The Christmas Spirit

Let me talk to you about a very famous man associated with this time of the year.  His story is very well known throughout most of the world. His main goal in life is to bring others joy, and often as children we grow up believing in him, but as life goes on we either forget or he must only be a fairytale because it's too fantastic to be true. He has a beard, kind eyes and always dotes a genuine smile. He is very wise and gives great advice. He knows what is going on in the lives of every human on the planet and loves to reward us for doing good. Especially around December, everyone tries to be a little more like him and feels great peace as they do so, regardless of religious inclination. He loves everyone, and those who believe in him usually have never seen him and go their whole lives without ever accomplishing it. Who am I talking about? Jesus or Santa? 

Some people hate on Christmas because they feel it forces Jesus on everyone. As a Christian, I still understand that you may not want to believe in God for various reasons, and I have no issue with that. To be honest I feel your pain when I see so much of a push for extreme feminism and gay rights. It kind of goes against what I have believed my whole life to an extent (feel free to contact me for clarification because it would take too long to explain in one post.) Given that we all know how it feels to have ideas forced upon us, I'd like to show how a good natured  secular Christmas doesn't differ that much from a good natured Christian one. 

Jesus and Santa are the key; they both personify the attributes that constitute what people see as good. I don't care which one you pick as a role model if you end up doing good things and feeling the peace that I do when I follow the teachings of Jesus. Christmas is about peace on earth and goodwill to men. You don't have to believe in Jesus to want that, and that is what we as Christians are trying to portray when we put up a nativity scene in our lawn or say "Merry Christmas" to you. We aren't trying to say "you have to believe in Jesus because we do". 

So if you're not Christian but you approve of Santa's idealized attitude towards life, you will agree somewhat with the teachings of Jesus. You don't have to worship him like I do, but you can take the time to benefit from the holiday that erupted from the desire to celebrate his birth in your own way. Spend some time with your family and love everyone a little more. 

Merry Christmas, all. Let's all get along. 

Ferguson Misunderstandings

This article has nothing to do with the innocence or guilt of officer Wilson, nor of the demeanor or actions of the late Mr Brown. Those have already been scrutinized and over analyzed again and again for too long. This has to do with what is going through everyone's heads that has made the discussion of the subject so volatile.

I tried to sum up on Facebook in one concise post the thought processes of both sides of the debate; the idea was that those siding with Wilson felt that accusers jumped the gun when they called him racist and violent, while those against him were using emotion from past racist events similar to this were automatically assuming that those accusations were correct. In part, I was right, but I quickly learned that there was a while new dimension to the argument.

I began to comment back and forth with a young man on the post believing my assumptions accurate. He posted an article on the frequency of police indictments, indicating that the court system was rigged in Wilson's favor. I claimed that the frequency of indictments had nothing to do with the innocence or guilt of Wilson and that it was a completely separate issue. He then contested that the prosecutor failed to proceed in an objective and consistent manner with the witnesses, citing sources and they were all pretty legitimate articles. I respond with other newspaper entries and statements made by police officers and whatnot.

The conversion got slightly more heated than calm, but stayed much more civil than my escapade in April about modest clothing. We ended up agreeing that neither one of us had the answer to whether out not be should be indicted or punished for his actions, but we did agree that there are issues with the court system that need to get fixed. We never once even brought up anything about race in our banter, which surprised me a little at first.

I'm glad for the time that I took to slug it out and try to stand my ground on the issue some listening to my opponent by rephrasing what I thought he was trying to say. When I did, he was able to clarify why what I had asserted initially was uninformed and I learned a whole lot. I'm excited to see what my next controversial conversation had to offer for my non formal education about life.

Click here to read the full conversation

I would like to link two events together to pose a moral question

Event #1
A few months ago I had a telemarketing company repeatedly call me asking for some lady that must have had a similar number previous to me having the phone. Having worked in a call center, I was very respectful to each agent add they asked me if I was interested in their products for a disease that I do not have. I understand that they are just doing their job as directed by their employers, and felt no need to attack the agent personally. Mulitple times I requested that they remove me from their calling list, and it finally seems to have worked. Upon researching the small claims court system, I learned that I can receive hundreds of dollars for harassment.

