The War on Men

Today I read a short essay about the lives of men. Men who worked in the era of the feminist movement. This essay was entitled, The Men We Carry in Our Minds by Scott Russell Sanders. Written in 1987, Sanders tells us his experience of men in the world. He starts off with how there are two types. Those who work all their lives under great pressure and strain and die young and those who sit on the top, in comfort. His essay attacks feministic views of masculinity by supporting that men are under pressure their whole lives by society to be a good, rich and powerful man. He is jealous of the women who can stay at home, away from backbreaking labor and suggest that possibly, it is man who is enslaved.



I will say that in my life, is a sense, I have to agree with Sanders. When a man fails, the people he was to be the breadwinner for, just lost income. Even though the thought of being a breadwinner is a little dated, the thoughts that he presents are still relevant. "Only women lived into old age," with how better funded women's health services are, it isn't surprising that men die on average at a younger age. A study was done showing that in California, young boys commit suicide three times as much as young women.

Trying to understand this, I stumbled upon a poet responding to the Miller Lite commercial series "Man Up." This poet talks about how our culture and how it effects young men in their pursuit of happiness. The portrayals of what is and is not masculine are directly trying to show that men are supposed to fit into society and not do anything to be themselves. Masculinity is something that is getting harder and harder to define. When we as a people rose up to give women the vote and rights, it is as if we forgot about equality.

Feminist like to alliterate the thought of feminism to fighting the "War on Women." A commentator speaks on this issue saying that calling their movement a war is similar to calling women innocent of any kind of crime. A survey was taken about what men think are the biggest issues of the Men's Rights Movement and found that from the least to the most the issues of inequality are the thought of male gender roles, negative media portrayal, educational inequalities, gender discriminatory government policies, false accusation treatment, reproductive rights, social stereotypes, anti-male double standards, feminism and father's rights. I doesn't stop at just those things, but as seen in a article done by Dana Commandatore, which recently got some heat on reddit, women can objectify men too. 




There is immense pressure on men to be some sort of superhero that doesn't complain or show emotion. They are taught that women should be treated better than themselves such as when you're told by your parents to "never hit a girl." When men do things that are seen as feminine, they are bashed and insulted for doing it. Everyday I get this for working at a sub shop, because I mean, I make sandwiches for money.


Recently a female rapist in Germany is facing charges of sexual assault and illegal restraint for raping two different men at different times. She is described in the article as being a nymphomaniac rather than a rapist and the British website faced huge accusations from Mediate and Reddit for this story.


Unfortunately, the world is not equal and there are double standards and discrimination that hunts down young men. Sexism isn't just done against women, so wake up and be egalitarian.





