The second choice essay I have picked is quite a contrast from the first. Below, my very brief analysis of The Federalist No. 51. This particular selection from the Federalist Papers is by James Madison, under the pen name Publius as all the papers were.
I have read this essay at least three times and each time I learn more from it. If there is one particular piece of writing that can be used to describe the basis for the Constitution of the United States of America, it is this paper. It's freaking awesome.
The essay focuses on the system of checks and balances to be set up in the government. Publius says that each branch of government must be seperate so that the legislative branch is not domineering although they are intended to be the strongest. Additionally, Publius stresses that positions and posts in the government must have enough power and salary to attract people to those positions. For instance, if the president had little pay and barely any power over the legislature, nobody would want to rise to the presidency. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
As always, there is the importance that each branch and faction is protected equally. To ensure this in the government, the branches have powers and checks on each other that anybody who has taken a civics class should be educated in. More in depth, though, is the way that the people check each other. Publius continues the argument he laid forth in The Federalist No. 10. He says that we can control the effects of liberty rather than remove its causes which would be against all republican and democratic doctrine. He warns that too much liberty can be extremely dangerous, especially to the minority that could be easily oppressed. Instead, justice must be achieved. "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society."
The effects of liberty are to be controlled and justice to be served by expanding the population and landmass of the republic so that there be so many interests and factions that no one homogenous group can form a majority in all cases. This is exactly what has created the controversies that run Washington and our nation.
I would love to discuss this article and some of the other Federalist Papers at great length, but I'll spare us all the extensive time.
Friday, August 28, 2009
On "The Last Iconic Baseball Card"
For my first choice essay, I chose an article from a recent Sports Illustrated Issue by Luke Winn.
The article discusses the changes in the baseball card industry (or sports cards in general) in the past 20 years. It begins by setting a scene at the headquarters of Upper Deck, a card producing company. Winn is very descriptive in his portrayal using excellent metaphors and similies to insert humor and imagery. Upper Deck will be no more soon because after 2010, the MLB has granted monopolic rights only to Topps, another trading card company.
The article also talks about how in Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie year (1989), his card was not expected to be the #1 card although it ended up being. His one rookie card is worth a great deal. When Derek Jeter was a rookie in the early 1990s, eight rookie cards were produced and reproduced. Then when Albert Pujols was a rookie in 2001, he had 43 rookie cards. The extensive inflation of the industry is a result of lower demand. The value of cards has become very low. Now many companies are going out of business rapidly.
I noticed that this article was written in a nice and simple tone using very common vernacular, as most articles from Sports Illustrated are. This helps appeal to the audience of people like myself who just want to read about sports and not have to think too much about it. Still, this article does provoke some thought as to what other industries have begun to decline like the baseball card industry. Are we getting unappreciative of things too fast? Is there any value in nostalgia any more?
The article discusses the changes in the baseball card industry (or sports cards in general) in the past 20 years. It begins by setting a scene at the headquarters of Upper Deck, a card producing company. Winn is very descriptive in his portrayal using excellent metaphors and similies to insert humor and imagery. Upper Deck will be no more soon because after 2010, the MLB has granted monopolic rights only to Topps, another trading card company.
The article also talks about how in Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie year (1989), his card was not expected to be the #1 card although it ended up being. His one rookie card is worth a great deal. When Derek Jeter was a rookie in the early 1990s, eight rookie cards were produced and reproduced. Then when Albert Pujols was a rookie in 2001, he had 43 rookie cards. The extensive inflation of the industry is a result of lower demand. The value of cards has become very low. Now many companies are going out of business rapidly.
I noticed that this article was written in a nice and simple tone using very common vernacular, as most articles from Sports Illustrated are. This helps appeal to the audience of people like myself who just want to read about sports and not have to think too much about it. Still, this article does provoke some thought as to what other industries have begun to decline like the baseball card industry. Are we getting unappreciative of things too fast? Is there any value in nostalgia any more?
Thursday, August 27, 2009
On "A World Lit Only by Fire"
I would like to begin by saying that William Manchester is basically the man. However, despite how much of the man he really is, he seems to have a severe man-crush on another the man, Ferdinand Magellan. More on that later.
A World Lit Only by Fire really grabbed me when I started reading it. I began by reading it on vacation up north and in the first two days of my vacation I read over 100 pages of the 296 page book. Over the next three days of my vacation, I read 30.
To provide some background, the book is split into three sections: The Medieval Mind, The Shattering, and A Man Alone. The first is only about 30 pages in length, the last nearly 80.
Being that the second is so lengthy, I think that Professor Manchester would have been better off carefully splitting (rather than shattering) The Shattering into multiple sections because it discussed some topics, that although not extremely varied, became confusing when all put together because of the time period overlap and such. The Shattering generally discusses the ways in which medieval Europe reached a barrier of corruption and stupidity that launched the world into the Renaissance.
The first section provides the reader with an idea of what the average medieval man would be like and how individuals and institutions thought or didn’t think and how society ran. The third section is nothing but a tale of Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe and the isolation of his crew from goings-on in Europe at the time.
