Challenges

I was thinking about something during one of the recent episodes of insomnia which have recently been marauding me. I think it was brought on by the intense, concentrated philosophy we've been covering this semester in both Phenomenology & Existentialism and Modern Philosophy.

This has got a bit of a solipsistic flavor to it, and I know that's been done to hell, so just bear with me.

I was struck with the thought (the honest-to-goodness, permeating thought) that it would be entirely possible for us to be creating our own worlds in terms of challenges and [je ne sais quoi-- that which has been defeated. 'jnsq']. jnsq is the root of what allows us to feel good about ourselves. We can defeat these things because we are, in one way or another, superior to them. For me, excelling in academia has really been the driving force behind my actions since I was introduced to it. I was used to being on top, and when I was in sophomore-(in-college-) level spelling in third grade, I knew that I was destined to kick ass at being intelligent. The jnsqs came easily because I hadn't yet met a peer.

This was the case until just about my sophomore (high school) year, when I started to veer away from my 100s and 99s and chemistry began to kick my ass. Regardless of when it started, or how much it has continued to be the case, the challenges could, feasibly, just be creations of our mind, designed to balance out the positivity. Every time I only barely passed an AP Chem test, I began to hate things more, and I cared less about succeeding and more about self-preservation. Ultimately, challenges could be a result of what we aim to be, which gives us some superficial purpose in this lost world. They're neutralizers for the positive aspects of life. Every time we defeat a jnsq, we're made to feel good about ourselves, but when one of those jnsqs is a worthy opponent, we can say that defeating it makes life worth living.

Or philosophy is stupid, which is just about the route I'm prepared to take.

Power Church!

Now with real lightning!

I'm debating whether it would serve me more efficiently to blatantly display my religious affiliation at the beginning of this post, if I should save it for the end, or if I should mention it at all. I'll keep it out of this for now, since I daresay it will reveal itself over the course of the reflection.

"'All we do on this state is bait. [...] People won't go to church, but they'll come to see us do these crazy things.'"

I read this sentence and wondered why they're making steps to convert people who won't go to church. You have to ponder why those people aren't going to church in the first place. I imagine it's (loosely) for one of two reasons:

1. They honestly aren't religious, and they are well-established in this conviction.
2. They are religious, but too lazy to attend service.

Now, imagine trying to communicate with the first group. These are the haters who have brought down the idea of televangelism (I'm including "parachurches" in this word) such that the ones who practice it must acknowledge how ridiculous they look and excuse it by saying that "'[it's] a bait to hook the people who would never come to a regular church service.'" These people sit at home on Sundays, content with their beliefs, and earnestly mock the people who are giving an effort to try to change members of the first group's minds.

Bad idea. They won't get anywhere.

Consider, then, trying to reach out to the people who are too lazy to go to church. If they believe (I'm talking really believe) that a sky daddy is watching over them and gets to decide whether or not they burn in torturous agony for all eternity, then there's a good chance that they'll be swayed by whatever is put on the television. They'll say to themselves, "Oh, no, it's Sunday. I slept through church. I guess I can make up for it by going next week. Hey, here's a guy who's telling me how it is... he looks ridiculous, but it's nice to see someone really believing in our lord so much that he'll put up with humiliation. These people give me hope." They don't have to like or agree with the things that the evangelist is doing, but they just have to feel guilty that they're not doing the same thing, and they'll likely be motivated to go to church.

And we're talking about the intelligent ones, here. Imagine the family of biblical literalists who attend rallies where the parachurch preachers give sermons and d e m o n strations. This woman is allowed to roam free, allowed to vote, allowed to change the future of this country... or perpetuate its failing values in the name of Christ.

Now, think about THIS with me: Has anyone ever considered that people are basing their lifestyles off of a BOOK? I'll tell you what: SNOOKI "wrote" a book. There is a certain group of people who live by this book, I'm sure. But there are millions of people who are still living by the archaic principles outlined in a text that is thousands of years old. I mean, when you really think about it, that's what they're doing: they're determining how they are supposed to live off of a friggin' book. I'll tell you what, people are just stupid.

Back to the parachurch preachers. According to Mazer's writing, "Their [the "muscular Christians"] ability to break things represents the strength necessary to resist the lure of drugs, alcohol, premarital sex, gang violence and generalised despair."

