Getting to Know Yourself

This is my theme for English B. My poem is based off of a poem Langston Hughes wrote. This is a page with he original: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/English_B.html . This is my take on it including new ideas and things that fit this time period. I also replaced the Harlem Renaissance subject with a much smaller, more modern movement.



Sitting in the back of the room
Watching dozens of screens flash with words, pictures, and games
I watched as the instructor assigned a poem to be written
A poem about ourselves
A flurry of thoughts consumed my thoughtful mind

Me
What am I?
Who am I?
Do I know who I am, Does anyone?
How do I fill the blank screen before me?

This poem
This excuse for people to write about them selves
But how would they do it
Do they know themselves at all?

With minds unwilling to wander from the acceptance of mainstream society
How do they even begin to know who they are
Hollister can't tell them
American Eagle can't tell them
The hours with their friends on cell phones don't help either
Is there anything to them
Besides, what you can find in the next corporate advertisement know as a student?
This world
Our society
Brand names and products
The mannequins fill the seats of our schools
Is that who will fill the seats of corporate executives in the future?

Free thought dies in the lust for acceptance
This never ending journey to be just like everyone else renders a mind with emptiness
An emptiness that can not be filled
Except of course by more brands and more new STUFF
Is that all our society wants in life, stuff?
I, on the other hand, choose to be me
To be me and stay as me
Not changing to fit the wavering trends of the day
I invite you to do the same
To create an age of free thought and self discovery

Growing up in this age of materialism and thoughtlessness
Leaves an educated mind yearning for more
Yearning for the answers to questions most have never conceived
Yearning to know themselves
Knowing myself is knowing what I stand for

Staring into the empty sky
The pink sun sets over the barren ridge
Reflecting golden and magenta rays off of the unstirred lake
My two friends and I sit thoughtfully on the abandoned shore
Observing the rolling green hills and jagged peaks that surround the lake
We sit and talk in a very close, local way about big, global subjects
The rise of technology in this wayfaring society
It affects everyone, but is it in a good way?
In the never ending journey to discover the world online
Have we lost ourselves?
We forget our culture and make way for the global culture that technology provides
Walking this flat earth I search for the edge
The edge of the known and the edge of acceptance
What lies outside the know world?
Can there be anything else to know,
Or has pop-culture and technology already explored the boundaries of everything?

There remains one final frontier
Once inhabited by many people
But now it is no more
The population of the frontier dwindles as the world flattens
But where is this frontier you ask
Where can it be?
If it can't be found on Google Earth then it must not exist, right?
Wrong
It's something that everyone already has
Each and every one of us
We just have to find it
A new place to go and explore and find new unimaginable ideas
But what is it you ask?
Unsurprising, you may not know what I mean
Most people do not

This final frontier and the last unexplored place that lies within us all
It is in fact, yourself
Getting to know oneself in a world of high speed, global communications is hard
When getting to know everyone else is so simple
It is easy to often ignore ourselves
What do you stand for as an individual?
Not what your society stand for
The freedom of thought is often not exercised
There is no longer a need in our society
We all are submersed in distractions from reality
The reality of who we really are as an individual
I encourage you to get to know yourself
What exactly do you believe in and stand for?
Spend some time with yourself
Be it in nature, or even at home
Get to know yourself
And lose the labels of society

A Call For Change

Testing out the microphone

Just trying to get a tone

That good enough for you

But the sound guy has his shoes

Up on the board

Surrounded by a hoard

Of fans

For the bands

I’ll put his career on a shelf

And do the sound all by my self

I'm adjusting EQ

And testing 1,2

Just moving the faders

For the work evaders

The nations slackers

Contributed to by hackers

Nothing getting done

Only having fun

What happened to the work force

There's no feelings of remorse

Do we not care anymore

Or did we just not before?

Have we all gone shopping?

Is that why we are stopping?

Pull in and park it

Go to the market

Buy some bread and cheese

The prices bring me to my knees

I can't believe the inflation

Of prices across the nation

Meeting basic needs

Verse corporate greeds

The resources split

But we all permit

Standing by and doing nothing

Our minds are filled with stuffing

I can't stand the silence

And all the violence

Something must be said

Before more end up dead

This calls for change

It shouldn't be that strange

Get off your ***

Stop wasting gas

Rise up and rebel

Help the motion excel

The motion for change

I hope it doesn't derange

Our fragile mental state

And just start a debate

A strong motion

Needs full devotion

So give it your all

And don't let it fall

The motion for change

Shouldn't be that strange

Now it's our generations turn

To show some concern

For the world around us

And make it a plus

To live in this time

That is full of crime

What can YOU do

To end the taboo?

