This I Believe

I believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we live. After that shocking and profound statement, dear reader, I have two options. After technically having completed my blog assignment, I can ramble, or I can explain myself. I guess, mostly due to a lack of rambling material, that I will explain myself. I think that life is only worth living when there is a real and constant danger of losing it. Without living on the edge of survival, there is no point. Right now, because of the systems set up by our society, I could survive doing absolutely nothing. I could sit around on my ass all day, taking a few hours to find some food for free at a food pantry, farmed by someone else, packaged by someone else, bought by someone else, and given to me for free. Even if I do work, I type numbers into a box and at the end of the day I am handed paper so I can drink water purified by someone else, live in a box built and maintained by someone else, eat food that was brought to me by someone else. Essentially, there is no purpose for me. I am not doing anything except living for others and by others. Only when I am literally hunted and hunting, escaping predators as I search for my own prey, living on the edge of death because I do everything, everything, by myself and for myself, only then am I living. This I believe.

Something

So the AP test is coming. I have taken two already, and I suppose this familiarity has made me a little calmer about the process. But then again, familiarity breeds contempt, and maybe this contempt will lower my potential to do well. If I hold the test itself in contempt, the issue really falls down to me. I can treat it as lesser than me, as something not worth doing, and watch my grade suffer, or I can visualize it as something contemptible for its ease, and blaze through it with a five. I suppose only time will tell. I can recount the tales of my previous AP essays, in order to calm my nerves, or at least feel the triumphant rush of knowing those tests are over and done, regardless of how I did. AP Calculus was wednesday of last week, and was honestly a mixed bag. The free-response questions were actually easier than I thought, with several I felt completely confident about and only a few that I had to take educated guesses on. The multiple choice was a little rough, with several questions focusing on specific concepts I had struggled with. I guess time will tell how I did. AP Bio I destroyed, due to good preparation and a heavily science-oriented brain. I only left one multiple choice question blank, and had to guess on just a few. The essays I felt very strong on, and I hope I did well overall.

It was my birthday...

I turned 17 yesterday, to the tune of a dozen choir members trying as hard as possible to sing off-key. I liked it though, and I would have (slash have) done the same. Perhaps the coolest gift I've gotten is my new watch, which is black and manly with some of the inner workings of the clock (or fake inner workings) visible behind the face. Its pretty cool. Another interesting gift was the purchase of a ticket to the new Star Trek movie by Henry Johnston. However, I bought Henry's ticket to the same movie for his birthday, so it turned out to be a wash. Great movie though, I highly recommend it even if you never saw Star Trek (I hadn't). Another gift was the return of my sister from college. Her last final was on friday and she returned home late last night. Although we were never close as kids, my sister and I have gotten better at maintaining a real relationship and she has helped me through much of my cliched teenage drama. The other cool news is that my family just bought a car: a dark gray Prius. What this means is that my sister and I will no longer have to fight over the Honda Civic to get places this summer, and that after she goes back to Kenyon I get to drive a Prius (sky blue, but manly nonetheless) around all of the time. Sweet deal.

Desires

Well, because you were not in class today, dear reader, I am not precisely clear on what those desires are, specifically. He has sexual desires that are fulfilled by the nurse, and he has desires to see Kareen again, and soon after he has desires to never see her again. He then wishes to be among people, to be in the light where he can at least sense the movement of the living around him. These desires I completely understand, and would likely go through myself. The deeper desire, which is likely the one I am supposed to be talking about, is his desire to communicate his story about the state of the world and the horrors of war. The need to communicate, to interact with a world he can no longer be a part of, is simply human, and every single person alive would have similar desires. The need to condemn war is more complex, although understandable in that he is attempting to rectify the situation that brought him to his current state. I am not entirely sure if I would break my silence just to condemn war, mainly for the reason that I would likely be isolated for my radical political ideas and I could not stay sane in that isolation, having just breached the wall of silence. However, if I knew I could be successful in my attempt to condemn war without losing my sanity, I would indeed follow Joe's fictional example and scream without vocal cords against the horrible institution of war.

Bullying

I am upset about the reaction to today's presentation on bullying. The most articulate response I heard surrounding it was that it was pointless because bullying is not an issue at UHS and that the administration is shoving this down our throats. I disagree with all parts of that statement. The administration is actually doing the opposite of shoving this down our throats: they aren't talking about it enough. In my three years at UHS I have heard school-wide discussions about the issue of bullying twice. Twice. Hardly shoving it down our throats. And bullying is definitely an issue at UHS. Maybe physically beating other kids up doesn't happen here, but we all know about incidents where peoples clothing was forcefully removed, and so the physical side is still there. Worse, though, is the verbal side, because for all the accepting atmosphere of UHS and for the community days and the sense of unity we all enjoy, gossiping about and mocking other students is still something I hear daily, and unfortunately occasionally find myself participating in. I'm not pointing the finger because everyone does it, but we should all be made more aware of what bullying is and what it means so that we can at least slow it down.

The parading of the cloth square

And I thought D'Souza was impassioned. This Beveridge is even more zealous about the glory of America, and his arguments are based less on fact and history and more on the generalized concepts of glory, honor, and self-righteousness. His countless references to god simply underscore that he believes America is the chosen land and we should be able to take whatever we want based simply on that belief. Again, this is an individual Joe would greatly dislike. Based on abstract, intangible concepts like god and manifest destiny, Beveridge believes that we should send young men to war simply for reasons that we cannot see or feel or hear. And the most tangible of those reasons is selfish. Beveridge believes we should take the Philippines to open up new avenues of trade, and to find new areas of land and resources to exploit in order to make America better, likely at great cost to the natives. Beveridge's entire argument is based on selfish reasons of bettering America regardless of what happens to the rest of the world, and he is willing to sacrifice young American men like Joe to do it.

America

Well, its clear he loves America. I worry, though, that D'souza's devotion to America seems a bit too much like the religious fervor of many of the groups he was condemning. But maybe that's just me. He seems more like a man from one of those cultures that forces virtue: he is so zealous about how amazing America is, it doesn't appear as if he got to that conclusion by choice. However, some of his points were good, if at times a bit stretched, and the patriot in me is all too eager to accept his go-america attitude. But, as he relates to Johnny, D'Souza is exactly one of the people that joe hates so much. D'Souza is all about intangibilities, about sending other people off to die to protect the glory that is America, about being on the side of the angels... Joe would say that D'Souza never fought for these ideals he supposedly believes, would never give his life for america despite the zealotry apparent in his writing. Joe went to war because of the attitude presented by people like D'Souza: he went protecting the greatest country on earth and defending democracy, the gift to the world. He ended up eternally crippled because of this blind devotion to the country that believes it is on the side of the angels.