gdp's Comments

World In Conversation : Would you hire illegal immigrants over legal residents for less pay?- 119 Blog

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:16:45 +0000

I would totally hire illegal immigrants if it meant I ad to cough up less money. Anyone who says otherwise did not consider things such as bankruptcy, business competitiveness and speed. I really do believe it is an important sector though, we need people willing to do jobs that others do not particularly want to do. Harvesting is a perfect example; I know I do not want to pick anything unless I am going to get to eat it. Maybe I am just perpetually lazy and hungry, I do not know. I think there is a definitely misunderstanding of the intention of illegal workers. People think it is of malicious intent, that workers are under the impression there is an abundance of resources so they do not think too much of it. Also who is anyone in this country to judge someone who is willing to bend over backward to all of society just to meagerly provide for his or her own family. People should be commending instead of complaining about these people. They work really hard to receive barely enough money to survive off of, meanwhile saving to support their family. As we all saw in the video the immigrants are homeless, starving and waiting on the corner for work. This is undeserving conditions for people that are trying to do the right thing. So while I'm at it, not only am I helping myself by saving money, not dealing with worker unions, striving with speed and competitiveness, I am also giving these people jobs with out papers. I would also be supporting their families. There has to be a give and take. I am giving them a job with out papers they are giving my labor for cheap. If there was not business owners that thought like this, then many more immigrants would have a deeper struggle then can be imagined. So at the end of the day, even though it does not even out quite right, the relationship will still be the same with big scummy business workers and workers willing to do anything for money. This really is ashamed because those workers deserve than most people getting paid minimum wage. The sad thing is these people would probably appreciate a u.s. citizenship more than most Americans. The next idea for America is to start revoking U.S. citizenship if a person does not do something wonderfully joyous and caring with their life. I am not sure where they would put the degenerates but it does not really matter because America's economy would end up booming and everyone that deserved to be rich, would be. So that's life now, what it should be and then hopefully that will be the happy ending, until the end of the world comes, just sayin.

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

Sat, 9 Apr 2011 02:02:57 +0000

Concerning the rates of suicide among soldiers who have returned home from combat, I think we should keep in mind our own lack of understating in that realm. I know I know nothing of the intensity and range of emotion that must be experiences by our military. The fact that such astonishing rates of returned men and women are committing suicide is disturbing. As if they didn’t endure enough they are forced back into a world that the war has caused them to fall out of. The cover story about the mistakenly slaughtered women with a white flag is a very open story that I’m sure isn’t different from a lot of kept and wrapped up guilt. I can only theorize about how I would feel in that situation. When death is numbers it is hard for me to find compassion. But looking down upon a fallen fellow human is different. It is that moment of realization that their life was as complex, involved and full as yours that shakes you to the bone. Ending a life and having that same realization must be excruciating. Not only did they end lives that shouldn’t have been ended, but they get a salary (not good mind you) and they walk off planes to claps cheers, hugs and kisses. I wouldn’t be able to comprehend the misunderstanding around me nor would I be able to find the strength and energy to explain the complexity of my own guilt. The flashbacks portrayed by media however exaggerated, I don’t believe to be too far off. I’ve had flashbacks myself, luckily nobody was shooting at me, but it was immersion to an unreal and past reality. I felt disconnected, flashbacks aren’t NORMAL, and everyone wants to feel normal right? So when you don’t feel normal the alienation starts to set in and it is easy to drift close and closer to the unreal reality. That unreal reality is enough to reek a lot of havoc on a person. I really don’t believe enough resources and outlets are given to returned soldiers. I think there is a misconception that ‘hey they should be happy they’re home and their getting laid again!’ Hoorah! We can’t take the severity of something we have never seen lightly just because those that have don’t want to hoot and holler about the pain and difficulty of war. It’s always hard for me to write blogs about these things in particular because never having lived anything close to warfare, I can only speculate. But I guess live is just my own perspectives speculation. I just hope there is an effort to supply soldiers with any resource they may need after returning to what may or may not be there home anymore.

