"Stranger in the Village"

It's very interesting to hear him talk about the "interracial drama" being acted out in america between blacks and whites. We can no longer deny reality, american whites can no longer hold on to european "innocence" , meaning that we will never have the "luxury" of being in the little forgotten swiss village witnessing a black man for the first time. We have a new and completely original form of identity which can no longer be denied really by either side. We run to our european roots and they hit a wall and form a new identity in having lost their own history.
In a strange way i feel like that too, like coming to america is a way of losing your past, and forgetting our history. I guess that's why so many hispanics work hard to maintain it, and the rest of us pretend to be angry because of "broken borders" but really we feel the anger that someone gets to enjoy and keep their history while for the rest of us it stopped a few generations back when our great grandparents came here seeking new opportunities and new identities. In some ways i'd rather be the poor scottish farmboy without money, than the rich spoiled american with a past that only goes back only to my great grandfather arriving with no money and settling what is now known as Ririe, Id. It's a cool short history but imcomplete.
It's that same feeling i got from baudrillard, somewhat generalizing how americans are except he's right in the same ways that baudrillard was. It's kind of disquieting to read from the perspective of a white american who's proud to be white and american although i'm not even sure what that means anymore. I think i'm just happy to be me and to be alive, but it's weird there does seem to be a strange divide in america but also one filled with more emotion and history than anywhere else (although i'm no expert).
We are not the members of this little Swiss village, naively wanting to touch a black mans hair because it is the first time we've seen it. We are too scared for that. We've bred shame into ourselves out of guilt. We've gone to a point where we feel worse for being better off (some of us at least). This hasn't transferred completely to hispanics because our history with them is completely different. We are ashamed and thus let some politician or beauracracy handle the "problem." The problem with that is that when the government handles anything, it usually makes the problem worse. Half ass projects are put up and welfare poorly (so i've heard) distributed. Low income schools bus poor kids to rich neighborhoods and we wonder why they act up in class. I think that with all our talk of "tolerance" we are really just suppressing something that is deep rooted and now festering. We are adapting to a new world system which is drastically different than how it's been since man first began to think and form tribes; to wage war and enslave. This is more the reality of human nature, since it has what has been right since day yet, and now suddenly we enter a world with a new mentality, where the old mentality is so completely abondoned that it has become taboo to think or speak about, which in turn creates more confusion and more suppressed feelings. We are given a new mentality with the same energy and no where to put it.
I am not advocating things go back to how they were, for it does seem that we needed a new world mentality, but to run to one that chooses rather to not offend than to accept reality seems counterproductive although it seemed much worse twenty years ago when the reigning mentality was men and women were inherently the same except for a artificial external features. This is not truth but a belief that was disproved by science. Men and Women are Fundamentally different. It's biology. We think and act differently. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's what makes the world interesting and exciting. We don't need to be robots to be equal.
I think Baldwin has some very good points though. I just heard that when performing in Las Vegas, Nat King Cole had to enter the casinos from the back entrance. NAT KING COLE. I was shocked but my grandma goes "that's just how it was. I never really thought about it until afterwards." She seemed genuinely disgusted about it though (although this woman was a mormon when blacks were denied access to the priesthood and didn't seem to care much). That's just how it was. She feels no guilt at anything. She just happened to be in a place that enforced discriminatory laws. they didn't affect her at all and that's how things had always been. I could never fault my grandma for suddenly changing her mind on the issue once it became socially acceptable. That's how millions were, and now she's one of the people complaining about gangs and such with no real solutions. Just floating along in life, taking what is and isn't acceptable for granted. Not really ever thinking, just feeling her way along life until it all ends and the movie camera stops and she gets to shake the great Eye's hand, and say "i did it, take me to the top, i was one of the good ones; i shut my eyes, plugged my ears, and shut off my brain, while keeping my heart open to you at all times; knowing that all good feelings were from you, and all bad from the Eye in the ground. I did it, i lived as i was commanded. I barely questioned, and i only did that because i was commanded. i did everything you asked and now i want to live at the top. I let you be my eyes, my ears, and my brain and now i want my reward."
I feel a little cruel for saying all that about my grandma, but it isn't just her, it's all who give up searching for truth and stray into the land of belief and wishes. i love them all dearly, since they are more like children, but i never really know what to do with them. Some of them are even more intelligent than me in many ways, but i still feel like until they can suspend their belief long enough to see that belief in anything, even nothing, is still an act of leaving the search for truth.

