In my opinion, I do not think it is right to give someone an advantage just because they have something (in regards to race, gender, relatedness, etc) that normally would not help their chances, which is why I do not think that Affirmative Action should still be in place. By continuing to keep this practice in the United States, I do not feel that we are helping anyone. I feel that we are continuing to exploit our differences, instead of treating everyone equally based on their accomplishments and abilities.
If we allow people an advantage over others just because of the color of their skin, for example, we are taking away from one of the most basic rules we are taught in the United States: you need to work hard in order to achieve great things. The infamous American dream that his inspired so many people to come to this country has started to fade. All people are worried about these days is getting to the top and making the most money, no matter what it takes. The innerworkings of this country are now so messed up that a huge rift has developed between the richest people, who hold all the power, and everyone else.
And why has this happened? Because the politicians, the company presidents and CEOs, and all the other higher-ups have been given advantages their entire lives (well, most of them, at least). Most of them grew up in well-to-do families and have been given opportunities because they have had the money and prestige to pay for them. If this keeps happening, it will only further the divide between the top ten and the bottom ninety percents. And since most of those well-to-do people are white, people of other races and ethnicities feel threatened and unfairly treated, yet again furthering the exploitation of our differences. And then white people begin to feel the white guilt, and feel the need to offer minorities jobs in order to alleviate that guilt. Once again, we have strengthened that rift between us all.
This is exactly why I think we need to get rid of Affirmative Action in the United States. While it could be construed as a good idea, one that could rectify all the inequality of this country, it is only helping to drive us all apart. And while it may be nice to be a recipient of Affirmative Action, it is extremely unfair to the rest of us who have to watch as someone rises up even though they did not really earn it. I can admit that I have been on the better side of Affirmative Action, but it did not feel right to me. I think that instead of setting people apart, we need to find a way to fix this and bring everyone back together.

I have to admit, I was totally shocked at the statistics for sexual abuse. I had never imagined the rates were as high as they are, and being able to visualize those staggering numbers by being able to fill the middle section in the front with people in the class who may have been abused blew my mind. Just having that knowledge has really made me think about the people that surround me. There’s a good chance that many of them have been sexually abused at some point in their life, or that they will be in the future. I worry about their safety as well as my own. I cannot imagine having to go through something like that and keeping my head held high, and it makes me sad to know that so many people deal with it every day.
When Sam told us to raise our hands if we did not know about or suspect any sexual abuse in our families, just about everyone in the room raised their hand. But when he said that he could just about guarantee someone in our family abused another or had been abused by another, I felt scared and confused. I cannot imagine anyone in my family committing such a horrible crime, and I definitely never imagined that someone I love and care about had to endure something that terrible. It must be hard for anyone to think about. Just thinking about anyone in my family even having thoughts about it makes my skin crawl. It is so very difficult to imagine that sexual abuse could be going on around me and I would not even know about it.
Knowing that sexual abuse will continue to happen into the future also scares me. This type of abuse has been happening for centuries, and it is obviously happening now. There will always be that one person who has fantasies and will not be able to deny his or her urges. I just hope that we will one day reach a point where people are not so afraid to talk about it. I think that if more people were willing to listen, maybe it would not be so surprising to learn the high numbers. If more people were less judgmental, I believe that more victims would not be so afraid of speaking out about their experiences and maybe more people that get those urges to hurt others in such a terrible way would be more willing to seek help. We obviously cannot change what has happened in the past, but maybe we can prevent this from happening so often in the future. We need to become more aware of the warning signs in both the victims and the predators, and we need to be willing to help before it is too late.

I was extremely disturbed by the video we watched in class. I not only learned that there is still slavery in the world, in vast quantities, but I also learned that there is almost a guarantee that any chocolate I eat will contain cocoa harvested by those slaves. Seeing all the hard work put into something we here take for granted, seeing the horrible treatments they endured, and learning that they have never been paid, was heartbreaking and horrible. When Sam told us to eat the second piece of chocolate, I was very hesitant, and debated with myself for a few moments. In the end, I decided to eat that second piece of chocolate. Why?
Well, first of all, Sam told us that if we still planned on buying and eating chocolate at any point in our life, it would be wrong not to eat it. I’ll admit I’m not the world’s biggest fan of chocolate, but I do enjoy it from time to time. I could not rationalize myself never eating chocolate again, nor could I tell myself that I would only eat fair trade chocolate from now on. Promising to never eat chocolate again, even just to myself, seemed completely unrealistic at the time, and it still does. I’m sure there will come a point in my life where I will forget that the chocolate I have just eaten probably came from slaves. It is sad to say that, but it is also the truth. Morally, I could not promise that level of dedication.
Secondly, it was already bought and paid for, meaning that somebody had already made a profit off of it, and those slaves still suffered through harvesting the cocoa beans and did not get paid. Me eating that piece of chocolate would not have stopped that. Just letting that piece of chocolate sit there would not have changed anything, and throwing it away after class would have been a slap in the face to those who worked so hard to make it. One of the slaves in the video said that he would not have any nice words to say to the people who eat chocolate, which he has never tasted. But how would he feel if he knew he had worked so hard for us to toss it aside?
I really do not believe that not eating the chocolate would have helped those slaves of the Ivory Coast. I do not believe that not eating chocolate for the rest of my life, or only buying fair trade cocoa, will help to solve the problem, either. Unless we make the point clear, that we only want the manufacturers of our chocolate to use fair trade cocoa beans, there will be little to no progress made, and the effort will have been for nothing.

