gdp's Comments

World In Conversation : The Cost of Empire - 001 blog

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:20:15 +0000

This whole video is just scratching the surface, it only covers the economic paradigm of this country and doesn't fully cover the military industrial complex's influence in the world. The video mentions the F-22 and how it is in 44 of 50 states, this was done on purpose to make it so it is more difficult to stop funding for the project should it ever come up for a budget cut. War is an industry and like any industry it has people that will defend their economic and political interests within that industry. In every industry from tobacco to computers there are lobbiest representing these interests and who's job it is to bring home the bacon for their respective industries. This bacon could come in the form of tax breaks, regulations being lifted or bent, direct government support (the military industrial complex is mostly government funded while the other part comes from private military interests or even other countries that these US based companies are more than willing to work for). The great American empire however is much more than just military bases throughout the world. It is a system that is based around the benefit and perpetuation of the, "American / Western way of life". The sheer amount of things that the US has done since WW2 to establish this empire is staggering, and most people will never know the things that men preceding their birth have done to ensure that people in the future can live the way they do. Everything from the Iran contra affair in the 1950s (This is when 1 man, 1 man, took down the entire legitimately elected government of Iran that favored the Oil to be nationalized and to benefit his own country and not that of foreign powers) to the purposeful inflation and economic / political coups of south american and latin american countries to benefit American companies. This is not some conspiracy but actual events recorded by the CIA and the defense department themselves. Look this up, stop watching television, stop watching the news for fucks sake. The "American way of life" has been funded by the suffering of people in countries that you will never meet who's countries have been raped of their natural resources and the time and labor of those people themselves. Whether or not you agree with this is up to you, morality is a joke as is the notion that America is a nation based upon freedom and patriotism or some other nonsense, maybe it was true at one point, but not in this neo-classical economic era. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNEIJ-k5mJo

World In Conversation : War Vets and PTSD -- 001 Blog

Sat, 9 Apr 2011 03:21:50 +0000

It's a sad effect of war and I felt quite sad when I learned that one of the marines in the video shown in class actually went on to commit suicide. An enormous waste of potential, life, and resources for a soldier. Being in the army I sometimes do worry about becoming messed up in the head once I ship out to Afghanistan. However, I don't worry too much about it because I've accepted someday, I will die. The stress that comes out of war is something that I cannot relate to as I have never seen combat. I can imagine though how hard it must be to see and do certain things that would rattle people who were conditioned to be tough and unafraid because ultimately those people are still humans. Humans with their own set of beliefs and morals that tell them that what they are doing and have done are wrong. PTSD is as shown in the video becoming more and more open to discussion within the military and soldiers are being screened and treated for it more regularly as it is as serious a wound as a gun shot. Seeing dead bodies and killing people scare people because seeing and doing those things makes you realize that that could be you in the future.

World In Conversation : So what your take on those "inequality classes"?

Fri, 1 Apr 2011 15:37:53 +0000

Professor, you and I had a discussion earlier in the week about this and I remember that I said I believe that everyone should work hard but that they should be provided with a minimum basis (basic living and healthcare) to which to use as tools for their lives (I have different reasons for supporting this, but mainly because I believe that it would be more beneficiary to society as a whole to allow individuals to not have to worry about factors about basic living and therefore allow more time to develop whatever it is that makes them, "Conscious" / "Human". You respond by saying that it would take up to 4 earths in order to have people all living with such a standard of living. With our current population and neo classical economics, yes it would. Upon pondering your response I've concluded something, "If everyone from The Matrix were to wake up, there will not be enough room in Zion for all of them". That isn't to say that I necessarily agreed with your response, but rather I use this metaphor to state that we need inequality. We need people to suffer in order for people to be bliss. And I'll respond to everyone who posts here by saying, stop stating the fucking obvious. Holy shit, have you not realized yet that college merely teaches you the information but not how to understand it? Every single one of you peasants merely are repeating the exact thing that Sam Richards said in class (That is if you showed up or didn't fall asleep in it or played on your laptops the whole time). Do you all seriously think that it is so simple as saying, "People of a lower class are in a bad spot, why don't the rich help them out?" You all keep bringing up names and statistics as if they prove or mean anything, what does it really mean if the average American earns 34000 a year, or that Dick Cheney gave no bid contracts to Haliburton (The company he used to be vice president of). Life, is, unfair. I hope every single one of you peasants realizes that even when you were in elementary school or high school you would let your friends cut in front of you or behind you (there fore screwing the person that was behind you but still letting your friend get ahead). It's the whole fucking paradigm of human interaction and social behavior that is the problem, not this thing you call, "Economics". The thing is is that as you grow older you don't change, you get taller, you look different, instead of lolipops you have cigarettes, instead of a tricycle you have a car, instead of school a job, and the only thing you had to be afraid of catching from girls were cooties. It doesn't matter on a macro or micro scale, when it comes to humans there will ALWAYS be someone that leads, and someone that follows.