maybe that's ok. maybe i'm making a big deal out of nothing. i know i fall off the path often, but i still sleep ok at night because i know when i fall off and i know what i have to do to get back on even though it can be the most painful thing in the world.
All in all i suppose the message from Baldwin is that realiy is here whether we want it to be or now and it will eventually bite us and refusing to acknowledge it will only make the bite that much worse.

"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"

Interesting read. Questionable though. Somewhat in the same way the Socrates' actual existence is questionable, but with big differences. Did Harriet Jacobs really exist? Almost certainly but, Child's says that she "revised" the work in order to shorten it and to make it more orderly. This is probably true but to what extent i guess should be the question. It certainly has the tone of someone more educated although it is told from the first person as Harriet herself.
The whole story is a plea, and a good one, for all northerner women (and men i suppose as well) to be as appalled at this story and realize fully what it means to be a slave, to realize the depths of degradation slaves are put through. The author (or revisionist) is careful to talk about the southerners as though they are a different race or breed altogether while the Reader (whoever that may be) can rest assure, for they are wise and can see what horrible things are being done. They are also brought to the point that they are able to do something about it.
We see through the story, a tale of a young girl who realizes she is slave and endures hardships under the watchful eyes of a terrible master and jealous mistress. Who falls in love but is torn from this dream of happiness. Who has a white man fall for her but who is unable to pry her away and who has a brother who escapes after being put in prison for trying to escape. She has a grandmother who is well respected and trusts wholly in God and the bible even amidst all the terrible things happening. The girl also has a child which inspires terrible things against her.
Even though this girl endured all of this and manages to survive, we see that she is made out to be completely powerless the whole time. Every thing that happens is beyond her control and she does nothing to combat it other than feel hopeless. I think this was a ploy of the "revisionist" who possibly sought to make these poor slave girls out to be completely hopeless, which means that the northerners Must rise to help, because they cannot possibly help themselves although i'm not sure because slavery would feel like a pretty hopeless situation so now i'm not as sure. It feels frustrating to think and read about it, but this is how you should feel. Then your more likely to do something about it. Heaven forbid I should feel bad because of inactivity (which i say tongue-in-cheek but it's actually true, i hate feeling bad because of something i'm not doing and it does make me want to make a difference so it's pretty smart if that was the ploy, but whether it was or wasn't the piece is still a good one about the horrors of human slavery).

"Haunted America"