As for an analysis of Professor Manchester’s style and rhetoric in this book, I noticed a few things in particular. I have not read any of his other works but certainly plan to when I find the time. Immediately, I noticed it read slightly different than most non-fiction books I have previously read. Perhaps that is because many of those are chronologies of events told by primary sources in great detail or are often autobiographical. This book, though is also unlike a history textbook because it reads a bit more conversationally and informally. It is almost like a lecture for a class of 25-50 students. Manchester doesn’t tend to pose rhetorical questions as many lecturers might, but in many ways his short two page sections that make up the book are like short lessons.
Something else I took note of while I was reading was that Manchester often uses longs lists to emphasize points. These lists can be for descriptive purposes, but more often they list a number of nouns or verbs to show depth or breadth of a certain topic. For instance, at the very end of the The Medieval Mind, he sets up his next section to discuss some certain men and two women influential to the times:
Some of the dragons were benign, even saintly; others were wicked. All, however, would seem monstrous to those who cherished the status quo, and their names included Johannes Gutenberg, Cesare Borgia, Johann Tetzel, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Jakob Fugger, Francois Rabelais, Girolamo Savonarola, Nicolaus Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Niccolo Machiavelli, William Tyndale, John Calvin, Vascon Nunez de Balboa, Emperor Charles V, King Henry VIII, Tomas de Torquemada, Lucrezia Borgia, William Caxton, Gerardus Mercator, Girolamo Aleandro, Ulrich von Hutten, Martin Waldseemuller, Thomas More, Catherine of Aragon, Chrisopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and—most fearsome of all, the moan who would destroy the very world cartographers had drawn—Ferdinand Magellan.
Was that list long enough for you? I can name many others that Manchester talked about with some extent in the book, but there are also two or three of those names I swear never came up.
I’d like to direct your attention again to the above quotation, but just to the last two lines about Magellan. Honestly, I was expecting the build up at the end for one big name, but I expected it to be Martin Luther, Michelangelo, or Leonardo Da Vinci; the latter two don’t even appear in the list. In any case, the description he uses to build up Magellan is quite characteristic throughout the book. He uses flowing, crescendo-ing, often lengthy sentences to describe a person. I enjoyed this for the most part, but it became a bit annoying at times. He often starts a point with a short compound sentence and follows it with a longer, descriptive one or two that give examples. Additionally, the subject or object, followed by a dash, followed by a phrase, followed by a dash, followed by the remainder of the sentence, is a ubiquitous tool in Manchester’s writing. He uses the dash to insert appositives and parenthetical elements that he feels deserve additional emphasis. I must say, it’s effective as hell, too.
Some criticisms I have of Manchester, and this might be to my own fault as well, deal with confusion. For one thing, the book doesn’t go in chronological order, it discusses a person or event and then, to provide background, has to tangent to talk about the people and places involved. The result is that in the middle of the book, the reader is assumed to know about some characters and events already and then is being introduced to new things that seem like they should follow the events already discussed, but are really occurring before hand. It gets very confusing and a more detailed timeline provided with the book would have been nice. Another source of confusion to the somewhat unengaged reader is that Manchester might go a full two pages referring to a character only as “he” or “she” and the reader easily forgets who is being talked about, especially when there are multiple people being discussed. A character might be referred to by multiple names or titles too. For instance, Martin Luther is, among others, “the monk, the heretic, the professor, the young priest, the Franciscan, the Wittenberg man…”
The final section of the book is where the man-crush the Professor Manchester has for Ferdinand Magellan really becomes apparent. For one thing, the final section, at times, reads more like a fiction book or non-fiction story because of the more romantic language and description. He certainly borrows much from Don Antonio, Magellan’s biographer.
The last few pages of the book discuss the ways that the medieval world exploded or shattered into the renaissance and how the 247 men of Magellan’s crew that didn’t return to Spain didn’t get to witness some of the most explosive events of it. The ending also portrays Magellan as an immortal hero and gives a morality lesson in what heroism truly is.
I could talk all day about the history lessons I’ve learned from A World Lit Only by Fire. This book has been eye-opening by increasing both my historical knowledge, and ability to read and hopefully has taught me things to apply to my writing.
A World Lit Only by Fire really grabbed me when I started reading it. I began by reading it on vacation up north and in the first two days of my vacation I read over 100 pages of the 296 page book. Over the next three days of my vacation, I read 30.
To provide some background, the book is split into three sections: The Medieval Mind, The Shattering, and A Man Alone. The first is only about 30 pages in length, the last nearly 80.
Being that the second is so lengthy, I think that Professor Manchester would have been better off carefully splitting (rather than shattering) The Shattering into multiple sections because it discussed some topics, that although not extremely varied, became confusing when all put together because of the time period overlap and such. The Shattering generally discusses the ways in which medieval Europe reached a barrier of corruption and stupidity that launched the world into the Renaissance.
The first section provides the reader with an idea of what the average medieval man would be like and how individuals and institutions thought or didn’t think and how society ran. The third section is nothing but a tale of Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe and the isolation of his crew from goings-on in Europe at the time.
