my english class

So I realized that it sucks having your least favorite classes also be your first classes of the day. Extremely bad luck that out of 5 classes, I really only dislike 2, and one is my first class on MWF, the other if my first class on TR, lucky me.

So my English class which is on TR is my definite least favorite, it's pretty much stupid. Like, I liked it at first at the beginning of the semester...before it got stupid lol. We even played fun little 'get to know each other' games on the first day of class (probably a bad sign). I've realized this class is so stupid because it's a lot like high school, and even though I've never been to high school, I somehow still know...

So we played a 'get to know you' game on the first day, where we all arranged our desks in a circle and the first person said their name and something about themselves. The second person had to repeat the name and the thing about the first person, and give their name and something about themselves, and so on. I mean, it worked, I know everyone's names in the class, but it felt juvenile even then, and especially now looking back on it lol.

We spend probably 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each class talking about irrelevant things to the class. The professor makes minor attempts to control the class and start the lesson plan but the students end up running most of it.

It is my highest maintenance class, and by high maintenance I mean we have an assignment due every class, lots and lots of busy work. A lot of it is just that, stuff to keep us busy even though we don't really learn anything from it. Frequent quizzes, righting assignments, editorials, etc. It's unproductive in my opinion.

The only thing I've really learned in this class is that I hate doing rhetorical analysis es and that research papers suck, but I do enjoy writing when it's something I want to write about...but I already knew that. I ended up writing my research paper on the federal government, basically copy and pasted everything I blogged about, rearranged it some and turned it in. lol sigh...we'll see.

Anyways I won't be sad when this class is over in 2 weeks.

katydids

So in Texas we have a bunch of Katydids, which are a close relative to the grasshopper. They make incredibly loud noises for insects, mostly at night, however the noise I can deal with. Katydids and grasshoppers are, in my opinion, the ugliest insects I see here in Dallas. I'm sure there is uglier, but for some reason I've harbored this personal vendetta against grasshoppers and katydids since I was little. I just think they're so gangly and disgusting, ugly little heads and spiky stick-life legs, yuck. Probably one of the few insects I make a point of going out of my way to kill.

Today I had the immense pleasure of killing 42 katydids while mowing my parents' lawn. I've never seen so many in such concentration. I guess they were just kind of hanging out in the leaves covering my parents' lawn and when I turned on the mower the vibrations must've stirred'em up because I could almost always see one or two jumping around ahead of me trying to get out of the way of the mower. A few of them weren't mobile enough to get out of the path of the mower, and even a few that did I hunted down to run over. Most of them, however, I left the mower and had to go stomp on. Call it cruel, call it hatred, it's probably a little of both but I don't really care. I don't even know why I hate them so much, there definitely are uglier insect. I think it's just that every time I've gone to pick one up, especially as a kid when I didn't know better, they would maneuver their disgusting legs around to latch onto you and then proceed to 'spit' or bite you with this ultra-disgusting mouths. Anyways, it was fun for me to have the opportunity to destroy so many of these hated insects, including running 20ft chasing after one flying away and doing a hop, skip, jump right onto his face, hah.

regretable moments

One of my most regrettable moments, this one involving a girl, was when I was 17. I was 7 months into one of the least satisfying and most complicated relationships of my life, but I'll explain that at another time. Anyways, so I was looking for a reason out of this relationship with this girl Sara, even though I kind of still liked her deep down. So I broke up with her and started seeing this other girl I met in another stake (stake being a boundary of church members), Julia. She lived like 45 minutes away so I didn't get to see her much, and that was a complicated relationship in and of itself, but it didn't last long. Over a month or two I started realizing I didn't like her as much as she liked me. She would sometimes get upset at me for not calling her much or not necessarily wanting to talk to her all the time either. I was perplexed why I didn't like this perfectly wonderful girl who appreciated every aspect of me more than I did. I just couldn't figure it out, then one day I figured it out. We were talking on the phone about our relationship and I had an 'epiphany' and, in all my teenage wisdom, thought I'd share it with her. I told her that I was becoming less interested in her because I realized she was only a rebound from Sara, the previous girlfriend. Yes, I told a girl she was a rebound. Yeah...that relationship didn't end well...