Event #2
In my philosophy class we talked about the McDonald's lawsuit in which the plaintiff initially received multi-million dollar settlements from the company for having 180° coffee burn her severely and costing her $20,000 in surgery from the burns. This was used as a case to lead a cause against tort reform, which limits when and how one can file a class action lawsuit. That can prevent truly innocent people from receiving justice while, it is true, putting a stop to frivolous lawsuits.


My thought process is as follows:

1. Technically I could make some decent money by reporting the company and showing record of the phone calls. By all means I have been harassed by the company
2. I definitely could use some money for college but...
3. I didn't lose $500 worth of time, so receiving that much moolah for my discomfort seems a little steep of a charge. 

So my question is: though I am completely in the confines of the law in pursuing that money, is it moral for me to collect that money? Why or why not? I want to know if my case would be a "frivolous lawsuit" or if it is a valid way to tell companies not to harass people in direct violation of the law. Tell me what you think. 

A Negated Affirmative: Political Duct Tape

The following video is an excerpt from an interview with Thomas Sowell, a Havard graduate who has, throughout the decades, studied and commented on the effects of different actions taken by the government, especially those of feminism, affirmative action and racialism.

The rest of this post is a paper that I wrote in my freshman English class at Southern Virginia University. I don't remember what grade I got on it, but I do feel that it brings up some excellent points. Sowell discusses several of these points in the video, though he talks mostly about how affirmative actions affects the workplace. The focus of my paper was that of college admission and scholarships. 

 http://youtu.be/JENCxjbARFM  

  

A Negated Affirmative 

by Clark Lindsey

Duct tape offers a temporary, superficial and sometimes damaging solution for holding things together. Likewise, affirmative action as applied in the college application process not only sidesteps the underlying issue of equal opportunity, it injures society on a deeper level through a cruel irony; this attempt to defend the rights of minorities has in a twisted, yet predictable way become the driving force of reverse discrimination by diminishing the value of hard work through unwarranted handouts.
  
Affirmative action is defined as action taken to prevent discrimination (be it against race, gender, religion, etc). At the time of the issue of Executive Order 10925, in which affirmative action is first defined and introduced, the circumstances were rather dire for the minority population, with Jim Crow laws and prejudice saturating the system. This order promised minorities better job security, better prospects of being admitted to state-funded colleges, and more superior career possibilities than previously available. But a hidden, then subtle issue arose: how far should we assist the minorities before it has become too much?

Garret Hardin sheds a little light on the subject in his “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor”. He submits a dilemma in which there are fifty people in a lifeboat with room for sixty total and one hundred more people tread the water around the boat. His query follows as thus: “[W]hich 10 do we let in?” (359) Naturally [according to current attitudes towards affirmative action], the minorities deserve our attention and undying devotion, above love of self and the good of society. As today’s connotation of affirmative action asserts, the part-black, part-Native American woman should be among the first admitted, the others being the Atheist homosexual and the illegal immigrant, regardless of the collective importance of their well being. Furthermore, the children of any Congressmen, former or present should be high in consideration because of the status of their parent. Basically, whether or not they have a family, a job, or prior demonstration of academic and/or societal propensities merits little to no significance in comparison to their other, uncontrollable factors like parental status in society, race or gender. Faulty logic clearly grounds that conclusion.

Admission to higher education deserves no more interchangeability between rights and privileges as the lifeboat quandary. Why should minority students be given a leg up over the stereotypical white male unless they have exhibited a finer proclivity in scholastic abilities? Now, before I delve further into this subject, the reader should understand that I represent what I imagine to be one of the smallest minority groups in existence: Cherokee blood runs through my veins, the Mormon religion characterizes my morals, and my parents adopted me from birth. Yet no monies from schools or random institutions, let alone the government pay for my college education based on any of these aspects because I don’t find it ethically correct to accept such funds. I worked long hours at Wal-mart and the local pool to pay for my college, and I find such subsidies non-compliant with affirmative action, seeing as they discriminate recipients based on the very facets that affirmative action forbids. I mention this because hypocrisy doesn’t bode well in academia, and hard work compensates for shortcomings in faculty.
   