As for an analysis of Professor Manchester’s style and rhetoric in this book, I noticed a few things in particular. I have not read any of his other works but certainly plan to when I find the time. Immediately, I noticed it read slightly different than most non-fiction books I have previously read. Perhaps that is because many of those are chronologies of events told by primary sources in great detail or are often autobiographical. This book, though is also unlike a history textbook because it reads a bit more conversationally and informally. It is almost like a lecture for a class of 25-50 students. Manchester doesn’t tend to pose rhetorical questions as many lecturers might, but in many ways his short two page sections that make up the book are like short lessons.
Something else I took note of while I was reading was that Manchester often uses longs lists to emphasize points. These lists can be for descriptive purposes, but more often they list a number of nouns or verbs to show depth or breadth of a certain topic. For instance, at the very end of the The Medieval Mind, he sets up his next section to discuss some certain men and two women influential to the times:
Some of the dragons were benign, even saintly; others were wicked. All, however, would seem monstrous to those who cherished the status quo, and their names included Johannes Gutenberg, Cesare Borgia, Johann Tetzel, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Jakob Fugger, Francois Rabelais, Girolamo Savonarola, Nicolaus Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Niccolo Machiavelli, William Tyndale, John Calvin, Vascon Nunez de Balboa, Emperor Charles V, King Henry VIII, Tomas de Torquemada, Lucrezia Borgia, William Caxton, Gerardus Mercator, Girolamo Aleandro, Ulrich von Hutten, Martin Waldseemuller, Thomas More, Catherine of Aragon, Chrisopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and—most fearsome of all, the moan who would destroy the very world cartographers had drawn—Ferdinand Magellan.
Was that list long enough for you? I can name many others that Manchester talked about with some extent in the book, but there are also two or three of those names I swear never came up.
I’d like to direct your attention again to the above quotation, but just to the last two lines about Magellan. Honestly, I was expecting the build up at the end for one big name, but I expected it to be Martin Luther, Michelangelo, or Leonardo Da Vinci; the latter two don’t even appear in the list. In any case, the description he uses to build up Magellan is quite characteristic throughout the book. He uses flowing, crescendo-ing, often lengthy sentences to describe a person. I enjoyed this for the most part, but it became a bit annoying at times. He often starts a point with a short compound sentence and follows it with a longer, descriptive one or two that give examples. Additionally, the subject or object, followed by a dash, followed by a phrase, followed by a dash, followed by the remainder of the sentence, is a ubiquitous tool in Manchester’s writing. He uses the dash to insert appositives and parenthetical elements that he feels deserve additional emphasis. I must say, it’s effective as hell, too.
Some criticisms I have of Manchester, and this might be to my own fault as well, deal with confusion. For one thing, the book doesn’t go in chronological order, it discusses a person or event and then, to provide background, has to tangent to talk about the people and places involved. The result is that in the middle of the book, the reader is assumed to know about some characters and events already and then is being introduced to new things that seem like they should follow the events already discussed, but are really occurring before hand. It gets very confusing and a more detailed timeline provided with the book would have been nice. Another source of confusion to the somewhat unengaged reader is that Manchester might go a full two pages referring to a character only as “he” or “she” and the reader easily forgets who is being talked about, especially when there are multiple people being discussed. A character might be referred to by multiple names or titles too. For instance, Martin Luther is, among others, “the monk, the heretic, the professor, the young priest, the Franciscan, the Wittenberg man…”
The final section of the book is where the man-crush the Professor Manchester has for Ferdinand Magellan really becomes apparent. For one thing, the final section, at times, reads more like a fiction book or non-fiction story because of the more romantic language and description. He certainly borrows much from Don Antonio, Magellan’s biographer.
The last few pages of the book discuss the ways that the medieval world exploded or shattered into the renaissance and how the 247 men of Magellan’s crew that didn’t return to Spain didn’t get to witness some of the most explosive events of it. The ending also portrays Magellan as an immortal hero and gives a morality lesson in what heroism truly is.
I could talk all day about the history lessons I’ve learned from A World Lit Only by Fire. This book has been eye-opening by increasing both my historical knowledge, and ability to read and hopefully has taught me things to apply to my writing.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
On "The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character"
I was going to do my blog from a satirical chauvanist perspective because I think making fun of ignorance is funny. However, I am far too tired.
I have seen a couple other blogs mention the difficulty of decoding much of Ms. Wollstonecraft's writing because of her style of rhetoric. I've read a great deal of things from this time period particularly by Thomas Jefferson and his correspondents, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison etc. Still, Ms. Wollstonecraft has one of the heavier styles that I've seen. It reminds me a lot of how Hamilton wrote, actually. He was a very verbose man. One might call him a wind-bag.
This flourishing rhetoric, in my opinion, is a possible way that Ms. Wollstonecraft attempts to assert her position. She is obviously a very well-educated, knowledgable woman. However, the last word in that sentence is exactly what is holding her back. I think she uses her flowery, sometimes heavy, language to assert herself as an educated person, not just an "innocent" woman. It may be out of insecurity or just show off. On the other hand, it could be that she's just used to talking like that.
On the whole, I really enjoyed this piece of writing. Although, I thought that the second half began to belabor the point. She could have reduced that to simply saying: Women are not meant to be objects of men's affection. They should pursue their own interests and be equal to men as friends and companions.