"the spirit"

I was talking to a friend of mine recently and he had something very interesting to say about what Christians would call 'the spirit' or 'the holy spirit' or 'the holy ghost' or whatever. Basically, you've got tons of people out there claiming to have these feelings, feelings they claim are from God or Jesus, warmth of the heart, a soothing of the mind, 'spiritual demons', 'being struck by the spirit of god', overwhelming happiness, spiritual epiphanies, etc. I'm going to specifically tune this musing towards Mormons because thats almost all I know. So basically you've got lots of Mormons out there with these claims that they've felt the holy ghost, that it has testified to them that the church is true, that they've experienced undeniable feelings to their very being that testify of the truthfulness of their church. How do you explain it? What is causing these people to claim such things? The answer, and although I'm no expert in, I believe lies in biophysics. Allow me to explain as my friend did.

When you go to a movie, for example, if the imagery is powerful enough, if the music is fitting and moving enough, if the cinematography is good enough, your brain will take in these perceptions, analyze them, and physically create feelings of sadness, anger, peace, happiness, terror, or many others. These are just examples of course; sight, sound, smell, and our other senses. Any one of a hundred other types of perception can play different notes on the instrument that is our brain. Point is, the human brain is among the most powerful and most complicated things known to man, our brain can make our bodies feel ANYTHING that we are capable of feeling. It's all based on physiological reactions and brain synapses or whatever. Like I said, I'm not an expert, but it's undeniable that music, imagery, smell, basically anything that we as humans are capable of perceiving, can cause our brains to make our bodies feel certain things, powerful things, undeniable things. It's something you KNOW you felt. Agreed?

So when someone sincerely believes that reading scriptures will allow them to feel 'the spirit', is it really divine intervention when that person experiences physiological feelings? Or is it just a complicated mix of their upbringing, the shaping of that person's mind and beliefs, and what that person considers to be 'powerful reading', or perception? When someone says they "know the church to be true because of feelings they've experienced", could it just be because that person is told that if they do certain things they will feel certain things, and then when they do those things and feel those things, they chalk it up as a 'spiritual manifestation' because that's what they were told the feeling is and that's what they believe?

When I watched Gladiator, at the end when he dies and the movie goes through the scenes of him in his field again, I cried. I was overcome with feelings created by my brain because of the powerful things I was perceiving. However, if I feel similar feelings but in a religious setting, suddenly those same types of feelings are 'of a divine nature'? I was told all the same things as I was raised and when I was younger, in a certain few religious settings, I felt strong undeniable feelings, and my mind put 2 and 2 together from what I'd been taught and said "hey, you've been taught that powerful feelings in spiritual situations are 'the spirit'!", but upon reflection, I've realize that those same feelings can be explained in many other ways. The most recent 'spiritual experience' I had was almost a year ago, I had watched some mormon propaganda film and had decided to turn my life around and was thinking about what I needed to do to be able to attend my sister's wedding in a Mormon temple a few months away. As I was thinking about what a sacrifice I would have to make and why it was important to me to do it for my sister's wedding, I had this overwhelming feeling of happiness, almost euphoric, and the feeling lasted for about 15 minutes while I rolled the idea around in my mind. Was it the spirit? You could chalk it up to that, if you believed in the spirit. It could just as easily have been my mind realizing deep feelings of love for my sister and the things I knew I would have to sacrifice in order to do this thing for her would have been a huge expression of my love for her, and who wouldn't be emotional if you were planning to make a huge sacrifice for someone because of how much you loved them? Of course, since the idea was of a spiritual nature, I naturally assumed at the time, 'hey this is the spirit'.

I guess I had never really attempted to explain the whole 'spirit' and 'personal revelations' thing, and when I talked to my friend he mentioned these ideas and just makes sense. These feelings are biological reactions. Perception is one of the greatest forces we know, our perceptions shape every facet of our beliefs, moral, spiritual, or otherwise; and indeed perception shapes every facet of our existence. It's that very reason that makes drugs so appealing to some people, they become bored of the way they perceive the world, and through certain things like drugs, they can alter their perception and experience old things in a new way. But rest assured, drugs aren't the only things that alter your perception of the world, perhaps religion does as well. I personally believe it does, and that people who proclaim divine feelings have merely had their perception of the world shaped in a manner more desirable to the religious community. So obviously I don't think someone is lying when they say "I know this church is true"; I have no doubt that through means I've explained, they can honest to goodness believe it, and have felt real things, physical feelings that reinforce their beliefs, based on their perception. So it's not that they are lying to me, they just have a different perception of the world than I do, and that's fine. It's a different world to different people, I understand that. I just wish that more of them could understand that as well.

