Before I start let me say that I do believe in charity and helping out the poor. If the immigrants you talk about went through the process of becoming a United States citizen then I have no problem helping them out in their time of desperation and need. And while I feel badly for the illegal immigrants who come here in search of a better life or to support their families the fact is we can not be overly charitable to them. I believe this because if we continuously feed the masses of illegal immigrants then the population of them would continue to grow and cause more problems. I know to a certain extent we need them to be here but as Sam said in class there absolutely needs to be policies which reduce how many come in. I know it seems cruel not to feed the hungry but they are taking that risk in coming here. We can not encourage illegal immigration and by being charitable to them we are doing just that. We are saying even if you do not get a job all will not be lost because you can still live on our charity. If everyone in Mexico knew this more would be willing to attempt to come here to make a new life.
I think if you really want to help people we have to try to work with Mexico to improve their economic situation as a country. Feeding the hungry only prolongs the problem. We need to go to the source, and the route of their problems is in Mexico. If our government worked with the Mexican government since the issue of illegal immigration is both of our problems I am sure we could at least improve our current situation. I think that big problems such as this need major reforms to fix it, and while it is hard to say do not feed people who are hungry sometimes these acts of charity do more harm then help. For example many of times in class Sam has mentioned how he wanted to give the poor and destitute in other countries food or money but the people he was with have stopped him telling you can not help all of them and it only hurts them in giving charity hand outs. It is going to be a long time before we can come up with a decent solution for our immigration situation like we learned in class it has been a problem that has almost defined and shaped this country. We need a policy or method that can fix this problem on both sides of the fence and feeding the hungry is only prolonging a serious issue.

It would be nearly impossible and really stupid to actively try to combat nepotism. First off it won’t fix anything by denying your own advantages you are only hurting yourself. As Sam said in class it is not what you know it is who you know. If you turn down a job that a family friend gives you odds are they’ll just give it to someone else they know. In order to combat nepotism you will have to work your way to the top of some organization and change its culture. For instance my mom works for Colgate Palmolive and not only can I not get a job at her home office but I can not work for Colgate anywhere in the world until my mom retires. That is the only thing you can do to really put an end to nepotism. The best thing you can do is look for companies that already do their best to battle nepotism.
So what I am saying is by going on a personal vendetta against nepotism you are probably just screwing yourself. It does not pay in this society to give up on your opportunities just because you are against favoritism. I do agree that in hiring someone it should be solely based on their resume and their credentials, but you can never really know how someone will turn out in the end. So I think by using nepotism and hiring someone you know you may have a better chance of hiring someone that will work well in the company. There are plenty of kids graduating college with awesome grade point averages but when hiring kids straight out of school you do not know if they are good at working with people or what they are really like. When you hire someone you know you know almost exactly what you are getting.
In a perfect world nepotism would not exist but let’s face it our world is not perfect we have to deal with how the world works. If everyone else is using their advantages to get ahead you have to as well. You can not fight nepotism simply by denying your own. It may be pessimistic to say that the world is the way it is and fighting it is useless but going on a personal vendetta can only hurt you and does nothing to change anything. If you want to fix the problem that is nepotism you must do it from the top, you have to lead a company and lead a culture to change its ways. Like I said I do not think that nepotism is a good thing, I just think it would be useless to fight on your own.

This lecture definitely changed my views on middle easterners and the war in Iraq. America has turned almost the entire Middle East into the picture of the enemy. If you went around asking what people thought of when they heard the Middle East, the majority would most likely say something along the lines of terrorism. This is unfair considering that most people living over there are exactly like us. Of course they have their extremists but after seeing the videos so do we, and with the economic capabilities that most Americans have our extremists scare me even more than theirs do. It would be largely beneficial for all Americans to attend Sam’s foreign invaders class or something like it. This would help change peoples distorted views on Middle Easterners and would also help future generations not believe everything that the media puts out their and to not swallow all of the governments propaganda.
The war in Iraq is a serious problem. I know in class Sam said rogue soldiers who mess with innocent civilians over there are few and far between, but I recently read a Rolling Stones article about soldiers not only killing innocents but torturing and mutilating them. It sickens me to think that that quality of soldier is who is representing the United States abroad. It’s really no wonder why a lot of countries dislike us. We have to be more careful and police our soldiers, these atrocities are most often over looked because we are at war but if these psychopaths were to come home and do anything like this they would be instantly jailed. There are probably more soldiers committing these same war crimes and not getting caught, think about what will happen when they finally come back to the United States. I can only hope they give up the sick things they did with the false power they had in Iraq but odds are they will not re-assimilate so easily.
The class also helped me to look at situations from multiple perspectives. People are easily influenced into feeling one way or the other and without even realizing it can fall into a wrong way of thinking. For example when Sam showed the pictures of cities and malls in the Middle East I am sure a lot of people were amazed to see that not all of the Middle East is sand and mud huts. Again I believe this and a few others of Sam’s lectures should be mandatory for students to take, I feel that a lot false perspectives would be simple to change. With these changed views the world could be a whole different place and misplaced ignorance would be a thing of the past.

