually a change I can accept with more enthusiasm than apprehension. The drawbacks of a globalized society would most likely be a deterioration of unique cultures as well as the obvious outsourcing of labor and its effect on the economies of the industrialized nations doing the outsourcing. However, all of the benefits of a globalized society seem intuitive; a more peaceful world is to be expected when every country has a vested economic interest in the well-being of every other country, and a supposed downside of globalization, a loss of nationalism, would very much serve to bring about world peace. Without nationalism, that basis for hatred and oppression would cease to exist. In the current world economy it is reasonable to fear globalization's ability to undermine unions for the sake of achieving the cheapest possible labor but that is only because we are in a transitional phase. When workers' unions become globalized as well, the laborers in third world countries will have the same claim to superior working standards and human rights as those in progressive nations with the highest quality of life among workers. The benefits of this far outweigh the drawbacks; I have no doubt we will inevitably see transnational cooperation among workers around the world. Sweatshops will reside in antiquity and the disparity between the salaries of the upper class and those in poverty will dwindle as fair trade will supercede free trade; a reasonable, global minimum wage, once established, would eat away at the ridiculous profit margins of the Fortune 500 and an educated middle class would emerge and thrive. Once we reach such a point of globalization, the benefits are self-perpetuating and will constantly improve; never will any governmental or corporate entity overstep its boundries in a world where there was such a risk of a revolt from a capable people, nor will they have the abundant power necessary as they do today. Globalization might very well be the best thing to ever happen to us as a society.

The Lack of Sports in My Life.

Sports are actually relatively insignificant in my life. I’ve never been particularly athletic or even very competitive for that matter. My involvement in playing sports competitively has been limited to a few local activities that I never really maintained interest in. Watching sports has played an even smaller part in my life. I’ve never truly seen the appeal; it has always just bored me. It’s actually kind of difficult to write 250 words on why sports don’t interest me, so this will probably be a short blog entry. It always kind of annoys me when some sporting event causes traffic, which makes commuting more inconvenient. For right now, the extent of my involvement in sports is the occasional swimming I do for fun.

Thankful for Peers

I really am thankful for the classmates I have and have had throughout my time in school. Every one of the ones I’ve known, even those that never became more than acquaintances or those that I have ceased to be friends with, has played an integral role in shaping my development as a student and even more as a person. I am certain that with a different cast of classmates my entire schooling would have been very different, and as a result of those different experiences I would be a very different individual. I am very grateful that I have had the friends I’ve known, I do not take them for granted. I know that a school is a profoundly lonely place when in isolation, and there are many students that never quite come by acceptance, so I’m lucky to have found it. As well as being able to talk to someone in school, it’s nice to be able to have people to spend time with outside of school, even without any particular objective. Having classmates allows someone to grow as a social being, to develop skills necessary to understand those around them and sympathy for fellow humans. Such an association opens doors for every student; it allows them access to the culture of their generation and allows them to play a role in shaping it. The impact of the community on an organism is significant, and should the organism be out of contact with the community, the community cannot possibly exist. Our day to day associations and friendships play a role, however small, in setting the tone for all human interaction.

Crime and Punishment (of Candide)

I’ve avoided this entry because I have no idea how to fill 250 words with my answer to the question of whether or not Candide’s punishments fit his crimes. They very obviously and intentionally do not. Voltaire specifically makes Candide suffer comically disproportional consequences for his minor wrongdoings. He went for a walk and was therefore a deserter of the Bulgarian army and deserved the execution he narrowly escaped from by pardon! My original plan was to play along with Voltaire’s comedic theme by justifying everything that happened in the story, but I found myself uninspired, and I still doubted that would fill the word requirement. Did Candide’s punishments fit his crimes? Of course not.

My Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy

Dear Cormac McCarthy,
I have recently read your novel, The Road, and I must admit I was fairly disappointed. Aside from the Pulitzer Prize and other accolades your novel has achieved, I’d heard good things from friends. Contrary to their recommendations, I thought it was very much overrated. I will acknowledge that it was significantly more enjoyable than the movie based on it, but that is only because the book lacked everything that would allow for a good movie adaptation. Movies are very dependent upon character and plot development. Your novel was almost entirely devoid of both. I understand that the purpose is to convey complete bleakness and pointlessness in the post-apocalyptic world of the novel, but it just doesn’t make for good literature in my opinion. While it is possible, if unlikely, to get by on excessively elegant and lyrical prose, you did a poor job of this as well. While there are a few good examples of adept use of language, they are few and far apart and are in no way justification for your story’s lack of story. Also, just to make it clear, utter neglect for syntax is not a stylistic choice. A fragmented sentence is almost always simply incorrect, and while they do have a unique impact when used sparingly, your merciless use of them leaves the reader desensitized to that impact. I’m sorry you found quotation marks and apostrophes injurious to your creativity, but they do play important roles and any novelist that intends to have their work taken seriously should use them. I also found the formatting of dialogue and superfluous spacing between paragraphs strangely disingenuous, as if trying to conceal the actual brevity of what is actually probably a novella by some standards. However, that’s really not an important or very serious criticism, as I acknowledge that probably wasn’t your intention at all if you even played a role in the formatting. I hope you found my criticisms somewhat constructive despite my perhaps more malicious intentions in writing this letter.
Regards,
A reader

Poet Defense!

