Thoureau

You ask me to write a blog about Thoreau, but he would say that you are taxing me unfairly, by taking my time away and punishing me if I do not concede to your will. Thoureau might suggest that I disobey you outright, and in fact refuse to subjugate myself to your will at all, and be thrown into prison for disobeying the laws of the state. There does seem a certain attraction to that idea, but as you are reading this, I must have decided to let your will prevail...at least for now. Thoreau's ideas relate directly to Joe's ideas about war at the end of book 1. Thoreau believes there should be no government, or at least that government should recognize fully that individuals are the absolute power and grant them their deserved influence, and Joe is simply applying that overarching concept to the issue of war. Joe believes that government should give the individual the right to choose, to go to war or not, and should never force a man to give up his life for a concept he cannnot touch or even imagine in many cases. Joe now believes that the government has no right to command men to go to war, to force them to fight, to subjugate them. He agrees with Thoreau that the individual, his rights, his wants, his needs, should come first and above all else.

The Three Books

Let me begin with the silliest and probably least worthwhile of the books, and yet likely the most enjoyable. This book is the aptly named Fool, by Christopher Moore. Among its pages unfolds a tale of murder, scandal, and debauchery as told by a doubly fictitious fool to Shakespeare's King Lear. By adapting this work of old to a more modern and less grandiose purpose, Moore takes us into depravity and base humor that at once make one feel ashamed and laugh out loud. There is art in the pages of this book, and yet it is of a less refined form than one would normally expect to find it. However, as previously mentioned, the book is the most enjoyable to read of the three. The next book on the list, if memory serves, is The Dead Zone, by Stephen King. Here we have more literary merit and a more sophisticated story, but less throwing one's head back and laughing. Here we have the tale of a boy who slips on back ice and is thus given the power to see briefly into the future. Dark and chilling, and no doubt leading up to a stunning conclusion of epic proportions. The third book currently being synthesized is Johnny Got his Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. This is an anti-war book about a man with no face, no arms, and no legs, remembering his life while lying in a hospital bed. This will be mentioned in later posts further, you can be sure.

Blog du jour

Dear, reader, I am about to let you in on a little secret. I am about to use a rhetorical device by appealing to pathos and uniting you, the petty mortal, with me the information source akin to the the great library of Alexander. How will I accomplish this great feat, you might ask. The secret is simple. I will reveal an aspect of myself that you would not suspect of me, dear reader. And this secret of mine is that my knowledge does not actually stem from god, miraculous as that knowledge might seem. I, too, read the works of other fountains of information just as you are reading mine currently. Now doesn't that make us seem closer? More like brothers and less like the worshipper and the worshippee? Well, that is the whole point. Let me elaborate. I am currently reading three books. Yes, unlike you, a mere mortal, I learn from multiple sources simultaneously and synthesize them together into a magical amalgam of thought. These three books have varying degrees of literary merit, and yet each of them contributes some to the aforementioned amalgam, sadly pushing me further and further into the realm of enlightenment and away from your sad world filled with clouded thoughts and mistakes. Those three books are as follows: Fool, The Dead Zone, and Johnny Got his Gun. I will eschew my heretofore clear writing for a more prolix examination of these works in a subsequent discussion.

Real Life Comes Back

So, we can blog about anything in our lives, as long as it is relevant and well-written. Then I, dear reader, will approach the subject of Chris Dobbs. He and I have a constant debate over blogger going, because in the writing of said blogs there are often details that one or the other of us get wrong, or in Chris' case, whole blogs that are simply fabricated, and we approach our comments to each other as opportunities to expose the faults of the other. Let me begin by saying that Chris is often wrong about what he says. Take for example, his gender blog where he makes a bad analogy. I will not dwell on that now because my comment on said blog goes into enough detail about it. However, my real purpose in writing this blog about Chris Dobbs is not to expose his inaccuracies and logical fallacies, despite their prevalence and the aggravation they cause me, but to applaud his commenting efforts and to spur other who have been less than stellar in their comments to follow Chris' example. No matter how wrong or unfounded the idea is that Chris Dobbs is defending, he will write slightly better than mediocre comments with real passion in his words and a real goal that he is aiming for. I hope that some of the bloggers who comment solely for points and not for the satisfaction commenting can give will join Chris in the fight for truth.

Gender....