I would definitely say the information on the opposite sex. Not to say that I did not learn a great deal about myself, I just think it was more enlightening to hear about females and how they deal with sex differently than us. For instance I knew that men get aroused really quickly (being that I am male and know exactly what that’s like) but I did not know that girls take an extremely long time to get in the mood. It makes a lot more sense now, after going to many dance parties at penn state, I’ve realized that the most common way of dancing (grinding) can be quite confusing for guys. Grinding is pretty much getting as close to sex as you can without taking clothes off or penetration, and it is extremely likely that men will get aroused during the dance. But I did not realize that girls probably feel little to nothing during this other than the closeness of another human being. It can be quite problematic for guys considering that they can be up and ready to go and the girl is unaware and has completely different intentions.
The lecture did worry me quite a bit though because it sounded like according to Sam the “needy penis” really never goes away. I am grateful that I will always have desire but I thought it would get less intense especially considering that his wife it seemed barely felt the same way that he did anymore. Its frightening in that most woman probably do not fully understand the needy penis and you could quite possibly end up with a woman who had no idea about the intensity of the feelings you have and that she might stop desiring sex with you. I realize it is not the only part of your relationship but I feel that it is a pretty big deal if you no longer sexually desire your partner.
Another thing that I think is interesting but knew about before the lecture is how few woman get orgasms from sex. I know it is not as big a deal for them as men but if you are going to have sex with someone why not find out what you like or how to get an orgasm before doing so. I am sure men would appreciate any tips woman can give them in the bedroom and it would make the whole experience better for both parties. If you are having sex with a guy without orgasm or with little feeling what is the point? Having sex just because you want the guy to feel good seems kind of twisted to me. I think with enough awareness we can fix this problem and make sex more equal as in both men and woman can enjoy it. Who wouldn’t want to have multiple orgasms anyway? Sounds pretty awesome to me.

I would like to think I could. But honestly I doubt in most situations that I would call my friend out for saying something prejudice. Part of me thinks that it is his or her life let him think, and feel, and do what ever he or she wants. It is not my responsibility to control the thoughts and actions of my friends and the people around me. It would also be impossibly hard to control and to teach everyone you meet why they should not do something or feel a certain way. But then you come to the realization that if this person or the people around you are saying and doing racist things what does that say about you? If you sit or stand by in silence and let them go on in their racism are you not just as guilty? These are the battles that you must constantly fight with in your own head. On one hand If you hang out with someone who consistently makes racist remarks then you are a racist just by association, your silence is enough to condone if not approve of his or her actions.
Although I also think most if not all people harbor some racism so if you want to have friends the odds are that at some point you are going to have deal with some kind of prejudice conflict. Does it reflect what kind of person you are if you let it slide? Or should we be consistently commenting and critiquing how our friends think? If it is my responsibility to call them out and correct them on their prejudices then it stands to reason that it is also my responsibility to correct them on other aspects of their lives that I think are incorrect. I guess the point I’m trying to make is you can not really change your friends or anyone for that matter unless they already want to, they must want the change.
But to answer the question if someone who was white like me was shouting racial slurs in my general vicinity I would be inclined to stop them. And I can only hope that I would have the general support of the people around me. I’ve never been made fun of for my race except someone called me white trash one time, but I don’t think that really counts. I also can’t imagine how it feels to be a minority with someone berating me about my race but I think it’s something that minorities are going to have to deal with for sometime sadly enough. The best thing to do about it is not to stoop down to their level like the letter to the collegian we saw in class from the girl who was called the n word. She didn’t get mad and curse the world or spread more hate, she took it in and still gave out love.