-The Observer

Why Manners Matter

I find that a great example of what manners are in society is told best by the author and writer for the New York Times and Vanity Fair, Henry Alford. He relates it to a German fairytale of three porcupines that live together in the cold. These porcupines have to huddle close together to maintain heat or else they will freeze to death, but the closer that they get, the deeper their spines poke each other. They eventually settle this problem by having each of them as close as possible so that the least discomfort is achieved while still staying alive. (Alford, 2012, pg. 28) As our society becomes more modern and technologically infused, we lose touch with our manners because we can hide behind a screen and think that no one can see you. We are on a path to being a hypothermic porcupine.
We can all agree that manners are needed, but some are needed more than others and too many manners over-complicate simple occasions. Manners can be described as a way of acting so that you are seemly the same as everyone else, but they can also be used to manipulate situations. You learn manners by seeing other people perform them, and when they should be used within certain boundaries. These examples can give you an expansive knowledge of when and how to use manners. These customs are vitally important in society and can cause people to be shunned or accepted based on how they are demonstrated.
A 2011 Rasmussen Reports poll was referenced recently in a NPR article that stated that 76% of the survey people thought that America was becoming increasingly rude. (Weeks, 2012) This might be true, but we are a long way from being without manners. As Henry Alford likes to point out, people in the distant past have been known to defecate, urinate, burp, spit and fart in public according to the sociologist, Norbert Elias in The Civilizing Process. (Alford, 2012, pg. 35) So when people consider the United States to be an uncivilized, rude country, we are still with manners. The only thing that commentators have to remark about is that our manners are changing or are underdeveloped in certain types of conduct.
Richard Sennett, a sociologist and professor at London School of Economics and New York University, has a theory that the degradation of American manners is a result of how in our culture people need to express their intimate emotions with acquaintances and strangers. (1978) In an interview, Sennett asserts that, “The notion that you show other people without restraint your intimate feelings is to say that those feelings don’t matter to you.” (Alford, 2012) The problem with our perception of society is that we need to stop talking about ourselves so much. Instead, we should speak more of societal problems, technology, politics, ideas or just thoughts – things that matter.
Henry D. Schlinger, a behavioral-analysis professor at California State University, researched an experiment dealing with the development of “theory of mind” in children. Theory of mind is a process of thinking where a person rejects his or her preset ideas and tries to empathize with other people. In the experiment done by researchers for the development of theory of mind, children are told about a situation where a child named Maxi places a chocolate bar in a cabinet, and then someone else transfers the chocolate to a drawer, without Maxi knowing of it. Then the children are asked where Maxi will look for the chocolate when he gets back, in the cabinet where it is no longer at or the drawer where it is at now. Most children before they are four years old will guess in the cabinet. At around four years old, they are able to differentiate between their own minds and the minds of others, so they almost always say in the drawer. (2009, Schlinger, pgs. 438-9) This is when manners start to develop, because the children try to understand what their peers would want from them. They can at this point understand that people don’t know things that they know, so they become more careful and understanding in an effort not to offend anyone.
The “Golden Rule” justification of manners is that we should treat others with the manners that we would want them to treat us with. Alford says that it is not about what you would want, but what they would want to be done to them. This can be accomplished by just taking on the worldview of surrounding people. This is what drives us to act the way we do and these worldviews of others may be impolite or rude. He writes about how people in gruesome wars do what they are told. It is theorized, in any situation, humans will try to maintain their status quo with their peers. (2012, Alford, 229-30) Clearly this is good reasoning as to why people can be led to do things that they wouldn’t normally do, but it is just as confusing as clarifying. If we were to need to maintain status quo, then does that mean that people are rude because it’s the normal thing and if so, than is there pressure to be impolite? Or even more importantly, is this impoliteness a result of accumulated sources of stress and can this stress be eliminated?
Most people think of manners as just well-wished ways of buffering your convictions on other people with opposing views. People know what not to do in situations, but they should be wondering what to do. This would mean that in the eyes of soldiers, they should kill because they are led to believe that if they don’t kill, they will be killed and they are led to believe that dying is bad. If this is true, that we only do what others will do, then we should all agree that this is a depressing commentary on mankind. We try to “behave about as well as our neighbors,” puts Randy Cohen, a writer on moral situations. (2012, Alford, pg. 230)
Alford continues on in his book to talk about a form of manners called, “imaginative manners” where he tries to find the perfect thing to do to manipulate people. Whether these manners help a homeless man make money or make others treat someone with respect, this form of manners in a groundbreaking idea. This is creating your own rules and applying them to everything.
This thought of imaginative manners forces the reader to acknowledge every experience possibly imagined as a setting for performing etiquette. Even though extreme, this would solve a lot of the problems that social critics point out in the public today. Everyone that is in retail or the fast food business knows that every once in a while, someone decides to come into your store five minutes before closing and ends up making your departure fifteen minutes later than expected. Imaginative manners may help these situations. Most people know that they are not wanted in the store that late, but most of the time they don’t know the extremity. If you ask a person to leave with a well thought-out reason, they will likely leave. Most people are hot-wired to think for themselves, but the manners described by Alford may just be a new way of using theory of mind and applying them at large scale. People who lack this ability to empathize with others are likely not as socially adept as most people and as the research done by Schlinger tells us, people with autism who are known to have a hard time communicating with people lack a strong theory of mind ability. (2009, pg. 439)
Communication etiquette is a difficult thing to master and with technology, it becomes harder. What is difficult in today’s technological society is to determine proper protocol on the internet and through text. With the anonymity of the internet, most people don’t fear saying what they want. Even if this is clique and over-stated, the simple truth is that when we do try to be nice, the internet has no body language and tone is extinct. This also applies to text messages and sometimes calls. When the other person’s tone is indistinguishable from sarcasm and true enthusiasm, you could get very offended. The fact of the matter is that when no one can see you write, you write what you think and everyone can see it. This is why blogs can sometimes have compulsively written things on them, or why the website, 4chan.org can be so popular. On the internet, you need to over emphasize yourself to bring across your point; but the problem is that this, over emphasizing, can cause anger too. People need to look at their words and figure out how to write the same thing in a less accusing voice before they post their words for all to see. Today is different than the 1950s and manners sometimes need to be redefined, invented and re-envisioned. In the world of technology, each advance means new protocol and systems of courtesy need to be established. Nowadays, people don’t care which side of the plate the fork goes on, but they do care if you are texting while eating. New advances are always being made and some manners build on others, so truthfully, all books on manners are never finished and Alford’s book is just another example.