Wait, wait, wait a minute. "We must resist the lure of gang violence! It's causing our children to be sinners! The only way they can be redeemed is through controlling their strength!" Yes, parents. Gang violence is perpetuated by godlessness. You are so right. In fact, these men who preach such a message should be parading around like heroes, because they are stopping our kids from having premarital sex.

Which is exactly why 1 in 4 women have HPV, right? Because they've been stopped by God.

I can name, off-hand, 10 girls with whom I graduated who have had at least one child, or have gotten pregnant, since we left high school. I would be willing to bet that all of them are Christians, or identify as Christians, because of the area we live in.

On top of that, what kind of message is "SEX IS BAD", anyway? Pushing things underground is just going to make people want to experience those things even more. I mean, come ON. That's a fundamental principle of governing societies. UNSAFE sex is bad. I'll give you that one. So why can't we teach people to be responsible, rather than pushing them away from natural experiences?

Christians should not be running this country, but they are. I take issue with this.

Edit:

I would reflect on the part where Jacobs describes how non-Christians are not real men, and how Christians are the paragon of what it means to be a man, but it's such utter bullshit that I'm not considering it worth my time.

a plague of tics

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to write about this short story. It was about a man who had lived with body tics since he could remember, with neither support nor escape, until he ended up in college and started smoking.

Rather than give any insightful commentary on the story itself, I'm going to relay a personal anecdote via blog. When I was about 10 or 11, my father married this thing which we will call Molly. Molly was, and is, a despicable creature unfit to even have made the acquaintance of my family, let alone become part of it. (I still maintain that she hasn't gotten that far.) She used to live in this city called Williamsport, which is about half an hour from my hometown. Inner-city Wilpo housed the BroDart book publishing/binding company (I forget what the hell they do there). Every few weekends, we'd drive up to Williamsport to meet this foul bitch, and since I was pretty much in love with books at the time, I'd always suggest going to BroDart, where they had used books at warehouse prices (read: cheap).

The one time we drove up, I came across a book called Kissing Doorknobs, which (as far as I can remember) was about this girl who developed obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) over the course of her adolescence. I'm pretty sure she gets molested at some point, and eventually she seeks treatment, but is still pretty fucked up. Molly bought me the book after reading about it, and I swear to god, she knew what she was doing, because in addition to being as much of a bitch as she is, she's manipulative. I read Kissing Doorknobs and thought, "This is kinda weird. I bet if I started doing these things, though, I could stop." The girl in the story goes around kissing doorknobs (obviously), counting steps, and generally having mental obsessions along with physical compulsions.

So I started performing some of these physical acts... counting things, moving certain body parts for no reason, and what have you. And after a time, I realized I was wrong: I couldn't stop. It was so frustrating. a plague of tics hits me hard. I can remember so many times when people would call me out on it and I would be so embarrassed that I would cry and cry, but I would keep doing it anyway, and it's one of those problems that's so difficult to explain to people, because they don't understand that "I NEED to do this." They will keep walking when you need to recalculate how many steps you've walked. You're trapped in your mind with the numbers floating around, the license plates you catch a glimpse of and then repeat to yourself over and over and over again, the words you mouth even though no one is listening to you speak... and you look like you're fucking crazy.

I hate the parents in this, because fuck. I hate the sister in this, because my siblings have always done the same goddamned thing: when I need support, they mock me instead. What's more, I finally sought treatment in 2007, almost 7 years after I read that book. Seven years of compulsions, of obsessions that I had been having with numbers and thinking that I was going crazy. I found a counselor, the same one I had had in elementary school (coincidentally-- she had since opened a private practice), and didn't realize at the time that I was looking at the wrong thing; I needed someone with a doctorate, not some self-absorbed, racist piece of shit. I talked, but I don't think she heard me. She would always give some kind of input, and when I asked if I could be put on medication to see if there was some kind of chemical change that could make this madness stop, she reluctantly agreed and contacted my doctor for a prescription.

Once I received the prescription, I tried cancelling my appointments as often as possible. Every time I went to see her, I would end up in tears because she would bring up some point (my dad, my childhood, etc.) that would just be upsetting. I wanted to be talking about OCD, not my childhood. I went off Zoloft in a matter of months, since asking my doctor to refill my prescription (which he wasn't going to write in the first place, since he doesn't believe in that kind of medication... ass.) was embarrassing and made me feel weak.

