The United States today is in a bad place. We are hated across the globe (rightfully so) for countless narrow-minded and greedy actions made without the American people’s consent by those who are in charge and out of touch with America.

I do not think it is even fair to call ourselves the “United States Of America” rather I fear we have become “Saudi-America.” We are in major debt because of two wars and a terrible fossil fuel addiction and none of these problems seem to have an end. We are dangerously dependent on Saudi Arabia for oil yet we still continue to waste it everyday.

These problems don’t even seem to affect or reach the general public. They are so engrossed with “reality” TV and SUVs that they don’t even realize their world made of plastic and lies is going to fall down around them if they don’t change the way they live and take an active part in bettering this country and those who run it.

The Problems:

1. The Government

The government running this country fails to see the effects of their actions as our economy plummets and our international relations crumble. The leaders of this country are worried simply about making a profit for themselves, personal gain. This can be said about many people outside the government as well but the government is supposed to have their people in mind not their pocket books

2. The Environment

This nation’s irresponsible use of oil has left us with more then an economic problem. The environment is suffering from strip mining by oil companies and green house gases and other pollution created by our ever growing need to buy and sell and gain. This cycle of greed needs to stop or there won’t be an environment for us to live in.

3. Tax Spending

The tax spending in our country is way off balance as well. It is estimated that the department of defense will be receiving 515.440 billion dollars during the 2009 fiscal year, a seven percent gain; while a thing like the Department of Education is in line to get 59.210 billion dollars a zero percent gain. These kinds of finical injustices are causing the down fall of the United States. As much as I wish it were not true, money rules this country and the world for that matter. So it’s obvious that programs such as education, that are not getting as much money, do not matter as much to the government.[1]

4. Two Wars

Many people in this country don’t even realize that we are in two wars right now not just one. War, as described by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is as follows: a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism.[2] Hostility, as described by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is as follows: deep-seated usually mutual ill will.[3] So as a country right now we have a deep-seated “ill will” on two fronts, terrorism and Iraq. Now terrorism that is understandable enough, to have “ill will” towards those who flew planes into buildings filled with our families, friends and neighbors. A war on terror, I may be able to accept. A war on Iraq on the other hand, is inexcusable in my eyes. A war where the only gain is oil and the cost is American lives. That is a war that I cannot support.

5. Media

Modern media is thrust upon us wherever we go and in whatever we do. Advertisements tell us how to dress, to act and what’s cool or in style. Commercials and other advertisements are used to make us think things are good, to make us feel safe and at the same time inadequate.

The language used in advertisements and on TV shows is destroying the English language. Words like fuck, shit, damn, asshole, bitch, dickhead and douche-bag just to name a few, are deteriorating the minds and speech of the entire country.

Spoon feed autonomy is all that TV and websites like facebook and myspace have to offer. Modern media does not inspire the individual to question or act; rather it inspires them to blend into the rest of the crowd and not question what’s going on. The information presented to this country does not force us as a people to think for ourselves. One has to actively seek out any kind of real higher thought and even then people willing to share and converse about this knowledge are few and far between.

The Solutions:

The above are a list of problems that we, as a nation, are facing right now. All together, they seem pretty overwhelming but there are ways for us, as a people, to change what is happening. Ways such as nonviolent protesting, supporting locally owned businesses, and simply being more aware of the forces of advertisement and their affect on your everyday life.

1. Nonviolent Protest

Striking, picketing, sit-ins, marches and lockdowns are some of the many ways I believe a person can make a difference. I think that acts like these are among the most profound and moving statements for anybody with a purpose and the drive to say something about it. Violence destroys and erodes human connections but nonviolent actions like those stated above are the key to making real connections with people that may not see eye to eye with you. A well executed petition can also do well in localized situations, I have seen in work at my old high school and in college.