Works Cited:

Alford, H. (2012). Would it kill you to stop doing that?: A modern guide to manners.
New York: Twelve.

Schlinger, H. D. Jr. (2009). The psychological record. Los Angeles: California State
University.

Sennett, R. (1978). The fall of public man. New York: Vintage Books.

Weeks, L. (2012). Please read this story, thank you. NPR. Retrieved from
​http://www.npr.org/2012/03/09/148295675/please-read-this-story-thank-you

Total Words as of Now (1,633)

Makeup Makes the Difference

Makeup. A dreaded word for many women in the world who think that it takes to long for something so trivial. But in this world, very few people truly think that a lady without anything extra is attractive. In fact, a lot of the time that person who is suddenly unattractive is shunned or thought of as uncaring. People like to say that this is subjection of women by men, but I'd like to argue that point. Yes, men want women who are attractive, but only as much as women who want attractive men.

Men who are tall, have sculpted abs and are well paid have a lot of admirers. The same goes for attractive women. Our society tries to enforce the thought of perfection on it's people with how famous people and characters of cartoons are generally thin and at the minimum not unattractive. This is embedded at a very young age and the idea of perfect is instilled to grow out to be the monster it is today.

As you can see in the photo from above, that is a compilation of models without their makeup. Many of them are innately attractive, but you can clearly see how they many aren't "models" without makeup. It's sad that people's physical appearance is an indication of how desirable that they are, but it does happen.

-The Observer

Hypnotism

When I went to hypnotist yesterday late at night, I sat wondering how it was like to be hypnotized and why it worked. For good reason, I felt like it was a lot of elaborate acting and not close to reality.

I heard that my group was going to go see a hypnotist and that made me want to get hypnotized because according to my friends, a half hour of hypnotism is equivalent to eight hours of sleep.

I got there and when the man asked for volunteers, I rose my hand a shouted along with about 40 others and strained my shoulder, but I didn't get picked.

He started it off by explaining the importance of the first five minutes. He said that this is what makes the show and that at your seat you could still become hypnotized. I was sitting on the floor, surrounded by people, so it was difficult following the instructions of "lean back in your chair and relax, you butt is now glued to your seat and you won't fall off," but I sat leant forward, head touching my chest, breathing shallowly whilst slowing becoming disconnected from the world.

I heard people remark and exclaim, but I didn't care, I sat in an almost trance in concentration while I was half listening to the hypnotist speak. I could tell I was about to fall under as it is called until someone hit my shoe and took my attention. I was wide awake and looked around, scorning the young woman to my right who was readjusting herself.

I looked at the men and women seated at the front of the group and they were all leaning odd directions, clearly near sleep. I was disappointed, but then I saw another audience member about five feet away laying down on one of his friend's lap.

As the people were put to "sleep," he sent them through very embarrassing tasks. The nearby man was not only following his commands, but also speaking seemingly of his own accord. He got attention of the hypnotist who promptly woke him and directed him to sit up and wait until he needed his help later.

He quickly fell back into the trance and even latched himself onto another member of the audience in desperation of warmth. The man was called to the front and sat down. Up there, he was the most expressive of the people up there and spoke, nodded and created his own adventures. He had a bald eagle fly away and screamed moo so often that he started to question his sanity.

I felt bad for him in the end, but I did wonder if he was just pretending to act the way he was. I didn't think that he would act like a stripper, but he did.