“Go to Tibet

Ride a camel.

Dye your shoes blue.

Grow a beard.

Circle the world in a paper canoe.

Subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post.

Chew on the left side of your mouth only.

Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a straight razor.

And carve her name in her arm.

Brush your teeth with gasoline.

Sleep all day and climb trees at night.

Hold your head under water and play the violin.

Do a belly dance before pink candles.

Kill your dog.

Run for mayor.

Live in a barrel.

Break your head with a hatchet.

Plant tulips in the rain.

But don't write poetry. “

- Charles Bukowski

I find myself unable to defend Charles Bukowski, as he has broken his own dictum of abstaining from writing poetry. This poem was intended to be friendly advice to a lot of young men, but instead it appears to be a schizophrenic to-do list. However, it is genuinely hysterical, so perhaps this bizarre advice is permissible. Really, it seems very few people take him seriously in my experience. I haven’t read much of his writing at all aside from Dinosauria, We, but based on that, I would imagine he doesn’t actually warrant the kind of disapproval he seems to get.

A Direction for the Class to Be Directed in By Direction.

Before deciding what direction is appropriate for the class, the goals of the class need to be clearly defined.  Because everyone intends to gain something different from the class, setting a direction for the entire group and expecting everyone to follow is impractical. The unified goal of everyone in the class would most likely be to pass the class, but since that can be done without meeting the goals of those in the class that intend on learning something, perhaps it isn’t the best goal on which to base the direction of the class. On a more serious note, I would enjoy going over more of the schools of thought of the Age of Enlightenment as well as classical and Eastern philosophies. I think that the more modern (or even perhaps futuristic in regards to thoughts on a post-apocalyptic world) thoughts we’ve gone over need perspective only granted through knowledge of such things. On a less serious note, I think the direction the class most needs is left. Left is a good direction. 

Father & Son

Honestly, I genuinely do not understand paternity. Not to say I do not have a reasoned knowledge of what it is or of its existence. Rather, I simply cannot apprehend it in a visceral sense. This can be really troubling at times as I cannot be certain of my ability to compartmentalize my interactions; to keep that relationship separate from every other association I keep. It seems to me that friendship was substituted for that relationship in my life, and as such I often find myself questioning my capability to clearly discern which is which. It isn’t that I think of every friend so closely, but more so that paternity has become meaningless, common and insincere. When I see characterizations of such strict gender roles, nuclear families, it really doesn’t make sense to me. I wonder if that outlook is common among those in my generation. It must be the case that stereotypical families are comically inaccurate for nearly everyone, but I wonder how many of my peers are so terminally detached from the paradigm that when they see depictions of what the relationship should look like they cannot intuitively grasp it. I really doubt my sense of apartness is in any way uncommon or even severe by the standards of most, so I wonder how such archetypes can even possibly continue to exist in a world where so few can truly understand them. 

How Do I Know What I Know?

The question of how one knows what he or she knows is one of definition. Objective knowledge is unattainable in nearly every matter, as knowledge is essentially subjective. In these terms I think, like Descartes, that the only thing any consciousness can be fully certain of as an objective truth is its own existence. However, for this question, I define knowledge as a very high degree of certainty of belief in a given thought. Defining it as such, there are myriad sources from which I draw said beliefs. Ethical truths are drawn from biological, evolutionary history of the human species as well as societal expectations and norms. Such ethical truths, as well as other basic things, are the basis upon which an individual operates in society so it’s natural that they are believed with a very high degree of certainty. The other basic things would be simple thoughts that just occur throughout life, from things told to us in school, by parents or other authority figures to the things that we see in the world, on television, the things we read in novels and in text books. I think the only way to adequately describe the source of knowledge for living things is ascribe it to life itself. Basic as it may seem, to be any more specific would be to preclude exploration into every possible means by which beliefs and knowledge are formed. So how do I know what I know? I know what I know because of what I have lived to experience (not to say knowledge is anywhere near strictly experiential.)

Our Meaning

Our meaning is something unique to every person; it is only what we perceive and how we are perceived. Meaning derived from any individual or society is by definition entirely subjective. The only meaning my existence could ever possibly have is the meaning ascribed to it by those that witness it. Aside from that, I am utterly meaningless. To say there is any objectivity to the purpose or meaning any person may find in life would be to try to apply an individual thought to the entire universe. It is only natural for humans to be so desperate to find meaning in life, as the human mind is wired towards finding patterns in even things without pattern; to try to impose order on a universe that lacks it. Meaning is a human construct and therefore has no place in matters that are so far beyond the scope of human understanding as existence is. That isn’t to say that meaning is invalid in its subjectivity. Just because some idea of purpose exists only within one’s mind, its significance isn’t diminished in the slightest because it’s still just as true to that individual. 