2. Get The Word Out

Literature is another source I believe to be important in getting your word out. Posters, flyers and pamphlets, I believe, are a good way to speak your mind without having to be everywhere, a well placed poster will speak to more people in a day then one person can. I remember picking up a pamphlet earlier this year and it helped open my eyes to a situation I was not aware of before then.

3. Actual Intelligence

We as a people need to think for ourselves. We are mindless sheep being guided by corporate America to an increasingly meaningless existence. To stop this I believe we need to think about the forces of corporate America and the government working to make us an autonomous collective of sheep instead of free thinking and living people.

Conclusion

Our lives are relatively short and it would be the most wasteful thing if people did not try to change something while they were here. If you don’t think there is anything wrong with the world, look harder you will find a reason to try and change something. If you don’t think the things I listed were problems then find something you do think is a problem and fight for, live for it or die for it because that is what life should be about. The worst thing a person can do in life is nothing.

Bibliography:

Bachman, Jess. Death and Taxes, http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/#purchase , 5/4/08

Merriam-Webster Online, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war , 5/4/08

Merriam-Webster Online, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hostility , 5/4/08

Influences:

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without A Country.

Kelly Hoffmann

The Communist Manifesto

The Humanist Manifesto

The Surrealist Manifesto

The Dada Manifesto

And countless other works by countless other people whose names I cannot remember because all my books have been packed away because I am moving.

What makes a piece of art aesthetically pleasing? Is it the skill of the craftsman? Is it the choice of colors, shapes, and lines? Is it purely an emotional connection with the piece? Is the idea of aesthetics a combination of these things? One perspective on these questions is the perspective of Derek Matravers, who, in turn, shares his opinion with Immanuel Kant. In Derek Matravers’ article, entitled “ The Aesthetic Experience,” he explains in depth Kant’s views on aesthetics, how they coincide with his own ideas about aesthetics, and the of an object having a certain aesthetic value.

Matravers first talks about the distinctions Kant has made with regards to visual delight. Kant believes that there is visual delight that is simply agreeable, a visual delight that is good, and a visual delight that ultimately leads to one’s personal judgment of taste.[1] It is between the ideas of visual delight in the agreeable and visual delight in the good that Kant believes the idea of aesthetic delight lies.[2] Defining the terms visual delight in agreeable and visual delight in good will help in defining the terms aesthetic value and aesthetic delight.

According to Kant and Matravers, a visual delight is agreeable if it simply gratifies us. They also go on to say that even animals can have delights that are agreeable because it makes no call on our rational. So, delights in the agreeable sense occur when something gratifies out senses. An example of this, in Matravers words, would be lying in the sun sucking a toffee and having a massage. These are all agreeable delights in the sense that they all gratify or please the senses of the body.[3]

Visual delight in the good, as stated by Kant and Matravers, is consequent upon forming the belief that the object has a good purpose. In other words, delights in the good occur when it is our own belief that something serves a good purpose and we are pleased by it. An example of delight of good may be seeing a Boy Scout help an old lady across the street. This is an example of a delight of good because we feel as though the Boy Scout was of a good purpose.[4]

After defining these two delights, agreeable and good, Matravers begins to explain Kant’s and his definition of the term aesthetic delight. As stated before, they believe aesthetic delight to lay between delight of the agreeable on one side and delight of the good on the other.[5] Also, they believe aesthetic delight is in some way bound up with cognitive faculties.[6] The cognitive faculties that they are referring to are those of imagination and understanding. A summary of Kant’s account of aesthetic is as follows: if someone is not interested in an object, but the object has the right formal appearance, it will stimulate our cognitive faculties.[7] This stimulation gives us a sense of pleasure and this sense of pleasure leads to us considering the object as beautiful. So, in this way, the aesthetic is not the same as the agreeable because it involves the cognitive faculties.[8] The aesthetic is also separate from the good due to the fact that it combines the cognitions with concepts.[9]