I really wish that I might experience this someday, because the hypnotist stated the way to find this trance in very similar methods to how you meditate to a state of peace with one's self. I can try, but I will never know how it's like until I try hard again to get chosen next year.

-The Observer

Killing Bald Eagles

Apparently, The United States has in an attempt tried to practice freedom of religion for the Native American community in the recent court case allowing the Northern Arapaho Indian Tribe to kill two bald eagles for a ceremony. The NY Daily News reports that in 2005, A tribal member was arrested for killing a bald eagle and the whole tribe then entered the judicial system to protest the Government's action in what they think of being religious prosecution.

A few years ago, the bald eagle was taken off the endangered species list and has been seen in the wild again. It is still illegal for anyone to kill a bald eagle though until a few weeks ago, for the first time in United States history, a Native American Tribe has been given the right to kill 2 eagles. Many people see this as an event similar to burning the flag or threatening your congressman, but the tribe disagrees.

For many years, the US government holds pieces of bald eagles in a reserve for Native American usage but the tribes have grown impatient with this because they require a permit and have to give back the pieces undamaged. The leader of the Northern Arapaho Tribes expresses his discontent in how he says, “How would a non-Indian feel if they had to get their Bible from a repository?”

What truly amazes me is that people oppose this. Clearly this right is protected under numerous laws justifying religious sacrament and freedom and is quite sickening that people would like to take this right away from the people's whose land we took. These people have as much of a right to be here as us and they may be living in the US, but that doesn't mean that they can't continue their practices that aren't a traditional American's practices.

Clearly this is about as patriotic as drawing pictures of a drunk Uncle Sam killing innocent Afghan citizens and then burning them (which did happen with real US troops). Even so, this country was founded on principles of equality and freedom and currently, America has not lived up to those ideals. With the war about to happen with Iran and the possibility of escapades in Syria, we can only hope that the US can keep a clean record, an untarnished reputation and adhere to a strict set of rules that were made for them in the late 1700s when this country was founded.

-The Observer

The History

History of the English Language

This short video is a explaination of the whole english language and its uses. This humorous video is a great example of how interconnected english is and why it is a world power of language.

The Taboo Topic

THE FORBIDDEN ISSUE

An epidemic is upon us that we are ashamed to admit. There is an addiction out in our lives that the majority of Americans commit. It destroys the user's life and they’re too embarrassed to get helped. It is not a recognized addiction and throughout the country it hurts marriages and individual lives. According to an interview by MSNBC, $12 billion is spent annually on the Adult Industry in America alone (2006). With the spread of the Internet, porn has become easy to reach. The biggest problem is not that it's easy to get to, but that it can act like a drug and hurt the user's life. Since you can be completely anonymous on the internet, no one knows of your serious problem. Porn addiction is not a documented or official addiction and therefore receives little research money. Many therapists and sexologists consider this to be a serious epidemic that is waiting for you where ever you go. The Internet is all around us, in our homes, our jobs and our schools. The experts both agree that pornography can have some serious side effects, whether it is causing you to lose a job or a family by just wasting your time in front of a computer screen, TV or other outlet for porn. There is always a constant urge to see a taboo substance David Foster Wallace, A commentator of the adult industry, writes on this, "The more acceptable in modern culture it becomes, the further porn will have to go to in order to preserve the sense of unacceptability that's so essential to its appeal," (1998, Wallace). Foster Wallace even goes on to say that now, a part of porn staying taboo lies in how it's becoming more and more "extreme" in nature, meaning degrading, painful and abusive to the female participants.

Experts consider porn to be a drug. Mary Anne Layden, Co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, reports that porn is the "most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today," and that "The Internet is a perfect drug delivery system," (2004, Singel). She goes on to say that porn is even worse than cocaine, because cocaine addicts can get the drug out of their system, but porn addicts will have it in their minds for the rest of their lives. This is because porn as Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist and adviser, puts it, "...it (porn) causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids," (2004, Singel). Some would argue that if porn was a drug, it is more like Advil or Tylenol and isn’t that big of a problem, but like Advil and Tylenol, it should be regulated and controlled.