I have definitely felt guilt about my race. The thing is when I feel guilty it is not really because of my racial background (I’m Irish, German, Italian and Slovak), it’s more that I feel guilt about being white. It is terrible for people to feel guilt or bad about something they could not prevent and had no part in. I think a lot of white people feel similarly even though it was not even our ancestors who committed the awful crimes that this country has let go. I am speaking of course of slavery, the genocide of the Native Americans, and basically dehumanizing and exploiting every new set of immigrants that came to this country. So, if it was not our ancestors who took part in it why then do we feel guilt? Well it is because even though we are not responsible we feel guilt knowing what the other groups have had to go through and that you have never had to deal with anything close to what they have to deal with. Also if you see the many ways in which our country is unequal and pushing down minority groups then you can not help but feel like you do not deserve the advantages you have. But really you should be feeling that the other groups just should not have the disadvantages that our country still today puts on them. So I also think we feel guilt about the wrong things.
Guilt is a terrible emotion and it only halts progress. If we are to truly accept the mission of finally making this a country of equality as it so poetically states in our constitution, first we must rid ourselves of any misplaced guilt we feel. How can you work with and hope to improve the situation of someone who you feel guilt towards? The main tragedy of this state of guilt is it prevents many people from moving forward and looking into real issues. It causes people to bend over backwards and try to be overly nice to people of other races. This is to sort of make up for the travesties their people have had to endure that is the real shame about the whole thing is that our guilt causes us to bring race relations in the wrong direction. If we are to improve race relations we must rid ourselves not only of our prejudices but also of our guilt only then can we start to move forward. And it is not like other races are even trying to put this guilt on us or make us feel ashamed for the conflicts of our ancestors. So this is an internal battle that most white people must have to struggle with and over come if there is to be true progress of the racial relations in this country.

As our planet approaches capacity we definitely need to have a better form of population control. While it’s hard to restrict people in what has seemed like a God given right (the right to have kids as much as and whenever you want), there needs to be some kind of limit for population or else there won’t be enough resources for everyone to live. China has already taken this into action because their country is too crowded; they realized what had to be done and placed limitations on its people to save themselves from over population. There are now over 7 billion people living on this planet. How much more can Earth take before its resources dry up? The answer is none there is already almost 50 percent of the world’s population starving and not getting enough to drink.
There needs to be a controller of the population. While it’d be easy enough to pass legislation in the United States of America and other modern countries, I believe the problem is and will be to control the population in third world counties where food and resources are scarce and people have a lot of children in order to help support their families. That’s where we will have to focus our population control efforts the most. Those countries cannot say to their people they can’t have kids when a lot of there lives depend on having children to work in the fields and get other jobs. So in order to help them we must find a way economically to improve their country so they will no longer need to have more kids to survive. I believe that some countries we would just have to show them how to support themselves and use there countries resources to benefit and bring up their economy. This is kind of like the Haiti project we are doing in class.
If I’m not mistaken the American population is declining. This is because the average family has two kids. So if we can get most of the world to adopt a system where two or three kids are the limit per family I believe we can significantly stabilize and lower the world’s population.
Although population is the main problem there are other things negatively affecting the planet and its resources. It’s called consumerism. As Americans we are wasteful and we consume more than have of what the world produces. That is absolutely ridiculous if the rest of the world led lives like we did there would be no more resources so I think it’s only fair that we also have certain limitations on what you can buy. This is where it’d get really tricky. How can you tell a person who worked hard for their money they can not use it to buy whatever they wanted? This would be the hardest part of fixing our abusive resource problem.

Without a doubt people are more racist towards Muslims than blacks in our society today. This is because they are constructed to be our enemy by the government and pretty much every form of media including books, movies, video games, and especially the news. We hear a story about some extremist disgruntled Muslim or terrorist organization on a monthly basis. Although I believe the nine-eleven terrorist attacks to be probably the biggest reason for people having negative feelings or prejudices towards Muslims today. I am sure that this was quite similar to the Pearl Harbor attacks during world war two. Even though some Japanese Americans had been living in the United States for generations they still got discriminated against and put into awful holding camps. My point being that Americans (obviously not Muslim-Americans) are holding grudges, maybe even sub-conscious grudges, against any one who is Muslim. It is sad but it was almost inevitable for this racism to build, and probably continue to build, considering that we are at war with countries in the Middle East and probably will be for as long as we have an interest in their vast supply of oil.
Also I feel like Muslim culture and Traditions are extremely different from that of Americans which makes it more difficult for your average American to understand that people from the Middle East are just like us. We see people in Turbans, women wearing head to toe coverings and hear about all these rules and restrictions that seem absurd to us. One could not hope to understand another culture and their customs through our media sources alone but unfortunately people have no where near enough time that they would need to take it in and accept it. Luckily for us students we have classes we can take to help us study and understand our differences but the majority of Americans have to go to work and get their lessons in culture from Hollywood movies.
Some people might not agree with me but I think they have replaced blacks as most discriminated against not only because racism is increasing towards Muslims but because things are getting better in terms of racism towards blacks. While I know it still exists and is still a problem I think things are continually getting better in terms of the amount of racism directed towards blacks. With every new generation I think things will improve as we put the past behind us and move forward. But unfortunately for Muslims things don’t seem to be looking very good for our future relations with a lot of the countries in the Middle East. It leads me to look at the hopelessness of there ever being a truly racism-free world.

