To Each His Own Emotion

In reference to John Donne's "No Man is An Island" poem, I must say I completely agree.  I feel as though no person may exist completely on their own.  If someone lives alone, or is an agoraphobic, they still have contact with the outside world.  They read literature or go on the internet.  In some way, they are connected to the rest of the human race.  We are all connected.  That is my strong belief.  Everyone does at least one thing in their life to change the life of another.  No man is an island.
Contrary to this poem, Jean-Paul Sartre's quote "Hell is other people" is not something I believe.  Though information about Sartre does not portray him as a pessimist, I do not believe someone who was particularly happy with everything going on in their life would say such a thing.  I think something happened to Sartre, such as a failed relationship or betrayal by a friend, to make him think so negatively of other human beings.

Loneliness Quote:

"We're all walking around with these glossy eyes.  "I'm just tired," we say.  But you know what?  It's bullshit.   Yes, we are tired, but it's not all from lack of sleep.  We are tired of waking up with nothing to look forward to, tired of going to bed exhausted after doing a million things we find no enjoyment in doing.  We're tired of this void, this emptiness that looms over us even though our days are packed.  We're tired of the loneliness that presses down on us even though we're surrounded by dozens of people.  So why can't we just say it?  Humans are so afraid to look into each other's eyes and say "I am unhappy, I am broken, I am hopeless and fallible."  We've been conditioned to associate pain with weakness, sadness with coldness, loneliness with unworthiness, difference with disease, as if these feelings are contagious, as if ambivalence is something not to be felt but to be feared.  Well, I say screw all of that.  Screw forced smiles and polite handshakes and I'm find, thank yous.  Screw the fear of crying in a public place, screw the fake chipper voice, screw the lies we spit out to cover up our problems.  We are humans.  We are meant to feel.  To feel everything and to feel it all openly.  We are not metal - we are flesh and bone.  Our boiled blood courses through our cold, clammy hands.  We are intricate and beautiful and we should never hide our human parts, because if we do, then what's left to show?"

-Unknown

This quote really hit home for me.  I used to feel this type of tired.  I know I have no reason to.  My life is wonderful; I have an amazing family, amazing friends, absolutely no hardships.  I could have it so much worse.  To be perfectly honest, I only felt this way because I would see all of my friends with their boyfriends, happy, content, and I would feel pity for myself.  I wondered what was wrong with me.  I knew what was wrong with me.  I did not look the part of a girlfriend.  I was weird and annoying and destined to live alone forever.  I would spend my time listening to songs like "Tired" by Kelly Price.  I felt alone.  I could not find the energy to go through the day, and my smiles felt so fake and forced.  Then I realized, however cliche it may be, that I did not need a man to complete me.  That was probably the most powerful epiphany I have ever had, and after it, my life changed for the better.  I no longer feel this lonely void.  I am happy.

Happiness Quote:

"I am beautiful no matter what they say
Words can't bring me down
I am beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can't bring me down
So don't you bring me down today"

-Christina Aguilera

This quote from her popular song "Beautiful" is both heart-lifting and inspiring.  This song means a lot to me.  I used to have really horrible self-esteem issues, and this song, including others such as "Fear" by Jazmine Sullivan, helped me overcome said issues.  It made my outlook on life more positive.  I started being more optimistic.  I began to believe more in myself and what I can accomplish.