Porn is argued to be an addiction as strong as gambling or drinking and should be treated as such, but no limits have been placed on it. This is because porn is protected under the First Amendment. Pornography is considered to only be illegal if it is obscene. Obscenity has qualifications referred to as the Miller Test, where it has to meet 3 basic rules. "(a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Roth, supra, at 489, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value," (1973, Supreme Court). These laws have allowed the general public to overlook the First Amendment if it applied to those three principles. One of the Justices wrote a dissenting opinion mostly saying that the only reason he disagreed with the ruling is because it went against the First Amendment in that everything is free speech no matter the material.  The problem with how the general public determines this is that the general public is always changing its opinion and will not stay the same. In the lawsuit, the Supreme Court didn't allow one community to determine the rules for the nation and therefore this test is rarely used and paraphernalia can almost never fit its rigid and strict set of rules which essentially makes the court case a useless waste of time.

Simon Louis Lajeuness, a postdoctoral student and professor says that porn has little to no effect on men and that in his study, "Those who could not live out their fantasy in real life with their partner, simple set aside the fantasy," (2009, Moore). This was a flawed study because it only had 20 participants and the testimonies could have been false and there is no way to really document how people’s relationships aren’t what they fantasize about or if their fantasies changed. This is argued against by Naomi Wolf, an author, political consultant and third wave feminist, who wrote in her essay that, "Porn has blurred the line between clothed and unclothes, decent and indecent," referring to how porn is helping people become more and more obscene in real life (2005, Wolf). She also claims in another essay that the younger generation are being desensitized to real human beings. In the exact opposite of Lajeuness, Wolf argues that porn causes unrest with their families when users prefer their fantasies over reality (2003, Wolf). She further relates that this causes women to think that they can't "compete with a cyber vision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer's least specification," she explains that this gives more power to men as women, seeking to please men have to do more and more, because porn will do more and more (2003, Wolf). This is truly troubling, because this has made people different than before. With porn literally at their finger tips, the users could just surf the net for hours fulfilling their sexual needs.

Statistics show that more men than women view porn and that almost all men do view porn at least once in their lives. There have been many reasons proposed for this and the scientist, Dr. Erick Janssen reported to PBS that men viewing porn is an evolutionary trait derived from the drive to spread your genes and have a much sex with as many different people as much as possible and thus, have your child inherit these desires (2002, Janssen). This would cause men to want to view porn in order to simulate the thought process that occurs when having sexual intercourse. In contradiction, sex therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, in a MSNBC interview purposes that maybe women are too ashamed and hide their activities because society has a harsher view against women viewing porn (2006). She relates that people comes to her a lot for an addiction to porn and that many couples are getting seriously hurt by this pandemic. She worries less about porn's existence, but like other experts on addiction, she advises rather that people use it in moderation and that it's only bad when, "...it's getting in the way of the intimacy in your relationship, it's getting in the way of a healthy sex life, and, in many cases, it's getting in the way of your ability to even hold down a job, or spend time with your family, or carry out your daily tasks," (2006). She explains that many people come to her complaining that their husband spends hours every night stuck in front of a screen, wasting their lives away.

Porn pulls a steady profit and helps our economy, but like tobacco and alcohol, it needs to be regulated so as not to cause harm. It's true that porn doesn't kill people, but it can do worse things than that like ruin your family and life. The obscenity law isn't enough and I won't argue against the First Amendment and try to censor the Internet, but the Government should fund more programs that help those with the addiction to porn and make young people aware of the programs that are available to them to learn how to sate their appetites or at least prevent their lives from spiraling down into the fearful predictions and terrible results that happen today.

1337 Words in this document (not including works cited).

Armstrong Moore, Elizabeth (2009, December 1). New research suggests porn is overly           demonized. news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10407102-247.html

Foster Wallace, David (2006). Big Red Son. Consider the Lobster

Janssen, Erick (2002). Why People Use Porn.          www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/special/why.html

MSNBC (2006, March 3). Porn Addiction on the Rise.          http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11640411/ns/msnbc_tv-rita_cosby_specials/t/porn- addiction-increases-across-country/#.TznZGoH9J94

Singel, Ryan (2004, November 19). Internet Porn: Worse than Crack?          www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65772