I actually laughed when I read some of the things that Rosseau and others said. These chauvinists hardly seem to regard women as the same species let alone equals of the same species. The way that these men used the argument style of by treating you like inferiors we're actually protecting and honoring you was quite ingenious to be honest. By convincing another that you're inferior treatment of them is what's best, you have a huge advantage.
What's quite eye-opening and stunning, though, is that women would actually fall for that crap! It's embarassing to me, even as a male, to think that women once thought themselves so weak that it actually made them special.
There are a couple things I specifically wish to address with this blog entry by providing commentary to Ms. Wollstonecraft's writing:
First, the position of women if Ms. Wollstonecraft's goals are achieved:
I really liked that Ms. W is not a classical feminist in the sense that she doesn't want women to control the world and doesn't consider women above men. Therefore, she is not a hypocrite. She believes in equality and reaching a level on which men and women interact and are educated toghether without difference.
Title IX is something to think about in this type of sense. Title IX requires that schools provide equal funding for men's and women's sports activities. This all seems fine. However, equality should not have to be stipulated. It should occur naturally. True, it does not always. It should be expected that institutions fund equally or close to equally for both men and women. Getting specific, men's sports are generally going to cost more than women's anyway due to these factors: More men generally play sports, traditionally male sports such as football and sometimes hockey aree usually more expensive.
This is even more true of affirmative action. Women don't need that leg up. It should be assumed that they get their rights equally, there should not be quotas. I'll hold off on the politics for now.
The other issue I wish to address is a little more deep. That is the difference between what Ms. W refers to as "love" and what she calls "friendship."
I have to say that I disagree with her on this. I think love is not simply the romantic, kissy, huggy stuff. Just as friendship is not the stage when two lovers become intellectually and spiritually connected. In my opinion, infatuation and enamorment is that "love" stage. Friendship stays the entire time when people share interests and converse. Love and companionship is when two people are inseparable except by physical means. It's when they'd do anything for each other and have the highest respect for each other along with having that romantic part of a relationship. Of course, love can mean something else to everybody. It's all semantics.
I have seen a couple other blogs mention the difficulty of decoding much of Ms. Wollstonecraft's writing because of her style of rhetoric. I've read a great deal of things from this time period particularly by Thomas Jefferson and his correspondents, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison etc. Still, Ms. Wollstonecraft has one of the heavier styles that I've seen. It reminds me a lot of how Hamilton wrote, actually. He was a very verbose man. One might call him a wind-bag.
This flourishing rhetoric, in my opinion, is a possible way that Ms. Wollstonecraft attempts to assert her position. She is obviously a very well-educated, knowledgable woman. However, the last word in that sentence is exactly what is holding her back. I think she uses her flowery, sometimes heavy, language to assert herself as an educated person, not just an "innocent" woman. It may be out of insecurity or just show off. On the other hand, it could be that she's just used to talking like that.
On the whole, I really enjoyed this piece of writing. Although, I thought that the second half began to belabor the point. She could have reduced that to simply saying: Women are not meant to be objects of men's affection. They should pursue their own interests and be equal to men as friends and companions.
I actually laughed when I read some of the things that Rosseau and others said. These chauvinists hardly seem to regard women as the same species let alone equals of the same species. The way that these men used the argument style of by treating you like inferiors we're actually protecting and honoring you was quite ingenious to be honest. By convincing another that you're inferior treatment of them is what's best, you have a huge advantage.
What's quite eye-opening and stunning, though, is that women would actually fall for that crap! It's embarassing to me, even as a male, to think that women once thought themselves so weak that it actually made them special.
There are a couple things I specifically wish to address with this blog entry by providing commentary to Ms. Wollstonecraft's writing:
First, the position of women if Ms. Wollstonecraft's goals are achieved:
I really liked that Ms. W is not a classical feminist in the sense that she doesn't want women to control the world and doesn't consider women above men. Therefore, she is not a hypocrite. She believes in equality and reaching a level on which men and women interact and are educated toghether without difference.
Title IX is something to think about in this type of sense. Title IX requires that schools provide equal funding for men's and women's sports activities. This all seems fine. However, equality should not have to be stipulated. It should occur naturally. True, it does not always. It should be expected that institutions fund equally or close to equally for both men and women. Getting specific, men's sports are generally going to cost more than women's anyway due to these factors: More men generally play sports, traditionally male sports such as football and sometimes hockey aree usually more expensive.
This is even more true of affirmative action. Women don't need that leg up. It should be assumed that they get their rights equally, there should not be quotas. I'll hold off on the politics for now.
The other issue I wish to address is a little more deep. That is the difference between what Ms. W refers to as "love" and what she calls "friendship."
I have to say that I disagree with her on this. I think love is not simply the romantic, kissy, huggy stuff. Just as friendship is not the stage when two lovers become intellectually and spiritually connected. In my opinion, infatuation and enamorment is that "love" stage. Friendship stays the entire time when people share interests and converse. Love and companionship is when two people are inseparable except by physical means. It's when they'd do anything for each other and have the highest respect for each other along with having that romantic part of a relationship. Of course, love can mean something else to everybody. It's all semantics.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
On "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
First off, I have to say that I really enjoyed this article.