World In Conversation : FEAR

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:15:49 +0000

(The personal revelation is bitter sweet Mr. Nathanial Peters, let me tell you.) Again on the content itself, I want to make it clear that if all of these events if retold as full truth, I don’t at all blame the murderer, or victim, as I feel to be more appropriate. If in a similar situation I could never predict, but I would never rule out, this extremity. This is terrible to say, and is a horrible hypothetical situation. Synopsis of mish mash: I think I need to reiterate that when pushing another person you should take in to consideration thresholds and evaluate the mental and physical risks of harming another being. I think I found my ideas of my own cultural constraints were multiplied. And I think that any person who responds in this manner to an atrocious life and constant setting, should not be, in any way shape or form condemned to death.

World In Conversation : FEAR

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:15:45 +0000

Maybe I am more indoctrinated to gender roles than I like to think, because for whatever reason I felt a new wave of sympathy for this man that years of hearing about the abuses of fellow women couldn’t muster. There is something about norms being shattered that rattled even me, when I like to pride myself as being immune or as immune as possible to the norms that are everywhere I go. And it leads me to an interesting personal evaluation. So I would like to know if I am the only one that feels this way. If I were to be shown the same personal story written by what clearly was a female speaker, would I have felt as much compassion, anger and emotional all around rouse? I don’t know.

World In Conversation : FEAR

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:15:30 +0000

This is profoundly horrible story. I’ll be honest and say sometimes I know abuse can push people past their brink. I know I have felt that way, and this person who pushed me was not nearly as abusive. It’s what I would define a ‘worst case scenario.’ From a different standpoint entirely I really want to commend this as a piece of writing. The piece is entirely un-gendered, with a few exceptions of slight gender role assumption: long hair, the father’s raping of the child, and relations ships with women. Long hair: The speaker references being ridiculed for long hair, with which most readers would assume a male speaker. The father’s raping: You would automatically assume the speaker was a female. And unless you were oblivious to the frequency of abused women leading lesbian lifestyles you would assume it was a female speaker in response to the paragraph on failed relationships with women. Yet this is obviously a man’s story which I believe is so jarring because of gender role semantics the speaker/writer chose were broken.

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

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 03:12:23 +0000

You know one of the arguments I hear a lot against same sex adoption and child raising? It’s that in that environment, THE GAY ENVIRONMENT, children are more likely to be homosexual or converted. And let me tell you a little something about my upbringing, my parents are straight as arrows, and I my friend, am certainly not. And some studies show that children brought up by homosexuals are more likely to experiment with people of the same sex, god forbid. God forbid we accept people who are accepting and like to try on their shoes before they buy them. ‘Silly homo kids, going crazy!’ The whole situation is ridiculous. If we could just accept homosexuality whether or not their children had homosexual tendencies would be irrelevant, because duh silly it would be accepted. It gets me rather flustered, because being a homosexual and beginning to weigh the options for my future family is hard. Do I want artificial insemination? Would I carry the child? Is adoption the appropriate path? Does the race of the child matter? Do I want extra prejudice placed on my child? Should I just do what I feel is best and always be there for them as they experience some of the prejudice I inadvertently facilitated? Is this all-pointless deliberation because when I want children this country will be a more open-minded? Doubt it, but I like to write my hope. It’s completely dehumanizing this question of whether or not gays can raise kids. Are we dogs, hamsters maybe? Honestly I think I’d rather these ignorant asses have been raised by hamsters than their own parents, because they didn’t seem to instill much of anything I view as moral. Maybe that’s just me being all gay and crazy, or maybe it really is them and they really are misinterpreting a huge demographic entirely. And as far as suitable parents go, it’s on a personal basis. Maybe there are some shitty parents that are gay, but it isn’t because they are gay that they are shitty. Just like it isn’t an incompetent heterosexual males’ orientation that make him a horrible parent. It blows my mind and is disappointing that Zach even have to stand up and say all of this, it just reminds me where we are in our fight to end the misinformation that this country has been plagued with since the very beginning. One more tangent to wrap this rant, I don’t care who my parents are no matter what as long as they love me. They could be aliens and I wouldn’t care at all, the only thing is I might be more likely to talk to a green person on the sidewalk. I guess I just can’t fathom why the openness is anything less than ideal.

