Because this is our last blog I hope you can understand and will accept this as mine. It is not a response Because this is our last blog I hope you can understand and will accept this as mine. It is not a response to the article or video posted above. Instead it is a response to the lecture about Cuba from Wednesday. I started counting 350 words now:

Toward the end of the lecture we were asked if we thought America would have a revolution like Cuba if we needed to and what we would be willing to give up to have equal classes. It was a strange question; what would I give up to have education be free and everyone have a place to live and a more equal way of life. It was hard to imagine America as one equal class. I don’t think America could be ‘America’ without the extreme differences in its classes. The American dream, in short, is to be wealthy. The lecturer said you could get all the education wanted in Cuba for free; her one friend had 5 PhDs. But her other friend dropped out of high school and works in the black market selling tobacco because he knew education would not be a factor in how much money he could make. I don’t think that would work in America. I believe Americans would have a revolution if our current education system got replaced. The rich and powerful in America would not give up their wealth to help the ones that are homeless or uneducated. As Americans we don’t see it as a right to be educated we think of it as a privileged. We also look at owning a home as a privilege not as a right, which is something I will never understand. But that is the way America runs and the wealthy want it to stay that way, and they have the power to do so. Cuba is a little different, instead of all of the wealthy having the power the men seated in government do. The citizens can choose Castro or they can leave it blank, she said. The citizens living in Cuba don’t have a say in who runs their country, but I don’t think America is all that different. We may get to choose between a few candidates but the wealthy put them on the ballot, the wealthy, the ones who run America get to choose who ‘runs’ their country. Middle class and lower class Americans don’t have a say just like the Cuban citizens don’t have a say. So what would I give up to have an educated society and let all Americans have the basic necessities to live like food and a home? Well, I would give up living in a society dependant on different classes. I would give up living in a society dependent on money and consumption and wastefulness. But then that would destroy the essence of America.

This is not a direct response to the article posted or the video we watched in class but my thoughts and this blog stem from that material.

I had a thought after class on Friday that consumed me my whole walk home. How twisted was the draft? If someone mailed me a letter saying I had been summoned to fight in war I would run to Canada. I have no doubt in my mind after watching the video on Friday that I would not be able to handle the pressures and trauma of war. If men and women who chose to fight are so easily damaged physiologically, I know I wouldn’t make it past day one. I don’t think I would make it through boot camp let alone deployment.
It is not surprising there are so many soldiers with PTSD. I think fighting in a war and having to live as a soldier would be very unnatural. But maybe it just seems unnatural to me. The soldiers fighting today are there because they decided to be there. Some part of being a soldier must have appealed to them. I believe these men and women are very different from me; their character must be different. So when you think about the draft, it was twisted. I believe there were men forced to fight who were more like me than like the men and women who chose to fight. I know there were people at war that had no desire to be there. How crazy is it that they were forced to go to war? Or flee to Canada, or go to jail. In a country that prides freedom, the draft took a lot of that freedom away. And what is even crazier is that the people who were sending you that letter and making you fight were the people running the country you were supposed to be proud to fight for. There had to have been countless undiagnosed soldiers with PTSD after Vietnam.
Another curios thought is that with all the veterans that I am sure suffer from PTSD, how is it that most soldiers coming home from combat that suffer from the same condition feel weak when reaching out for help. It is sick that soldiers feel like they shouldn’t need help, or that they will be mocked if they seek help. The system breaks down here. I remember someone from the video saying everyone changes after experiencing war. That isn’t hard to agree with. War if a fucked up, crazy situation, how could a soldier not be effected? But how do you prepare a human mentally and emotionally for combat? You can’t. So you can’t condition a soldier not to be effected and the system shuns them from getting help when they return. How twisted is that? We should honor men and women who fight, if we agree with being in a war or not, because they are risking a lot more than their lives when they go to combat, they are risking their sanity.

I try not to be afraid. I don’t enjoy the feeling. It makes the world seem evil and who wants to live in a place like that? Fear is an emotion needed for survival but it is still one of the most unsettling. I have a lot of fears though. I took some time to think about what I am most fearful of. Many different kinds of thoughts came to mind.

I fear I am being persuaded
I fear the power of others
I fear the distant future
I fear my expectations
I fear being unrealistic
I fear I need faith
I fear the death of others
I fear drastic changes
I fear intelligence
I fear being left behind
I fear money
I fear greed
I fear there are more bad guys than good guys
I fear they will win
I fear infinity
I fear there is a God
I fear judgment
I fear being the center of attention
I fear mirrors
I fear disappointment
I fear things will never change
I fear I will have regrets
I fear I will feel absent without fire
I fear it’s what keeps me honest
I fear addiction
I fear I can’t exist without her
I fear we are separate beings
I fear a lonely death down the road
I fear being a widow
I fear I don’t want to be a mother
I fear I will never be a grandmother
I fear never being loved
I fear unhappiness
I fear living too long
I fear the end of my youth
I fear the passage of time
I fear there is no meaning

Fear is a part of my everyday life. But I am not always afraid. Most fears are shuffled in with the rest of my thoughts and go unnoticed. I only realize them when I take time to identify them. Some fears are good; they influence how I act, what I do and what my ambitions are. And some fears are comforting because they are unique to me and I am the only one that truly knows what I am fearful of. But some fears keep me from exploring and I want to see the world.