So four years later, I am still wrought with vocal and behavioral tics. I at least know more about them now than a licensed, practicing counselor does. My mom doesn't know the full extent of my issues with tics, and I tell her everything. She's been supportive of me all along, but I completely know where the author is coming from when he says he doesn't understand how people may have their vices, but he isn't allowed to have his, and then his dad slams his nose into the goddamn windshield.

Who the fuck even DOES that.

Anyway, I'm done.

***

Edit, post-yoga.

I was really in a bad mood since I'd read this story, and after class I felt so guilty for making a spectacle out of everything that I thought I should probably take this blog post down. After I read over it again, I reasoned that it was organic enough of a post to keep it up in its entirety. I should be more charitable to the author, though, and to the nature of the assignment, to state that beyond the surface-level stuff, it was a well-structured short story that was captivating (for whatever reason). It held my attention through the whole thing.

Sorry for being derp.

Blog Post #5

It's St. Patrick's Day, and I don't give a shit because I'm not Irish. (Or Catholic, or Protestant.)

That being said, here's a blog post.


Prompts for Wed.: In about 500 or so words, write 1) the specific question you propose to answer for your final research paper; 2) your working thesis statement (i.e., a sentence that tells what you think you will prove in that paper, a response to the question you will answer); 3) an overview of what you currently know about the issue; 4) an overview of what you need to find out about the issue; 5) a list of arguments which oppose the one you plan to make; and 6) a list of sources you have looked at on the topic at this point.

1. What are the economic and ethical concerns that arise as a result of high-production factory farming?

2. America’s demand for meat is at an all-time high, consequently placing considerable economic and moral stress on those citizens who concern themselves with food production.

3.

• Animals are being processed in an unreasonably inhumane fashion.
• There are not only several stances being taken on the inhumane treatment of slaughter animals, but different debates which concern the overarching issue of our relation to animals.
• We process billions of farm animals every year for American consumption.
• Federal inspections are tragically insufficient to ensure food safety—yet millions of uninspected animals are stamped with the USDA’s seal of approval.
• In response to the exposure of unsafe inspection practices, the USDA turned the responsibility of consumption to the consumer.
• Chill baths, used to disinfect chicken carcasses, wash the bodies in germs.
• Downer animals are recorded to have been thrown in with animals deemed safe for processing.
• There are multiple governmental reports which have been issued as a result of faulty inspection on behalf of the FSIS. The USDA insists that this is a consequence of poorly educated inspectors.
• E. coli, specifically, results from the corn-based diet that is fed to cows who are being bred for slaughter and dairy production.
• E. coli 0157:H7, a strain of E. coli discussed in Slaughterhouse, is naturally found in cow feces. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_O157:H7
• Something like 90% of the meat processed in the United States is done in 13 slaughterhouses.
  

4.

• How safe is the food we eat?
• Is there a rational, ethical answer to the vegetarian vs. meat-eating debate?

5.

• The USDA argues that food poisoning and germs (e.g., E. coli, salmonella) are naturally in raw meat, and consumers should focus on thoroughly cooking their food.
• Many philosophers dealing with ethics have addressed the issue and concluded that meat eating isn't really that bad.
• Major corporations need high-speed food production to meet the demands of American consumers.
• Tyson has a list of core values (www.tyson.com/Consumer/CoreValues.aspx).
  

6.

• Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz.
• Food, Inc. by Robert Kenner.
• Food for Thought edited by Steve Sapontzis.
• Humane Methods of Slaughter Act Weaknesses in USDA Enforcement : Testimony before the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives

Plagiarism and Laugh Tracks

"Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age", by Trip Gabriel, addresses the increasingly prominent issue of plagiarism that seems to be second nature to most students today. There's no nice way to express my feelings about plagiarism, so instead I'll just make a list where I do it meanly.

1. It's impossible to get through a grade school education (esp. one geared toward higher education) without learning about plagiarism. Students say they didn't know any better? I say, "BULLSHIT." (Bolded and in caps!) We have all heard the spiel from teachers for years. Years, I tell you.

2. You didn't write that stuff. You didn't go out and do hours of painstaking research. You didn't assemble it in a coherent and scholarly manner. So don't claim that you did! It's so obvious when students take credit for things that they didn't do. And professionals? How dare you.

