Love and that ever Imposing Gray Area

Upon reading Steven Pinker's article creatively entitled 'Crazy in Love' many thoughts came to mind. I do agree with much that Pinker has to say and all of his introduction rings true with me as well as his closing statements from economist Robert Frank and so on. The trouble that I have with this article lies in the middle. He seems to be saying that, as Chris Rock states, "A man is only as faithful as his options." In that he is saying that if there isn't an intrinsical proximity infatuation (thank you Jason Lee, Cameron Crowe, and everyone involved in the movie Vanilla Sky), that if we aren't smitten with joy and lust with the person, then we are bound to an unfaithful future. I argue, that rational reason for picking a partner is essential to its outstanding success. Perceiving the person's emotions and future actions helps us generate whether the partner that we are currently with is an appropriate candidate for future marriage. Even Pinker's statement to "Look for someone who is emotionally committed to you because you are you" generates problems. These statements are ignoring rational thoughts of general compatibility that can be perceived through rational thought. Someone may love the hell out of you, but if you disagree on almost every important subject, such as religion, children, drug use, financial status, even if you disagree on a location to settle down, this can cause a very difficult situation. In order for love to habitually exist amongst two partners there must be more than love. In order for a life long partnership to exist they must be compatible on many levels or at least understanding of their partners stance on nearly every subject, otherwise arguments or breaches in communication will result and an unhappy marriage or divorce will eventually become an inevitability. This is where we enter the gray area of finding an appropriate life partner. There are many levels on which partners have to be at least somewhat connected upon (why do you think e-harmony matches you on 26 seperate dimensions?) in order for a companionship to fundamentally exist. For example, different people crave different amounts of commitment vs. spontaneity. Different couples crave separate amounts of commitment in that they want their partner to be steady and possess an assurance that they will be there for you all the time or that you need some time apart to flourish as a couple. Some couples, or people individually, crave to always do the same thing and follow a set routine while others want surprises along every curve of the road that they experience as a couple. There are countless numbers of factors that contribute to being a successful couple. The only thing for sure is that it is based upon an individual basis and any one person surely cannot be given a general rule for finding a suitable partner for them as it is always upon an individual basis. So in order to find the soul mate right for you, you must consider who you are yourself and what you consider happiness and fulfillment before you engage in a thought process confirming that the person you are with is really right for you or not.

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War and Peace

It seams that the overall concept of Richard Rhodes article 'Living With the Bomb' is how war can create peace. How destruction can create diplomacy. Let me restate that, how an impending apocalypse can create a mutual understanding amongst world leaders. This article states that through the creation of nuclear weapons we have since formed better relations with countries who would have otherwise wanted to bomb the hell out of each other. I think that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) was merely a sensible result that had been caused by the world wide example of the potential devastation of nuclear weapons (I.E. Hiroshima). No country led by a even somewhat respectable, sensible, even power hungry leader, wants to destroy a region or culture of people and ruin that area for decades. It almost seems to me that countries who are attaining to gain nuclear weapons are doing so for their own protection. They want the world to see them as a threat. It's like your little brother or sister who started to lift weights and now you have to take them seriously. They don't necessarily want to kick your ass they just want to be recognized that the potential is there. They may also want nuclear technology to say to a potentially invading country (pardon my profane english) "Don't fuck with us, we got the nuke," and not necessarily have to employ it but the simple danger of having it is enough to scare them from attempting to do so. This being said I do have to agree with Rhodes, as well as many others, in saying that the danger does exist in terrorists gaining nuclear technology. But, how can we eliminate that threat? It's nearly as impossible as preventing a college student to stop stealing music off the internet. That being said, I have no viable solution to the problem of prevention only that it should be thoroughly processed and thought out before it's too late. Maybe I'll respond later with some possible solutions to preventing terrorists from receiving nuclear weaponry, but until I attain a higher IQ and a degree in Advanced Weaponry Prevention Tactics, let's just cross our fingers. :/

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Visual Argument

In response to the visual argument we had done in class, I thought it'd bring it to my blog for some supplemental material. As you can see this Persuasive message tries to warn people of the dangers of having unprotected sex. I believe it proves to be an effective persuasive message due to the humor of the picture and yet it presents a striking reality. It compares going out into gunfire without any armor (protection) with having unprotected sex. Really, this isn’t far from the truth because either one may cause serious body harm and even death (even if death is more remote in sex). This all just adds to the effectiveness of the message but will it stick out in someone’s mind when they find themselves in ‘the heat of battle’?