I like the idea of a historical revisionist. Someone who retells history a little more objuectively, and usually, and bit uglier than we would like to see it. When something is first written, it is sometimes written from a biased viewpoint, perhaps unintentionally, but biased all the same, with a favorable slan to one side or another. If this version correlates with how we ourselves were brought up to see an event or how we would like to see an event, than it's sometimes hard to hear a dissenting opinion, or at least to trust it. That's what's so interesting about people llike Limerick who take something as complex as the conflict between the Indians (or Native Americans if you prefer, although neither really seems to fit for me, one too politically incorrect, although i guess "savages" would be worse, and the other overly PC as labels in the age seem to be; too friendly and vague to be taken offensively as is the hope of those who create them, but becoming exactly that to me because of that.) and the White settlers on this continent and breaking it down to see the fault, ignorance, and manipulation of both sides from those who should have known better on each side.
It's easy to pick on the Indians, and say well hey, they would have just killed each other anyways (i actually said this when i was about ten or eleven; luckily my dad was didn't freak out but instead calmly explained why thinking that way needs to be questioned just as much as oversympathizing; i had no idea what he meant at the time.) just as it's easy to say that the whites were all evil or greedy or manipulative. It's also easy to say that the whites were trying their best and a few things went out of control, or that the Indians were completely taken advantage of. There is a little truth in all of these statements, Indians did have brutal battles against each other for various reasons, White people did take advantage and break agreements and such, some Whites really did want peace and coexistence; the trick is figuring out how much truth to apportion to each statement and attempt to see things as they really were.
At the end of this, as Limerick points out, we start to see patterns and common threads weaving in and out of each story. Where some people only see differing points of view, the trained eye can point out themes and use these to decide what was really going on throughout a complex situation like that between the white settlers and the Modocs.
We generally look at events as an outsider in history it seems, and thus we are able to see from a god-like point of view where things went wrong, and we begin to make judgements of people based on this; yet sometimes it's hard to put yourself in the middle of the situation and it seems only when we truly understand what it's like to be there, as well as understand where it all breaks down; this is the real point where we can stop bad history from repeating, and prevent bad history from occuring by looking objectively and subjectively at the events around the actual one in question.
I am reminded of how many people i've run into think that the german people were all idiots for trusting adolf hitler. I used to think "yeah, that is weird that so many people could follow someone like that."
Is it really so hard to imagine though? Germany was arguably the highest educated country in the world at the time, with many leading world philosophers and scientists coming out of Germany at the time who all supported hitler and national socialism. When national socialism was on the rise it was usually the most educated and idealistic who jumped on board first. No lies were really told either to the public, everything was pretty much spoken of from the beginning although you could say ideas and action are completely different things. No these weren't idiots, these were people desperate for an ideal to get behind and who actually believed that their cause was justified. Of course there was propaganda and such but where isn't there propaganda. Just turn on CNN or Fox News or any media outlet and you'll find tons. No they weren't idiots, just enthusiatic and misled, poorly misled. Couldn't the same be said for any of us?
I bring this situation up because until we look at these catastrohic events in history more from the point of view of those involved as well as from our after-the-fact knowledge we still run the risk of terrible repeats. I believe that this is the point of the revisionist.

"The Education of Henry Adams" and Derek Ririe

I've definitely noticed the correlation between all of these different essays (about time right?). They all have to do with critical thinking and questioning the very ways you were taught to look at people and events.
I like this essay alot and am seriously going to buy more written by Adams just to see if he develops anything else further. I really should have read this one sooner, necause it is another affirmation that i am not the only who feels as though they were born in the wrong time, and to a faulty education system, although i know even i guess not to wholly blame either. I would probably complain just as loudly in any other time as i do now. It really is an amazing time in history to be alive, unless you happened to be born into wealth, intelligence, even-temperment, and good looks in another time, or at least one of those four, than life would have been much tougher in ages past than in today's world. Still though, it's easy to bemoan the "good ol days" and treat the now as if it were some rabid dog that badly needs to be put on a leash, or is on a leash controlled by idiots. It's much harder to realize the world has always really felt this way, at least to somebody, and that for the most part all you can really do is try to make a difference in your own way and try to discern through learning, what the truth really is concerning the state of the world and it's various real and assumed problems.
Where does knowledge come from, and does have an "education" really prove anything? As weird as it seems i was watching a show called 'america's most smartest model' where a group of smart young models try to prove their intelligence in various competitions against each other. It's pretty silly but i still like the show because the tests do not test book smarts, or the ability to remember facts, but instead they focus on different areas such as your ability to communicate efficiently, work under pressure, learn not to make assumptions, etc. Last night they sent home a guy with a Ph. D in psychology because although he knew much in a specialized area, he buckled easily under pressure, and behaved like a child when things didn't go his way. As silly as this example was it reminded me alot of this essay, or at least the first part of it.
I loved that he felt nothing for school, and didn't actually regard college as "education" although as i write that it feels somewhat like an excuse on my part, or at least a justification since he still must have achieved decent grades while i'm not. I honestly can't figure out why i hate school so intensely, since i never really have before, i always regarded it as something beneath me growing up, since i didn't need good grades to comprehend the material better than most, and i never really had to try to fit in, people just seemed to like me. I always felt like it didn't matter that my grades were poor in high school, because i knew that i knew what i was doing and i assumed i'd always do well in life despite of grades because my comprehension was so high. Now i'm in college and i constantly feel like i'm drowning, and all i want to do is read. i just want to read and fantasize about the meaning of existence. Now i'm constantly terrified of falling behind and ending up with a terrible life, just because i never "buckled" down and got things done for school, yet whenever i "buckle" down i feel as though i'm compromising a part of myself, only doing the work in order to keep going into a life that i will hate forever since i HATE "buckling" down. gahhhhhh. I know i'm being silly but it's not letting me sleep. I don't want to be afraid because it feels as though i have no future, but i also don't want to be afraid because my future is too restrictive.
I just want freedom. I just want to love and be allowed to question while not having to conform to anything i don't feel is me. I don't want to have to conform to school, or to work, or the idea that one needs both to be complete. I know this is not everyone's idea but i'm not sure what else to do. Still, i can only do what i can for now, and keep questioning and filling my mind with thoughts of greater men, only to question and reject those in the end in the emergence of my own patchwork and ever changing philosophy on how life is and how it should be and what the means. Unfortunately few are paid to read and to think. We are paid to act, and act well in order to get paid more, which is a disease and a ceaseless cycle, with no intention of letting the individual be free to simply exist in it's natural form.