World In Conversation : Is it selfish for people in poverty to have more kids because of their lower income?- 119 Blog

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 05:25:24 +0000

Do I feel that it is selfish for people in poverty to have more kids because of their lower income? Well to start with what I think is appropriate for any type of income family, they should only have two children. This is because I believe that a person should only replace themselves. With having two children, you replace yourself and you replace your spouse. I feel like if everyone reproduced this way it would not over populate the earth. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. I don’t think it should matter what income people should not have a large amount of children. For example the reality show about the family with eighteen children, I never personally watched it. I just think that is absurd and unnecessary. When people have that many children, they are taking from some one else. I am not sure if I could really explain on the point and make sense. To go back to the answer, I do feel like it is selfish for people that have more kids with a lower income. People should be cautious when having sex and having a low income. Especially when you know you can not support yourself, never mind a child. It is not fair to the children that these people have. That child did not ask to born, but someone brought it into the world and can not even support. How is that fair to the child? It is not at all. I just become so furious when people have babies and can not support them and do not give them up for adoption to lead a better life. May be I am crossing the line by bringing adoption into this topic, but it is an option. Some people just can not handle losing their child, which is completely understandable. When the child’s well being is brought into question because the parent can not support it, I would call that selfish. I do not feel guilty about saying that either. For example the “octomom”. I would call her completely selfish. She has no money to support her eight children and she decided to keep them and make money off of the media. How can it be any other way than selfish? Unfortunately it can not be, no matter how any one justifies it. This is something that I feel is brutal topic among mothers. Especially mother’s that are not in the situation. If I were in this situation though, you probably already know my answer, that I would not have any children if I knew that I could not comfortably support them. But that is just my personal opinion, even though I know that it is harsh.

World In Conversation : Do you think his lighter skin gets him ahead in society?- 119 Blog

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:41:37 +0000

" I really believe white people have everything easy. Everything is given to them most of the time. I am pretty sure there are white people out there that struggle just as some black people; however, a white person being poor has the same amount of struggle as a black middle class person." I'm sorry I just think this is a ridiculous statement, and you should try to gain a little perspective before you say bat shit crazy things.

World In Conversation : Why do we think of people from other countries as so different from us?- 119 Blog

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:33:17 +0000

Why do we think of people from other countries as so different from us? Because they are. They are different. I believe that there is really not much ‘nature’ at all. We have culturally dictated commonalities and culturally dictated differences. The problem doesn’t lie in the differences themselves. It lies in our reaction to difference. People living in Indian slums and Japanese high rises have pretty different lives than I do but they are radically different in different ways. Here’s the problem, we are all different no matter how ignorant the arguer, they never dispute that point. But in this society (generalizing) certain differences mean more than others. Here’s the trifecta, color, location and religion. God forbid your black, from Sudan and believe in more than one god. It sends people who aren’t any of those things into a panicked frenzy. I’m being dramatic, a little. But this is where I rant about the importance of tolerance and education and not being a total idiot. Have you ever had that awkward situation that you have no idea how to handle because the person you are encountering has one or more of the trifecta differences? It is probably feeling that way because you are embarrassed by your own lack of knowledge. Rather than take the steps to become acquainted with differences to avoid discomfort, we avoid difference entirely. Hello prejudice and discrimination. Just the other day I was reading an article on the cut religious studies program at Penn State University, and later that night my girlfriend received an email from a previous religion professor say “I guess I’ll need to find a new calling.” What the fuck? Am I right to be upset? How are we going to learn if the learning isn’t institutionalized? Because we obviously avoid the confrontation of ‘real time experience.’ It’s all just a crazy mess, people aren’t afraid of difference as much as their own ignorance and lack of initiative. (I generalize terribly in all my blogs “we, people etc.” I just wanted to specify I’m generalizing on what I observe of humans. Sometimes you can take the initiative and the other person won’t, remember you have and equal amount of difference on both ends. That can be hard to remember when egocentrism is in full swing (pretty much always). I just want to riterate what I meant by the bolded sentence: If you look at someone and take an inventory of all of the differences between the both of you, the other person noted many or all of those same differences. Isn’t that interesting? “He is so different than me,” you could say, but on the other end that person is saying the exact same thing. (Irony)