There will always be an uneven distribution of wealth in this world if we want a functioning global economy. And it is logical that the upper class will stay wealthy generation after generation while the lower class stays in the lower class. Not everyone can be exposed to the same level of education or the same opportunities. Some people are farmers and teach their children how to farm and others are CEOs that will teach their children the business. This uneven distribution of wealth supports the society, even on a global scale. If civilians in third world countries consumed as much as Americans do, the planet would not be able to sustain all 6.9 billion of us. So although I do not think it is fair, it is life. I think there are some people that deserve to be on top and others that do not. There are some that earn their wealth and some that have it handed to them. Money is just money; except when it is also power. And when money becomes power the system breaks down. There is a loop hole in the system that too many upper class citizens benefit from to have fixed. When money is used in an unjust way to gain more money and synonymously more power, the ‘bad guys’ are getting closer and closer to the top and this is what upsets me.
I may live in a society that calls itself a democracy but as a citizen of this society I do not feel I have a say in what happens. I may have the ability to vote for someone to represent me, but I still do not have a say in what they decide; the people at the top will get what they want. These budget cuts are a prime example of this. Corbett does not care what the students want; he cares about what the people lining his pockets want. Humans are going to do what is best for them, even if they have been elected into a position that asks them to put society’s needs first. And there is no way to cure greed, so I'll have to accept the corrupt, unfair society I live in.

Sam’s lecture on Friday made me seriously reconsider my opinions on the morality of life sentences. I used to think they were unfair. Not for all prisoners; I am sure there are some that should be behind bars for life, but I thought most deserved a second chance, especially men like M. And when I say men like M. I mean men that are locked up for a crime they committed at a young age; respectable individuals that have used their time in prison to gain an understanding of themselves. But after digesting Sam’s lecture and then reading M.’s story I think life sentences are needed, not unfair. If M had not grown up in prison he would not have become the compassionate man he seems to be. It sounds like he fully understands how awful his actions were. It seems like he knows the amount of pain he caused and whole heartedly regrets what he did.

I think M. is brave. I do not know what it would be like to spend life in prison but I don’t think I would survive. To wake up every morning knowing I would never be let out would destroy me mentally. But M. is a better man because of his time behind bars. I think one of the most complex challenges of life is gaining an understanding of self. I am just beginning to learn who I am, what I think, what I like and desire. I still have a lot of growing to do so I envy M. He knows more about himself than I may ever know about myself. And I believe he would not have achieved this if he was not serving a life sentence.

I hope M. is in a peaceful place. I hope he has forgiven himself for what he did as a boy. Assisting in the murder of another human being is a disgusting act, and so I think M. deserves to be in jail. But I also think he deserves a happy life. “My life maybe in prison, but that does not mean that my life has no meaning,” he said. I think M. will die happier than the majority of people living because he has purpose. And he has one of the things I desire most; a true understanding of self.

Today I was reading a story and half way thorough I thought, “Wait, are these characters even white?” Their names and their actions did not really indicate which ethnicity they were but I, being white, naturally thought the characters were white. And then after reading more closely came to realize the characters were European. For half of the story I imagined white Americans when really the characters were European. Well that changes things. The setting, the appearance, the voices and visions all change. So I thought, what if an African American read this story; would he first imagine the characters to be black? When do we as children start to notice the differences between races beyond skin color? Like actions and speech and demeanor.

If this man in the video was talking on the radio, would people still think he is white? Just by the sound of his voice and his accent, his race could most likely be identified. What if we could only read what this man was saying? If I had only the script in my hands, could I figure out he is white? Could an Asian person imagine another Asian person saying the same thing as this white man? Yeah, I would think so. Just like earlier today when I imagined Europeans as Americans. I think it is very simple; this man’s white skin is what makes me think he is white. Some would argue that his hair and clothes affect my perception of him as being ‘more white’. But being more white isn’t a real thing. It’s just a way to describe a ridiculous label society has. How can a fellow white person be more or less white? If you are white, you are white.

Society may describe or even define a white man as speaking, dressing, and acting like the man in this video but this is not how all white men act or look. Yet this man is said to be ‘more white’. So then maybe this man’s skin color isn’t the reason this man is white. I guess it’s not that simple. This man is white, the whitest, because society says he is.