"Already Northern society betrayed a preference for economists over diplomats or soldiers- one might even call it a jealousy- against which two eighteenth-century types had little chance to live, and which they had in common to fear."
I am like this, in fear of the world, because it wants machines, not men, and i am less than a man, i am an idealist. I am not a part of the same species that beings named Roosevelt and Washington are a part of. I am less than a man to those would want robots, because i question the need for robots. I want more who just love and who love to be alive, while questioning values and meaning, but does this really work? No. Jesus came and made his impact, but it has changed nothing about human nature, it is still by and large, a wasteland for zombies, and a playground for idealists. I think i am more human than most but since they set the standard, i become something else altogether.
"...he perpetually fell back into the heresy that if anything universal was unreal, it was himself and not the appearances; it was the poet and not the banker; it was his own thought, not the thing that moved it."
Completely counter intuitibe and correct in a sense. The banker is much more real than the poet. The banker deals with tangible realities while the poet mainly concerns himself with abstract concepts and observations concerning age old questions regarding human nature. These are not what is real to the work-a-day world but makes more impact to someone like me than all the money in the world. I am not saying, however, that money holds nothing over me, just that it seems more abstract to me than a concept like truth or love. I'd rather contemplate the importance of truth than engage in money making or money spending.
Adams talks about not having money or much of a mind, but being well adapted for social standings. He sought after something in life that secured his social station and exercised his talent for being social, such as a diplomat, or some such position. This is exactly like myself. I love interactions with people, especially friendly and intelligent ones, although intelligence is a tricky word to define. I should say instead, people who possess not only knowledge about history, literature, and events, but also the ability to fit them all together and realize the signifigance of them in relation to themselves and history. This is where i want my life to lead; rich social interactions while continuing to learn all that i can from word, thought, and experience.
"Henry Adams never professed the smallest faith in universities of any kind, either as boy or man, nor had he the faintest admiration for the university graduate, either in Europe or in America."
A degree is a piece of paper. It says little about your ability to think and your levels of intelligence. I dated a senior who was attending UNLV majoring in marketing, while i was a senior in high school and while she could quote text book statistics regarding the economy, and differences between consumer markets, she had so little passion and thought concerning the world, i soon became disgusted and let her go, and yet she was the one who will probably be regarded as the more intelligent of us, because she has a piece of paper that claims that she is "educated." A degree is proof that you can endure at least four years of suppression, and pass the tests claiming you know very well how to conform and become a more efficient robot.
The thought has occurred to me though that i complain so much only because i'm too lazy to just get the work needed accomplished. My aunt told me once that i only work hard when i want to, or when i see an end in sight. I become extremely productive at work when i know i'm quitting in a month, but when there is no end in sight, i despair and lose interest in what i'm doing. I agree, i do work better when i see an end, but is that much different from someone working hard only to get a promotion? I don't really think so, except it's more socially acceptable. It's a fact that i hate working for someone else, and it just so happens that i feel that same way for school. if it was really for us, we would grade ourselves, or not work on a grading system at all. A degree is only a piece of paper that proves that you already know how to work for someone else, and that you can do it better than someone who doesn't have that piece of paper.
I am torn completely though because i also feel that there should be some accountability, some separation. We are all born equal but we do not end that way and there should be a way to show that you have actually accomplished something. Except that every accomplishment i'm capable of is inside. I had an amazing love affair with someone, and it taught me much more than any schooling at any level ever could, and yet i'll never receive any sort of decoration for this accomplishment, or any sort of proof. It is all internal, and I will never be paid more than someone else for that experience which was worth more to me to this date than anything else even remotely in my life.
That manifestation of love was the catalyst for my journey into critical thought. It was the event that triggered my eventually intense separation from mormonism and god, and my realization that everything must be questioned and that unprovable universals must be rejected in order to really search for truth, be it beautiful or ugly. I've had to thank this experience countless times for what it continually teaches me, and yet it has less relevance to the "real" world than even someone's relationship with a possibly imaginary camera lens in the sky. Life is strange.