We need to start

And do our part

Just call for change

It’s within your range

To do what is needed

To get the ideas seeded

In the minds of the world

Now the scroll is unfurled

And the list is read

How many more will end up dead?

Is that what it takes

A list of names

Before society breaks

And then blames

The government and leaders

At the door are the greeters

Inviting you to take action

And begin an interaction

Between the leaders and the rest of us

Some one needs to start making a fuss

If you don't then who will

The sound of oppression is quite shrill

It's a conspiracy to be free

And clear the debris from the decree

Don't allow the misinterpretation

To define the nation

It's a call for clarity

I say it with the most sincerity

A call for change

It might not be strange

For those of the yesteryears

It might bring some tears

To the eyes of those who once held the signs

On government steps

To change the minds

Of the House of Reps

To get what you want

You can't be nonchalant

In your manner

So make a banner

And shout it out

Fight for what you are without!

No wonder it isn't perfect

I Believe that conflicts create a life worth living. Many people dream of a life with no conflicts or problems, but I think that a life like that wouldn't be worth living. On a warm night this past summer I lay awake on my bed with the window open. I heard two people down the street having a rather loud argument on their back porch. I began to wonder why couldn't there be a world without problems like the one they were trying to work out. Why couldn't there be a perfect world were everybody got along with one another? I wanted to know why life had so many conflicts between people and why the world had so many problems. And then it struck me. If there weren't, my very existence would be Incredibly Dull.
Conflict is what makes life exiting, you never know whats going to happen. If everything went perfectly and according to plan nothing interesting would happen. Everything would be so predictable I believe it would drive everybody crazy. It is natural human instinct to desire something, anything out of the ordinary. If everybody is to act the same and be the same, there should, in theory, be no conflicts. But through socialism its been shown that humans need differences between each other; no one likes being the same as everyone else. It is through these differences that conflict is created. There is a sense of competition instilled in all of us that must be fed. If there is not competition, life becomes bleak and lacks a driving purpose. With no competition there is no conflict. Living a life like this would bore me out of my mind. I found it ironic that I had just realized the human need for conflict as I lay in my bed with absolutely nothing to worry about. I lay there without a care in the world and began to grow more and more impatient with my inability to sleep, a conflict. I should have had nothing to worry about and my human instinct was to find a fault with my lack of conflict.

Who Controls You?

Hello, this is about as cynical as my last one. I wrote this for a school assignment relating to the book 1984 and the control you have over yourself. And now, here's what I turned in:

In today's society everybody is dependent on something. It may be a job, activity, commitment, or other person, but we all have some controlling factors in our lives. My life is controlled by many different individual people, groups of people, and factors.
In school and most of my free time my teachers control me. They tell me what I can and can't do, what work I must do, when to do it by, and how little free time I will have in the next few days. Although their intentions are to give us the opportunity to have a better education, their leadership ends up having the exact opposite affect on students. Many students do what the teachers tell them to do out of Fear of getting in trouble or getting bad grades. Students are controlled by the administrators and teachers through fear. We do assignments so we don't get a bad grade and so that our parents don't get mad at us, not so that we get a better education. I am trying harder and harder to try and learn instead of just worrying about getting a good grade, but that just isn't very possible with the present expectations of students. We all follow the rules out of fear of being sent to the office or in some other way getting in trouble. This example of leadership by fear is very similar to adults in the working world.
From what I see, hear, and know about the working world, I can synthesize that many people are controlled by their bosses with both fear and opportunity. Some jobs offer the opportunity for a promotion so workers work harder while some people work out of fear of being fired and not having the money to have the newest car or the fanciest house.
While at home, I am controlled usually with opportunity and then when that doesn't work, with fear. My parents reward me with their trust, future opportunities, and sometimes material goods when I have done something that they want me to. This is a very effective way to control people in a friendly manner, unlike Big Brother's control through fear. When I do something they want me to do, my parents let me do something I want to do such as going places or having people over. When this tactic doesn't work my parents must resort to control through fear. If I refuse to do something that must be done, such as washing the dishes, then my parents control me through fear, on a much smaller scale than demonstrated in 1984. They 'threaten' to make me buy dinner at a restaurant that night if they don't have the clean dishes to cook with in time. Although this is not anywhere close to the severity of the way The Party controls their people, making a teenager pay for dinner is still an effective way to lead through fear.
In the few moments that I am not at school, at home, or doing something directly controlled by one of the two(e.g. homework or chores ), I have found that even though it should be my own personal time, I am still controlled someone or something at all times. While cycling I am controlled by fear of being hit by a car or given a ticket for not riding in the right places. When I am hanging out with people everyone is indirectly controlled by each other through fear. In any group of people there is almost always some sort of pressure not to say or do anything too far from what is normal for fear of not being being accepted by the other people.
Although this isn't part of the writing prompt, I have also noticed that control through fear or opportunity are merely a mater of perception. Even though this wasn't part of the prompt I realize the you want us to learn and spark our thinking. These prompts you gave us are very good at sparking thought, they just don't ask us to then vocalize the thoughts triggered by these questions. I am now going to assume that you would like to hear the other thoughts and deeper understandings of life I have gained from reading this book, discussing in fish-bowls, and writing the above part of this paper.
The way I see it, weather you are being controlled by fear or by opportunity is merely a mater of perception. If you are a "glass half empty" sort of person then it seams as though you must do something you don't want so that you don't punished or beaten by the current controller. If you are a "glass is half full which so close to being full we might as well say that we have enough water to last us forever," kind of a person that is almost annoyingly optimistic, then you might see the situation as follows: if you do what they say then you have the amazing opportunity of not being punished or beaten. However, this is not a very common outlook I have notice because people realize that without the controller there wold be no punishment, so it is not really an opportunity to not be punished. Depending on your outlook, control through fear can be seen as control through opportunity.
Another point I would like to bring up is that I believe that no one truly has complete control over themselves, including me. People as a whole are governed by laws and authority and controlled by everything and anything even as simple as 2 plus 2 equaling 5. As much as we would like to think it, no one has control over every aspect of their life. If we had true control of our own lives we would be able to float off the floor like a soap bubble, even if The Party didn't want it to happen. The most basic and obvious things that keep people from controlling every aspect of their lives are the laws laid out by each areas' governing bodies. The next level of controlling groups are then parents and spouses followed closely by jobs and schools. Together, all of these limit our actions and give us less control of how we live.
Another factor that may control my life, as much as everyone else's is the societal norms and the unwritten laws of society. As mentioned before, the fear of nonacceptance controls nearly every aspect of life. What "the cool" people do sets the standard of what everyone else should be like and how people are expected to act. The mass media is one other great factors that control us all by setting a standard that no one can live up to that nearly everyone tries to reach.
While talking to the Regional Director of South Metro Abercrombie stores at 2:30 in the morning this weekend I began to realize how much the media and industry Own us and control every aspect of our lives. He told me that they sell sex, not clothes. The whole purpose of their advertisement campaign is to make people think that they will have more sex if they shop at Abercrombie, Abercromie & Fitch, Hollister, or Ruehl 925. This is a perfect example of media controlling people by giving them the opportunities to fit in with everybody else or to have more sex. Another example of how much the corporations control us as a society is the amount people are willing to steal just to have the opportunity to fit in. At one local Abercrombie store, every 30 days about 30% of all merchandise is stolen by people that just want to fit in and, largely, by the staff at Abercrombie stores. Some other statistics that the Regional Director told me are that 90% of all thefts are done by employees and that more than one in three employees have stolen from their store. At this point Abercrombie realized that they needed to subtly rule with fear. Beginning May 1, 2007 all clothing will have an RFID security thread sewn in that is so small there is no way to find it. A computer system in Ohio can then keep track of the purchase of every piece of clothing from any of Abercrombie's many brands in any store across the world just with this one thread in each piece. Abercrombie can continuously check at each employees house through the Verizon Wireless Network if there are more than ten RFID threads in items that are marked as "unsold". If there are, then the system will notify local offices of the problem. Abercrombie security can then go the the employee's house, and with hand held scanners, find the exact location of all unpaid for items. After this, each Abercrombie employee that lives in the house will be audited and then, in most cases, fired. If this system does not remind you of the Thought Police in any way, then something is wrong. This is one of the many examples in society and 1984 of how we are controlled through both fear, and opportunity.
What I have learned from the book is that fear is by far the most effective way to control a group of people. A person's natural instincts are to maintain and improve upon one's own health, pleasure, and safety. When any of these are threatened to be taken away, people are willing to do anything, depending on the severity of the punishment. All Hail Big Brother (and Abercrombie).