The fact that we have the works of Frederick Douglass proves the latter statement. He worked diligently to achieve his goals, and despite dismal circumstances, he succeeded. He was enslaved and sold as live wares for ill-earned gain, yet he reads and writes. Listen to the heartlessness demonstrated by his master and eventually his mistress:
I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years. During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by anyone else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of action immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute. (Douglass)

Now, I do not contend that slavery rests among even the remotest of viable methods for teaching the value of being proactive, but it induced his “various stratagems” which exemplify hard work and resolve. He worked in a “ship-yard”, utilizing the other boys to learn how to read by challenging their knowledge, contesting that he knew how to read and write better than they, understanding full well that the four letters he had picked up from the labeled boards he worked with didn’t even hold a candle to the skills possessed by those he confronted. This effort epitomizes how people should move up in society; networking logically yields positive results, and humans have a tendency to work harder in adversity.
   
For example, my peoples, the Mormons and the Cherokee, by this nation alone were murdered and driven from their homes because they were different and in the way. Both established new homes, built new lives and moved on, making their plight a part of their tale and vigor—like Douglass, except on a grander scale. Myself, I am adopted, and I jokingly say that my parents picked me off of the clearance rack, and got a handful to deal with, but I still endeavored to become self-sustaining. On a much more serious note, let us not forget the bombings of Hiroshima and the legitimately hellish environment that ensued. Counter-intuitively, “[e]ven while the smoke still rose from the wasteland of total destruction, human goodwill began to go into action as people made their first moves toward recovery and restoration” (289). People push through and become stronger individuals after tribulation, and many different cultures have developed through hardship; therefore, by eliminating financial hardship because of culture you risk redefining the culture as well as encouraging slothfulness. Affirmative actors, as I call those who hypocritically purport to uphold Executive Order 10925, may not realize that giving true handouts to members of minority groups supports laziness—it removes obstacles, and therefore determination and perseverance. The anecdote about giving a man a fish rather than teaching how to fish illustrates my point nicely because of the implication that if we simply give someone in need money to get to college, they have missed the lesson of how to provide for themselves. They will not only expect more in the future, they will become dependent on their supply of fish, and complain loudly and obnoxiously upon its eradication.
   
To conclude, I have always been bamboozled by the legality of questions on college applications that ask for race, nationality, and religion. It makes sense to gather information on gender for housing and social reasons under the names of dating and marriage, but if the others are denied permission to exist in selective policies, why can admissions officials ask these statistics prior to admission? This information should be gathered ad hoc only.
Construe with me an experiment, undertaken by colleges across the nation, in which the same applicants as years previous are reevaluated, minus the controversial information aforementioned. Should one demographic dominate the acceptance rates, the others can then be offered extra help before admittance to college, meaning that they are denied initially, so that the elite of the academic field can compete with the other top scholars and advance society at a faster rate. “It’s ludicrous to say that a student who has not been given the advanced preparation… should expect to be on a ‘level playing field’ and to expect them to do as well as someone who has had the training and support” (qtd. in Dennis).

Apart from the moral reasons for equality, the issue of fairness surfaces as well. Equality is not a direct synonym of fairness or logic, though they often coincide. The government should not make blanket statements concerning fairness because they can only be judged on a case-by-case basis. The title of this essay refers to how the government has nullified its own law by allowing affirmative action to transform into the mishmash it is today. In context, equality means that students should be admitted on both academic and personal merit alone, not on any factor out of their control.