a thought on constructive nihilism

Nihilism. The great nausea; the denial of self; nothing is real, and nothing matters; we will all die someday and nothing holds us all together. There is no external absolute and every act is justified just for being it's own assertiveness of violent freedom. Where does one find value in the denial of value? In being completely free.
The other night I was in a terrible state of depression, overwhelmed by the situation I had somehow found myself in. It was formless and disconnected from everything. I felt that if when I closed my eyes, nothingness took the form of existence and I was more than just alone. I was all that there was and everything else was a memory in oblivion. I feared this feeling more than death itself, because death was an escape from existence, and a form of not being. This feeling was that of being forced into life, forced into continuing to exist forever while everything around me fell into decay and slipped into another life, and another universe. It was the feeling of being on an island in the middle of existence, and it all being nothing in it's own value and meaning. Everyone was on the main body, unaware of their own decay and bodily corruption, falling one by one into the eternal sea of darkness, obliterated by their own inability to conquer it and live miserably for eternity.
This is the feeling i had and eventually i sunk so low that i began to consciously think about it. It became more than an intangible feeling. I became aware of nothingness and it was a comfort. I began pushing myself out of myself more, stepping outside my depressed introspection into a well contained extroversion. I started joking and laugh. Nothing was quite real and it all felt beautiful. Decay was being reversed and the young bud was blossoming into something still abstract, but completely satisfying. It wasn't a destruction of self but an awakening to the potential of self. I became more than myself unaided by ideas and was able to handle everything that came at me and respond exactly how i wanted to, to get the reactions i craved.
So maybe this isn't nihilism completely but i still felt the nausea and overwhelming nothingness, yet this led me to something else, something that was me completely. Whether or not this was necessary i'm not sure but that was my night and it seemed that i had to fall completely in order to rise.

'The "Banking" Concept of Education'

I once had a conversation with my uncle Rudiford (his name is actually Randy, but went by Allen as kid; my dad called him "nude" growing up because he ran around naked as a kid; then my other uncle named him "rude" as a hybrid of Randy and Nude; this later became "Rudy"; and now i call him "Rudiford" to make his name sound more impressive) regarding this exact same issue. I have always disagreed with teachers who simply "deposit" you with facts in order that you know them. No other purpose really, in fact I've been against school in general since high school. I realized that i learned more from reading and my own experiences than from actually attending any institution. I only enjoyed institutions like that for purely social reasons (i won't even touch on church). I still feel like my greatest lessons were learned when i was challenged and forced to defend myself using my own store of knowledge and intuition, and that has almost never happened in any "learning" institution, it's always with other people on my "own" time.
I really like how he compared teaching with the "banking" concept to being necrophilic; treating those being taught as objects, like pitchers, waiting to be filled up with water, rather than fill themselves up and question the purpose of everything they think they stand for.
"In problem-posing education. . . they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation."
I love him talking about seeing the world's situations as snapshots, unconnected and simplified, rather than being connected and ongoing, thus making them much more complex and put into perspective. Reality is not one thing, floating independently, but an ongoing process of perception and thought, with things constantly becoming better, worse, or neither, and everything else. The world becomes broader when looked at critically this way and much more intense and intriguing, because it's not easy, and many times there are more than one right answer to a problem and sometimes those answers have greater negative consequences than what is occurring in the original situation.
When looking at the world passively, these problems seem either too overwhelming or you become myopic and think there is one unifying answer that everyone should just get around, no matter the consequences for the other sides. When looking critically however, you get used to finding connections and looking back to see when this type of situation occurred and how it was handled originally. You asses the problem from every angle and calculate the risks of ever action, even the risks of taking no action at all. What you are doing is placing everything in it's proper perspective, and asking the right questions about it in order to judge the right course, if any at all should become visible. Even if no correct course presents itself, you are still rewarded for this knowledge when something else happens and you are better able to prevent future negative situations from arising, or at least better able to resolve them either the best, or only salvageable way possible.
"Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total context, not as a theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed."
The more i learn about the world, the more i want to help it, but i also want to help it in the ways that actually prove themselves to work. this is a little tough because what works sometimes changes person to person, culture to culture. We can only really keep questioning and learn to adapt while keeping the principle of "keep nothing sacred" in mind. Question all taboos and extremist attitudes, and always keep on the lookout for those with rock solid convictions and little knowledge, or those with some knowledge and who still get caught up so far in their own ideals, they are willing to compromise their own integrity in order to achieve them.