Supreme Court (1973, June 21). Miller v. California.          http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0413_0015_ZS.html

Wolf, Naomi (2003, October 20). The Porn Myth. nymad.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/

Wolf, Naomi (2005, May 21). Equal Wrongs.    nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/columns/n_10405/

Final Word Count: 1459 Words

My Thought on the Plauge of Acyronims

SOPA, ACTA and PIPA. Common terms for the internet at the moment. The thought is to give the United States law enforcement the ability to illegalize any websites that have any unauthorized streaming, counterfeit goods or copywritted material. Many people think of this as a "censoring of the internet" and are openly fighting the bills by attempting to hack the FBI and other government agencies. The main argument that the defense has is that it would help the entertainment industry by forcing people to buy the CD of that one artist of buying the DVD of that one awesome movie. Many people are outraged, because this is a sign of oppression by the government in a form of saying that they are supporting big business and hate the weak, poor man who can't even pay for his cable, but now he has to pay for his music too. The commonly shouted phrase is, that you don't get to destroy the internet because it doesn't fit the business model you want or that you need to find a new way to market the products that you're making. Unfortunately, this bill would spell the end for our favorite websites like Facebook and Youtube, and already Megaupload was taken down by the FBI and hackers retaliated taking down various government and music sites in protest. (whole story here)

Whatever happens, I'm pretty sure that SOPA, ACTA and PIPA will cause much more harm than any sort of benefits.

-The Observer

A Little Pent Up Jealousy

You probably can't tell that of right now, I've only had 195 views on my blog. As you might be able to suspect, this isn't very much... Most blogs in my class have less then mine, some even breaking 100 as we speak, but a few have over 500 and in one of my friend's cases, over 2000. I think it's impressive and I won't whine, but I find it fusterating that I have so few. You could attribute it to how I'm not consistantly posting or how, some posts, I admit are basically garbage. The one friend that does have over 2000 says that he constant pings his blog, which would explain why he has so many, considering that search engines would lead directly to him.

It's interesting to see the statistics of blogger. For instance, out of my 200 views, over half of the view are made on internet explorer and the vast majority of the people who have ever seen my site, perfer windows in their computer company. Surprizingly, the next highest amount of viewers use an iPod. I don't know how, but out of the people who have seen my blog, most are from the USA, but a sizable portion hails from Russia and a few from Germany. I don't know what my appeal is to those countries, but I'm glad that it isn't all just Americans.

Hopefully if I can convince enough people to join blogs with me, we could have over 1,000!

-The Observer

Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Anti-Jokes turn jokes into statements making things that seem to obviously start of as a joke end up tragically, resulting in humor through the unexpected. Pulling on people's imaginations, overused jokes, prevalent racism, sexism and antisemitism, these jokes make people laugh at the unrealistic (for a joke) answers. Many are considered "crossing the line" but a good number are appropriate.

Some that are considered anti-jokes from anti-joke.com include, but are not limited by:

Your mama is so fat, diet and exercise would probably save her life.

How do you punish an electrician?           Kill his family.

What happens when you step on a bear trap?          A lot of pain.

What did the black guy say to the white guy?          I'm black.

Why did the chicken commit suicide?         To get to the otherside.

What do Chinese kids make for father's day?          Shoes.

What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?         The Holocaust.

An Irishman walks out of a bar.

Your friend is so gay that he has consensual sex with other men and enjoys it.

What would George Washington do if he were alive today?          Scream and scratch at the top of his coffin. 

What did the boy with no arms and no legs get for Christmas?          Cancer. 

How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb?          Two, one to change it and the other to hold the ladder so the first man won't fall and hurt himself.

What did the homeless man get for Christmas?         Nothing.

New Blogs?

As you can read above, I might be starting a new collective blog with some fellow classmates. This would entail that we would have 2-6 people writing 3 posts a week but have everyone's posts show up side by side on a web page. If I were to do this, I'd first have to make a pact. I'd make everyone write down 2-5 topics and put them into a container of some kind, then every week, we would pull one of the topics out and each blogger would be required to write three blogs on the issue. This would prove advantageous, because, we could all designate a meeting place to come up up with ideas on what to write about. Also, this would be time efficient for us, because we would all have a set deadline and requirements, or else we would be liable to group discipline. On top of that, since we would have multiple contributors, there would be many posts every week. I would like to do this, but I don't know as to which of my peers would like to participate in this with me.