At this point, Matravers alters one of the delights. The delight previously called good is now called cognitive because this delight, he claims, should not be limited to the ethical. Using this new term, he claims that we have delights that are neither agreeable nor cognitive. This claim is basically a reiteration of Kant’s claim stated earlier about aesthetic delight falling somewhere between agreeable and good delights.[10]

After defining the delights, he criticizes the conclusion that Kant has come up with thus far. The conclusion is that visual delight is aesthetic if it contains the following three things: firstly, it is an experience including the experience of cognition; secondly, it has non-instrumental value; and thirdly, that value is grounded in the cognitions.[11]

Matravers has a few problems with this definition. The first problem he sees is that cognitions have no phenomenology, that is to say, there is nothing that is similar to having a belief. Therefore, Matravers claims, cognition cannot be experienced. He also believes our beliefs to be instrumentally valuable, that is to say, that their value resides in their effects on our beliefs, opinions, etc. Knowing this, it is not possible for this delight to be non-instrumentally valuable.[12]

After this, Matravers goes on to analyze other philosophers and their ideas about the aesthetic experience. He follows this with his conclusion. He says he has made two main claims at this point. The first is that it is a necessary condition for being an aesthetic experience of delight that cognitions figure into the experience. Secondly, he said he has tried to map out the grounds for which the value of this experience could be expressed. He says that Monroe Beardsley’s idea of “active discovery” best fit his account. The idea of active discovery is explained by Monroe Beardsley as follows:[13]

A sense of actively exercising constructive powers of the mind, of being challenged by a variety of potentially conflicting stimuli to try to make them cohere; a keyed-up state amounting to exhilaration in seeing connections between percepts and between meanings, a sense (which may be illusory) of intelligibility.[14]

This idea is supposed to account for the cognitive experience within the experience of aesthetic delight.

The first problem I have with his conclusion is that I do not agree with his first claim. At the beginning, when he was talking about Kant’s theory, he argued against the definition with which Kant devised for the aesthetic experience. I believe that he was right to argue this point, but I do not think he went about it in the right way and I do not think that his criticism was complete.

The reasons I do not believe that his criticism was enough is because I do not think the three delight distinctions are correct. The idea of the delight in the agreeable and the delight in the good were a good start. Then, the delight in the good got changed to cognitive delight because he claimed it was not right to restrain the idea to the ethical. This is where I believe things first went wrong. He broadened the idea of the delight in the good to the cognitive delight, but left the delight in the agreeable the same. This error is one that led to others later. If the idea of the delight in the agreeable were changed to a more broad term, then the relationship between the two of them would have become clearer. The delight in the agreeable, when broadened, should have been called non-cognitive delight because the idea behind the delight of the agreeable was that it was delight that did not involve cognitions.

After making that mistake, another mistake is made in making aesthetic delight its own delight. There are many problems with the definition given to aesthetic delight. One of the problems is that they say that aesthetic delight falls in between the delight in the agreeable and the delight in the good. This does not work because of the error stated above. The delight in the good is also called cognitive delight and the delight in the agreeable should have been called non-cognitive delight. So, saying that something “falls in between” is also like saying it is similar to both. In this case, it would be a contradiction if the delight in the aesthetic were to be similar to both cognitive delight and non-cognitive delight. If we let aesthetic delight be A and cognitive delight be B the schematic formula will show the counter diction:

A > ( B · ~ B )

This can also be said as following: If A then B and not B. Spoken this way the contradiction is obvious. A cannot be both B and not B at the same time. Knowing now that the definition of aesthetic delight is flawed, a new definition is needed.

If we let C be any delight, then this valid formula will show that all delights have to be either cognitive (B) or not cognitive (~B):

C > ( B v ~ B )

Spoken, this would sound like: If C then B or not B. In other words, all delights fall under either the cognitive or non cognitive delight. The aesthetic delight is no different; it must fall within one of these two delights.