I must admit that I was guilty immediately of what Mr. Carr talks about. I looked at the title of the article and started thinking about it without reading the article. If I had come across this article online and seen it was seven pages I would not have read the entire thing.
Mr. Carr's point could easily be misunderstood by anyone who doesn't actually read the article and even by someone who does read the article. His point is that Google and the net are not making us stupid because we are losing knowledge. In fact, we are gaining knowledge and we get more little snippets. However, we are changing, maybe losing, our ability to reason and derive our own deductions from axioms.
Carr talks about different ways that technology has changed writing styles and learning styles. He uses the examples of the typewriter changing Nietzche's style and Taylor's scientific management. He even mentions Socrates's fear of a decline due to changing technologies. This would all suggest that we are simply getting worse and worse simply for the sake of efficiency. Google, Carr says, is the root of this in our modern society.
I agree with Mr. Carr on many of his points. He addresses the issue that our learning style is changing and that our elastic minds are deteriorating in their ability to think for themselves. He's suggesting that we are capable of teaching old dogs new tricks, but those new tricks aren't always good for us. There is a great deal of validity to be had here. We now seem to just read headlines and tidbits of information and assume that is the story and all we do is take the facts as they are presented. Sometimes this is good, sometimes these facts are slanted, but either way we're not thinking for ourselves and drawing conclusions from which we can learn.
The idea that we are getting too much breadth and not enough depth is an interesting one. I agree that perhaps in a strict context, this is true. We read a little bit about a lot of news articles and never have more than two or three facts behind each one. This means everyone runs around trying to make it seem like he or she knows what he or she is talking about when no one really does.
In another context, it would be silly to say that one has too much breadth. I say this because if you think about it, this would completely discredit a liberal arts education and well-roundedness in knowledge. Those of the brightest thinkers in history were certainly men of liberal arts that had a great deal of broad knowledge in so many areas and just happened to be skilled at two or three (i.e. Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Plato).
In general I thought the article was well-written. The organization was done well and the rhetoric was done in an educated vernacular style that's easy to read but also skilled. It was necessary for these ideas to be put out there and I'm glad Mr. Carr did that.
I must admit that I was guilty immediately of what Mr. Carr talks about. I looked at the title of the article and started thinking about it without reading the article. If I had come across this article online and seen it was seven pages I would not have read the entire thing.
Mr. Carr's point could easily be misunderstood by anyone who doesn't actually read the article and even by someone who does read the article. His point is that Google and the net are not making us stupid because we are losing knowledge. In fact, we are gaining knowledge and we get more little snippets. However, we are changing, maybe losing, our ability to reason and derive our own deductions from axioms.
Carr talks about different ways that technology has changed writing styles and learning styles. He uses the examples of the typewriter changing Nietzche's style and Taylor's scientific management. He even mentions Socrates's fear of a decline due to changing technologies. This would all suggest that we are simply getting worse and worse simply for the sake of efficiency. Google, Carr says, is the root of this in our modern society.
I agree with Mr. Carr on many of his points. He addresses the issue that our learning style is changing and that our elastic minds are deteriorating in their ability to think for themselves. He's suggesting that we are capable of teaching old dogs new tricks, but those new tricks aren't always good for us. There is a great deal of validity to be had here. We now seem to just read headlines and tidbits of information and assume that is the story and all we do is take the facts as they are presented. Sometimes this is good, sometimes these facts are slanted, but either way we're not thinking for ourselves and drawing conclusions from which we can learn.
The idea that we are getting too much breadth and not enough depth is an interesting one. I agree that perhaps in a strict context, this is true. We read a little bit about a lot of news articles and never have more than two or three facts behind each one. This means everyone runs around trying to make it seem like he or she knows what he or she is talking about when no one really does.
In another context, it would be silly to say that one has too much breadth. I say this because if you think about it, this would completely discredit a liberal arts education and well-roundedness in knowledge. Those of the brightest thinkers in history were certainly men of liberal arts that had a great deal of broad knowledge in so many areas and just happened to be skilled at two or three (i.e. Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Plato).
In general I thought the article was well-written. The organization was done well and the rhetoric was done in an educated vernacular style that's easy to read but also skilled. It was necessary for these ideas to be put out there and I'm glad Mr. Carr did that.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Not taking it for granted
This is something I wrote today because I wanted to. I want to share it with as many people as possible and a blog is a good place to start:
In today’s world, it has been said so many times that we take things for granted and once in a while we need to stop and count our blessings. We then proceed to take this for granted and shrug-off the idea of humbling ourselves. Still, it must be stressed that we sometimes need to try looking at our lives from a different point of view. I started to look at things a little differently just over a year ago.
When I was teaching swimming lessons last summer, I was assigned to teach a one-on-one lesson to a young boy. This boy was about six-years-old although his actual date of birth was unknown. He had recently been adopted from China by two loving parents that decided that a good place to start assimilating him into the American culture was swimming lessons.
The first day of lessons was a Monday. I met his parents and I met him and I walked with him to get into the water. As expected, it was difficult to get him to go in the water. For one thing, he had hardly been in the water. Additionally, he spoke very little English and my communication with him was limited as a result. Eventually, I got him in the water with me and for the first day we did little more than get him acquainted with the pool as I carried him around and tried some floating with him.