                                                                      

Works Cited:
Dennis, Raoul. “Supreme Court Decision Turning Down Affirmative Action Case Only a Small Victory.” New York Amsterdam News 92.23(2001): 42. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. 12 Oct. 2011.
Doulgass, Frederick. “Learning to Read.” Reading the World: Ideas That Matter. 2nd Ed. Michael Austin. New York: Norton, 2010. 46-50. Print
Hardin, Garret. “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor.” Reading the World: Ideas That Matter. 2nd Ed. Michael Austin. New York: Norton, 2010. 357-67. Print
Oe, Kenzaburo. “The Unsurrendered People.” Reading the World: Ideas That Matter. 2nd Ed. Michael Austin. New York: Norton, 2010. 288-91. Print"

Facebook Haters

Having read of the predicament of the English in the 18th century concerning the amount of poor children running through the streets stealing and begging for food, I have come to appreciate greatly the wisdom of Jonathan Swift in addressing the issue. His "Modest Proposal" in 1729 was to eat the offspring of those who are less fortunate as a delicacy, granting the dregs of society money and cleaning up the public walks for those who are more fortunate.

I wish to follow his example in purporting a solution to hate crimes on the Internet. There are some people out there who post ridiculous comments on their Facebook walls that are just outdated and bigoted. These posts include assertions of genuine beliefs that simply offend the general public because they are not politically correct.

We cannot have people posting thoughts and declarations that go against popular notions and common practices. The emotionally sensitive might have hurt feelings.

In fact, I would l like to thank those who on the Internet have placed themselves on a higher plane than those haters who speak their minds on touchy subjects, or make religious creeds known to everyone. These thought police help to make a non-contentious environment for all others on the Internet. It is likely that if they work hard enough they might be able to achieve that which George Orwell predicted in his book 1984 where even one's own children will turn in their parents for breathing out unintentional blasphemies against the government and currently upheld values in their sleep.

I myself have helped in this great cause at times but found that I do not have the time to constantly patrol the pinboards and Twitter feeds for comments that don't aline with my own. After long internal assessment I have found within myself a lack of courage to continue to attack others for what they believe and have only resorted to recounting what I myself believe.

My proposal is thus: if you ever see post with which you disagree,  please respond in the most inflammatory way conceivable without thinking through the long term consequences. Do not keep in mind the feelings or sentiments of the Facebook haters because they are no longer people. Obviously they always intend only harm and never base any of their perspectives on some sort of truth that they may have picked up through their life experience.

Please refrain from using good communicative skills, or doing any research or deep analysis before replying on your news feed. That would require effort and thought,  sometimes even a reflection of your worldview and might cause an annurism in your brain. Kind anecdotes, or rephrasing what you assume the person might be trying to portray (but has failed to do so) surely couldn't do even the slightest bit of good for internet communities. How outlandish!

These hateful people should also be shunned in public for the spiteful actions of speaking their mind that they think that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, or that abortion is wrong except in very critical circumstances, or that welfare should only be given to those who show work ethic and desires to amount to something in life instead of being a free handout for those who dont want to work. They who scourge the earth with such audacity to say what they think is right should be permanently silenced by none other than imprisonment and the removal of their fingers to never bear false witness about their sickly perceived evils of our culture again. I mean, look at the rude and intolerant nature of this next picture! How can people even say something so arrogant?!

Please join with me by sharing this blog post on your Facebook walls, pinboards and other social networking sites to inform the general population in the fastest means possible so that we can rid ourselves of free speech Nazis that aggravate us by refusing to conform to our wishes. Then maybe we can go back to posting about frivolous things like fashion, professional sports games and comedic performances on American Idol while ignoring important debates and denying the reality of pressing problems that plague our pages with pilfering profanity like traditional values. Cuss words, violence, and pushing pornographic images are much more suitable to our purpose of raising the next generation in peace and understanding. Try to promete those, too. I see that some of us have already caught on to that movement. Keep up the good work!

With an extreme attitude of sarcasm and a prayer that if you have read this you understand what is implied here,

Clark Lindsey, a recovering Facebook Police Expert

Disclaimer: there really are people out there who hate on others using social media. Those people are still human beings, but their actions should not be tolerated. Help put a stop to cyber bullying, but in a nice way. Though three lefts do, two wrongs do not make a right. Often those who harass others are insecure themselves, and as I have discussed in this post, it is possible to go too far on the offensive in the name of justice.

