Winter Poem (Haiku)

Snowflakes falling on
the ground, Christmas carols sung
Winter has begun

Globalization

       I have always subconsciously known that globalization played a huge role in my life but I never really gave it much thought. Everything that goes on in my life has in one way or another been affected by globalization. Not only business but politics and culture as well are becoming more and more globalized as technology advances. When you think about it, if it weren’t for all the industrial development and technological advances then globalization would not be such a huge trend as it is today. For example, the telephone and computer has made communication with people across the world as easy as communicating with someone who lives underneath the same household. Because of such easy communication, things such as politics and the economy are not only affected by what happens locally but more importantly, by what happens around the world. During the 1800s, receiving news of presidents’ choices and other political affairs would take months. Today someone can just log on to the Internet and find out something that was announced five minutes ago or even less. Even though globalization has many benefits such as being more connected and aware of global events and happenings, it does have its downsides. 
         Globalization has increased many disturbing trends such as child labor and sweat shops. Many of the products used nowadays come from across the country or even across the world since people get more profit from production in countries such as China and India than in the Unites States. The reason why it’s cheaper though can be pretty disturbing though. Most of the time the labor that goes behind the products used is illegal or at least should be. Many children slave away for up to sixteen hours at a time, trying to make a meager amount of money to support their families. I know that globalization has defects that should be fixed but the question in the end is if we would rather stay ignorant and living in bliss or if we want to open our eyes and realize the damage we are during to our future generations.

Sports In My Life

Right now sports do not play much of a role in my life. The most it has played in my life recently is watching a good old soccer game or boxing match with my Dad. My form of exercise I guess you could say comes more from recreational hobbies such as jogging or biking instead of sports. When I was about five, my parents were set on making me a join ballet because in their mind, that was the best type of "sport" a girl could do at such a young age. It would help fulfill their prophecy of making me as girly as possible. Eventually, I was able to convince my parents that swimming was more of my thing and at six years old I was set to go in the shallow end. To be honest, that was the most I’ve ever enjoyed playing a sport, it was something that could be competitive yet fun when you wanted it to be. I stopped practicing swim at around nine years old because the practices were not fitting into my schedule and I had a gap of sports in my life until middle school. My parents were telling me that playing a sport was something not exactly necessary but extremely beneficial and after a lot of pressure, I joined the volleyball team. I never hated volleyball; I just always felt that my parents were much more into it than I was which wasn’t what happened with swimming. After middle school, I decided that sports weren’t my favorite way of exercising but that doesn’t mean I’m sedentary. In fact, I enjoy a jog or bike ride with my Dad most Saturday or Sunday mornings.

Thankful For A Classmate

      Over this weekend I was able to reflect on a lot of things to be thankful for such as my family, friends, education, etc. In school, there are many classmates I am extremely grateful for having because without them, school would be boring and tedious. In philosophy, the person I really owe thanking is Shayne. If it weren’t for Shayne, I have no idea how I would get through the group work. I wouldn’t know who to write a Facebook message to asking what the homework was. He’s also a pretty cool guy, sharing my interests such as the African American Heart Monitor and bike riding to name a few. So this is pretty cheesy, I’ll stop now. Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy

Dear Cormac McCarthy,

            You seem to be a very dedicated author based off the book we read in class and what we overall learned about you in philosophy. I like how you use real experience to help you write your novels, it gives it a sense of realism that a person can relate to. You are able to use your knowledge and turn it into influential works of fiction which is something to admire because very few people can say they have gotten that far. The fact that you have the same last name as my favorite teacher in the whole world only makes you a much more notable person.

            While your novels are very unique and original, they can be confusing. Well I guess just “The Road” since that is the only book I’ve read that was written by you. The lack of grammar and sentence structure made it a little hard to follow. At some points I wasn’t sure of whether the book was mentioning an actual happening in the present, a flashback, or a thought. If this would have been clearer, the book would be much more lucid and comprehensible. Other than that, “The Road” was a very remarkable and outstanding narrative.

Defend the Poet (Charles Bukowski)

        When it comes to Charles Bukowski, people either seem to love him or hate him. In my opinion, although he might be somewhat of a nut case, I do lean more towards the liking him than hating him. The stories and poems he write are not written out of complete randomness. In fact, Bukowski himself has mentioned that when writing you “don’t try”. He is trying to say that when you are trying to write whatever it may be, you have to just wait for it. All of Bukowski’s writing is therefore written based off his experiences and knowledge. He does not seem to write a lot on happiness as we saw when reading “Dinosauria, We”. He writes the crude truth, well at least version of it. We might be able to assume that he has such a pessimistic view on life due to his pretty depressing life which consisted of an abusive father, continuous love affairs, and no real sense of what he wanted to do. He thought of writing as a way to keep himself from going insane at his post office job. Overall, while the views that Bukowski has are certainly different and odd, they do contain a sort of truth in them. Sometimes, in fact most of the time, the people who think and see outside the box, are the ones who tend to more knowledgeable and educated than the ones who stay stuck thinking inside the box.