The Greater Good

There are many agruments that attack this subject. Lets say that your girlfriend is strapped to railroad tracks and there is a train about to come and crush her, taking her from you forever. Your only option to divert the train is a switch that changes the trains tracks. The tracks that you could change it to contain a swarm of people leaving a baseball game, therefore if you switch the tracks you'll inevitably kill around 80 people. What do you do? These are difficult decisions one must make to sacrifice innocent life for innocent life. What presents the greater good?
This argument poses many interesting questions but I find that it can relate to Watzman's 'When You Have to Shoot First' article. He states that sometimes suspicious people who very well could be innocent may have to be killed under certain circumstances. I think that I would have to agree with him as long as proper procedure has been taken and appropriate threat is drawn. His discussion about the 27 year old innocent electrician who was shot dead does pose many questions. But it's a game of what do you do? Do you sacrifice the innocent life because there is a probable chance that he isn't, just because he displays all the characteristics of someone who is about to blow you and the surrounding 4 blocks to smithereens?
I think that I would have to agree with Watzman's argument that precautions must be taken when the situation that presents itself may even be construed one time out of every hundred. It seems to fit well with the old cliche' which has now been appropriated to so many movie villains 'In order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs'. But in this case, in order to save the eggs, sometimes you have to make an omelet.


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Sexting

Hey everyone,
Not here really to blog about anything per say but to give my readers something to think about. I recently came across some articles about sexting. This is a new fad that I'm sure many have engaged in but didn't know this was the term for it and have not thought about the repercussions that it may bring. Just thought everyone should be aware of the consequences. Here are some articles about this latest technological controversy. Does this provide a good example of a slippery slope or an exploited loophole in U.S Law or is it a necessary enforcement to protect people?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512798,00.html

http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_12094358

http://capitalnews9.com/content/headlines/137035/parents-learn-about--sexting-/Default.aspx

War: A Virus?

War is an interesting topic since so many articles have been written about prevention of war and peace. William James' essay The Moral Equivalent of War explains how war is a historical necessity and how it has shaped our society today. Most people would never take a war back because of the good that has resulted in the end (ie the civil war or world war II). But I tend to have a different stance on the subject of war. War is a forceful way to spread one's ideas. It's a way to prove who is right and who is wrong. It's almost like a virus of the body trying to prove who is more powerful. All human society's, like virus', attempt to spread and war is a forceful way we achieve that in the most extreme of circumstances. Granted, most of the time when war resembles a virus is when one side is considered 'in the wrong' (such as Adolf Hitler) and they must spread their ideals onto the rest of the world. I don't believe the metaphor is wrong however because some similarities can be drawn. War is the virus of man, the equivalent of an attacking outsider on an internal body. The circumstances are undeniably similar the only difference is that when a virus is rid of the body stays the same but when a human virus (ie War) is defeated the world becomes a better place because of it.

Global Warming

Global warming is a sensitive issue. To some it evokes pictures of necessary immediate action while to others it means a vastly overrated hoax. Either way it's an important issue in the public eye. Gore's An Inconvenient Truth poses interesting facts that are easily debatable but provide a striking view of the subject. Although most of his arguments possess more holes in it than a sieve. His arguments hit home and this is why his story has gained so much ground. While I personally don't really consider myself on the global warming bandwagon I can't deny it's persuasiveness. What really is the harm in prevention? As Gregg Easterbrook says in his article Some Convenient Truths' most plans to reduce pollution and correct human wrongs done on the planet have been relatively cost efficient and have provided us with little economic or personal sacrifice. To say no to a prevention plan that has no personal or national effect almost seems like taking an unnecessary risk. It kind of reminds me of a religious outlook that some people hold. That the implications of believing in god us to heaven while not believing lead us to hell. So if we believe then we have something to gain but nothing to lose while if we don't believe we have heaven to lose and nothing to gain. As opposed to the proverbial win-win or lose-lose situation it's a win-null situation versus a lose-null situation. Which would you rather have?