(Scroll down and read my other posts to learn more about my personal escapades and the mistakes of myself and others. Nobody is perfect, but we can all progress if we try! I am amenable to constructive criticism, so feel free to contact me with ideas. If they're messed up I simply won't respond and delete your comments, so please don't waste our mutual time with real hateful remarks. Sarcasm is appreciated to an extent.)

Moral Relativism: Evidence That God Exists

Having studied different moral theories of Kant, Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and others in my philosophy class, it has astounded me that these incredibly intelligent men differ by such large margins in defining right and wrong. Deontologists like Kant claim that exceptions can't be made on moral laws based on circumstances; if something is not moral in some circumstances it isn't ever moral. Consequentialists like Mill assert that the ends justify the means; sometimes actions that are immoral in some circumstances are moral if they bring about greater happiness when all is said and done.

Most compelling movies and TV shows will present these competing moral claims to make the viewer try to discern for his or her own self good from evil. Often the villain will purport that his actions are only to bring world peace or to grant the people freedom, but his method is to kill millions of innocents in the process. Other times it is the hero that decides to forego killing the villain because they believe that killing is always wrong,  but their mistake also costs the lives of many bystanders or friends as a consequence.

These moral dilemmas,  and the widely variant responses concerning what should be done, often create societal discord about politics and religion or the lack thereof. Our differences as human beings sometimes lead to war or governmental coups, family feuds or neighborhoods and church congregations shunning some members. Obviously humanity is divided over issues such as abortion, gay marriage, guns, animal rights, religion, stem cell research and myriad other topics, and that is only taking into account current national views on the matters,  let alone global views that have changed over time and vary by location. Just think about how chaotic it would be if every human being ever to exist were to sit in a council to decide right and wrong by unanimous vote.  It would never happen.

Despite this idea,  each person generally tries to do what is good, with many exceptions,  but even wicked people tend to justify their actions in side way shape or form. This notion of doing what is right comes from what in the LDS church is labeled as the "light of Christ", or the inner feelings that one has to follow God and be a good person, also known as a conscience to the secular world. Everyone has a conscience even if they chose not to listen to its advice. Even amongst all the arguing and bickering over right and wrong there are some pretty universal constants in the moral world. Lying for the sake of lying is not moral, nor is killing innocent people. Taking that which belongs to someone else is also immoral. However because there are exceptions of people not caring about others and placing personal survival as the number one priority, relying on humanity by itself to truly define right and wrong is not possible. This is partiality due to the fact that when other people place their moral emphasis in a different way it is a man's nature to claim that the other people have used flawed or corrupted logic to reach their conclusions.

Now,  part of God's nature is that He understands everything perfectly and makes no logical errors ever. Let's out it this way: God understands the workings of the entire universe of which mankind through its "science" hasn't even been able to indisputably outline the parameters. He knows a lot more than all of mankind put together and has an eternity of experience using that knowledge and dealing with humans via creation and seeing world's come and go. Granted that His knowledge is without fault, He had the right and ability to discern good from evil perfectly and completely. Man does not have that right,  never had had the right and honestly never will have the right. Therfore, God can instruct man on moral issues and by following His directions man can live a moral life.

Why do I claim that moral relativism evinces the existence of God? Because man does indeed affirm that good and evil exist, but cannot agree upon the line between the two. In order for morality to exist,  there must be a method to define it universally otherwise morality becomes nothing more than opinion, and if that's the case nothing is immoral because someone will always have a different opinion. Since morality and opinion do not equal each other, a party outside of humanity must dictate morality and immorality, and the party must comprehend every situation fully to make the judgement call. The only being ever conceived that can do so is God Himself.

I then approached my professor with this hypothesis and inquired to hear what rebuttals philosophers might give to this question.  His response is that atheists will claim that God doesn't exist, but that only means that atheists do not believe in morality, rather in opinion alone. If that is the case than those that believe in no God could potentially assert that they can do no wrong in their own eyes, which means that laws exist purely as social contracts and not to prevent evil from prevailing in society.