A Direction the Class Needs

       The first thing that popped into my head when what type of direction a classroom needs I started thinking about literally going towards somewhere north, south, west, or east. This random thought eventually turned into a rational idea. I started thinking how it would be pretty cool if classes were more broad when it came to its environment. The worst part about the word classroom is room. The fact that it confines you to only one certain area and space is its downfall. A class should be able to be outside, inside, in between wherever it best fits. If I’m learning about the environment, I don’t understand why I can’t go outside and see it myself with my own eyes instead of turning pages and writing a paper based off what I’m reading. It’s not just about being more hands on but also about being more open minded to what a class can be. A class does not have to just consist of fifty minutes in a room but it can also expand into spending fifty minutes walking in a neighborhood, taking photos, analyzing your environment, etc. By doing this, a class will have more of an appeal and more importantly, it might actually become something to look forward to.

Father and Daughter

          In "The Road" the main bond and relationship expressed is the relationship between Father and son. They both care deeply about each other even though they both feel as if they are not really sure what the other person is thinking. The lack of understanding they have of each other makes their relationship more distant but their dependency for each other keeps them together. They are each other's world and they must trust each other and work together in order to survive and keep existing in this bleak post apocalypse world they live in.           My father and I have a similar relationship to the father and son in which I do tend to trust and lean on my Dad more than my Mom. My Dad and I aren’t big communicators but we have a trust and respect foundation the same way the man and son do. We do not feel like we need to express everything we feel and think in the moment but at the end of the day I know we can depend on each other in case of anything. My mother and I have a good relationship as well, one in which communication plays a greater role. This differs from the boy and his mother’s relationship in which the mother abandoned them because her love for her son was too great to watch him suffer. Because of the abandonment though, the boy probably feels as there is no trust or connection between his mother and him.

How Do I Know What I Know

• Nurture- to bring up; train; educate.
• Experience- the totality of the cognitions given by perception; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered.

             
           Everything I have learned up to this very day can be summed up in two words: nurture and experience. The one that has mostly affected me though has been experience because as they saying goes, you sometimes have to see it to believe it. When I was too little to understand what events and actions meant, my parents’ nurture came into play. They nurtured me with their beliefs of religion, philosophies, goals, and aspirations which at the time became mine as well. They helped me to understand and know my religion of Catholicism as well as more general aspects of beliefs such as pursuing my education and knowing right from wrong. As I was able to interpret events and happenings, I started learning more through experience than through what I was being told. Instead of thinking I wanted to be a doctor just because that’s what my parents expected of me, I started to explore other careers such as teaching and writing based off what I came to believe were my interests. I started figuring out the truth based off what I went through, not on what other people said or told me. I know that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy are not real or existent thanks to my experience. Up to this very day, I believe I know what I know thanks to nurture and more importantly, experience.

Our Meaning

            Our meaning is something important to us. If we were to not have meaning then there would be no reason to live on. Our meaning defines not only who we are but who we were and who we aspire to be as well. Everybody has different things that add on to their meaning. Religion is one of them. Most people base their meaning on this world from their religion. Many religions say that humans’ meaning on this world is to help others and save ourselves from sins and whatnot. Others believe that our meaning is to merely reproduce and just continue on living in this world. Whatever meaning we give to ourselves, it’s something personal and valuable to us. It changes the way we view our surroundings, our environment, and our world.

            For me, our meaning is to enjoy everything we are given as much as possible. We are given the greatest gift of all: time. Time is something extremely valuable because once it’s gone, it’s gone. You cannot regain lost time as the saying goes. By being able to say that we have appreciated and enjoyed every last second we were given is to say that we have lived up to our meaning. Our meaning is not to live self consciously and doing what others perceive as normal but to do things that we are really passionate about and giving it our all.

God in 2010

     In a society where everything seems to derive from cold hard facts and evidence, God is something that remains based off of abstract values and faith. It is something that greatly varies from person to person. It is easy to see that God in society has been one of the greatest controversies of the world and remains as one today.
     From the beginning of civilization and in other words, society, has been fighting over what perspective they have on God. While some see him as Jehovah, others see him as Jesus. The lack of compromise over how to define God has led to millions of lives lost and even more beliefs. In society today, the trend of atheists is slowly increasing and while I have nothing against religious pluralism, I do think that believing in something greater or higher to live for is healthy. Without it, it makes life pointless since in the end death is death and why work so hard for death?
     God in 2010 in essence is still the same as it has been for centuries long. God is something elusive and in a way, ethereal which people up to this day cannot completely agree on a right justified definition for.

