Sunday, February 28, 2010
Share Button?
I'm honestly realizing how horribly behind I am in the world of technology. I really need to work on understanding how computers work. I need to read a computer science book, take a class on HTML or do something because it seems like everyone knows how to do this stuff except for me!
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
BE A REBEL
Something I found a long time ago that completely verbalizes my frustration with how the K-12 education system works.
Every day, millions of children march to school with drudgery and resistance. As young children, they go in open-hearted and free -- at night, they imagine that their tiny hands can reach up and touch the birds. The entire world is a new place and the fascination of beauty never subsides. But as older adolescents leaving their high school, they go close-minded and bondaged -- at night, they drink themselves into passing out and talk about the most popular thing to come, under obligation. The boys worry about their sexual conquests. The girls worry about their sexual appearance. Both worry about being social in a society that has made a weakness of kindness and an insult of emotion. Such a great change occurs between those who enter school and those who leave it.
Just think of the sheer idiocy of compulsory education. We threaten these children with imprisonment if they do not appear in class. Once in class, they spend their time either sleeping or completing tasks that are completely irrelevant to them. By giving them no option in their schooling, what have we taught them? The first lesson they learn is to detest learning, to hold unbridled sympathy for education. Take any man, put him in chains, and force him to recite poetry, or force him to play an instrument, or force him to farm the land -- and once he becomes a free man, do you think he will want to engage in that activity that was forced upon him? The scars on a slaves hands from working the fields, the memories of abuse of a house servant; given the right to do as they wish in the world, is it likely to think that they will return to that work which they were forced to do? And then consider schools. We force children to sit and overfeed them erroneous facts, faulty logic, damaged reasoning, concealed under the guise of "schooling." Once the mental faculties of these children are damaged, their heart grows an animosity towards learning, towards books, towards facts and knowledge. It is the greatest folly to make children hate learning, and the greatest danger to a real, living Democracy in any nation.
Because when the Red Sox win a baseball game, five universities in the state of Massachussetts riot. But when the United States regime supports a South American dictator known for slaughtering his own people, it's a whisper lost in the wind.
Our ignorance is their power.
Real knowledge is acquired by learning what interests you, through reading, investigation, practice, or any other desirable method. To become intelligent, you must engage in activity with the idea that are you learning because you want to, because knowledge is a goal. The path to conformity varies greatly from this. First, you engage in nothing, but allow cultural standards and social obligations to control you. Second, the idea of learning is to memorize random, perhaps unrelated and blatant facts -- true or untrue -- so that they may be recited upon command. Third, the goal is not knowledge, but a passing grade; they learn to for the sake of knowledge, but rather for the sake of social acceptance.
Take two children. Give the first freedom and liberty, give him a wealth of books and movies, give him teachers to aid him upon his request and a place that encourages art, creativity, and independence. Then take away the freedom and liberty of the second, require his presence in a classroom in front of a teacher, threaten him with a jail sentence if he does not go to his school. Give each of them ten or fifteen years, and check the development of each of them after this amount of time. The only forced to endure slavery may be able to stand in a lecture hall and he might be able to say to you, "George Washington was born in 1732 and died in 1799. In 1776, the Revolutionary War began where he acted as general. In 1783, it ended. In 1789, he was elected president a first time, and in 1792, he was elected president a second time." You are given dates and events, surely, it is true history. But take the child who was given freedom to do as he pleased, and he might be able to stand in a lecture hall and tell you, "In the sixteenth century, in Europe, a Spanish physician by the name of Michael Servetus was convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. Fleeing from his oppressors, he made it to Geneva, where the vindictive John Calvin had absolute authority. In earlier years, Servetus expressed his doubt on Calvin's protestant religion. Once captured by the authorities, Servetus was burned to death at the orders of John Calvin in 1533. They had him wear a hat of sulphur and used slow-burning wood, that the crowd could listen to screams for mercy for the duration of a half hour. One year after the death of this man, Calvin published a list of insults of his former enemy."
Be a rebel. Because being a conformist means admitting that the parts of you that matter are already dead.