3. If you're not willing to credit the author, then as Sarah Wilensky stated in the article, this "fosters laziness". There's no getting around it. If you're not willing to put in the effort to give credit where it's due, then your work is probably not worth reading.

--------------

And now for something completely different.1

Oh, Chuck Klosterman. You silly, silly man. In his passage entitled "'Ha ha,' he said. 'Ha ha.'", Klosterman describes just how much he despises laugh tracks. I suppose he brings up a lot of good points that I might have at one point thought, but that I've never voiced.

Laugh tracks encourage people to laugh at certain points in television shows. It's basically "canned laughter" (and indeed, he calls it this). Is this due to the insecurity that Americans feel while they're watching television, like they might not "get" whatever it is that should be "gotten"? On the surface, it appears to make TV shows' jokes funnier... but for someone who's actually stopped to consider the nature of laugh tracks, they're insulting and just outright idiotic. Klosterman mentions having gone to Germany for four months, and how awkward it was for him to fake-laugh in conversations. This directly reflects our American attitude toward linguistics; we can't stand silence, and the laughter serves as a sort-of reinforcement for our insecurities. We've effectively been conditioned to laugh even when we don't mean it.

In my opinion, this is definitely a piece with which I can agree. Maybe the more "sophisticated" and "intelligent" TV shows don't use laugh tracks, but they succeed in a plethora of ways: for one, they leave comedy open to interpretation, which is fantastic. Additionally, the subtlety of the humor in shows is increased, which can give a gratifying sensation to people who pick up on it. (And come on, admit it. We all like feeling a bit superior sometimes.)

1 You have to have seen something like this before. If not... for shame.

To the blog cave!

Right hurr, I'm going to talk about the topic that I'm considering for my research paper. (I'm really bad at making decisions, so bear with me.)

We're all familiar, in varying degrees, with the Internet. It's a technological phenomenon that has positively exploded over the last 15-20 years. In many ways, it has become its own subculture; and within that subculture exists a myriad of sub-subcultures and interest groups. Some of them include:

• Deviant Artists (LiveJournal communities, fanfiction/slashers, oekaki frequenters)
• Forum-Based Opinionators (redditors, 4chan)
• Social Networking Moguls (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter)
• Identity Crises (MMORPG, FPS, RPing)
• Entertainment Seekers (YouTube, webseries, Newgrounds)

The number of people who participate in each of these groups numbers in the millions. Not only is it a significant amount of the population, but people who don't take the time to really examine these groups as their own subcultures can miss out on a bigger picture of which they were not aware. Go on-- name an anthropologist or a sociologist who's studying Internet subcultures. I can't think of any, and I've been around the Internet since Neopets first launched. (In a few years, this is really going to date me.)

We have an untapped resource of sociological and anthropological studies available to us, and we don't have to look any further than our computers. I don't advocate laziness, but research for research's sake could take us deeper into understanding humans not only in groups, but hiding behind the mask of anonymity in those groups.

Here are my questions for the world:

1. What does this mask of anonymity give to the people of the Internet?
2. How have these subcultures progressed over time?
3. Is there any good to come out of identifying the Internet's social groups?
4. Is this really a culture at all?
5. What negative effects has the stratification of people on the Internet had in contemporary society?

As I think of more, I'll post them. If you have any suggestions, I welcome them!

#2 - Annotated Source

Kant, Immanuel. "What is Orientation in Thinking?" Kant: Political Writings. Ed. H.S. Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 237-249. Print.

Immanuel Kant writes, in one of his lesser-known essays, of his worry that the integrity of knowledge and science is diminishing. This essay was written in 1786, and he predicted (well ahead of his years) that the focus of both of these fields would turn from empirical inquiry and rationality to one of a more romanticized interest. Kant rued the idea of great men driven by their feelings rather than by logic or empirical evidence.

This article is a blessed anchor amidst a drifting fleet of illogical philosophical ideas. Kant cannot be denied as one of the greatest minds of all time, and indeed, he demonstrates this in What is Orientation in Thinking? He is notorious for denying the validity of irrational thought, and so it is unsurprising for him to have been apprehensive about the romantic future in philosophy. In such a way, he is biased to write this essay.