Fyisa

Fyisa is a man from Africa. He moved here, to America, many years ago when he was young. He's a smart and wise man, who has realized many things about life that I couldn't at first understand. When I first met him, I was 14 and in a dorm room with three other guys. He ran through the door and told me the greatest Hendonist inspired realization that I've came to understand. He told me that we only live once and the one thing that we need to do from beginning to end is enjoy ourselves and worry less about the small things. That we need to get as many friends as we can and as few enemies as possible. Live for our own happiness through making others happy. We must wake up every morning and decide what needs to be done and do what we want with out another person trying to hurt our happiness. That we must learn to accept all those who are here and appease everyone.

His thoughts stay with me today and grow. Fyisa would always be singing and telling stories about himself and life in general. He proposed many theories and among them, my favorite is his thoughts on clothing. He told me one day that he wished everyone was naked all the time. I kinda just sat there in the class room a little dazed and asked him why. He told me that if everyone was naked, there would be nothing to hide and fetishes would become extinct and people could only judge each other on what's there, not by what is not, like makeup or flashy clothes. People couldn't judge others harshly on appearance, because their physical flaws were visible. At first, yes it would be uncomfortable but, with time, it wouldn't be that big of a deal as everyone walked around with out their self-conscience mind controlling them to be who they were not. With time, no one would care about each other's appearance and rather, just judge others mentally.

I thought that this made no sense what so ever. Why would being nude make men any less sex-oriented. How would that change anything? Wouldn't this just make it impossible for some people to be happy, because their flaws were right there seen by all? I didn't know what to think, but i just knew that he just said what he thought.

Recently, this point was made up again as my language class; favorite author, David Sedaris, wrote in his book, Naked, about when he visited a nudist colony for a week. My friend made me read this article and I was very nostalgic as Mr. Sedaris pulled my thoughts to his time spent naked with the elderly (mainly). It reminded me of the African I knew, whose ideology was remarkably the same as the people who lived at the colony. I found it odd, how a these two related.

Even as I wondered if he was just using the same words as David Sedaris, I realized that no, Fyisa's thoughts went deeper and explored a much larger view of humanity. He was not just the guy who wanted to be naked, he was the guy who wanted to make others happy and wanted to end secrecy and hate. To this day, I'm sure Fyisa is just living to be happy for others, which makes me happy, because, I know that through him, others are too.

You Are Not So Smart

 

The video above shows a very hindsight bias  thought that most humans have about life. When you draw the "bull's eye" you are just trying to find a correlation between very impossible things to judge. Therefore, what you need to know is that humans just find meaning from nothing and these associations are manifestations of hope and dread. People would be a better race if we didn't order the events that happen. 

You Are Not So Smart is the blog for the franchise-like ideas that arise from the creators -check it out.

The Dragonborn Era

With the release of the great Skyrim, people everywhere are addicted to the violence that trancends the beauty of the artificial world. Since the first Elder Scrolls in 1994, the world has changed. The Epic-Fantasy of the Tolken based books spawned the fantasy genre as we know it today. Skyrim came out on 11-11-11 and is loved and adored everywhere I go. At school the intial rage was so great that if you didn't have it, you didn't talk at all, because all conversation was on how seemless the world was or how amazing the details are.

The Game

This game steals from us our time, our minds and our lives. All we want to do is play the game and nothing else. Our thoughts are the game and our ideas lead to the game. It's known that eventually, we will get bored, but we don't care. The cult of the Dragonborn that is rising will be but a fading memiory in year, but for now, be vigilent, you never know where this can lead.

Occupation

Occupy Wall Street is growing in popularity as the slogan of the non-violent campaign being "We are the 99%" is seen worldwide. The movement is trying to take power from the richest people in the world who control countries and peoples. As terrible as the situation sounds, a large part of the protest is optimistic.

With the recession and the enormous debt in the USA, fears have risen about retirement packages, 401ks among various benefits and politician's have to react to the demands of the populous. The problem is very vague and can't be direct. The hardest thing that needs to occur is finding out what the problem is itself. In America, we have many institutions that are supposed to help us live. According to many people: banks, insurance companies and many staggering corporations have taken control of daily life.