World In Conversation : How can we make people more aware of the slavery that is still going on?- 119 Blog

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 23:36:58 +0000

How can we make people more aware of modern day slavery? That’s not the issue at all, how can we make people care about modern day slavery? That’s the question we have to ask and address. And to be honest it’s impossible to make anyone care about something they DON’T WANT and can’t find the energy to care about. It’s exhausting. Talking about Thursdays lecture, I knew we were going to be speaking about blood chocolate as soon as I saw those cups in the front of the classroom. As soon as it crossed my mind I felt the empathy and sympathy that is, and should be, evoked be the thought of unpaid labor, beatings and pissing in a tin can chained to a wall. But it’s DEPRESSING. You know it and I know it. On top of the empathy and sympathy, I would say it’s also natural to feel angry, small and helpless. Sitting there you are angry the situation exists, your angry there is really not all that much you can do, angry at yourself for not wanting to hear about it, and even angrier because most of us know that perpetuating the evils in the world is virtually inescapable. And that makes you feel small and helpless. I heard people behind me, ‘I’m never going to eat that shit again.’ Really? Don’t make promises you can’t keep, don’t embarrass yourself. Coco puffs have chocolate too. I ate my chocolate. We have all been eating those people’s flesh for a long time. But imagine your life if every time you eat some chocolate or send a text you think about some unnamed person bleeding while they assemble or facilitate your way of life, you’d probably jump off a cliff. I don’t mean to sound theatrical about it, but imagine. Every time you did anything you directly linked it to perpetuating the misery and death of others. It would be crippling. We would have to have that film running right in front of our eyes every single fucking day if anything was going to be done, but if we were to do that when do be get numb to the entire thing??? When would it just not evoke anything from us at all? Probably frighteningly fast. One more thing, what does 30,000,000 look like? Can you visualize the lives of that many people? Do they matter like your family, friends lovers? Of course not. Be realistic for Christ’s sake. Don’t blow smoke. And by the way all those missing person’s posters of pretty blonde American girls, whose bodies are never recovered, they are dying in some slum somewhere of aids after they got kicked out of whorehouses. Ironically, slavery is what's colorblind.