Surrealism and my Journey through my mind

I'm not meaning to be cynical or pessimistic, although it may come off as that. This was inspired by an IM conversation(ironically) I had with Courtney. These are just some thoughts I wanted to put out into the world.

Corey and Johnny, two close friends of mine, and I sat on the edge of a lake in Wyoming looking at the sunset discussing surrealism and technology, and then we all slept out under the stars, The whole time observing natures beauty. None of it came from a computer, none of it came from a factory or out of anyones head, it was just there. We noticed that on the edge of the lake and as far as we could see there weren't any man made "improvements", anywhere.

According to the Department of Land Surveys and property ownership related things any man made feature added to land is an “improvement”, but is it really? What is it improving? Can you even improve on natures beauty, so far all I've seen is scars and pollution on the natural beauty of earth. Staring at the pinkish orange sun reflecting off the watter we discussed how we all three love really advanced technology and how its all amazing, but then how we all also love just getting away from it all for days on end, just totally isolating yourself with a few good friends in the middle of NOWHERE. With no technology, no phones, no one to interact with that you couldn't look at. What contrasting interests.

Because on one end, it is completely amazing and a bit compelling even, how far we have made it in the world of technology. How much we're able to do is almost scary, but on the other end, we almost forget the beauty of simplicity.

We all love our toys, and honestly they are amazing, we the lighting nerds especially love new toys, but way too often we forget about life without our toys

While writing a paper on technology dependency I realized just now much we need technology to live the way we do. We do need technology only to maintain our life styles, but to live we don't need any. The cave men and Cromagnon managed and got by, obviously, or how could we have evolved from them.

It's so strange to think about how far we've made it in all these different fields, like medicine. 50 years ago, we probably couldn't do around 60% of what we can now.

Also, while writing this Shakespeare script I'm working on I'm reading this packet on how and why they spoke the way they did in the Elizabethan times. Their often flowery and figurative way of speaking because they had nothing like TV and computers to make them rush everywhere, so they sat around and read and and talked to each other and came up with flowery language just to show they could. The more figurative your language the smarter it showed you were.

Now day we are taught to speak in as short and precise sentences as possible because we don't have the time to sit around and talk. Or do we have it and we choose to fill it otherwise? All regular conversations ever are is the exchanging of information, or surreal opinions and gossip. Far too rarely do people sit around and talk about their true feelings, thoughts and GENUINE opinions.

Now, with IM conversations, the world has gotten even more surreal and trivial with the use of so many abbreviations and strings of letters meant to be phrases. (lol, omg, ttyl, gtg, brb) Already we are "too busy" to actually walk to someones house to talk, too lazy to drive, too lazy to pick up the phone off the wall and call them, and far too lazy to reach in our pocket for the cell phone that everyone always caries at all time,. WE INSTANT MESSAGE. I think the name says it all, instant, that what we want in this world isn't it? Instant Gratification. Later isn't good enough, we want it now, we want our STUFF now. Like a screaming four year old we want it now. Everything is about stuff. The modern measurements of success are material goods and objects. It is no longer one's intelligence or happiness, or ability to string together long figurative sentences that measures success in life. Shouldn't happiness be the measurement of how well someone does for what they want to accomplish? Believe it or not, there are still some people out there somewhere that don't live solely to get the biggest house and the fastest car.

Some of the wealthiest people are also some of the must unhappy. Its true, you cant buy happiness.... So I guess we will all have to try to rent it.

Wow, that was a rather long rant.

I guess I'll just step off my soap box right now, but if I step down, who will take my place? No One. We're are all too busy listening to our iPods and text messaging our friends while doing IM and myspace with our other hand to bother to think for ourselves. Many people merely think and agree with what the last posted survey of their best friend said.