Loneliness

In his online article "Being 'fully human' online", Ezra Klein touches on some of the positive attributes of online gaming, and of being online in general.  Jason Rowe, a disabled 35-year-old man Klein interviewed, described the internet as his "window to the world."  This phrase provides a distinct insight on what it is like to rely on the computer for all of your social needs.  While most have the option of going out to a bar or any other public place and socializing in person, there is a percentage of people without that privilege.  With today's technology though, they do not have to remain in complete isolation.  They can travel miles away, to other countries, other worlds, other dimensions, without having to leave their front door.  Personally, I believe online gaming is extremely beneficial for those who have no other option.  It helps to combat the loneliness they may feel.  When people overuse the internet, well, that is another topic entirely.
Roger Ebert puts his advanced writing skills to use in his two articles "All the lonely people" and "A meeting of solitudes" to talk about the topic of loneliness.  He speaks of the different ways many solitary people share their thoughts through blogs, of the reasons why we, as humans, find soul mates and get married, of what lonely people in past civilizations did to pass the time.  Losing his ability to speak introduced a new means of communication to him: the internet.  Through this, he began recording his thoughts in organized articles and sharing them with his many fans.  He read their feedback and developed a deeper connection with them.  He gained just as much from them as they from him, and they opened his eyes to new perspectives.  After reading this article, I can better sympathize for those who live in solitude.
Personally, I do not often feel very lonely.  There are people in the world who have nothing and no one, and I am extremely blessed to be in the current position I am in.  I can honestly say I love my life.  You need not date to get rid of any feelings of loneliness, which I have learned by keeping my self out of relationships.  Actually, being lonely should never be the reason you choose to find a companion.  I have friends who I know care about me, and a loving family, and I keep myself involved.  I do not have time to feel anything but happy.
The internet, Facebook mainly, are very convenient means of socialization.  I have Facebook on my cell phone, so I do not often use it on the computer.  That means I do not waste my time mindlessly scrolling through my Newsfeed, watching people I am barely acquainted with keep the world posted on their mundane existences.  I also do not text and IM about nothing.  Nothing bothers me more than seeing a conversation go in this manner:
Hey.
Hey.
What's up?
Nothing much. How about you?
Nothing much. 
Cool.
Yeah.
You would not do this in person?  Could you even imagine?  What makes cyber communication any different.  If you are going to start a conversation, start it with a point, but I'm afraid I have strayed from my point.
Is the internet isolating us or bringing us closer together?  What a difficult question to answer.  In a way, it brings people separated by distance closer together.  However, many young people misuse this new science.  Two girls in the same room with sit next to each other and text.  Why!  Have we become that incapable of functioning without our Iphones and Androids?  What is the purpose of texting someone 25 miles away while you are at a party?  While the internet has helped connect lonely people who have no other option stay connected to the outside world, many of us take its presence to an extreme.  I do not understand why some people complain about being lonely, yet they do nothing but go home and blog about it, in the quiet seclusion of their living rooms.  Get out there!  Meet new people!  Loneliness is a time-old epidemic that is today both solved and caused by the internet.  But hey, that is just my opinion.

Life in a Day

     Probably one of the best summaries in the century so far of the human experience, Life in a Day tells the story of our race.  It's complex usage of juxtaposition shows the audience drastic differences in the quality of life of dozens of different people and families.  It was a film created entirely from YouTube videos uploaded by 80,000 different people from all over the world on the week of July 24th, 2010.  These videos were recordings of their lives on the 24th.  This movie and the way it was filmed really opened my eyes.  It is amazing to me that so many people can go through so many different things all in the span of 24 hours.  It makes me feel closer to the world around me and to people in other countries.
     While I took a lot away from a lot of the scenes, I have to say the scene that was most memorable to me was the scene where that one guy was doing Parkour.  I REALLY love Parkour. Doing flips off the walls and such really intrigues me.  It makes me wish I was physically gifted enough to partake in such an activity.  I did not approve of his shoplifting, however.  It really puts in perspective the values and morals of different people in different situations.  A scene that impacted me positively was the scene with the widowed Chinese man and his son.  When they said the prayer to the dead wife/mother, I felt touched.  I could not imagine losing either of my parents at such an age.  I do not really feel as though any of the scenes really impacted me negatively.  One scene that could have possibly had a negative impact was the scene where the man ate a live chick, but that scene was fast-forwarded through, so I did not have to suffer through watching it.
     What does it mean to be human?  Is humanity emotions?  Love and compassion?  Hatred and envy?  Is humanity the ability to relate to other beings in an advanced way?  The ability to create a higher, ever-developing society?  A superior language?  Opposable thumbs?  I believe humanity is a complex mixture of all these things and so much more.  In the film, I saw all of these components.  Humanity is such a cruel and beautiful thing.  I witnessed the sacrifices parents are willing to make for the well-being of their children, the hard work young kids endure daily to make enough money to help their mothers and fathers put food on the table.  It makes me feel so blessed.  I have no real problems.  I do not ever go to sleep at night thinking what I am going to do about survival the next day.  There is nothing in my life I have any room to complain about.  A person such as myself, living in suburban middle class America, knows nothing of the plight of, say, a Middle-Eastern nomad.  The world's plethora of lifestyles so greatly differ from one another, sometimes it is a wonder we are all even from the same planet.
     I thought this film was artfully edited.  I would certainly recommend it for a friend.  The cinematography was absolutely pristine, given the filmers were all amateurs.  The theme of the movie was visionary, one unsurpassed by anything that could have been scripted and acted out.  It was a phenomenal movie, and I would not mind a conclusion, actually.
 

We're ba-ack....