I don’t know all of what is going on with each of the Occupy Movements, but I know what the main motivations are and I have heard about some of the police brutality that is occurring in Oakland and New York. It is very sad and also rather horrifying that the police, those who we have always thought would protect and serve, could do a lot of the things they have been doing to these protestors. From throwing things to using pepper spray and weapons, I believe the police have gone much too far trying to “detain” the Occupy protestors. The mass majority of the protestors are completely peaceful, with only a handful that have gotten violent or vandalized businesses, so this brutality is completely uncalled for.
I am personally rooting for these protestors, as I share many of the same ideals. The interworkings of the government and big business will, in my opinion, inevitably lead to the fall of our country. I think it is great that so many have come together to make a change, although their method is a bit flawed (but they are learning quickly), but it still amazes me that the (mostly) right-sided politicians can completely bash this movement, saying the protestors are lazy and need to find jobs. But therein lies the issue: there aren’t very many jobs left. So many of the big corporations (which the politicians support) have been sending work overseas to cut costs, or have fired lower-end workers in order to give out bonuses to the presidents and CEOs. And while our economy has not deteriorated to the levels of a vast majority of the world, we do have the largest income gap in the western hemisphere. Our generation especially needs to focus on this movement, since we will be the ones affected by it most. Do we want to do menial jobs with our college degrees, or do we want something more?
I think the passionate message and the similar situations are what is drawing these Egyptians into supporting the cause. I must say that I was rather surprised to find that there was so much foreign support for the cause. For many years, I have been under the impression that most other nations pretty much hated us, or at least had a mild dislike for the United States. I have come to realize that maybe that impression stems from that small one percent, who seem to think they are better. The vast majority of this country, or at least those of us who want to bring about change, have finally found common ground with some of these other nations, who also want change in government. I think it is refreshing for these other nations to see a different side of the United States, a side with different thoughts and ideas from the politicians who get to speak for “us.”

I personally disagree with the decision that the Arizona state senators came to on the issue of club discrimination in colleges. They decided to let clubs, mainly religious and political clubs, to refuse membership to anyone who does not follow those specified beliefs, and still let those clubs be funded by tax dollars.
First of all, discrimination is wrong, no matter what the scenario is. While it’s true that a Jewish person would probably never want to join a Catholic club, it is still a possibility. Maybe that person is curious about the religion and wants to learn more, or possibly wants to have a discussion with people of another viewpoint. Just because that person does not follow the Catholic faith, it does not mean that they should be banned from expanding their knowledge in that setting. And the fact that they will be allowing the different religious clubs to refuse membership to gay people is appalling to me. Their sexual preferences have nothing to do with their faith or belief system and should be of no concern to anyone but themselves. I feel that, with this decision, the membership refusals will begin with subtle, unseen things like religious, political, or sexual preferences, and will expand out to obvious discrimination against things like race or gender. Being protected against these kinds of discrimination is a constitutional right, and the fact that these clubs will get away with this and still get funding is really sad.
I am not really so sure that this would fly at Penn State. I feel like people here are open-minded and respectful enough that this kind of legislation would not need to be put in place. Yes, there may be some obvious, yet unsaid rules and qualifications for clubs here, as at any university, but many of the clubs I’ve looked into accept all kinds of people. I have not yet looked into very many religious or political clubs here, but I have hope that they would be open-minded to new people, since this campus is so diverse (to me, at least).
I think that this is an issue because it is reinforcing the ideal that it is okay to shun people from different organizations because of their personal beliefs or other factors about them that they cannot control. I feel that this will just continue the issues the country already has with racism and prejudice. In my opinion, the majority of the American population is too close-minded towards different cultures, religions, and experiences. If we keep allowing racism and prejudice to form in the country, we may never grow out of that close-minded way of thinking. For me, this is a big issue because it can affect the future of America and the reverse the progress we have already made.