When considering the definition of cognations (imagination and understanding), it becomes obvious that Kant was correct in saying that aesthetic delight spawns from cognitions. If aesthetic delights spawn from cognitions, then it is obvious which delight aesthetic delight falls under: cognitive delight. That is to say that all aesthetic delights are cognitive delights and, also, that not all cognitive delights are aesthetic delights.

The main problem that I have with Matravers and Kant’s view on aesthetic delight is that they make the term too broad. They made its scope equal to that of cognitive and non cognitive delights and that was the major error, not recognizing that aesthetic delight was entirely part of cognitive delight.

Bibliography:

Derek Matravers. “The Aesthetic Experience.” British Journal of Aesthetics 43:2 (British Society of Aesthetics: 2003) 158-174.

This is a link to an article by an author previously talked about in this blog, Derek Matravers. In my opinion Derek Matravers is a great writer of philosophy and I will soon be posting a paper on the Philosophy of Aesthetics that is greatly inspired by this article, it’s a good read from anybody interested in the topic of art and aesthetics and my paper should be up with the next week or so.

Here’s the link.

http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/43/2/158

The automobile is undeniably the most significant invention of the past century and a half. It has completely rewritten our sense of time and distance, to the point that what used to take the better part of six months, you can travel from Independence, MO., to Portland, OR. in a mere 17 hours. However, the automobile is not without fault– it has created generations of sedentary people and has made the expansion of corporate retail possible, as well as energy motivated wars around the planet. Is it possible to continue using this essential technology as we move into the 21st century? Or must we take drastic measures and completely revolutionize the way we live?

The automobile problem is a complex one. It involves nearly all corners of American life and society in some way or another. From manufacture of cars, transportation of cars, transportation using cars, the logistics and shipping industries, and even getting to an office job in the morning, these things are all a large part of what automobiles have done to our society. So what, then, can we do to end our dependence on an outmoded form of transportation? Should it be an alternative fuel? Perhaps a completely different way to design our communities? Maybe we should invest large amounts of money into public transportation? A reversion to rail transport? The complex question of automobiles has an equally complex answer.

Certainly the most important thing to consider when examining the problem of automobiles is the question of sustainability. With the sharply declining oil reserves in the world, the automobile is becoming more than just a carbon dioxide factory. It is quickly becoming an ecological nightmare. The influence of the auto industry leads governments to approve massive drilling projects in Alaska, ruining the pristine nature of one of the few Earth locations untouched by human hands. Oil-fueled initiatives to deface the Earth are undeniably perpetuated by automobile technology. We can be sure, then, that if we fail to make more economic cars or innovate alternative fuel options, the problems with the automobile will continue to get worse.

So if we cannot continue down the path of oil, what should we do? Many scientist are proposing hydrogen as a means to fuel cars. In a short answer, hydrogen is not a viable solution to end our dependence on fossil fuels. Hydrogen uses electrolysis to extract hydrogen from a source like water. This process requires large amounts of electricity to accomplish, and a massive majority of the electricity that is generated comes from sources like oil, coal, and natural gas. This means that the electric car is, too, an unrealistic suggestion. In order to completely eliminate the harmful effects of the automobile, we would need a better way to generate electricity first and foremost; then discover a better way to power the engines of our automobiles.

Reducing the impact of the automobile should be a primary goal of any community. However, they continue to zone structures and locations that are less conducive to this goal. Strip malls are unreachable by any other means besides automobile. The same goes for suburbs outside major cities. These places are rarely linked up with any kind of public transportation of the cities they surround, once more perpetuating the problem. Many suburbs are mazes of concrete, Starbucks’ and Wal-Marts dotting the cookie-cutter wastelands. These communities are built for convenience and access instead of sustainability or environmentality. This problem with the middle-American psyche is the very base of the car problem itself. If we cannot give up cars that get merely 8 miles to the gallon simply so we have something that resembles safety, then we are resigning our Earth’s fate to a dark future.