::edited on nov.12::

potato gun fun

So when I was a teenager, or more specifically 15-17, me and my friends found plans for and constructed a potato gun made out of PVC piping. We were met with success. We did lots of fun things with our new instrument of entertainment, often destructive things. The gun could shoot a piece of potato about 2 in. tall/wide and about 3 in. thick at about....1000fps? Definitely we could shoot holes through wooden fences, 4x stacked drywall, aluminum mailboxes...in any case it was a force to be reckoned with.

On one such particular night of youthful delinquency , we were driving around in my old Nissan late at night, looking for things we could shoot our gun at. We were driving through a neighborhood and drove past an elementary school. The school had a simple lit sign in front by the street used to display announcements. We thought it would be great fun to shoot the sign, see what kind of damage we could inflict. Well so we pulled up to the sign planning to fire the gun from inside the car, but just then we noticed a car in the distance pull around a corner and was heading our direction so, in a spur of the moment decision, I pulled into a nearby alleyway and turned my lights off. The car was a little ways off, but close enough to see a stopped car quickly drive into an alley and turn the lights off (almost certainly more suspicious than just sitting in front of the sign would've been...). In any case, the car passed by us a few seconds after pulling into the alley, and I pulled out and started driving down the street away from the school, planning to drive around the block and come back. Well, so this car turns around and starts following me! I was certain it was following me because I made a point of taking frequent sudden turns around this neighborhood.

After about 2 minutes of this car following us, and us trying to figure out if we should be threatened or not, decided it was probably some nosy neighbor following us because we looked suspicious and wanted to see what we would do. So what DID we do? We stopped, they stopped about 15 ft behind me, and we loaded up the gun and my two friends got out and aimed it at them (it took two people, one to aim and the other to ignite the fuel). The car didn't do anything while they were positioning (about 6-7 seconds) and so we decided to fire it at them. However, we didn't want to get into criminal offense just yet, so they aimed high, above their car into the overhanging trees above. What proceeded was nothing short of hilarity.

The shot fired off (it had a pretty deafening boom when we did it right, and we did it right that night) and streaked through the trees above the car, causing leaves to fall down around the car. At night you could see the exploding fuel (flammable aerosol) shooting a little ways out from the barrel as the shot went off. The car immediately begins to back up quickly and attempts to turn around and go the other way, however the street is a small 2 lane street and the car is a suburban with a poor turn style so it would have to do probably a 5-point turn to turn fully around. So once it backs up as much as it can, and the people inside realize they can't escape quickly, whoever was driving just hits the horn and holds it. We jump back in the car and speed off while the car continues holding it's horn. We sped home, just dying over the whole ordeal. What I would've paid, even to this day, to know who was inside of that car, and to be able to see their reactions. What they were thinking when they began to follow us, and what they were thinking after they saw that shot go off over their car. Oh man...those were good times.

future of america

So we went over the most amazing quote today in my government class. A fellow by the name of de Tocqueville visited America in the early 1800's and in a prophetic way was able to see a part of democracy that would allow for a 'unique' kind of despotism. I'm going to cite the whole quote, it speaks volumes and has everything to do with my other govt post:

"I noticed during my stay in the United States that a democratic state of society similar to that of the Americans might offer unique opportunities for the establishment of despotism...

I think that the kind of oppression that threatens democratic peoples will not resemble anything previously seen in the history of the world...

I see a multitude of people, too numerous to count, equal and alike...Above them rises up a huge and guardian-like power, which is alone responsible for making sure that they are happy and for watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to details, regular, full of foresight, and gentle. It would resemble parental authority if, like that authority, it had for its purpose the preparation of people for adulthood. But, to the contrary, it only seeks to keep them in a state of permanent childhood.