But if that's the case, what does matter? The emotions that run rampant through our head, the thoughts that we tumble and toss over in our minds constantly -- sexual fantasies to memories of our friends and family, thoughts and ideas about our future, wishes and desires for our current life with those who are close to us. The idea of a living freedom, knowing that what you wish to do believe with your mind is unrestricted and what you wish to do with your body, so long as you harm none, is unlimited. Life matters to us because we make it matter; if we never told a lover we would miss them upon our departure for a long voyage, if we never told a family member that we dream of a time when oppression ended, if we never wrote a poem and hoped to give it to a friend whose face we haven't seen in years -- if we never cared about life, then life wouldn't matter. What matters is what we make matter. So in a few years, all the kids who graduate from high school will know that their grades never mattered, because even though so young, they already know that it won't be the grades they got that they think about upon their death bed.
Twenty years ago the textbooks used in history class just began to cover some of the issues of the four hundred years of oppression of the African race in this country.
Children who are forced into a school and forced to complete erroneous assignments learn only one thing: to hate education. I clearly demonstrated this truth earlier, but there is more to be learned from it. Take a slave. It could be a slave from any society, whether an African in colonial America or a Plebeian in the Roman Empire. For the entirety of their life, they labor. Their sweat, their tears, their blood, the biproducts of their toil seep into the ground and their garments. All they produce goes to the one who did not labor (and alas, our modern Capitalist system has managed to recreate these conditions). Inside every slave, there will be a growing hatred of their activity as a servant, a farmer, a manufacturer -- they will learn to hate what has been forced upon them without their consent. But inside some of them, there will be the kindling of hope for a dream. One day, they will hope to produce for themselves, knowing that what their hands reap will be what fills their stomach, and not the stomach belonging to idle hands. So, too, it is with our compulsary education. The more we are forced into schools and our minds filled with useless facts, the stronger our thirst grows for real education, for real knowledge. Few are like this, but we exist. Others simply remain politically and emotionally sedated, as the focus of their mind is the next test or the next prom, and not children enslaved in southeast asia or the meaning of life.
To every student who must endure the excuse of an education system that we have, I can only offer these words of hope... Educate yourself, not with school teachers, but with the books they wanted to ban. Teach yourself, learn, grow, and develop. Learn that the greatest asset education can offer is that of independence.
"If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense.
"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him, as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other."
-- Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations, Book 5, Chapter I, Part 3, Article II.
Life matters to us because we make it matter. Be a rebel.
BE A REBEL
By Punkerslut
By Punkerslut
Every day, millions of children march to school with drudgery and resistance. As young children, they go in open-hearted and free -- at night, they imagine that their tiny hands can reach up and touch the birds. The entire world is a new place and the fascination of beauty never subsides. But as older adolescents leaving their high school, they go close-minded and bondaged -- at night, they drink themselves into passing out and talk about the most popular thing to come, under obligation. The boys worry about their sexual conquests. The girls worry about their sexual appearance. Both worry about being social in a society that has made a weakness of kindness and an insult of emotion. Such a great change occurs between those who enter school and those who leave it.
Just think of the sheer idiocy of compulsory education. We threaten these children with imprisonment if they do not appear in class. Once in class, they spend their time either sleeping or completing tasks that are completely irrelevant to them. By giving them no option in their schooling, what have we taught them? The first lesson they learn is to detest learning, to hold unbridled sympathy for education. Take any man, put him in chains, and force him to recite poetry, or force him to play an instrument, or force him to farm the land -- and once he becomes a free man, do you think he will want to engage in that activity that was forced upon him? The scars on a slaves hands from working the fields, the memories of abuse of a house servant; given the right to do as they wish in the world, is it likely to think that they will return to that work which they were forced to do? And then consider schools. We force children to sit and overfeed them erroneous facts, faulty logic, damaged reasoning, concealed under the guise of "schooling." Once the mental faculties of these children are damaged, their heart grows an animosity towards learning, towards books, towards facts and knowledge. It is the greatest folly to make children hate learning, and the greatest danger to a real, living Democracy in any nation.
Because when the Red Sox win a baseball game, five universities in the state of Massachussetts riot. But when the United States regime supports a South American dictator known for slaughtering his own people, it's a whisper lost in the wind.
Our ignorance is their power.
Real knowledge is acquired by learning what interests you, through reading, investigation, practice, or any other desirable method. To become intelligent, you must engage in activity with the idea that are you learning because you want to, because knowledge is a goal. The path to conformity varies greatly from this. First, you engage in nothing, but allow cultural standards and social obligations to control you. Second, the idea of learning is to memorize random, perhaps unrelated and blatant facts -- true or untrue -- so that they may be recited upon command. Third, the goal is not knowledge, but a passing grade; they learn to for the sake of knowledge, but rather for the sake of social acceptance.