Ethnicity vs Culture

What dictates who a person is? In today's society we have such a mix of ethnicity. In 2000 census the new ethnic group 'mixed race' was added. This is due to the large mixing because there aren't as many ethnic barriers today as there were in past generations. It's no longer taboo for whites, blacks, Middle Easterners, Native Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Mexicans, Latinos, etc. to intermarry. Children from interracial marriages had a difficult time being accepted as they couldn't wholly identify or be accepted in any one ethnic group. So who says your black just because you look more black than white even though you're technically half white? It seems today that it's more about the culture that you belong to, or were raised in, more than the ethnicity that you genetically possess. In the 2005 New York Times article 'DNA Test Gives Students Ethnic Shocks' this issue was somewhat of an undercurrent in the article. Students were administered a voluntary DNA test and many were surprised to find that although they identified with a certain culture that they were actually ethnically more of another. To some this may cause confusion raising the question "Who Am I?" but in today's society ethnicity isn't nearly as important. This question should be answered more along cultural lines than ethnic ones. In many Latin American countries this is and has been the case for awhile now. You are not judged as much on the color of your skin than your clothes, occupation, language, and general attitude. This is how they identify native indigenous people, who are more commonly low class and dress in the same fashion as they have for many generations and held the occupation of farmer/trader for many centuries, with European, who are commonly middle or high class and possess business jobs in large cities. Many of the indigenous people who adopt European religion and dress are then no longer considered indigenous; they have in other words adopted a new culture. Now the idea of 'betraying' ones ethnicity may be detestable to some but as with many issues, it depends on the person. We are living in world where freedom of thought and expression is of the utmost importance. Who's to say what you can and cannot be? The one man in the article, who was raised by to black parents, found out he was 48 percent white. Does this mean he should automatically identify with the white ethnicity or culture? Well, he doesn't think so and I don't think so either because he was raised black and that's exactly where he wants to be. That's his personal freedom. That's who he is and I fully agree and support that freedom.


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Patenting Humans?

When I read 'Ultimate Therapy: Commercial eugenics in the 21st Century' By Jeremy Rifkin I became startled at learning one of the many interesting facts presented in the article. It could be one of the many facts, such as genetic engineering being discussed as inevitable. I became more focused on the fact that the author stated that most of the 30,000 genes in the human genome as well as most of our organs, tissues, and cell lines will become patented within ten years. These patents presumably being possessed by Scientific or pharmaceutical companies. Now what exactly does this mean? Does this mean that I cannot mention a gene or organ of my body without putting that pesky trademark (™)symbol next to it? Are words going to be nixed from my vocabulary based on the economic greed of companies and elite individuals? This seems to be as sad as Donald Trump trying to copyright the phrase "You're fired!"©

Infinite Monkey Theorem and Web 2.0

As I was reading through the selected articles where we had to choose one to blog about, I knew right away, as soon as I read it, which one i was going to choose. I had no exposure to the "infinite monkey theorem" before reading Andrew Keen's article "Introduction, The Cult of the Amateur" and it caught my eye as an interesting metaphor for Web 2.0 and it's seemingly limitless possibility for amateur creative content. I deduced that he must be using it as a metaphor rather than there being an actual direct link between the two after visiting the Wikipedia page describing the theorem in detail. Keen's article basically states that through the vastness and openness of the internet, the professional creative artist is eventually slowly being led to extinction by the amateur. The amateur, through the sheer mass of content they put out, is bound to come up with a couple masterpieces. Now the problem I have with this is that he seems to be suggesting that if a masterpiece would be created by an 'amateur' it would be a mistake and not worthy of merit. This thought, I think could not be more cynical or pessimistic. This profession is merely evolving. Our culture is simply expanding. A new niche has been created. The niche of the amateur and Keen had better get used to it because it's not going anywhere anytime soon. This new 'cult' as Keen so eloquently states is not a cult, but a mass of people creating and spreading their own virtual identity. As with all things some people's creations gain ground, get spread around, become viral in better words. It's the new, hot, hip, and surprisingly quick way to gain fame and infamy. Now just because one person is labeled as an amateur does not mean they do not have the intellectual creativity that any professional might posses. If nothing else they may posses a more truer version of creativity, one that is simply for the love of creating and not for financial or economic gain. So Andrew Keen, I'm not saying that I wholly disagree that this new age of content is destroying our culture, but like exercise; wherein the muscle must be destroyed before building itself back up, stronger and bigger than before, this destruction will make our culture richer and better off in the long run.

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