I think that I am in stage five for white people. I’ve lived almost my entire life in rural Pennsylvania, which pretty much means that I didn’t see a whole lot of racial diversity in my early life. I spent a lot of my childhood in stage one, because even when I did encounter people of color, it wasn’t awkward and it didn’t really occur to me that we were all that different. I finally fell out of stage one when I started high school and started to branch out more on my own. I spent a lot more time around people of other nationalities, cultures, and religions. Coming to Penn State also had a big influence on me. I’ve never in such a racially diverse place before, and I have to admit it was a bit of a culture shock. But as I got to know more about the backgrounds of the race, culture, and differences in people, I became a lot more accepting of the different ideals and ideologies. Since coming to Penn State, I have fallen into stage five without really even realizing it. I am now much more open to other cultures now that I can understand them better. I wouldn’t say that I am in stage six, though, mostly because I do still look to people of color for the acceptable lines. I don’t really seek their approval, but I feel that they will give me a better idea of what is and is not acceptable.
I feel like most of my friends and family are in stage two. This is mostly because race is not something that comes up often in discussions, and if it is brought up the conversation is usually diverted to something else. I don’t really think that they feel the “white people guilt” that was discussed in class. I mostly just think that they haven’t encountered enough diversity or know enough about race to really feel comfortable with it. In my family’s case, they grew up in a completely different era from me. There was probably less diversity around when they were growing up in northwestern Pennsylvania than there is now (not that things have changed much, anyway). They just don’t know enough to think differently. As for my friends, I think they were in much the same boat. They just haven’t had enough experience to form different opinions. I think that college will help them form new decisions, though, much like college has helped me see things differently. Being thrust into a new environment has a lot more of an impact than some might think. I really wish that they could all come to this class. I think it would really open their eyes to the rest of the world, and it would make them much more comfortable in our ever-expanding culture.

I found this article on happiness very enlightening. It really made me wonder about my own views and opinions of happiness and seriously reconsider them. I thought it was really interesting how the concept of happiness has changed over the years. Way back when, being happy meant that you were lucky. Your happiness was determined by the fates and the gods. If you weren’t blessed with happiness, there was nothing you could do to change it and life went on. After time, being happy took on the meaning of being virtuous. Helping others and being charitable made you one happy camper. And then being happy meant you had led a good life. And now, with our society, we need things to make us happy. We need things that bring us pleasure to give us a fleeting moment of happiness, and then we go back to being our regular, everyday selves. And we feel bad afterwards because we can’t hang on to that moment, so we keep looking for more.
The whole section on how it’s scientifically impossible to be happy all the time really spoke to me. I’m one of those people who is always trying to strive for goals in order to obtain happiness, but looking back on it, I really didn’t feel happy for very long. It felt great to reach a goal, but there was always something one step higher, one more thing to get done. After reading through this article, it’s all started to make sense to me. The same goes for the section on money and wealth. We always want the new “it” thing. When we get it, it’s the greatest thing in the world. But two weeks later, there’s a newer version of that thing, and it’s something else we need to have. If these are the things that make us happy, we’re in a never-ending race to disappointment.
The section that talked about how freedom of choice doesn’t always make you happy was by far my favorite, mostly because it’s the one I can relate to the most. I’m definitely one of those people who hate making decisions, because I’m terrified that I might make the wrong one. It’s probably one of the most frustrating, stressful things in my life. There are so many choices out there, and so little time to explore them all. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve dreamed of a simpler life. It’s no wonder people get so depressed when they’re around others who know exactly what they want out of life.
All in all, this article really made me rethink my own goals in relation to my happiness. There isn’t some miraculous formula for happiness. There aren’t any steps that will lead your way in the pursuit of happiness. You need to do what makes you feel good and not fear the choices you make. Surround yourself with people that love you, and don’t let thoughts of the future override your here-and-now.

I feel that this is one of those questions where you can think you would have a set opinion, but you can never really know until you’re put into that situation. There might be many people who would want their child to grow up physically normal and deal with mental and emotional issues as they come along. Other people might take a more “liberal” approach, by not changing the physical appearance of the child and letting them choose how they want to live. I feel that there are a lot of pros and cons to each of these solutions, but I feel that if I had to choose one specific answer, it would be to let the child decide his or her gender.
But one major con to that decision is that the child could grow up feeling they are weird or different. It is something most children feel at some point in life, and it’s normal to feel different, but I think this is different. And this could happen in either case. For example, what if you chose a physical sex for your child that didn’t reflect how they felt inside? If you ask any gay or transgender person, I’m sure they would all tell you how difficult it is growing up with that feeling. I think that by giving my child a chance to really decide for himself how he wanted to act, whether born as a hermaphrodite or not, will have more benefits.
I also think that, with advancing technology, it will become easier to change someone’s physical sex as they get older. Many parents in the past have chosen the sex for a hermaphrodite baby right after birth, and a quick surgery takes care of everything. It becomes much more difficult as a person gets older. There are many costly reconstructive surgeries that take place in sex-change operations. But I feel that as medical procedures continue to evolve, these procedures will become fewer and cheaper. This means that parents don’t have to make such quick decisions, and they can give a child the opportunity to express their true feelings.
I feel that this is a very emotional question to answer, and, in my opinion, it is something that all parents should really talk about and consider before having children. It seems to be one of those things that isn’t talked about very often, and if a mother or father is not prepared for the situation, they could end up making a quick decision that they may regret later in life. In my opinion, it is important for parents to allow their children to express how they really feel, and not how they think they should feel. I think that as society continues to progress to a more accepting way of thinking, things like this will become more common and less controversial.