Take two children. Give the first freedom and liberty, give him a wealth of books and movies, give him teachers to aid him upon his request and a place that encourages art, creativity, and independence. Then take away the freedom and liberty of the second, require his presence in a classroom in front of a teacher, threaten him with a jail sentence if he does not go to his school. Give each of them ten or fifteen years, and check the development of each of them after this amount of time. The only forced to endure slavery may be able to stand in a lecture hall and he might be able to say to you, "George Washington was born in 1732 and died in 1799. In 1776, the Revolutionary War began where he acted as general. In 1783, it ended. In 1789, he was elected president a first time, and in 1792, he was elected president a second time." You are given dates and events, surely, it is true history. But take the child who was given freedom to do as he pleased, and he might be able to stand in a lecture hall and tell you, "In the sixteenth century, in Europe, a Spanish physician by the name of Michael Servetus was convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. Fleeing from his oppressors, he made it to Geneva, where the vindictive John Calvin had absolute authority. In earlier years, Servetus expressed his doubt on Calvin's protestant religion. Once captured by the authorities, Servetus was burned to death at the orders of John Calvin in 1533. They had him wear a hat of sulphur and used slow-burning wood, that the crowd could listen to screams for mercy for the duration of a half hour. One year after the death of this man, Calvin published a list of insults of his former enemy."
Be a rebel. Because being a conformist means admitting that the parts of you that matter are already dead.
But if that's the case, what does matter? The emotions that run rampant through our head, the thoughts that we tumble and toss over in our minds constantly -- sexual fantasies to memories of our friends and family, thoughts and ideas about our future, wishes and desires for our current life with those who are close to us. The idea of a living freedom, knowing that what you wish to do believe with your mind is unrestricted and what you wish to do with your body, so long as you harm none, is unlimited. Life matters to us because we make it matter; if we never told a lover we would miss them upon our departure for a long voyage, if we never told a family member that we dream of a time when oppression ended, if we never wrote a poem and hoped to give it to a friend whose face we haven't seen in years -- if we never cared about life, then life wouldn't matter. What matters is what we make matter. So in a few years, all the kids who graduate from high school will know that their grades never mattered, because even though so young, they already know that it won't be the grades they got that they think about upon their death bed.
Twenty years ago the textbooks used in history class just began to cover some of the issues of the four hundred years of oppression of the African race in this country.
Children who are forced into a school and forced to complete erroneous assignments learn only one thing: to hate education. I clearly demonstrated this truth earlier, but there is more to be learned from it. Take a slave. It could be a slave from any society, whether an African in colonial America or a Plebeian in the Roman Empire. For the entirety of their life, they labor. Their sweat, their tears, their blood, the biproducts of their toil seep into the ground and their garments. All they produce goes to the one who did not labor (and alas, our modern Capitalist system has managed to recreate these conditions). Inside every slave, there will be a growing hatred of their activity as a servant, a farmer, a manufacturer -- they will learn to hate what has been forced upon them without their consent. But inside some of them, there will be the kindling of hope for a dream. One day, they will hope to produce for themselves, knowing that what their hands reap will be what fills their stomach, and not the stomach belonging to idle hands. So, too, it is with our compulsary education. The more we are forced into schools and our minds filled with useless facts, the stronger our thirst grows for real education, for real knowledge. Few are like this, but we exist. Others simply remain politically and emotionally sedated, as the focus of their mind is the next test or the next prom, and not children enslaved in southeast asia or the meaning of life.
To every student who must endure the excuse of an education system that we have, I can only offer these words of hope... Educate yourself, not with school teachers, but with the books they wanted to ban. Teach yourself, learn, grow, and develop. Learn that the greatest asset education can offer is that of independence.
"If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense.
"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him, as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other."
-- Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations, Book 5, Chapter I, Part 3, Article II.
Life matters to us because we make it matter. Be a rebel.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Corporation = New Feudal Manor
I feel like the corporation is the contemporary version of the feudal manor.
Politicians/board members ------- Kings
CEO's --------------------------- Vassals
Middle Management --------------- Knights
Entry level positions ----------- Serfs
No matter what way i look at it, I'm doomed to be an indentured servant or serf when i get out of college. Working on a computer (land) I don't own, to make money for a corporation (lord) I most likely hate, all in the attempt to gain protection (a steady paycheck and benefits like health insurance and a 401k).