World In Conversation : LGBT families. There's a lot of fear out there.

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 03:56:59 +0000

Zach Walls is correct in what he so eloquently spoke of. It is truly pathetic that the reason why gays cannot get the same marriage rights as straights is because of people who are simply hateful to that which is different from them. Homosexuality is something people are born with and they cannot change it even if they say they have just to satisfy some social norm (Religion is the biggest factor towards homophobia in society). From a sociological point of view homosexuality it does not influence people in their own sexuality. Why? Because a person's sexuality is deemed from birth through genetics and hormones influences through those genetics. Sociologically it may influence people's thoughts and may cause them to become uncomfortable and biggoted though. To say that a homosexual couple would prioritize attempting to indoctrinate a child into becoming a homosexual instead of loving the child as one of their own, a family if you will. Is a flat out unfounded insult that makes as much sense as attempting to tell a white child that he should be treated differently because he is born white. Homosexual couples being poor parents would be a valid argument, if it were able to be proven so. However, the argument amongst opponents is that gay marriage is immoral, that gays would indoctrinate children to become gay (not sure what is so wrong about this other than the bigoted personal thoughts of a person). What Zach Walls has testified is that his parents loved him and simply wanted him to be him, they didn't ask him to become a homosexual they simply cared for him like ANY OTHER PARENT WOULD. The social norm of homosexuals unable to marry or to be discouraged from being parents is an archaic and irrational one that must be changed if we are to better the lives of many children who are without parents in this country.

World In Conversation : How much government do we need?

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 02:54:21 +0000

Government control is a part of our lives as it is in America on such a large scale that I chuckle at this cheap attempt to gain political currency by Michele Bachmann for her bid in 2012. This announcement made by the administration which is at best a minor piece of advice to parents that breast feeding a child may be a better idea than to bottle feed them. It is not something that involves the problems that the country is facing today ranging from government spending, the state of our economy, the war in Afghanistan. The comment that Michele Bachmann has made stating that this announcement from Michele Obama is constituting, "New definition of the nanny state." Is absolutely preposterous and is simply a cheap shot at the administration or is just a comment that outlines the extreme ignorance of Michele Bachmann as to the nature of this country since world war 2. The government controls our lives on a DAILY basis, we just don't notice it as much because we take many many life improving services for granted. From the moment that Michele Bachmann wakes up she is being, "Nannied" by the government no matter how free she thinks she is as a person in this country. When Bachmann gets out of bed and goes to use the bathroom's water she is being protected by the EPA that makes sure her water isn't poisoned by lead or other contaminants. When Bachmann gets to eat her breakfast the FDA makes sure that her cereal doesn't make her sick. When she turns on the tv to check the day's weather NASA satellites feed the information to private news outlets that then forward the information to private tv networks. There are many more but I'll keep the list short. The most face-palm quality part about Bachmann's post was that she has even admitted to breast feeding her 5 children. What I have to wonder is what if a conservative administration (such as Bush's) were to come out and say such a thing?

World In Conversation : Empathy Might Be Our Natural Drive

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 03:23:42 +0000

We all hear about starving children in Africa or the sweat shops in Asia and all most people will do is think, "Well that sucks". The video is right about human empathy, but only when it is on a small or individual scale because if you are living in a western society you have a fairly good chance at eating 3 meals a day, attending school, and doing whatever it is you want to do in your spare time. It's extremely hard to be empathetic when the problems of other people aren't your own and those problems of others won't eventually becomes yours as well. In school you learn about starving children, sure you may feel bad that there are people like that in another country, but what are you going to do about it? Will you start eating your vegetables like your mom tell you? Will you start donating canned goods overseas? If you see someone that forgot their lunch money however, you may or may not help that person out and pay for his lunch. We all know what it's like to be hungry because one day you might not have had time to eat until the end of the day because of a busy schedule. Either that or it was simply convenient for you to help this individual at that time. The starving children in Africa? You would have to go out of your way, go and put YOUR own precious time from jerking off and doing whatever it is you do to help people you don't know whom experience things you don't because you were born in a country with the means to produce and distribute food properly. Sam Richard's video to me seems like a hippy commie video which promotes the idea of, "Equality" in that we should all treat others as if they were our brothers and sisters. Let me ask you something, do you have friends? Have you ever let your friends cut infront of you in line? Why would you do so? Because they were YOUR friends that you saw wanting to get ahead in line. If empathy were to be as wide spread as the video suggested then what we know to be empathy would be non-existent. It would be watered down into what we would call indifference. It is not possible for empathy to be mass produced as if it were the next big thing like a new Iphone or music player. Empathy is something that must be individually found amongst each individual person, not something that covers over a mass of peoples.