World In Conversation : What did you get out of King Of the Mountain?- 119 Blog

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:01:31 +0000

(SO THE PIECE I READ AND WROTE ON WENT MIA BUT IT WAS ABOUT LIFETIME INMATES... I had to post somewhere) Reading the posted Pennsylvania Lifers letters was semi eye opening I must say. I have also been in contact with someone who exchanges letters with a 'Lifer' and she has said on multiple occasions that it is one of the most constructive and fulfilling things she does in her spare time. I am absolutely interested in doing the same. I think there is so much to be learned on either end of these letters. Perspectives other than your own are almost impossible to assume, but I think trying on perspectives of others in order to expand your own is critical to personal development. Sites like this: http://www.prisoners.com/homepg2.html#main show more informal individual narratives. And as far as the justice of the situation the ‘Lifers’ find themselves in I can’t help but think that the accurately prosecuted don’t deserve their sentences. And the narratives of many don’t disagree or combat their sentences at all. In fact the most prevalent emotion is remorse or resolve. I can’t speak for a situation I’ve never even tried to fully understand. My statements in this moment are still nothing but speculation, but I can’t say I don’t want to do my best to become more aware. Here is a pretty awesome quote by Albert Einstein that I found to be pretty relevant: "A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Think about it, it’s all perception; I want to make it a life goal to assume and understand as many differing points of view as humanly possible. Facets to do this present themselves in all manners all the time. It is a matter of recognizing and taking the initiative to empathize and know that all lives are not congruently privileged or not. There are billions of perspectives to try on. I don’t think I will ever run out of differing opinions. Isn’t that beautiful? I wish more people could recognize the beauty of difference and understand it doesn’t take believing what others do, it just take an attempt at understanding. Try living homeless, try staying in a 5 star, try prison, try all night subway rides, try touring the nation, try farming, try grave digging, try absolutely everything you can fit, and hopefully when you finally do die, you will think that you did your best to understand the allusive.

World In Conversation : Why Don't We Like Positive News?- 119 Blog

Sat, 5 Feb 2011 03:42:11 +0000

Positive news, or news that isn’t disguised as propaganda to the highest bidder, it doesn’t exist. If you want good news you’d better make it yourself and shout it out. As far as telling us the things we should be scared of, it’s completely subjective. Glenn Beck… that’s what really scares me. Shooting a bunch of Democrats like rodents that’s scary too, but I’m sure some people watch it because they’re happy about it. I can’t imagine there aren’t people in this country that weren’t happy to see countless black people killed and displaced in Katrina, I can’t imagine some people listen to the coverage of Iraq’s murdered civilians and don’t think good riddens. It’s all subjective. Things that scare me might not scare you. I’m scared of hairless cats and cotton balls, you aren’t. But I understand the concept Sam was trying to get out there and I don’t disagree really, I’m always just trying to play devil’s advocate. Truth be told though, I don’t watch the news ever, I don’t read the paper, and I don’t know what’s going on until it slaps me in the face. And the reason I don’t is because it hurts, it’s depressing. I can’t personally afford to be sad anymore so I’ve cut a lot of that out of my life. I don’t really feel badly about it. Just the other day I became aware of the Peace Corps scandal where the institution has allegedly hushed up 1,000 raped and abused female service members. Depressing. That is something I’ve been saying I would do since I was eight years old, it honestly broke my heart a little. And when every night you hear about another drunk 15 year old who killed all their friends on a joyride every night it gets to be draining. And when that kid was your little neighbor it gets harder, and when it’s your sister’s boyfriend it gets harder than that. So eventually you turn off that damn TV and you hope that it doesn’t seep through the windows and under the doors because it is just too hard to let all the bad stuff in. And for me and others as well, it’s just better to be oblivious to the frequently developing evils of this world. Evil is changing faster than fashion and I guess the news is the runway, where horrifying tragedies are accessorized with corruption. And personally tragedies aren’t as sexy as Victoria secret models, who by the way are implants and anorexia, and thousands of years of pressure combined into people. So I can see the tragedy in that too… I just want to live in a bubble sometimes and I don’t feel bad about it.