Do Candide's Punishment Fit the Crime?

        I really do believe that Candide's punishment fits the crime. The time in which Voltaire was writing this parody is very different from today's. If we were to judge it from a modern day perspective based off modern values, then no we would not think his punishment fits the crime. \
         At the time though, there is a major philosophy that continues on throughout the story which is Pangloss's philosophy. Pangloss's phlosophy states that everything in the world is created for the best. Everytime that Candide receives a punishment, he seems to believe that he deserves it because it'll result into the best end. Based off of Pangloss's philosophy, every punishment fits the crime, whichever it may be since it's the supposedly for ther best end.
        While in today's world, getting whipped a couple thousand times in order to join the army and becoming homeless for kissing a girl may be a little extreme. I don't believe that in today's liberal world that Candide's punishments fit his crimes. At the time that Candide lived in though, with Pangloss's philosophy and all we would have to say that they were justified.

Modern Gadfly

gad·fly
a person who stimulates or annoys especially by persistent criticism

It took me a while to figure out other people in our culture and society today that would fit into this definition just as well, if not better than Socrates. It was difficult because as we all know, Socrates was the epitome of a gadfly; never taking anything for its face value. I finally concluded that Ralph Nader was a gadfly of modern times.
Ralph Nader has been involved in politics, law, and even activism. He has even been able to gain so much publicity off his activism that he has followers called “Nader’s Raiders”. He has just about questioned everything from the ecology’s state to car safety to humans rights. He seems to disregard authority and the beliefs that the system should go by, instead he questions it and tries to come up with ways in which we can improve the system.
Nader was the only one who seemed to inquire on minutia that many others seemed to overlook. While many people took increasing car accidents as normal, Nader questioned it. He spoke up against car manufacturers such as Chevrolet, stating how unsafe their cars were and the amount of lives they were taking. Nobody else even came close to questioning the cause as much as Nader did but by the end Nader had convinced manufacturers about the need for safety belts and stronger windshields. This in a sense, is a parallel to how Socrates was able to win over his opponents into realizing that they had no idea as to what they were saying.
Nader was able to touch onto several if not many other subjects in his activism. He questioned how safe and clean the environment really was during a time in which no one else seemed to care or notice about the pressing issue at hand. All this persistence in his beliefs led him to become a presidential candidate four times for the Green Party. Although he did not win these elections, his activism and determination has left a legacy just the way Socrates’ questioning and philosophy did.

The Unexamined Life

       Everyone at one point in their lives has asked themselves an important question such as what do I want to do when I grow up? What path do I want to take? I believe that humans subconsciously examine their lives whether they like to or not. Examining your life is something essential in life, without it you really don’t get a grip of where you are in life and where you are going.

       Socrates came up with this belief that if you never question yourself then you’ll never truly be happy. This is true because if you never ask yourself every once in a while about your wants and needs then it is worthless to live. Everyone wants a reason to live and reason to be on this earth, the reason in other words is the point of life. If you just go about your day to day life without every wondering about yourself or your surroundings even if you are happy, it still is worthless.

       Many people waste their whole lives living without meaning, mostly because they are too scared of being judged or criticized for taking a different path. They would rather live in a bubble that their surroundings have molded them into and live in a supposedly “content” life. Many people think that if they have money, health, and a pretty white picket fence surrounding their house that they are living in bliss. Really though, they are living on what society has defined as bliss. If they would analyze and evaluate their lives, they will probably realize that the life they’re living is based on other peoples’ ideas and principles, not their own. That is a worthless life because a valuable life is one in which you live for your wants and happiness, not others.

Eulogy

          Carlina started a great life on May 15, 1994. She was only 6 pounds. Who knew that something so little could someday become someone so great? From the beginning, she was a quiet child. She was obedient and did not tend to make scenes. Her parents loved her from the start.


         As Carlina grow up, she aspired to be something big. Even though she wasn't sure what exactly this big thing was, she was determined to be someone in the world. She loved her parents very dearly, knowing that they were the reason she had such big goals in life.

        During her teen years, she became very interested in supporting the cause of animal rights. She felt that she had to voice the rights for the poor animals who could not. She would go on to become a vegetarian for almost a year and was a regular volunteer in PAWS which is a no kill shelter along with her mom. She also became a regular volunteer at the RUSH hospital which was by her high school, trying to help navigate people around the hospital and meet their needs.

         Carlina was able to do many amazing things throughout her life. She went on to become an avid advocate of animal rights and environmental issues such as the overwhelming pollution and waste. She always had a book in hand to read, always wanting to know more and learn more every second she had. She will always be remembered as a passionate and devoted woman who tried to leave an impact on the world.