"Our Time"

I really enjoyed this read, and as i sit here typing i realize that it's because it has layers. There is a lot going on and there are no definite conclusions. You follow the author and become nothing, but not nothing, just mot yourself anymore, you are following each character as if they were a part of you, or were you yourself. You were floating somewhere inside of them and everything that happened to them felt like it was happening to you, only removed, and less emotional, but still impactual.
This essay was definitely tough sledding at first, but once i figured out the different voices coming through the story became absolutely fascinating. You become absorbed by this world where nothing is quite as it seems where corruption and self deceit hide, laced throughout the story in surprising areas. Everyone gets a chance in this world to be both aggressor and victim, as the characters attempt to bring themselves out of ignorance, misunderstanding, and chaos .

Strangely enough as i was reading this the tv happened to be on and i noticed after awhile that i could hear Edward Norton's voice in the background. i looked up and American History X was playing on the tube. It was weird that this movie should just so happen to be on while i was reading "our time" because they echoed each other in an interesting way although they had two separate story lines. Or rather they complimented each other, fit nicely. I started looking at the Edward Norton's friend in jail who was locked up for 6 years while Derek (norton) only had three and Derek had killed two people.

These are two separate stories and yet when i think of societies horror concerning dope addicts it seems heghtened by the person being black. There is a strange fear of the unknown there. We fear what we don't understand, and it's hard to understand the black man's side in the issue.
Identity. At the base of everything, we based our identities on the color of our skin. We have to don't we? That explains our genetic make up, our past, our history. It says so much about us and yet so little. We still have that chance to break outside the "norm" and yet still be true to our identities. There are other things that separate us all but skin is probably the biggest, next to gender. We even have to meet certain standards in that group in order to be a "member." An African is not an African -American. I heard a woman on tv who was black saying Barack Obama was not black, but instead he was an African-African-American, because his dad emigrated from Africa and Barack's roots are not tied up in slavery, therefore he was unable to understand what it was like to be "black" or "African-American." I guess it's the same as the Irish immigrating to American and not accepted with the other whites. We all have to meet identity standards, or cultural identity standards.

i realized while reading this that i am fascinated by stories of people or groups of people (families) falling apart. I become fixated and imagine this happening in my own family, which leaves me depressed for days after, and yet i'm always more drawn to these stories. I like to think them through from all perspectives, first as one character. and then another, from most important role to least. Everyone matters, because they all played some role. There's common threads throughout all of these stories, starting with a trigger. Some event, usual death, which is the root of all that goes so horribly wrong.
I'm thinking of the Virgin Suicides now. Amazing movie and so perplexing. It starts with the trees dying and ends with the question of why.
I read a similar story of a boy accidentally killing his sister. His family then falls apart and everyone goes their separate ways, all going crazy from guilt and depression. All it takes is one tragedy. All it takes is one external accidental and all you can do from there is watch it all violently explode into eventual nothingness, with only burning shameful, guilt driven memories to guide you along.
It's stories like these that really force the question, is truth truly random and indifferent? Or is this all just the Eye's innocent joke?