It likes it when the citizens enjoy themselves--provided that they do not think about anything other than enjoying themselves.... It provides for their security, anticipates and takes care of their needs, facilitates their pleasures, manages their most important affairs, directs their labors, makes rules for the writings of their wills, divides their inheritances; why wouldn't it relieve them entirely of the trouble of thinking and the difficulty of living? ....In the end, it reduces each nation to nothing but a flock of timid and hard-working animals--with the government as its shepherd."

"I have always believed that this sort of slavery--orderly, gentle, and peaceful--the portrait of which I have just sketched out--could be combined more easily than one could imagine with some of the exterior forms of liberty. It is even possible that it could be established under the shadow of the sovereignty of the people....

Our contemporaries...imagine a single, guardian-like, and all-powerful authority--but elected by the citizens. They combine centralization and the sovereignty of the people....They console themselves for being under a guardian by thinking that they themselves chose their guardians....In this system, citizens depart from their dependence for a moment in order to choose their master--and then return to it....This does not satisfy me at all. Who my master is matters a whole lot less to me than the fact that I am under subjection...."

Basically he's saying that in a democracy, we as a people--through self-government--can give so much power to the federal government that the federal government is essentially taking care of all our needs, and that at that point we have become 'slaves' or 'sheep'. And what will be the fate of that society?

"It is altogether pointless to give the responsibility of choosing the representatives of this kind of central power to citizens whom you have rendered so dependent on it. This exercise of their free will--so important, but so brief and infrequent--will not prevent them from losing little by little their ability to think, to feel, and to act for themselves--and from gradually falling below the level of humanity.

It is truly hard to imagine how people who have renounced the habit of directing their own lives could do a good job of choosing those who must lead them; and one ought not to expect that a liberal, energetic, and wise government could ever arise from the votes of a people of slaves. A constitution that would be republican in its head and something more than a monarchy in all its other parts has always looked like a short-lived monster to me. The vices of the rules and the imbecility of the ruled will not be long in bringing it to destruction; and the people, weary of their representatives and of themselves, will either create freer institutions or soon return and spread themselves out at the feet of a single master."

--"What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear" by Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol.2, Part VI, Chapter 6, written around 1830 and translated by Michael Iachetta.

Does that sound like a good society?? Exactly as I was saying in my previous post, the more and more powers that shift to the federal government for the 'betterment of society' the more we are moving towards the society de Tocqueville describes here. It's important to recognize that he's not describing the conditions of America at the time of his visit to the US. It is a description of a political situation that he thinks could SOMEDAY arise in a country such as the US. And truly he was right, that's exactly what America is becoming, lending example to all the things I listed before, social security, medicare, federal 401k plans, etc.

All this illustrates the 8th and final meaning of liberty, having a large area of personal responsibility without help from government. We, as humans, have to be responsible. By giving our problems to someone else to solve, and by not being subject to the consequences of our actions (if you squander your money away, the government will still support you in your old age through Social Security), we are really eliminating choice altogether. It's a crazy concept to wrap your head around, but once you really do it's a huuuuge deal. Suddenly I see American government for what it was, what it is now, and what it's heading towards, and it's scary. I'm not sure I'll experience a fullness of what de Tocqueville was describing in my life time but I might. And knowing how ignorant the American people are towards politics and that too little effort is being taken to rectify this situation, it's enough to keep you up at night.

american government 101

**LONGEST POST SO FAR INCOMING**

So I'm taking a government class this semester, the first government class I've ever taken, and I gotta say I'm learning a lot. Probably the most important thing I'm learning is how our government is slowly shifting away from what our founding fathers had intended for our Federal government to be. I'm quickly learning that far too many Americans don't know anything about government or politics, I know, I used to be one of them. I didn't know anything about politics and was consequently apathetic towards it, but in my learnings I've realized it's exactly this state of mind among American citizens that is allowing the government to move away from what it used to be, and towards an uncertain goal.