Mainly, this is a fiscal problem. Our government attempts to cut back on expenses and destroys things that we need and want to provide for yourself and those who depend on us. Stemming from education concerns, financial aid has been decreasing for years and our nation being raised in a sense that you MUST have a college degree, has grown fearful that college is only for those who can afford it. Sometimes even if you do get a degree and the profession you're seeking is in demand, it is difficult to get a job. Health Care is expensive and necessary. People die, this is a fact. the problem is that the rich live longer than the other classes. The richest people can afford the things that get expensive. This angers people, because they think that the rich abuse the poor and control the raising of payments and just get richer as the poorer people just get poorer.

The jealously of the middle and the lower classes frightens the upper classes which in turn starts a cycle of contests for control.

Propaganda of the occupy movement.

This fear starts with domination and is clearly seen in the media as police forces or swat teams spraying crowds of people with pepper spray. This is stupid. Since the cause has very shoddy organization, if you did nothing, then the populace would just quite down. Since the government is reacting violently, it's getting much more support than it should. The media exemplifies the protestors' pleas and villainizes the police force and government.

A widely seen image of a police officer dousing a crowd of college kids associated with OWS.

Some news companies and websites have even called this movement a catalyst for class warfare. The people are starting to get impatient and don't want to have to wait until the next election for change. This impatience and lack of hesitation from the government causes strife. People want the current officials to change.


Personally, I think that the movement has a good root idea and cause, but the bandwagon it's receiving is making it look stupid. the large amount of protestors will say one of two things when asked, "Why are you protesting?" one being the textbook definition and same old answers you'll hear anywhere or the second being how they "Want to remove tyranny," "Stop suffering," or "End discrimination!" these things are only loosely based to the movement itself and I truly believe that this makes these people looked like brainwashed idiots. The movement was not to remove tyranny, it's to correct the current beliefs of Washington. Even though the reason people are protesting is because of their suffering, it's more about policies that make them suffer and not the cause itself, being, usually, bad luck and self blame. And ending discrimination is nowhere near the basics of the thought of Occupy Wallstreet, poor have the unfair, millinea old, disadvantage of lack of wealth. this doesn't automatically mean that they are cursed. People with power, status and money realize this (usually) and won't discriminate against them. This movement doesn't care if you are a racist, anti-semi or ignorant, if you have a legitimate claim to harm, you're accepted.


The only video that I've seen that can easily portray the reasons that I've seen is this one,

The Top Comment being;

1. End the Fed.
2. Free Energy for the World.
3. Resource based Economy.
4. Human Evolution.

reasontorecord 2 weeks ago 66

All of which are all to radical or impossible and I personally think, ignorant and stupid.

If the Federal Government was ended, there would be no end to the problems we would face. If we want better benefits for life, we need a federal government so that we would actually get tehem.

If the US, no lets say every developed country was to supply free energy to the WHOLE world every country's economy would tank because of the soon massive need and loss of jobs because you'd have to volunteer to maintain the facilities because there is no profit. Also, the countries that get power decide who in them gets to have electricity. This power we give their national government is so huge that it is hard to say what is better to do, Give them power, or withhold the power.

A resource based economy is outdated which contradicts his fourth point and would result in mass suffering because people depend on service based jobs for almost everything from a job to help on something that they are doing.

His last point about "Human Evolution" is so vague that you can't understand what he means. Does it mean a universal belief in evolution? Or something simpler like a controlled advancement of culture and science to a point of godliness? This vague comment annots me. it presents no plan and can't really show any in depth thought.

All in all the points he present have no plan and are therefore useless, because how can you tell a government not to exist by mere protests. It's pretty stupid. I'm not entirely convinced that this person understands what he's talking about. The words he present don't come with an argument and if they did, it would be flawed. the contradictions that he has in his words and are very strong. If a collaboration of people united for a common purpose is government and the government is an advancement from personal achievement, then how is the next step, dissenting from the government?

The very basic identity of the argument against an unpopular government is sound, but the piling on of people's complaints don't help.

If you need some complaints from the protestors, go to this website.