This is a very complex issue, and I would like to begin with a qualification of my ideas to come. I believe that we will never fully understand the issue, and the concept is something like the aristotelian truth that we can approach but never reach. That said, I believe that gender is a mix of societally influenced and inherent to an individual. I believe that regardless of the society around me, there are aspects of my personality and my identity that would not change. I agree with De Tocqueville in that women and men are inherently different, and we should not subjugate one or the other, but neither should we make them interchangeable. We must recognize the unavoidable differences that make us men and women and use them to our advantage rather than ignore them at great cost. I don't think that any specific individuals have influenced this decision,. although I do think that my opinion has been shaped by the readings we have done in class about gender, and Eustace Conway has also been instrumental in altering my view of "manliness" and of myself as a man. Despite my insistence on certain characteristics that are inarguably male and female, I do believe that expressions of manhood or womanhood are shaped by societal influences, that women play with barbies and men with G.I. Joes. That men go to war and women foster children is human nature, but the specific interactions they have with society are often shaped by that society.

Media Images

Media images play a role in Ortiz Cofer's story not so much as the main focus of her tale, but as background information. The main point of her story is about real life images, about the way real life is affected by the visual implications of race and size. The santa is the first place the story goes, because the Puerto Rican family is forced to conform to the ideals of the United States by giving presents on Christmas rather than their traditional holiday. This example of how their religious rites are transformed by the media and corporate structure of another country just backs up the thought of her body being judged differently in a new culture. The incident with the susie doll is another example of the media controlling aspects of her life. Her image of beauty is affected by the culture around her to make her want a white doll. Then, the contrast between the white golden-haired doll and the obviously Puerto Rican girl is likely what caused the butcher to yell at her. The contrasting images of media and reality are what lead to many of the problems that she faces, from the inability to perform to cultural athletic standards to her departure from the norms of beauty that cause her so many problems.

Gay Marriage

Well, many can likely predict the answer I am about to impart to you, dear reader, as I am an active member of the UHSGSA, and do not only believe in gay rights, but work to make them happen. At least on a small scale. So, the question turns not to what, but to why. And that answer is also very simple. Like the esteemed Ralph Waldo Emerson, I am a deep believer in self reliance, on individual liberties and rights and ideas. I am deeply committed to maintaining my own way of life, but I know that to deny anyone else the rights I have myself would be not only unfair but completely ridiculous. And so, the simple answer to the gay marriage question is simply that I don't care, as strange as that sounds. I don't care who marries who, or what their religion is, or even if they are headed to hell (which I don't believe, by the way). I simply realize that if my way of life is to be respected I must respect the way of life of others. And therefore, I grant to every gay individual who wants to marry the person they love my permission to do just that. What they want. Their marriage doesn't affect my life, and I don't believe I have any right to step into matters not about me. I believe in choice, and it is as simple as that.

Numero Cinco

Essentially, Wolfson introduces the court case of Turner v. Safley because it presents an analogous claim to the rights of marriage. His rhetorical strategy in bringing this case to light is to show how a case that could be argued to be similar was successful, thereby implying that his own cause would or should be successful if brought to court. Turner is appropriate to this case because prisoner's represent a small, minority group that was denied its right to marriage by the government. If you see the case the prisoner's brought to court as an example of a group unfairly denied its marriage rights, as the court evidently did because of their favorable decision, one would argue that gays, another small, minority group denied its marriage rights, should be allowed its marriage rights. By presenting these arguably analogous cases in the middle of his argument, Wolfson presents the case that gays should be allowed their marriage rights as the prisoners were.

Airplane!

In paragraph 5 of his essay on the benefits of traditional family situations and the unavoidable evils of non-traditional family styles, Santorum compares the horrible people in atypical family situations to pilots of an airplane that only sometimes makes it to the destination, with standard households representing an airplane with a much higher rate of success. If one is in a single-parent household, for example, it is fairly likely that a child will do well. In fact, it is probable. However, Santorum argues that there is a much higher probability of a favorable outcome with a traditional family. It is obvious that everyone should choose the living situation with a higher rate of success, right? The comparison to the plane exaggerates the supposed evils of non-standard family situations by comparing a potentially (although subjectively evaluated) negative outcome in child-rearing to a fiery and bloody death in the midst of an airplane crash. By playing off a fear commonly found in citizens of an airplane-using society and a terrifying image even for those who have never flown, Santorum hyperbolizes what is likely not even a legitimate concern.