World In Conversation : Conformity Rules the Day

Sat, 5 Feb 2011 04:03:33 +0000

This little experiment demonstrates the herd behavior that all humans are wired to from birth till death. Let me explain in terms of college life on Penn State. The typical weekend involves socialization through either alcohol consumption or through some sort of sports related activity. Through this socialization people will typically wear hoodies, baseball caps, jeans, and depending on the weather skirts and t-shirts. Generalizations / Stereotypes are never a real objective idea, but they have some sort of observed behavior / trend that causes it being spawned. The students on Penn State will lean towards alcohol consumption, there are many alcohol related deaths / injuries that occur on campus / off campus involving college students, and many are arrested in attempting to consume it. People want attention, people want to be special, and people want to socialize. On Pennstate activities indirectly and directly related to alcohol is where most of the, "Group" leans towards. If you want to be social, if you want to meet people you had better step towards alcohol in one way or another. The video shows on a small scale how if everyone around the person does something, the person will imitate those persons. It makes perfect sense that this would've helped human beings survive in pre-historic periods where a group mentality would ensure that enough food was gathered or that enough shelter was prepared. In a modern age however, it is just the opposite, we need people to think for themselves, to always question what they are told to be true or what they see / hear to be, "Normal". What happens in that elevator, is happening everywhere and on a large scale. We buy things the television tells us to buy, we listen and repeat what faces on the television and radio say and think they are our own opinion, we wear what models and actors wear, we dress like movie stars, and we vote because we don't know any better when we should be trying to change the system and not encouraging it. Personally, I say screw the norm and fuck the standard. Do you know what I do instead of drinking / partying on weekends? I play World of Warcraft. Why? Because I find it fun. I enjoy drinking, but I find it absolutely retarded that people think they need alcohol to have a good time, or that it should be accepted to have hangovers on a regular basis. If people call me out on it or make fun of me for it, I don't care. Hate to sound like some sort of free spirit or whatever but I'm serious when I say, I don't care about social trends because I am not a slave, I am a free man.

World In Conversation : Americans Gone Wild!

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 04:51:29 +0000

Guns aren't the problem but it's people who don't respect guns and use them properly. The father is the one to blame here as the gun was not in a secure place and in plain sight for a child to take and think of it as a toy. Lack of education to the child on the dangers of a gun and the lack of proper gun storage are to blame here. The child doesn't understand what a gun will do in real life if it goes off, he can't comprehend what murder is or what death is. This incident shows what happens when the system goes horribly wrong and finds an easy victim instead of addressing the big problem of irresponsible gun owners. Gun ownership shouldn't be restricted, but rather it should be harder to get in that someone who buys a gun understands that he / she has a responsibility to treat the gun with respect and educate those unfamiliar with guns about them for the safety of everyone in that environment. While nobody got hurt thankfully and if they did then the father would be facing jail time right now. The potential for someone getting killed was there and this is all to blame on the father who is lucky that his son simply put it in his pocket and wasn't curious enough to point it at someone or mess around with the safety switch. The father failed to do these things and as a result the child was the target of the police because he was the one in possession to begin with. Laws have grey areas and this is one of them, sure it wasn't a good idea to arrest a child, they should've simply sent him to class and called the parent to come down and explain how his child brought a gun to school. Instead of jail time he should simply be forced to go to a gun safety class and make sure that this incident never happens again.

World In Conversation : Letter from an Inmate

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 04:58:54 +0000

People in prisons are no different from anyone else that has made a mistake in their lives, it's just that their mistakes ended up costing them much. Ingrained into the minds of most people are the thoughts of inmates as being violent and unworthy of any respect from the rest of society. Freedom is an amazing thing to have, to be able to choose to go to class or to sleep in, to be able to choose to pick which class to go into, what college, what job, etc. Freedom is the greatest thing that anyone can have and at the same time the least noticed. The irony of this is that a person who is facing life in prison has the potential to become the best sort of citizen in society. He would be a man that knows what it is like to have freedom taken from him, he will make every moment count, unlike most of society that chooses to simply do as the TV, magazine, speaker, or computer says. Someone could cynically say that if released he could just do his best to not get caught or hide better. However someday in the future if we could somehow prob the mind of an inmate and after 10-20 years of repentance he has truly reformed into a model citizen, he should be released. In a way we are all criminals in that we kill time here and there, we slowly kill the Earth through our usage of fossil fuels, we encourage all the shitty media and even shittier food industry by actively contributing to the corrupt system, refusing to read books and prefering to watch tv, I could go on, but the point is that while most of us are not behind bars, we sure as hell don't act like we deserve the freedom we have.