It seems so ironic that a group of individuals (i.e. Mothers) that are so infatuated with the idea of safety for them and for their children would drive devices that are completely opposite to the idea of the “children’s future”. Without dipping into a tangent of parent psychology, these desires really represent a need for power, for independence in a dependent family situation. Drivers of large, pollutant vehicles don’t care about the environment all that much, despite what they say, and justify their driving by half-heartedly tossing things into a recycling bin and planting a sapling at the park on Earth Day. But these same individuals perpetuate the automobile industry by buying corporate goods and services that come from miles and miles away. This, too, is a major problem with automobiles– logistics.

Most of the shipping industry is serviced by tractor-trailer semis, especially within the United States. Raw goods travel from around the world to processing plants in the continental U.S. and are then made into processed goods like, for example, a bottle of soda. The soda is loaded onto a semi and travels from a plant in Wisconsin to a distribution center in New York City. Then, a fleet of trucks travels all over the city and loads the bottles into coolers and machines so you, the consumer, can buy these items, day after day. This is the central problem with the dependency issue– not being able to give things up that we don’t want or need. Until we as a culture can overcome the bourgeois, we can never overcome a dependence on anything.

“Technology as magic” is a concerning concept. We look at technologies that represent this fad– worshiping technology and using it as a magic fix, an instant liberator from the forces of boredom. Many ad campaigns show SUV’s climbing mountain terrain, glistening in the sun as their fresh paint and unscuffed tires as if it had rolled right off the lot and into the Sierra Nevadas. This kind of imagery preys upon people– the companies will even admit to as much. The marketers know that people are insecure and bored and whimsical, so they build and market a car directly toward these kinds of people, and that car becomes the sport utility vehicle. A magic pill in our increasingly magical world.

So what, then, would we have to do to eliminate cars? We would have to rethink as a culture what we value in terms of material possessions and branding. We would need to once again realize what the concepts of distance are. We need to outlaw strip malls and become more locally focused instead of forever keeping our interests set on sights far away. We need to extend city public transportation further into the suburbs, allowing more and more people to take advantage of the services offered by the public trust.

The personal automobile needs to become a thing of the past if we are to secure a brighter future for our society. We need to find more sustainable energies if we are to power cars in electric or hydrogen means, and it is simply not possible to generate enough power to sustain an entire society based on electric or hydrogen-powered cars as well as all the current power needs, as pretty and idealistic as the ideas seem to us.

Knowledge, one of the most valuable things to us as a people, is the thing that separates us from the animals and helps us advance forward in math, science, art, music and so on. Knowing how to throw a football, hit a baseball or dribble a basketball are among the least important abilities to the advancement and betterment of us as a people. With this in mind, it is only logical that a professor at a university should get paid more than a sports coach at that same university, especially when it is run by the government, much like the University of Iowa. Sadly, this is not the case. In fact it is far from it. The average salary of a college football coach is a mind blowing one million dollars, while the average professor makes around ninety-four thousand dollars. The average coach makes over ten times as much as a professor.

This controversy is very important to me because I am going to college to be a teacher. To see that the state of education in this country is so backwards that teachers are making far less then a sports coach, is very concerning for many reasons. One reason is that if all this money is being pumped into sports, then that is where the attention is going as well. Also, with No Child Left Behind legislation, fine arts programs in schools are getting cut. Why not sports programs first? There is also the issue of money; even though money is not why most teachers, including myself want to be teachers. The low pay can turn away even the best natured people.

As an aspiring teacher, I think that the general goal of education is to better oneself and improve upon the world as it is today. I think we can all agree on this point. If that is the case then how can we possibly accomplish it when the government is allowing colleges that are under their control to pay a professor a tenth of what a coach makes? Education should be the main focus right now because we as a nation are falling behind in education to Europe and Asia. Another problem that arises from team sports in schools is students miss practices and classes for games in other cites. I think that this is totally unacceptable because the student’s education is a higher priority than an extracurricular activity, such as a sport. As the strongest nation economically, there is no reason for the U.S. to be falling behind in anything, especially education. Although it is inexcusable that the government is allowing this to happen in the schools that it runs, the government is not alone in the blame. We, the people of the United States, are to blame. We focus so much attention and value on things other than education that this problem has gone virtually unnoticed. Knowledge is not perceived to be cool; knowledge does not get you the winning goal, but being able to throw the skin of a deceased pig down a field does. This is the reason we are falling behind; we put too much of our focus on things like sports. When you say the word college, most people don’t think degree anymore; they think baseball, basketball, or football.