     Dreams.  Dreaming is a truly amazing concept when you get down to it.  There is so much involved in dreams.  They are such completed functions of the human brain.  There are four main types of dreams: Nightmares, Lucid Dreams, Recurring Dreams, and Prophetic Dreams.  Each is unique and utterly amazing to think about in its own way.  Now, we'll take a glance into the mechanics of each.
     Nightmares.  We all have them.  We all loathe them.  Those nights when we wake up abruptly, in a cold sweat, fearing for our lives or the lives of our loved one.  Nightmares are the embodiments of everything our concious minds despise: fears, anxieties, etc.  I've had countless nightmares about my friends and family dying....and in every circumstance, I am inadvertedly the cause of their death.  I may have given them something to cause an allergic reaction or not given them an full oxygen tank if we go deep-sea diving.  I never directly do the killing, but I always know it's my fault.  I've never experienced the trauma of losing someone close, so I don't know why I have these dreams.
     The next type of dream I'm going to cover, the Lucid Dream, reminds me of the movie Inception, where the main characters' job was to realize they were in a dream and plant something into the mind of the son of a corporate giant.  While I've never had this type of dream before, I certainly try.  However, it's been learned that when the brain realizes it's in a dream, it does whatever it can to wake you up because it doesn't like being in a hallucenogetic state.  Maybe I've had this dream before, but I woke up before I could think to remember it.
     Recurring Dreams are apparently quite common.  While I personally have never had the same dream twice, I can see why it would pose some significance to those who have.  The fact that your brain repitively comes up with these images might lead people to believe that the dream is predicting the future, or may have some other secret meaning.  Speaking of predicting the future, let me come to my next dream topic: Prophetic Dreams.
     Prophetic Dreams are dreams in which the dreamer seems to predict the future in a way.  It is theorized the humans piece together facts and information during the day and come to conclusions they wouldn't have in their dreams, conclusions that are going to happen.  There are five very important people in the world of dream studies.  John Allan Hobson, Robert McCarley, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Adler.

A Summary on the Debate I Epically Failed On

1. I feel the debate went amazingly for the first time we did something like this.  The other teams seemed amazingly organized and all of the debates flowed nicely and kept my attention throughout.  The only person who's debate I didn't like was my own.  I know I did pretty horribly.  I liked the time frame in which we were given to complete the research and I believe everything came together nicely on the three days we presented.
2. I feel as though this was a tremendous learning experience for me and that now that I know what it'll be like, being up there in front of an audience, I'll be able to better prepare myself and my speeches ahead of time so that my audience may take in the maximum effect of my words.
3. I feel as though I personally performed the closing statement the strongest, not because I did well on it, but because it was better than both of the other two times I spoke.  I feel as though my cross examination was disgraceful.  I had a plethora of amazing questions to ask the opposition, and they were all on paper in front of me; I don't know what happened.  My mind went blank in the heat of the moment.
4. I would change the amount of time I spent practicing to improve my delivery.
5. I would like to improve everything about my performance and my brief because I know both could have been significantly better.
6. I feel as though the rubric touched upon every major and important issue that people should be assessed on during debates.
7. Two debates that were particularly intriguing to me were as follows:

Resolved: the United States government ought to provide for the medical care of its citizens.

AND

Resolved: as a general principle, individuals have an obligation to value the common good above their own interests.

Thank you! I really enjoyed this activity and I can't wait to redeem myself by actually doing well on the next debate we have! Have a nice day! 

Outliers Summary (Chapter 6) and My Cultural Legacy

http://malcolmgladwell.com/

In the first chapter of the second part of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses cultural legacies, namely in the small Appalachian town of Harlan, Kentucky.  The Howards and the Turners, two of the town's founding families, had an infamous history of violence towards each other, and Gladwell explains why.  It was because of the culture of honor, dating back to these families' roots.  Generation after generation, they were taught and encouraged to protect their own above all else, to form a sort of clan that doesn't have faith in the goodness of humanity.  They were taught to be paranoid herdsmen, always with their guards up, expecting attack at all times.  A legacy like this was safe, but it wasn't healthy.  These families formed hatreds of each other neither could quite comprehend.  Lives were lost, enemies gained, all over a version of pride called honor.  They say pride is a man's greatest weakness.  In this case, it exemplifies years of purposeless hate, and for what?  A few dozen lives lost?  Cultures of honor are mysterious things, things Malcolm Gladwell attempts to decipher.

Later in the chapter, Gladwell tells us of am experiment conducted on cultures of honor at the University of Michigan.  Were they still common, and where?  Why did hatred from those two families last for so many generations?  The results of the experiment showed that boys from the South were more sensitive to insult and were more likely to turn to violence as a means of solving problems instead of standing back and letting them happen.

By my interpretation, "cultural legacy" is exactly that: a legacy left by past generations for future generations by your culture.  My culture legacy would be the morals my parents have taught me that I proceed to pass along to my children.  They've taught me to be open, kind, caring, responsible, and harw-working, among other things.  I plan on passing these positive values along to my children as well, and my family's culutural legacy shall go on for many generations to come.