I would never be able to live in Helsinki. I could not live in a place where it is dark for the majority of the day. But then when I think about it, I would not be able to live in a place where it is light most of the day. And I couldn’t live in a place that was always very hot or always very cold. I imagine what life would be like in those conditions, and I can’t say I know what it would be like. For all of my existence I have lived in a place with proportionate nights and days and seasons that change. When fall becomes winter then spring and summer my surroundings drastically change. The trees, the colors, the skies, everything changes signifying another part of the year. I could not live in a place that did not have changing seasons. Like central Africa. The environment would be too constant, confusing; it would be hard to have a sense of time. You would need to have a certain kind of character to survive in a place like that. I am curious to know how many of the people that suffer from seasonal depression grew up in Helsinki and how many moved there and at what age. Does the environment you grew up in matter? What I have learned in sociology so far would make me say yes, of course where you grow up effects your character. But lingering in the back of my mind is the thought that maybe humans just aren’t meant to live in such severe conditions. Maybe seasonal depression is occurring because as humans our beings cannot withstand the harsh conditions of nineteen hours of darkness every day. Maybe we are pushing the body beyond its physical limits. Without technology it would be near impossible to live in Helsinki. Humans need warmth and sunlight. They live in the dark and cold. Seems unnatural to live in an environment like that. But I guess I can’t really say I know what humans need, because I am only one human and don’t know or understand the humans that live in Helsinki.

The artist said that as a child he was taught and believed that “if you worked hard and did well and got a college degree you would have a job”. And that present day children don’t really believe this but that they are right not to. I often think about all the places and cultures I could have seen with the 100 grand I will spend at college. Everyone tells me the education I am getting at Penn State is priceless, but I am not so sure.
Yesterday over one hundred Penn State students united and marched to Old Main in an effort to show the administration we cannot afford another tuition increase; most of us are struggling to pay what we pay now. Many students told stories of friends who no longer could afford to stay at Penn State, or how they themselves had to take time off due to the cost of tuition. How is it that money is preventing these people from getting an education? Why, in a world where a college degree is needed to become a successful individual, are colleges allowed to turn qualified students away on the basis of money? Neither of my parents went to college. Not because they could not afford to do so but because a college degree was not needed to get a respectable job. But many things have changed since my parents went to school. Children today are urged to get a college degree, and in most cases need one to live at least a middle class life. But while society’s standards for education have changed, children today are still only provided with a high school education. How can our economy grow if the next working generation is leaving college in debt? But they say to one day be wealthy we must first go to college and get a degree. So my options are to be poor now or to be poor later? That doesn’t make sense to me. Society needs to understand, and Universities like Penn State need to recognize that they are crippling some of their students.

I think this song reinforces the idea that we have these invisible strings attached to us, and although we are free to make our own decisions other factors and forces beyond us are shaping our lives. Some say this is fate; I’m not so sure I believe in fate, or at least not the typical definition of fate. To believe that there is a perfect person somewhere in the world is unreal, it is pretty safe to say that there are hundreds of people that would do. But fate in the sense that if either of our lives were different we wouldn’t have met, that part is cool. To acknowledge that there are hundreds of other people I could be with, that I would enjoy being with just as much, but I’m not with any of them, my life somehow collided with yours, and in a way it was out of our control. I think deciding which college to attend was the first major decision I made about the direction my life was going. If I had gone to a different school my life would be totally different. And chances are my future husband would be a different guy. And this idea runs into the idea that the more choices we have the less happy we become. In some cultures there are matchmakers that set up strangers to be married. Neither the bride nor the groom has a say in the matter. They have no choice, and therefore they cannot feel regret. But then you think, well, hold on, there is no way I would be happier if someone chose my spouse, the person I would have to spend the rest of my life with, for me. But the universe kind of does choose the person we end up with. It is in a way out of our control. We may think we are choosing the person we end up with but we really aren’t.

I wish the entire human race could see the world as I did when I was a child. In story books the sun and clouds had faces. And in movies the animals and flowers had voices. I thought the trees could feel and the rivers could think. I thought fish and birds felt emotions like mine. I think the artist in the video would agree that if all humans could see the world through my childish lenses, we would be closer to achieving a completely empathetic society. If we want to try and save our species and the world in which we live, we need to start connecting ourselves to everything that lives with us on this beautiful planet. We need to expand who we identify with to include all creatures ‘who have a one and only life on this planet’.
This idea that all humans would be able to empathize with all living things could be achieved if everyone was willing to listen and try to understand what the artist in the video is saying. I may only understand what he is explaining on a very basic level, but at least I challenged myself to try. I feel like most of society would not listen to his ideas because they have other beliefs that interfere. Instead of opening themselves up to a new way of thinking, they would rather stay close minded and comfortable in their beliefs. Comfort is the main reason we surround ourselves with like-minded people. It is nice to feel as if someone understands you and to feel as if you understand others. But we need to open ourselves up to personalities beyond our comfort zones to achieve a completely connected world. We need to free ourselves from the groups of people that think like us and embrace different ways of thinking. Unfortunately I don’t think this can be achieved in the world today. As human beings we have a strong desire to belong and in order to accept different ways of thinking we would need to let go of this desire. So although a completely empathetic society looks good on paper, it is near impossible to achieve. And that is a sad thought.