Appearances

Vasquez waits to disclose the fact that Brian and Mickey are straight in order to prove the point that it is impossible to tell another person's sexuality, and it is impossible to prove one's sexuality. Any man can be thought gay, and any woman can be seen as a lesbian. Vasquez waits to show that the men attacked were straight to show that the scope of homophobic violence is extensive and not even limited to homosexuals. When heterosexuals are being attacked as a result of homophobic violence, it is obvious how ridiculous and unfounded that homophobic violence is. The issue itself does not change, however, when we realize that heterosexuals are occasionally the victims. It is still a wrong, terrible thing and the victims do not matter. The point of Vasquez's argument is that a straight person is just as human as a gay one, and so whether the violence affects heterosexuals or homosexuals is really irrelevant. People are being attacked, and that is wrong. That the victims of such attacks are everyone and not just the hated group just goes to show how ridiculous and truly unfair the homophobia is, and how wrong a concept it is that one should delineate humanity along lines of sexual orientation.

Transcendental Eustace

If my options are to defend, challenge, or qualify, I choose qualify. There are always things that support and attack Eustace's identity as a member of various systems of thought, and so Eustace is simultaneously a transcendentalist and not. He believes in many of the tenets of transcendentalism, such as the outpouring of discipline and beauty solely from nature. He wants to become more than he is, to feel a different kind of life by reconnecting with nature, and in this way wishes to transcend. He is spiritual, and always seeks to find god in nature. In all of these things one would call Eustace a transcendentalist, but I believe he is not entirely one of them. The main difference is that Eustace is not cognizant of what he is doing. He did not find thought, and take action because of those ideas. He did not realize that god was in nature while living in the city, but simply found god and all of his transcendence by simply being among the world and the things he loves. Transcendentalism is premeditated, and Eustace simply wanted to live in the best and freest way he could. He sought out nature because of things like the scene where he fights the deer. Being in nature makes him whole, but not because he spent his life philosophizing and eventually realizing this should be so, but because he experienced life firsthand and then pursued it because he could.

Nature

"He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments": Here Emerson is talking about the contrast between the tangible and the intangible aspects of the world in which we live. There is more than truth, than the ability to spit back numbers. An attempt at something unknown can lead to answers beyond the question itself, and so a lack of knowledge can be even more powerful than knowledge in its own way. And, the final, beautiful sentence tells us that imagination, ambition, the mad ramblings of the mind attempting to give form to life will always show us more of true nature than science, or math, or any concrete examination of the natural world. This line really puts forth an idea that much of his writing seeks to convey, and in simpler, more understandable prose that is for its accessibility more beautiful than his endless explanations could ever be. Emerson is telling us that nature is not found in data about the natural world, in numbers cataloguing dry facts about animals or plants, but in the seemingly insane tendencies of the human mind to seek out answers that cannot be answered, to dream while sleeping rather than falling into oblivion, to guess at the world around us when we do not know where the real answers to our questions lie.

Destiny

In writing Last American Man, Gilbert is not attempting to turn everyone into Eustace Conway. She is not writing a book to spread the exact same message Conway is, although perhaps that is an added bonus to her work. Instead, Gilbert is trying to make the country realize that it has lost its ability to truly live, to experience life as those who have gone before us did. I don't know whether Gilbert is trying to save that concept, to carry on Eustace's traditions, or, as the title suggests, she is merely writing the epitaph to a dying concept. However, regardless, Gilbert is writing about the necessity of being an active participant in the world. The necessity of being self-aware, living life instead of sitting by and letting it flow around you. To achieve Gilbert's and I believe Eustace's in a small way, we need not live in the forests, but we must find our true calling; not the one society has thrust upon us, and pursue it with passion and drive. We must all become Men of Destiny in a way, feeling what we are meant for and actually going after it. We need not change the world, but we must follow our hearts, as the gardener did. Textual evidence for this lies in the paragraph straddling pages 82-83, where Eustace talks of his need to do "things" rather than talk about "things." He needs to feel alive, to experience the world, to exert himself. And, in the final words of the paragraph, he must follow destiny. Gilbert's message put simply is to follow destiny with all you have.