Team sports are not to be confused with physical education. Horace Mann said in the Report of The Massachusetts Board Of Education “In the worldly prosperity of mankind, health and strength are indispensable ingredients…”. I believe this to be true; physical education is a pivotal part of a well rounded education, but I also do not believe that sports teams are a pivotal part of a well rounded physical education. Knowing this, there are two plans that I believe would fix this horrendous problem.

The first to rid ourselves of this problem is to eliminate team sports programs completely from public schools. Let sports teams exist in private venues whose competitions and practices take place outside school hours. This would allow sports to continue to be a form of entertainment, but prohibit it from interfering with the activities of the young players’ education, which is far more valuable than a team sport.

The second solution is to take the money being spent on sports and allocate more of it to the school and less to the sports program. It would be beneficial to make sports related absences inexcusable. Even the money that is made by sports programs should be reallocated to the school. That is if the point of the sports programs is really to help better their athletes.

The time for change is now. Coaches for college sports do not deserve the same pay as a college professor much less ten times as much. We are falling behind in education, there is no way around it, and there is no amount of footballs thrown or baskets made that will help.

I am an art and art education major so the discussion of what is and is not art is a very important to me. On http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/ there is a discussion titled “Derek Matravers on the Definition of Art.”

            In this discussion, they went through the different theories about what art really is and how it could be gauged. One of the first ideas is that beautiful objects cause a state that is more complex but similar to pleasure. The patterns of shapes and lines are the definition of this beauty that causes this complex pleasure feeling. The idea of the beauty is something that is not a personal matter.  In other words, one can say: “I like this,” because it is stating a personal preference to the piece of work. One cannot say or should not say: “This is beautiful,” because this statement forces others to either agree or disagree with what you are saying. The problem with this theory is that we are the best judge of what gives us the most pleasure and then, in turn, what is most beautiful. The creator of this theory then tries to exclude anything personal (i.e. things like color, texture and size) and makes beauty only about form, shape and line, which he thinks are a universal standard that everyone could say is or is not beautiful.

I do agree with the first part of the statement that the idea of beauty gives a person a form of complex pleasure and is the very essence of what makes us different and in no way can this feeling of beauty be standardized or made universal. I believe that something being beautiful and giving us that “complex pleasure” is a form of art, but that in itself fatally contradicts the rest of the aforementioned theory. I do not believe that there is anyway that beauty can be gauged on a universal scale, that is to say, I do not believe that there can be a universal standard of beauty. Throughout the discussion, they say that some art is and some art is not beautiful, which is my point. The beauty of a piece of art is too subjective and too dependent on the viewers’ perspective and experience for one person to assert that this piece of art is beautiful and this piece of art is not. This is some what pretentious. But, if there were 55 percent of the art world that thought it was beautiful and 45 percent thought that it was not beautiful, would it then be democratically considered art? This question really is two questions in one. One question being: what is the definition of the “art world” and the other being: how do things come to be part of the so called “art world?”