God in 2010

For the most part, religion in the modern world has a new face. Fanaticism has largely been replaced with adherence only in name. At least in the United States, most would describe themselves as spiritual, but try to distance themselves from dogma. For those people, religion probably plays a minimal role in their lives; God is the reason for their new promotion or their favorite sports team's recent win. There still are fundamentalists, but they're probably outnumbered. For those that describe themselves as spiritual, God is a sort of pantheistic deity. Those that are outspoken about their theism are sometimes ostracized for it, so it's natural that a new-age type of view on religion is so prevalent. Opposite of disassociation with dogma, the thing that keeps most from completely abandoning the notion of the religion they consider themselves a part of is probably the sense of community or comfort it may provide. So people usually follow some form of diluted Christianity to avoid isolating themselves from that group that they have most likely been a part of since birth, or to avoid having to be genuinely uncertain of the answers to more than a few of the questions of life. Even among those that do strictly follow fundamentalist beliefs, it's rare to see the intolerance exhibited by fringe groups like the Westboro Baptist Church. Considering Christianity's history, it can definitely be credited with making substantial strides in the direction of coexistence. The world would be a much more peaceful place were this the case everywhere.

The Irritant in the Modern Day

Socrates was a social gadfly in his own time because of the questions he posed. The ignorant character he played when posing these questions caused those he dealt with to question the way they saw things. So upsetting was his prodding of those around him to see the world from another perspective that he was eventually sentenced to death for it. Surely, there is no one so profoundly disturbing the status quo today as to warrant state disapproval to the extent of imprisonment and execution. There are still people living today playing the role of the social gadfly, attempting to make those around them more closely examine the lives they live. The most obvious and immediate examples to come to mind for me are Stephen Colbert and David Thorne. Both do so to comedic ends, but there is an entirely serious side to the things they do. Stephen Colbert plays a staunchly conservative character in interviews with politicians even though he is himself a liberal. It is usually used to humiliate the politician willing to appear on his show, but often also to point out how unexamined their positions may be. David Thorne is definitely second to none as an example of being irritating as a social gadfly is supposed to be. He usually uses a nonchalant demeanor to make those that send him hate mail seem foolish in their aggression towards him. David Thorne and Stephen Colbert both pretend to be in complete agreement with the things people say to them, and often try to take positions even more extreme than those they’re talking to in an attempt to make them appear foolish. In an email conversation regarding his son’s probation from his school’s computer lab, he tells the teacher that, “though physical discipline is no longer administered in the public school system, it would probably be appropriate in this instance if nobody is watching. I know from experience that he can take a punch.”

The Unexamined Life and Why It May or May Not Be Worth Living

Is the unexamined life worth living? Of course, Socrates would say it is not. For the most part, I do agree that for one to live without at any point questioning who they are or what they are doing is a waste of reasoning. I’ve always thought that people develop interests without any clue as to why they find them interesting. This rule includes myself, of course. There have been many times in the past when I’ve wanted to work towards some goal only to realize that I lacked any real justification for why it mattered to me at all. The examined life combined with an unhealthy apathy for most things, as well as the angst that comes naturally with adolescence, can be quite detrimental. In that sense, it can be said that leaving life unexamined at times is beneficial, namely when perception is tainted by distaste for ambition. However, I wouldn’t say I regret at all the time I’ve spent doubting my own interest in so many things; such experiences are lessons learned, stepping stones towards a more complete character. Raising questions of importance, of the reason behind thoughts, and of self is of utmost importance in the development of a person’s personality. The justifications given for the places we choose to be in life certainly mean more than the places themselves. Perhaps it is also so that someone can be measured by how far they are willing to go in the unending pursuit of answers to those questions about life left unanswered. Despite all this, I speak from personal experience, and as such I cannot say with certainty that any one way of living is superior to any other. The unexamined life may be filled with untold bliss to accompany ignorance. I haven’t even analyzed life to anywhere near the extent others have. Where I am now, it would probably be generous at best to consider my life anywhere near fully examined.

Self-Eulogizing

There is little to be said of Shayne, as the life he lived was a short one. As such, there are few accomplishments for praising. Most, at that point in life, have yet to achieve much, surely; he was no exception. What can be said of Shayne, however, is that in life, his presence impacted those around him. He is remembered by his family and friends whom he took pleasure in knowing. He enjoyed much of the life he lived despite his complaints. Unfortunately, this coffin does not contain his corpse, as the body has yet to have been found. We will just have to pretend it is here though, because he was last seen setting sail into shark-infested waters on a makeshift raft crafted entirely out of meat. Perhaps he would have had a better chance of surviving if only he had waited to recover from spinal surgery before attempting such a feat. We can never know why he chose to do such a reckless thing. It was actually rather uncharacteristic of him, as he never was much of a daredevil. Perhaps he resorted to such things because his creativity failed him when it came to other undertakings: writing a eulogy as a completely random example. Of his regrets, one is that he didn’t get enough sleep most nights, and on the nights he did, it was only because he did not spend enough time trying to actually think of more interesting ways to do things. Indeed, he was rather lazy at times. May he rest in peace.