We think that we are so smart because we can remember more facts that the person next to us in class. But the real important part is to understand them, not just know them

It seem s as though we've forgotten how important thoughts are. It reminds me of Fahrenheit 451. Everything is so rushed. What are we doing now that is supposedly more important than taking the time to listen to one another? And as we've learned more and advanced more, we've lost so much in value. We keep wanting more, and everything is becoming less personable.

My favorite quote from Fahrenheit 451 is some thing to the effect of: “we have filled everyone with so much information they have no room to think. Every man is proud he can take apart the television set and put it back together and they think that they are the smartest man alive.”

Something that a teacher that I greatly respect once brought up, and I'm elaborating on, is that Hitler could paint very well, yet he was not an artist. He could make an exact painting from a picture very accurately, but he was still not an artist. True art has expression and meaning. This is so like today where many people can learn facts very well that they simply copy from the book to the test. Unfortunately, many people don't take the time to think their own thoughts and discover their own facts, and most importantly many people don't take the time to discover themselves and who they are.

Surrealism is much too common in our society today, I know few people who are themselves around everyone, not just their one or two best friends. If there was a way to measure surrealism it would be growing at an exponential rate. As I walk the halls of my school I see so many girls, and guys too, all trying to be alike. They all try to dress the same, act the same, be in all the same activities, go to all the same parties, and have all the same friends as the most popular girl. One word: mannequinism.

It's true, as we grow up our personality and lives are greatly affected by the people around us, but thats not all we should be. We should be our own person!

I honestly respect the "weird loner" kid that sits in the corner listening music and ignoring the nasty looks of "why don't you fit in" he constantly gets from all the other kids. He isn't afraid to be himself! There are some people I respect for breaking the form of the standard Barbied-up high school kid.

Something people don't do enough is think. Sure people think plenty about the things that don't really matter, what to wear, how to do their hair and what color of eyeshadow to choose. But when it comes to real, genuine thoughts they just don't happen enough, we're all to busy. Commonly they aren't life changing , but instead life defining.

To put your life into perspective we are all just small specks on the side of the third rock orbiting a glowing speck that is the center of a very small part of a galaxy that is one of millions in a universe that may just as well be one of many more. That might help people realize just how trivial what color Polo shirt you wear on one day of the 1.68 trillion days the world has been here. Yes thats 1,680,000,000,000 days.

Over the last hour I have become closer to discovering myself by writing this. The important part was thinking it and then writing it. At all times there are 101 ways to talk to people, IM, Email, Texting, Cell phones, land line phones, and heaven forbid, actually talking to someone face to face.

Just thinking it out caused me to actually begin to get closer to understanding myself. Most of us have never taken the time to think about what we believe and think and what our opinions are. sometimes we say, "I have time to think to myself, see I'm not that surreal kid in articles and books, that's everyone BUT me". Your only trying to fool yourself, I know Ive tried. Truthfully, unless you have deprived, no, withheld yourself from technology, (no TV, no computer, and no phone), your just as surreal as the rest of everyone else. I know that any successful person in this society has not managed to do that. Today's surreal society demands that of us, everyone must be completely connected at all times to everything. "OMG, you haven't checked your myspace yet, I posted it like 20 minutes ago, what wrong with you, do you live under a rock?"

Maybe thats what it would take, living under a rock, figuratively, not literally of course. Don't get me wrong, technology is amazing and makes work much easier, but what is the benefit? More free time! But what do we do with the free time? We all sit in front of our computer and IM people, check our myspace, and surf the web in our own little surreal bubble of safety. What has technology made the jobs of many of todays workforce? Sitting in front of computers, starring at numbers, all day long. The common argument to that is, well, computers make it so much easier to do everything. But with out computers, that much wouldn't be expected of us.

You wouldn't expect an assembly line of 100 Ford workers to make thousands of cars a day, as is now expected of automotive companies. Perhaps cars aren't the best example for a "lack of technology" scenario...

In the past farmers grew enough food for themselves and maybe someone that helped them harvest. Now the comparably small portion of farmers grow enough food for the rest of the nation because they have the technology that makes it so they can single handedly harvest a field that would traditionally takes 30 or more workers. This way the rest of the nation can work in a city and a big tall building on their floor in their little teeny tiny cubicle analyzing numbers, specs, and figures at a computer all day, everyday, for the rest of their lives.