The founding fathers of this country valued liberty above all else. Liberty, as I've been learning in class, had many different meanings to the founding fathers...7 that I've studied so far. First and most important, 1) Self-government, or living under laws created by representatives of the people. Having this makes it a lot easier for citizens to enjoy the other meanings of liberty, as they have a say into what becomes law. 2) Personal liberties or having a large area of personal choice without interference from government, such as religion, what color shirt you want to wear, what school you go to, who you can marry, etc. 3) Living under a government that protects person and property, or a government that protects citizens from each other. 4) Living under a government that does not harm innocent people in life, liberty, or property, or a government that protects citizens from itself. 5) Freedom from unlawful physical restraint. 6) Living under a government with limits, through means of a constitution. 7) Living under a local government, or not being ruled by foreigners.
This highly esteemed value of liberty that the founding fathers shared is what I'll refer to as traditional liberalism. Liberty valued above all else, "Give me liberty or give me death."

Prior to 1788, when the Constitution was ratified, our country operated under individual state governments. This gave the citizens of each state great power to create and live under laws of their choosing, Virginians living under laws that Virginians wanted, not Virginians living under laws that New Yorkers wanted. The founding fathers believed in a small federal government, considerably limited in it's powers; they wanted to leave a majority of the powers of government to the already established state governments. Article 1, section 8 of the constitution lists very specifically the powers of the federal government. It is from this you get one of the most fundamental contrasts between democrats and republicans. Since the creation of the constitution, there have been people in power who claim "if the constitution doesn't say I can't do it, then I can." and there have been others who hold to the beliefs that "if the constitution doesn't specifically say I can do it, then I can't." Democrats and Republicans. In general, Democrats are trying to expand the powers of the federal government beyond what is listed in Article 1.8 while republicans are trying to limit the powers of the federal government to what is listed in Article 1.8.

In the 1900's, or specifically the early 1900's, American government has experienced a dramatic shift, arguably for the worse. During the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, the federal government begun to expand its powers beyond what is listed in 1.8 to give itself powers ranging from regulating aspects of the economy, to providing social security and medical care, to playing an important role in housing grants and education. While these may sound like beneficial parts of our nation, it is important to consider that as the powers of the federal government expand, we, as citizens, begin to become less free. As the powers of government are shifted from the state governments (where our voice has a greater impact in the legislature) towards the federal government (where our voice has a lesser impact in congress), we are beginning to lose liberty in the sense of self government. My professor uses this diagram a lot in class to portray the change in government we've been experiencing in the twentieth century:


1931 or there about is when the shift of the powers of federal government really began, during the Roosevelt administration. We began to shift away from a constitutionally limited federal government (one of the meanings of liberty) to a federal government that has more and more control over us. The American people back then were more or less knowingly giving their freedoms to the federal government in exchange for the government 'solving all their problems'. This creates another problem, as the American people have less and less say in government, the more ignorance towards politics there will be. Fact is, we as an American people are the ones who control the government, not the other way around. Corruption aside, the government isn't ruling over us and making laws we as a people don't want, these are legislations approved by our elected representatives in Congress, yet the less knowledge we have of politics, the less useful we are as a people in the legislative process to make meaning contributions to democracy.

So government has become something that barely resembles our original federal government that was founded on traditional liberalism, that's just the cold hard truth. Is it bad? I don't know. The goal of pre-1931 government was to preserve the liberty of the American people, liberty to not have 1/3rd of our income taxed to support government policies that go outside of the constitutionally framed powers of the federal government as listed in Article 1.8, but the fact is that President Roosevelt didn't force this shift in government, though he definitely pushed the American people strongly towards it, it was the interest of the American people in a time of national desperation, war and depression. Citizens thought that if they gave the federal government more power, it could solve the economic crisis the country was experiencing, and it well might have, it's a government class not a history class so I don't know how well it actually worked. The idea was to give these powers to the federal government to create a solution to the problem, and then once the problem was solved, the powers never really shifted back to state governments.


So if the federal government's goal prior to 1931 was protecting liberty, what is the goal of post-1931 federal government? I'm not sure, but consider the policies implemented since then (largely by the democratic party), welfare, social security, medicare, medicaid, government funding of the arts or scientific research, and a more recent example, Democratic party member Senator Clinton's proposal to create a federal 401k plan allowing the government to establish 401k plans for every American, matching up to $1,000 of each citizen's deposits each year. If you look at all these policies and many many more established post-1931, it would seem the goal of the federal government (and even the American people since they are the ones voting these presidents into office and voting these legislative representatives into Congress) is societal welfare. Sounds like a noble enough cause right? Let me give a little example to illustrate societal welfare entails...