Politicians/board members ------- Kings
CEO's --------------------------- Vassals
Middle Management --------------- Knights
Entry level positions ----------- Serfs
No matter what way i look at it, I'm doomed to be an indentured servant or serf when i get out of college. Working on a computer (land) I don't own, to make money for a corporation (lord) I most likely hate, all in the attempt to gain protection (a steady paycheck and benefits like health insurance and a 401k).
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Republicans and Democrats
I spent a lot of time today analyzing what accounts for the conflicts between our political parties. I wanted to know what makes them so drastically different, and the best explanation i could find was this response i got on yahoo answers.
The answerer gave a profile of the type of person that inhabits each party, and from this it is pretty easy to see what makes the viewpoints of each party so conflicting.
From this answer i've come to the conclusion that both parties are hypocritical, scheming, Tartuffes. They both lay claim to honorable principals, but in reality our government no longer governs for the people by the people.
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
After much consideration, I would compare them this way...and please understand that I use extremes to illustrate the point...
Imagine two families....one Republican, one Democrat.
The Republican family is headed by the father. The mother is a stay at home mom of five children. Dad works as a banker, brings home the money and, as such, has the last word as the 'provider'. He takes his family to church every Sunday, and they sit - as an upstanding family in the church - in the same pew every week. They follow the bible's teachings, and as such, believe that abortion is wrong. Dad is a strong patriot...he believes in his country, right or wrong. He has a gun at home, and will use it to defend his family. He does not want the government to get overly involved in his family life, and doesn't believe that he should be over-taxed, just so that his hard earned money can be handed out to worthless hippies who are too lazy to get a job. He pays his mortgage on time, he is always current with his bills and he believes that everyone should do the same.
In the Democrat's household, the parents are 'partners'. They may even be same sex partners. They have children as well, and raise them the best way they know how. There aren't as many rules in the house, and the children are encouraged to think for themselves. They encourage the children to respect everyone else's views...even if they don't actually believe them. They are pro-choice and don't necessarily feel that the church should influence the way they think. They want a peaceful world, where everyone is fed, has access to free healthcare and safe and happy. Not always terribly sensible, but they are humanitarians...and they believe that everyone should share in the providing for others. In essence...they are a very liberal family...some might call them hippies
One is red and one is blue. That's really all there is.
democrats want to help people and republicans want to help people help themselves
The answerer gave a profile of the type of person that inhabits each party, and from this it is pretty easy to see what makes the viewpoints of each party so conflicting.
From this answer i've come to the conclusion that both parties are hypocritical, scheming, Tartuffes. They both lay claim to honorable principals, but in reality our government no longer governs for the people by the people.
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
After much consideration, I would compare them this way...and please understand that I use extremes to illustrate the point...
Imagine two families....one Republican, one Democrat.
The Republican family is headed by the father. The mother is a stay at home mom of five children. Dad works as a banker, brings home the money and, as such, has the last word as the 'provider'. He takes his family to church every Sunday, and they sit - as an upstanding family in the church - in the same pew every week. They follow the bible's teachings, and as such, believe that abortion is wrong. Dad is a strong patriot...he believes in his country, right or wrong. He has a gun at home, and will use it to defend his family. He does not want the government to get overly involved in his family life, and doesn't believe that he should be over-taxed, just so that his hard earned money can be handed out to worthless hippies who are too lazy to get a job. He pays his mortgage on time, he is always current with his bills and he believes that everyone should do the same.
In the Democrat's household, the parents are 'partners'. They may even be same sex partners. They have children as well, and raise them the best way they know how. There aren't as many rules in the house, and the children are encouraged to think for themselves. They encourage the children to respect everyone else's views...even if they don't actually believe them. They are pro-choice and don't necessarily feel that the church should influence the way they think. They want a peaceful world, where everyone is fed, has access to free healthcare and safe and happy. Not always terribly sensible, but they are humanitarians...and they believe that everyone should share in the providing for others. In essence...they are a very liberal family...some might call them hippies
One is red and one is blue. That's really all there is.
democrats want to help people and republicans want to help people help themselves
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
My First Post!!
Well i've spent the past 6 house designing my personal website, my personal blog, and my blog for The College Companion. My head is spinning. My Etsy account just got registered, and i'm hoping to get a video resume started by this weekend. I haven't slept more than 5 hours a night for the past week and i really hope tonight will be different!
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