The second day was no better. It was nearly impossible to get him to leave his parents and come with me. He began crying and wailing and he cowered behind his father. He cried all the way to the shallow end as his father half dragged, half carried him. To get the boy in the water his father had to sit with his feet in the water while I got the boy in the water. We warmed up by playing catch with a football and actually did some real swim instruction that day.
On Wednesday as I came to get the boy from his parents before lessons, I spoke with his father. He explained to me that the reason the boy was so hesitant was that he was frightened to leave his parents and get in the water with the stranger. That was nothing I hadn’t experienced before. I have trouble getting kids into the water all the time. They complain that it’s cold; they don’t like the feeling of the water; they don’t like me; they don’t like leaving their parents.
However, to say this situation was a little bit different would be an understatement. Rather than a simple fear of the water, there was something much deeper and serious that was causing this behavior. The father explained that the boy was afraid that when the parents were trying to get him to go to swim with me that they were instead abandoning him. The boy had been abandoned multiple times as a child in China and had lived out most of his six years with other children impoverished, starving, and unprotected. That hit me hard.
That day was much easier for me and for him as well. We started working together very well and over the next two weeks he made significant strides in his swimming abilities. I was so happy for him. I saw him recently in lessons, this time no longer one-on-one but a full class. He was speaking English and interacting and I was filled with joy for the boy.
After that day that the father explained the situation to me, I truly began to look at life differently. I realized that I am so blessed to live where I do and to have the support groups that I do. Many of us are lucky that we have friends, family, teachers, co-workers, and others that support us in those social institutions. Don’t ever take those people for granted.
One of the most important institutions in our American society is that of the family. Families are those networks of people close to us (and by definition related). A republic is founded with the hopes that citizens are active in their community, educated, and virtuous. The family is the source of this.
The idea of the republican values is one that can be disputed. Most agree on what those values are, but the source of them is a bit shaky. Many would argue that these values are to be derived by a citizen independently. Others suggest that the purpose of education is to inform children of these virtues and teach them so that we educate capable citizens. If this is the case, we have failed in most cases. Still more say that peer groups and friends are the source of these virtues. Nonetheless, it has commonly been the family that has been most successful in teaching and carrying out republican virtues and values.
The argument for independent acquisition of these virtues takes most of its merit in the concept of peer pressure. Those that support this view point are generally classical followers of individualist views like concepts of Locke, Calhoun, and Social Darwinism. They state that if a person is taught citizenship by peers, friends, family, or teachers, this is a restriction of free knowledge. There is certainly merit in this because it is generally true that people end up exhibiting the biases of their friends, family, and teachers in some way.
What, then, is the downside of individualism? It is that it is irrational. Society would be a wonderful place if everyone could capably think for themselves and form their belief systems through their own reasoning. This, however, is a silly notion. We cannot much expect someone to grow to adulthood and form opinions that are his or her own because he or she will not learn the reasoning skills to do so inherently; one must be taught to reason and there is therefore a bias present. Furthermore, everywhere there is faction that influences thought. If one is to form an opinion, there first must be an issue; for there to be issue, there must be difference in opinion; where there is difference in opinion there is the influence of faction. It is impossible for one to truly reason opinions individually.
Also, standard republican values of integrity, prudence, and others are non-partisan and not associated with factions. They are all virtues rather than opinions.
Friends and peers are clearly sources of peer pressure. They would be good places for values and opinions to ferment and for people to share ideas and opinions, but it is not likely that teenagers emerging as citizens will be discussing the values of republican citizenship in their free time. While one of the most effective sources of applicable knowledge and hubs of societies, friend and peer groups are unreliable when it comes to the abstract and not immediate. We cannot expect people to learn to become good citizens from their friends. It doesn’t hurt, but it hardly ever occurs except through subtle and almost unnoticeable modeling that would be missed by the unobservant.
Teachers are also an unreliable source. Although for the most part, we hope that bias is not broadly exhibited, bias is still present. Also, schools and institutions may teach the hard mechanics of civics and social science, but often leave out the soft mechanics that deal with citizenship and virtue.
This leaves the family as the most reliable source of republican virtues and support. A family is tied together by relation and love. Blood relation is like an obligation to love, yet still, that love is a strong one. Families certainly inject their bias into what they teach their young. Who is to say this is a bad thing? Families seem to have the highest success rate in teaching children the ideals and values of American citizenship.
The fact that parents try to instill their own opinions in their children is insignificant because it simply continues balance and hardly works. In any case, children don’t always listen. There are certainly conservative parents that have raised liberal children and vice versa. Kids will always rebel.
The important thing is that children are taught the skills of critical reasoning and the importance
of being a good citizen in a republic. Schools try to teach this but often don’t try hard enough. We must use the institution of family to instill these principles at a young age so that we produce active and knowledgeable citizens. For this to happen, the American family must be strengthened and preserved.
The American family is still one of the greatest institutions there is. Freedom is preached, hopefully practiced, and exhibited. It is extremely influential in the decisions made by individuals, communities, and national legislators. To disregard the American family is to disregard the fabric of the American populace.