The United States needs to figure out better ways to aid countries that are not as well-off as we are. From what I have seen, we mostly send our military, missionaries, money, or supplies. In my opinion, this hasn’t had much benefit for the countries we have tried to help. The two most current examples I know of are Haiti and the Middle East, mainly Iraq. We have been “aiding” these countries for so long, and I feel we’ve made very little progress.
We have been importing goods to Haiti for a long time. Many people might feel this is good for their economy because we are offering them goods at cheaper prices, but it is actually hurting the rebuild of their economy and country. I hadn’t realized that we had such a negative impact on Haiti until Sam discussed it in class, and I don’t think many Americans realize it either. If we are sending them goods, we are taking away jobs and money from the Haitian people. We are not allowing them to make their own way, and we are making them completely dependent on the goods we provide. We are treating their farmers much like we have treated our own in the past: We decided that cheaper imported goods were better to buy, and we pretty much made the traditional American farmer extinct. I believe we need to gradually stop sending them our goods, and help them to grow and produce their own, so that they can eventually become self-sufficient. Instead of just sending money as aid, we should also offer them advice on how they can better their businesses and products, so that they won’t always be reliant on other countries.
As for Iraq, I really feel that we have done more harm than good there. We have destroyed many homes and livelihoods and completely changed their way of life. The military has driven tanks through towns and completely uprooted Iraqis from their homes. We insisted that they change they type of government they had just because we view our way as the best. I think we could have gone about the whole situation in much better ways. Just because we are in a war, it doesn’t mean we need to demolish their country. They are people, too, and most of them pose no threat. I believe we should help to rebuild what we have destroyed in this case. As for their government and lifestyle, I think we should have given them the choice and then aided them in whatever they chose. We dug ourselves a deep whole by just implementing democracy, and now we may never be able to leave Iraq.
So, all in all, I think the best way for the United States to aid other countries is not to offer money or goods, but to offer advice and lay the groundwork for a self-sustaining country. I feel that we need to butt-in less, and let these countries learn to help themselves.

I remember reading about this project in the syllabus the first week, and I was a little unsure about it. It seemed like such a broad topic, and I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to come up with any good ideas. When it was introduced in class, I got a bit more excited about it. Knowing it was a real thing, and that we would actually be trying to help the people of Haiti, made me eager to start looking into things.
I had some free time Wednesday night, so I figured I would start watching the Haiti videos. After watching one, I already wanted to watch more. I suppose you could call me ignorant, but I had no idea that Haiti was in such a rut, even before the earthquake. The last few lectures have really made me realize that our country could take much of the responsibility for that, and for many other country’s hardships. After watching a lot of the videos and hearing the stories of the Haitian people, I really felt I owed it to them to help out in any way I could. And it really blew my mind at how noble they are. They don’t want our handouts and our charities; they want to be able to make their own way.
I think many of the Haitian entrepreneurs could benefit the most from a marketing and advertisement strategy. Many of them have clothing or accessory businesses and sell things that could be bought by people on a broader scale, like the people here in the United States. If we could help them set up a website to promote and sell their products, they could get more local and global business.
Many of them also need ways to get more supplies at cheaper prices, or a larger workspace, or more workers, or all of those. We need to figure out a good way to ship products cheaply and efficiently. Many of the entrepreneurs have to buy supplies that have gone through many different channels, making them very expensive. If we could find a more direct route from the manufacturer to the Haitian people, it could cut costs significantly. We also need to find a way to fund their much-needed purchases for their businesses. I saw that there is a micro-financing organization available to do just that, but we need to make the Haitians more aware of it.
There are so many other things that we can do for these people, too. We just need to think up the ideas. I’m sure that with all the brilliant minds in our section, we’ll come up with a lot of great ways to help Haiti. I’m sure it won’t be easy, but I think it’s going to be a really fun and interesting project.