I believe in God for more than rationalizations, but sometimes it is nice to hear logic that supports my convictions. If all of this was worded strangely and hard to understand I will try to sum it up in one sentence. People believe in good and evil but can't agree on the parameters, making morality a matter of opinion. In order for pure morality to exist it would have to be universal and not change based on social acceptability as it tends to do with mankind. God can see all things clearly enough to be able to outline the distinct between right and wrong. Therfore if you believe in morality you believe in God or in the least a supreme being.

Standing Up While Sitting Down

I hold hope for the communicative skills of the rising generation after yesterday's Life and Ethics class discussion about abortion. This topic is heavily debated upon,  and I specifically have not yet posted on it for good reason. The only reason I have chosen to talk about it today is because I was able to see my very culturally diverse class go head to head without being at each other's throats. Opinions clearly differed even amongst those of the same religion, and, as usual, my opinion presented a lonely outlier for the group that certainly sparked people's interest and got some individuals who normally don't speak in class to repeatedly raise their hands to respond to my viewpoint. In fact,  the whole class turned from asking the professor questions to asking yours truly what I believed,  and, to their credit, even why I held my beliefs.

Normally when you hear about this kind of occurrence in a church magazine the writer will portray the discussion as a crucial missionary experience, which in a sense I guess it was, but the church has no official stance on abortion that I am aware of, so I kind of was on my own and representing me myself and I. So was everyone else,  and the battle was indeed for truth's sake. As students presented their individual arguments, other students would call them out for using logical fallacies  such as over generalizations or assumptions on what a person might believe if they belong to a particular faction of beliefs. Then the original student would respond to the refutation with a defense for their argument and the truth of the matter slowly sifted itself out. My standpoint in particular was attacked brutally, but not in an insulting manner. As was I, my questioners only sought to know what was right and what was wrong.

We had ask read three articles on the subject and they all failed to mention abstinence from sex as a preventative measure for abortion. Each in turn laid out why or why not the woman has a moral right to decide to end a potential human life because her financial circumstances are difficult or her mental health isn't where it should be in order to make it through the nine month pregnancy let alone motherhood. This mindset is bright about by the labeling of the two sides of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: either you believe in preserving life or maintaining free agency. This is not the case. Many people fall somewhere generally in the middle of the spectrum on this topic.

For instance, in my case I believe the woman does have a choice concerning how to treat her own body; different in my opinion however is that I believe that choice comes before having a child as opposed to after becoming pregnant. This view was partially accepted but everyone's concern was that people in general enjoy having sex, so they wondered if I thought sex was a bad thing. I appreciated this question because it gave room to eliminate misunderstanding. Very important in clear communication.

I don't believe that it is bad. I believe that it is something to take into consideration that the biological reason we can procreate is to have children. If the only motive for having sex is to have fun and experience enjoyment one must weigh out the risks, just as one must determine if skydiving or riding a roller coaster is worth the risk. Though safety precautions may be in place,  accidentes happen. I love roller coasters, but each time I get on one I have to accept the possible consequences of my decision.

Nobody liked the answer, but no one could refute it either. Morality comes down to the idea of setting priorities: which ideals must be upheld above all others? if physical pleasure is number one and avoiding having a baby is farther down the list, then go ahead and do what you will. If your priority is to have a career and never have children, then to play it safe you may be celibate your whole life. Seeing the question of abortion as such a matter of deciding whether or not to have unprotected sex and dealing with the results makes the debate rest only on cases of rape and severe health threats for the woman. A person always maybe free to choose whether or not to sacrifice his or her life for that of another.

Anyway that was my standpoint and when the class ended five or six students approached me to explain that they disagreed with me but that we had had a very good conversation concerning the matter and today heard things they had not considered before. They expressed to me their wishes not to offend me in anyway shape or form and that I was not a monster in their eyes for holding my ground. This exhibits a rather different human characteristic than what I have seen before when making a stand as my previous posts show. During the whole conversation it was blatant that emotions were high for everyone,  but no one insulted each other or set up strawman arguments. People admitted any flaws that they had in their argument, and I feel that the class grew wonderfully from having the conversation. We were all able to set one priority straight: respecting those around us and establishing healthy relationships (not a dominant and submissive relationship nor a constant battle for it to become such) heavily outweighs being right all the time.