To be part of a family in America, or anywhere for that matter, is a gift. It is arguably a natural right to be cared for by a maternal unit and be reared by a full paternal and familial unit. Yet today, so many are deprived of this right.
Be thankful to be and American citizen. Be thankful to have a family. Be thankful that you have people that support you. Be thankful to have friends. Be thankful to have food. Be thankful to trust someone. Be thankful to be trusted. Be thankful that you are loved. Be thankful to know how to love.
Don’t ever take these things for granted.
In today’s world, it has been said so many times that we take things for granted and once in a while we need to stop and count our blessings. We then proceed to take this for granted and shrug-off the idea of humbling ourselves. Still, it must be stressed that we sometimes need to try looking at our lives from a different point of view. I started to look at things a little differently just over a year ago.
When I was teaching swimming lessons last summer, I was assigned to teach a one-on-one lesson to a young boy. This boy was about six-years-old although his actual date of birth was unknown. He had recently been adopted from China by two loving parents that decided that a good place to start assimilating him into the American culture was swimming lessons.
The first day of lessons was a Monday. I met his parents and I met him and I walked with him to get into the water. As expected, it was difficult to get him to go in the water. For one thing, he had hardly been in the water. Additionally, he spoke very little English and my communication with him was limited as a result. Eventually, I got him in the water with me and for the first day we did little more than get him acquainted with the pool as I carried him around and tried some floating with him.
The second day was no better. It was nearly impossible to get him to leave his parents and come with me. He began crying and wailing and he cowered behind his father. He cried all the way to the shallow end as his father half dragged, half carried him. To get the boy in the water his father had to sit with his feet in the water while I got the boy in the water. We warmed up by playing catch with a football and actually did some real swim instruction that day.
On Wednesday as I came to get the boy from his parents before lessons, I spoke with his father. He explained to me that the reason the boy was so hesitant was that he was frightened to leave his parents and get in the water with the stranger. That was nothing I hadn’t experienced before. I have trouble getting kids into the water all the time. They complain that it’s cold; they don’t like the feeling of the water; they don’t like me; they don’t like leaving their parents.
However, to say this situation was a little bit different would be an understatement. Rather than a simple fear of the water, there was something much deeper and serious that was causing this behavior. The father explained that the boy was afraid that when the parents were trying to get him to go to swim with me that they were instead abandoning him. The boy had been abandoned multiple times as a child in China and had lived out most of his six years with other children impoverished, starving, and unprotected. That hit me hard.
That day was much easier for me and for him as well. We started working together very well and over the next two weeks he made significant strides in his swimming abilities. I was so happy for him. I saw him recently in lessons, this time no longer one-on-one but a full class. He was speaking English and interacting and I was filled with joy for the boy.
After that day that the father explained the situation to me, I truly began to look at life differently. I realized that I am so blessed to live where I do and to have the support groups that I do. Many of us are lucky that we have friends, family, teachers, co-workers, and others that support us in those social institutions. Don’t ever take those people for granted.
One of the most important institutions in our American society is that of the family. Families are those networks of people close to us (and by definition related). A republic is founded with the hopes that citizens are active in their community, educated, and virtuous. The family is the source of this.
The idea of the republican values is one that can be disputed. Most agree on what those values are, but the source of them is a bit shaky. Many would argue that these values are to be derived by a citizen independently. Others suggest that the purpose of education is to inform children of these virtues and teach them so that we educate capable citizens. If this is the case, we have failed in most cases. Still more say that peer groups and friends are the source of these virtues. Nonetheless, it has commonly been the family that has been most successful in teaching and carrying out republican virtues and values.
The argument for independent acquisition of these virtues takes most of its merit in the concept of peer pressure. Those that support this view point are generally classical followers of individualist views like concepts of Locke, Calhoun, and Social Darwinism. They state that if a person is taught citizenship by peers, friends, family, or teachers, this is a restriction of free knowledge. There is certainly merit in this because it is generally true that people end up exhibiting the biases of their friends, family, and teachers in some way.
What, then, is the downside of individualism? It is that it is irrational. Society would be a wonderful place if everyone could capably think for themselves and form their belief systems through their own reasoning. This, however, is a silly notion. We cannot much expect someone to grow to adulthood and form opinions that are his or her own because he or she will not learn the reasoning skills to do so inherently; one must be taught to reason and there is therefore a bias present. Furthermore, everywhere there is faction that influences thought. If one is to form an opinion, there first must be an issue; for there to be issue, there must be difference in opinion; where there is difference in opinion there is the influence of faction. It is impossible for one to truly reason opinions individually.
Also, standard republican values of integrity, prudence, and others are non-partisan and not associated with factions. They are all virtues rather than opinions.
Friends and peers are clearly sources of peer pressure. They would be good places for values and opinions to ferment and for people to share ideas and opinions, but it is not likely that teenagers emerging as citizens will be discussing the values of republican citizenship in their free time. While one of the most effective sources of applicable knowledge and hubs of societies, friend and peer groups are unreliable when it comes to the abstract and not immediate. We cannot expect people to learn to become good citizens from their friends. It doesn’t hurt, but it hardly ever occurs except through subtle and almost unnoticeable modeling that would be missed by the unobservant.