 Some philosophers say that things become part of the art world because of social links to the art world, in other words, things are art once they become associated with the art world. With this definition, a few problems come to me. One problem is, if a work that could be considered art is made and the person that created it has no idea that this “art world” exist and that person does not show the painting to anybody, is it still art simply because of the fact that it is has the potential to be art or because of some unspoken definition of what art really is? Another problem is the act of becoming associated with the “art world.” How does an object become part of the art world? Who decides? Do other people have a say in it? My answer to these questions is, that like the art itself, I believe the “art world” to be a very personal thing. My view of the “art world” is probably somewhat narrower in scope then a lot of other people’s perception of the “art world.” This includes one of the men brought up in the discussion; he thought that in order to be in the “art world” one only has to believe yourself part of the “art world.” This definition, to me, has too wide of a scope, but like I said, I think that the “art world” is as subjective as the art within it. This will help me in explaining my answer to the other question: how do things become part of the art world? Because my definition of the “art world” could be different from another person’s “art world,” the best definition I can come up with is art becomes part of someone’s personal “art world” when a person or people within their “art world” whom they trust claim it to be art.

When examining a cellular phone, at first one may think that it is an unnecessary device aimed at being frivolous and looking like you’re constantly busy. These are not, however, the limits of the cellular phone in any respect. The cell phone’s use outweighs even its cultural negatives. It allows the portability of personal communication at a level never before seen by man. It facilitates the spread of the Internet into mediums never imagined. It makes easy the storing of vast quantities of telephone numbers into the database of each phone. The usefulness of the cell phone dwarf the implications that it brings to our consciousness as a culture and as a people.

We must examine not only our own lives, but the lives of others who do not possess the technologies we do. We will use, for the lack of a better example in our current world climate, Africa. Most countries in Africa have marginal percentages of the levels of penetration we have of the cellular phone. Many of these countries are barren even of the computer, and by proxy the Internet Even landline phones, in some parts of the continent, are rare or even nonexistent. So how, then, would we explain a cellular phone to an animistic tribe in the deepest jungles of the Congo? How would we tell a destitute woman that we can call our friends halfway around the world with a piece of plastic and silicon that costs an amount of money equivalent to her yearly wages? How does a starving child know what a text message means, or how he could use it? It seems so absurd to think that such a device exists in such an absurd world. Seems to be an issue of priority.

Cellular phones were not always the marvels of miniaturization, innovation, and communication that they are today. When cellular phones were first developed, they cost several thousand dollars, were bulky and unreliable, had almost no coverage, and were a massive eyesore. This is in concert with many technologies of the past– the first automobiles, the first firearms, the first televisions, the first landline telephones– but still, the proponents of these technologies soldiered on, garnering the needed publicity that these needed to succeed. Often mocked by the public for spending massive amounts of money for useless items, these people became the norm once everyone rushed out and bought the next generation. Smaller, cheaper cars, televisions, and computers all led to the ubiquity of these items, forever locked within the public psyche as just another part of daily life. The cell phone was no exception.

Every day, millions of Americans awaken and leave their homes, cellphones in tow. They are easily reachable, connected into the grid of society, inseparable to the network of airwaves and accountability. Cell phones, however, are becoming even less of a simple communications device and more of a status symbol. Small phones, flip phones, phones with keyboards on them, phones that take pictures, video, and sound. All these are qualities of the best phones on the market and the individuals that posses them are top-rung on the social ladders, especially in college and high school. But unalarmingly, the older generations do not have any need for such immersion into such an illogical world. My grandfather has a simple, battered cell phone that doesn’t have a camera, doesn’t play music, and doesn’t even have a full-color screen. Utility is far more important in a technology, and this seeps into other technologies besides the cellular phone.

I think that it is fair to say that there is a certain allure, both aesthetically and intrinsically, of the cellular phone. It is not a light investment to make, financially or emotionally, to purchase a $300 device that permanently connects you to the modern culture the moment you give your number away. Therefore, it is not hard to imagine how connected people become to these items. The constantly use them, perhaps not even out of necessity but out of desire to get a large volume of use out of something so expensive. Soon, they become part of a person. It’s something they always have with them, not unlike their watch, their wallet, or their keys. In a way, we become subliminally connected to these devices in ways that we don’t comprehend or even think about. It is the same phenomenon with television, computers, iPods, and even something so basic as credit cards or watches.