When you grow up all teachers and parents say is you have to work hard to be successful and have a good life. It is ingrained in our minds hard work equals success. You do not really stop and think about what advantages you have or more importantly the disadvantages of others when it comes to success. Unless it is brought right to your face like Sam does in class it is hard to see these handicaps to some peoples success, it is especially hard to see advantages that have been handed to you and things that you have taken for granted your whole life. If you think about it for most people hard work is the only way to be successful, meaning that most people in the world live in poverty and they do have to work for everything that they have. I would say it’s largely a western part of the world concept where you can have some advantages over your peers. Also when you become successful it is extremely difficult to try not to take any credit for your successfulness. Do you think any top level executives stop and think “yeah my success in life was mainly handed to me” even if they had rich parents and other had outs in life?
Also people who work hard through college and get degrees tend to think of non- college and less educated people as lazy. It just happens when you see people in lower jobs you would never consider taking yourself you almost subconsciously think they didn’t work hard enough in life to get a better job and advance. It also goes back to people wanting to feel good about themselves, another natural human process you want to feel as though you’ve done something extra and really deserve your successes, you want to take credit. It really does take some kind of eye-opener to get you thinking differently about what you have really worked for and what was just handed out. I would say most, certainly not all, people in college right are there because they have had a lot of advantages over the people who can’t get into college for both monetary and academic reasons.
I know personally after Sam’s lecture I thought back to how I’ve arrived where I am today and I’ve got to think most it was because of the advantages I received from my parents, school system and area I lived in. Because of my parents I haven’t had to work at all through high school or college which gives me ample study and relaxation time. Because of my school system I’ve had ap classes and advanced math classes that have put me ahead of a lot of other college kids. Finally because of the area I lived in where most kids take school seriously and have college aspirations I was then exponentially more likely to go to college.

Looking back my life was largely deterministic. It’s a hard thing to admit but it seems to make the most sense. I was born in a well off area and my parents have more than enough money to support me in what ever it is that I want to do. They pushed me to get good grades and to go to a good school and that’s exactly what I did, I had little if any choice in the matter. In terms of the activities I took up in life soccer, baseball, Boyscouts, and fraternities my older brother had engaged in each before me and is probably the reason that I chose to do the same. My older brother also strongly influenced me to go to Penn State, he didn’t tell me directly to go but after visiting a few times there was no way I would ever want to go anywhere else. My political and social views are largely based on what my parents say and think, being young and having in opinion of my own on such matters leads to near blind acceptance of what ever they say. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, although I would like to research and form my own opinions sharing the same opinions as my mentors and who I view as two of the smartest people I’ll ever meet isn’t that bad for now.
For some people determinism not having any choice or not having any control. They are partially right in my opinion free will does not exist. Although we would like to believe we have control over what’s going to happen and we’d like to think we could choose differently; we can’t. If you think about it every choice you make you use previous experiences to help to make that decision, you can’t help it you just do it’s automatic. Even before you’re born everything that you are ever going to do was laid out or predetermined. The way I like to think about it is that your life is like an extremely complex equation with infinite variables. In fact the entire universe was laid out in this fashion, if you believe in the big bang that might be the one act of genuinely free will in history. If you actually are reading this you’re probably still arguing with me in your head it’s ok it took a lot for me to give up my free will belief and I don’t expect you to give it up based on my short two hundred word explanation, but one thing I’d like you to think about is that no other creature on earth has free will that is clear, they’re born they eat they reproduce and they die. It is a human condition to think that were special and some how above other creatures.