Teachers are also an unreliable source. Although for the most part, we hope that bias is not broadly exhibited, bias is still present. Also, schools and institutions may teach the hard mechanics of civics and social science, but often leave out the soft mechanics that deal with citizenship and virtue.
This leaves the family as the most reliable source of republican virtues and support. A family is tied together by relation and love. Blood relation is like an obligation to love, yet still, that love is a strong one. Families certainly inject their bias into what they teach their young. Who is to say this is a bad thing? Families seem to have the highest success rate in teaching children the ideals and values of American citizenship.
The fact that parents try to instill their own opinions in their children is insignificant because it simply continues balance and hardly works. In any case, children don’t always listen. There are certainly conservative parents that have raised liberal children and vice versa. Kids will always rebel.
The important thing is that children are taught the skills of critical reasoning and the importance
of being a good citizen in a republic. Schools try to teach this but often don’t try hard enough. We must use the institution of family to instill these principles at a young age so that we produce active and knowledgeable citizens. For this to happen, the American family must be strengthened and preserved.
The American family is still one of the greatest institutions there is. Freedom is preached, hopefully practiced, and exhibited. It is extremely influential in the decisions made by individuals, communities, and national legislators. To disregard the American family is to disregard the fabric of the American populace.
To be part of a family in America, or anywhere for that matter, is a gift. It is arguably a natural right to be cared for by a maternal unit and be reared by a full paternal and familial unit. Yet today, so many are deprived of this right.
Be thankful to be and American citizen. Be thankful to have a family. Be thankful that you have people that support you. Be thankful to have friends. Be thankful to have food. Be thankful to trust someone. Be thankful to be trusted. Be thankful that you are loved. Be thankful to know how to love.
Don’t ever take these things for granted.
The Stink about "Skunk Dreams"
As I began reading Ms. Edrich's story, editorial, article, essay (I don't even know how to classify it), I was really expecting something a little different.
The fact that she started with such descriptive, flowery language had me excited for reading a good story. Then she turned it into what appeared as if it was going to be an article about brain chemistry (still interesting) that started with a cute anecdote. From there Ms. Edrich took a somber tone of dissapointment and dissatisfaction with one's state in life. At one point I even annotated "man this chick is emo!" After her melancholy personal statement, she proceeded with a short-lived environmentalist perspective. Another annotative insight, "from dreams to envrionmentalism, what next?"
If you haven't caught my opinion yet, it's that this piece of writing was either so above my level that I didn't pick up on the point or it was just an organizational mess like a fundraiser run by a middle school student council made up of the girls who were elected solely on their looks; I feel like it was two wheels short of a motorcycle and for you military types: one more foul-up away from a CF.
I am being a bit harsh. I just couldn't tell where she was going with it and I don't feel like I learned particularly much from the writing. It was minimally thought provoking only at the point where it brings up the concept of dreams and the strange way in which game farms are actually good for the outdoors.
Furthermore, I did love the description that was used. I can usually get a pretty good visual image even from non-fiction essays. This was like prose fiction in its descriptive abilities. Ms. Edrich almost gave me a sensory overload. Her descriptiveness entertained me enough to keep reading and i enjoyed her use of language. Of course, I was also humored at the random subject matter.
I can't say that I think this is a good article because I don't really see the point. That is probably to my fault because I don't even like reading fiction anymore. Most of the recent works I've read have been scientific or philosophic essays, political in nature, or history texts. I need to start reading for enjoyment again. Sorry, tangent. However, I dod think that Ms. Edrich is probably a skilled writer and I would like to see some of her poetry or any works of fiction she has done.
The fact that she started with such descriptive, flowery language had me excited for reading a good story. Then she turned it into what appeared as if it was going to be an article about brain chemistry (still interesting) that started with a cute anecdote. From there Ms. Edrich took a somber tone of dissapointment and dissatisfaction with one's state in life. At one point I even annotated "man this chick is emo!" After her melancholy personal statement, she proceeded with a short-lived environmentalist perspective. Another annotative insight, "from dreams to envrionmentalism, what next?"
If you haven't caught my opinion yet, it's that this piece of writing was either so above my level that I didn't pick up on the point or it was just an organizational mess like a fundraiser run by a middle school student council made up of the girls who were elected solely on their looks; I feel like it was two wheels short of a motorcycle and for you military types: one more foul-up away from a CF.
I am being a bit harsh. I just couldn't tell where she was going with it and I don't feel like I learned particularly much from the writing. It was minimally thought provoking only at the point where it brings up the concept of dreams and the strange way in which game farms are actually good for the outdoors.
Furthermore, I did love the description that was used. I can usually get a pretty good visual image even from non-fiction essays. This was like prose fiction in its descriptive abilities. Ms. Edrich almost gave me a sensory overload. Her descriptiveness entertained me enough to keep reading and i enjoyed her use of language. Of course, I was also humored at the random subject matter.
I can't say that I think this is a good article because I don't really see the point. That is probably to my fault because I don't even like reading fiction anymore. Most of the recent works I've read have been scientific or philosophic essays, political in nature, or history texts. I need to start reading for enjoyment again. Sorry, tangent. However, I dod think that Ms. Edrich is probably a skilled writer and I would like to see some of her poetry or any works of fiction she has done.
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