The very idea of a neutral technology seems at first to seem a bit ridiculous, but then one comes to realize that all technologies, at the basic level, are neutral. A technology by itself has no power to act upon or affect a culture or a people– such is the curse of a construct that is absent of consciousness. It is the constructs that do possess consciousness (i.e. Humanity) that influence technologies to have negative influences upon a culture or a group of people. The harnessing of electricity was surely never imagined as a form of capital punishment. The television was not invented to give birth to two generations of children who are bombarded with media and rarely get the exercise they need. Few things are created and left to be for a single application. Technology is not the culprit in any sense of the word– the true hijackers of our culture are the victims themselves, perpetuating the problems by reapplying old technologies into roles ill-suited to them.

Human interaction has changed so much in the last thirty years, first with the Internet and then with things like instant messaging, e-mail, and cellular phones. Now, in our modern and progressive digital age, cellphones have taken those three individual technologies and made them the nexus of functionality for these devices. A person can now hold a conference call, text a friend in New York, and be instant messaging her mother in Asia, all at the same time from a device the size of a candy bar. While this would be certainly boggling to Marconi– who only imagined a world where we could talk to one another across an ocean– such things are ubiquitous with our everyday lives. We give no second thought to what these technologies mean to us because they’ve simply always been here. We take advantage of every feature with ease and bravado, throwing caution to the wind and roughly tackling technology and throwing it to the ground triumphantly.

So herein lies the coup de grace, of you will. While we as a culture, especially in America, have dropped the ball on erring the side of caution, we have developed a device that is incredibly useful. We have abused this device beyond the imaginings of its creators, not unlike most technologies. I’m looking at you, Enrico Fermi, Karl Benz, Tim Berners-Lee, Thomas Edison, Marconi, Davinci, and all the other inventors whose minds never fully grasped what their creations would mean for the world they lived in, for better or for worse.

When I was younger I was both confused and a little bit frustrated by church more specifically the Catholic Church, fortunately as I got older my confusion gave way but it gave way to more frustration.

             I served my elementary and junior high school sentence at a small private Catholic school in my home town. My experience there was, I am sure, no worse then anybody else’s, church twice a week and not a clue what they were yelling about until about the sixth or seventh grade. Along with church came teachers that frowned upon questions and praised conformity. I couldn’t tell you an exact day or moment that I finally understood and realized what it was they where saying, but it was that same moment that I realized I was not and never would be a Catholic.

            In the eighth grade I was blessed enough to have a teacher that questioned the teachings of the church and thought the religion should be a more openly explored thing. This helped me figure out why specifically I didn’t like the Catholic Church.

            It turns out that the Catholic Church in my mind is more dictatorship then religion. If the infrastructure wasn’t enough to turn my fourteen year old mind away then the teachings were or should I say lack there of. When the priest was done yelling at us for not coming to church (mind you he was yelling about this during church) and telling us, in a not so subtle way, that we were all going to hell, he would give us a few pointers as to how to lead good lives and make it to heaven and they where as follows:

1. Never use a condom.

(Propagation is the key to a successful religion.)

2. Steer clear of gay people.

(They obviously subvert the goals of the church…those goals being mainly to take over the world.)

3. Last but not least you MUST give money to the church.

(This is key in the goal stated above…world domination.)

            After realizing that these were the only three pieces of “advice” they had I felt that as a fourteen year old I had gotten what I could out of Catholic Church/school. Being obviously unsatisfied with my past religious experience at about the age of sixteen I started looking at other religions/ways of life. I found that infrastructure aside most Christian based churches offer little more then the Catholic Church which was practically nonexistent. So I started looking at non-Christian religions and found Buddhism to be the closest thing to a standard religion that fits my way of living.

            I don’t claim Buddhism for a few simple reasons, one my mother would faint, two although I have a basic idea of the religion I don’t feel as though I have enough knowledge to truly call myself a Buddhist and last is that I don’t feel as though I need a label to define the way I live my life and/or my moral beliefs.