According to "The History of Plymouth Plantation", the pilgrims at this time were experiencing an economic drought, if you will. They were practicing a society under which everyone was expected to work to the extent of their ability and the fruit of their labor was shared as communal property for the betterment of every member of the society (societal welfare), yet they "languished in misery" because of the shortage of food being grown. "This sharing of property in common (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men who were most able and fit for labor and service were annoyed at spending their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong or resourceful man had no more in the division of food and clothing than the man who was weak and not able to do a quarter of what the other one could; this was thought injustice" Simply put, the pilgrims were staving because the members of the society were unmotivated to work. In a society in which everything is given you by means of the mutual labor of the society, to what extent can a man be motivated? The taking of property from the few and giving it to the many breeds laziness, slothfulness, lack of motivation, and indeed economic poverty.

The pilgrims eventually divided the crop land among each individual family, based on their size, and stated that they were in charge of providing for their own family with this section of land. No more was food and/or clothing going to be given to them, if they didn't work their section of the field, that family would starve. If they worked hard, they could eat exceptionally well. This created a huge motivation among the pilgrims, "the women now went willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to plant corn, whereas before they would allege weakness and inability; and it would have been thought great tyranny and oppression to compel them."

Why is America arguably the most prosperous nation in the world? Undoubtedly this can be attributed to the founding fathers' views that "what a man earns belongs to him", this being in contrast to a communistic nation, or a 'societal welfare' where "what a man earns belongs to society as a whole". However since 1931, with the expansion of the powers of federal government, we currently sit somewhere between those two extremes, thusly: "what a man earns belongs partly to him and partly to society." We are taxed almost 1/3rd of our income, these taxes of course going towards supporting "societal welfare". But the shift of powers from the states to the federal government hasn't stopped, indeed it increases with each presidency. Suppose in 20 years the amount of government programs we've allowed the federal government to install requires that we're taxed 2/3rd of our income?? If we follow this pattern, eventually we will become a government who's only goal is societal welfare, or in modern day terms, "socialism" or "communism", and the entirety of our income will go towards the support of government programs for communal benefit, and what happens then? Once we've achieved our goal of 'societal welfare'? Utopia? I think not; almost certainly history will repeat itself and just like the pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation, we will experience 'economic drought', starvation, slothfulness, apathy, etc. Interesting side note about Utopia, its derived from Greek: οὐ no, and τόπος, place, i.e. "no place" or "place that does not exist."

So it is then left for every American to decide for themselves, do we protect the liberty and property of every American, even if it means that those who are genuinely less capable in their circumstance (for whatever reason) will be exposed to poverty and poor health? Or do we voluntarily give up that part of our liberty, or earning rights, for the economic and medical betterment of society, even if it means that lazy Americans (and illegal immigrants) can, and will, live comfortably on your dollar by exploiting the system? If you lean towards the first, your beliefs are closer related to the republican party. If you lean towards the second, your beliefs are closer related to the democratic party.
Also to clarify, the terms 'conservatives' and 'liberals' came from the shift in powers during the Roosevelt administration. Those who opposed the expansion of the powers of federal government were called conservatives, while those who supported Roosevelt in his efforts to expand those powers were called liberals. Yet the conservatives were, and still are, the ones who are trying to preserve what I earlier called "traditional liberalism", where liberty is the highest priority. Modern day liberals are trying to get away from traditional liberalism in a movement thats referred to as 'Progressivism'.

So there you have it, American Government in a nutshell. As a citizen it is your obligation to voice your opinion in the democratic process, lest through our neglect we allow for further corruption of government. As I said, it is left for every man to decide whether to pursue traditional liberalism or America's current goal which I still am not sure of, but suspect is societal welfare. Each extreme has its merits and it's shortcomings. My goal isn't to say which one I think is better, only to log for myself a summary of these facts, and help others to understand that which they may not have previously known.