World In Conversation : What Does the Confederate Flag Mean to You?- 119 Blog

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:12:08 +0000

What does the Confederate flag mean to me? Nothing except a bad mood, because that shit pisses me off. Someone in class said that most people who wave these flags are ignorant of it’s negative racial connotations. And you know what I say in response to that comment… you’re ignorant. Because either they really don’t know and you’re ok-ing a lack of knowledge that is offensive to all types of people or they do know (that’s my experience) and wave it around calling themselves neo-Nazis doing god damn jail style tattoos of the battle flag in the back of class. NOT KIDDING. There really is no excuse for supporting and having pride in the flag, if you do not understand what it represents. People have to realize that certain images evoke memories and feelings of dread, anger, or in my case disappointment in the human race. People should be respectful and understanding of which this flag originates its standing on. Then the other problem is that people are taking this specific flag and adding more negative connotations. My high school is great example of how this is true. It got to the point in my school that battle flag was banned, as it had taken on gang implications. The argument ‘I’m proud to be an American.’ These gang implications represent Neo-Nazis, which is the uprising of Nazism to modern day, and were connecting with the Confederate Battle Flag. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-13-co... (interesting link) showing a similar banning in a Southern school. I honestly am embarrassed to be American 99% of the time. I just can’t understand where the lack of respect originates. Maybe it’s this idea of superiority that has caused every evil I can identify. Actually I take back ‘maybe’, most definitely every horrific event habilitated by human beings is caused by the want of superiority. This is a separate tangent entirely though. So I must continue my tangent on the Confederate Flag of Battle. I can’t think of any symbol or material item that I would wave to show my believed superiority. It’s just plain mean and inconsiderate. And if you knowingly endorse something that obviously is offensive to a huge contingent of people IN YOUR COUNTRY I just can’t help but assume you are a racist. Even though, supposedly this flag has taken on a new meaning for people now. It still doesn’t completely erase the things it has been connected with in the past. Most commonly were ‘power to the south!’ and slavery. In my opinion this was one of the most unjust things that has happened in this country. And for people to be waving and taking pride in a flag that use to represent hate, is just mind blowing. And people wonder why we still have racial problems in this country. In our soc 119 class, so many black people were getting mad about this topic, and if this is the result of taking pride in that flag, then people should not being doing it.

World In Conversation : Stories for Uplift

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:31:38 +0000

We are culturally defined to the point where I find it hard to believe we have much control over who we are at all. A professor of mine once said that the society around us, the society we have constructed is merely a projection of our psyches. We need to adopt psyches that will truly be conducive to our and our children’s freedom. We have to adopt a way of thinking that will celebrate human emotions that should be shared and interchangeable no matter the color or language those feeling the emotions speak. In regards to the video, we see two children much closer to a culturally ‘clean slate’ than we are. I hope, I truly hope that skin color doesn’t end up dictating those two children’s lives, but my gut says that unless our psyches radically change they will fall into a society divided by shade, dialect, and religion. People told me and still tell me that loving a woman and being a woman is wrong. WE ARE ALL HUMANS. Get it through all of your heads. Life is too short to sit idly by and watch opportunities for the most sought after human emotion pass you by. Sometimes I honestly doubt homophobes, racists, sexists etc on their ability to love. I feel as though love dwarfs all differences and ‘faults’ or at least should. When someone claims to be in love and discounts mine, I lose all respect for the person and their ‘love.’ Maybe it sounds harsh and as though I am speaking from a lack of perspective but I thought I would never stray from my ‘type’ brunettes with light eyes. Now I am madly in love and she is not at all what I predicted for myself, but infinitely more beautiful in our differences. But I am going to say this and mean it, I don’t care if she turns black, blue, orange, heavy, slim, ripped, shorter, taller, wrinkly, dark eyes, red eye, I don’t fucking care if she turns into a vampire. I love her. I find it impossible to believe in the love of two people when they can’t admit to the things I just said, when they can’t say that they wouldn’t care if their lover was fat and yellow. In those instances it isn’t unconditional and from my point of view shouldn’t even be characterized as love. Unfortunately, my previous paragraph just debunked the lives and lies of bigots everywhere. My sincerest apologies. I honestly would love to hear a counter argument. I would love to hear someone explain why their skin color is superior and why anyone below will simply not do. AND I would love to hear a heterosexual convince me my impulses are going to result in my fiery demise. I personally am always going to root for love, the real thing. I hope someone agrees because we need a psyche change and we need it soon.

World In Conversation : Last Name “C” – Intense Debate

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:45:40 +0000

SOC 119