Ok, more background.
After my Al Gore 'hypocrite' rant, I've been watching for the response which should restore balance in my world. During class yesterday, I was aware that PETA had responded to the Inconvenient Truth story and all the other stuff we're hearing about these days. As far as I know, many in our class are monitoring the stories and studies about global warming.
Presently, I am eating a very good coffee rubbed rib-eye steak covered in mushrooms and onions. It's very good. Simoultaneously, I am watching Glenn Beck on CNN and Glenn had a representative from PETA on the program.
It seems that PETA sent a letter to Al Gore, stating that he should turn vegetarian if he really wants to make an impact on global warming. States that eating meat, cows in particular (remember, I'm chomping on a rib-eye presently...and it is REALLY GOOD) helps to support pumping more green house gases than... well, lots of stuff, including driving to California.
No shit!??! In order to be responsible, I can eat nothing but veggies and tofu in order to appear not to be a hypocrite?
Anyway, here is the article:
Glenn Beck - The Real Story, March 8. 2007
That's it! Call ME a hypocrite. I am NOT giving up beef! It's what's for dinner!
I remember being blissfully ignorant before I signed up for this class. I remember doing the right thing based on my value system and how I was raised.
We have asked us to pay attention to the news and current events and to speak up, to write. I have done my best to do just that. However, as you may have noted in my first post online, I was under the impression that being less controversial would be better in the promotion of my business.
I've found that there appears to be more at stake than future potential income. I have tried to take a stand on one side or the other and to not adopt a neutral stance.
I am going to re-iterate something I stated once before. I don't think is in the best interest of my college completion, but Dr. H., you're telling us to speak up, so here it goes.
Speaking out is not going to work for me. I am too fickle or my mind is too feeble for me to see what you see when each of us read the literature in this class. I don’t mind reading it as the views sometimes differ from those of my own. Heck, I don’t even understand much of what I read until we discuss it in class. However, there is so much information available these days from people with a great deal more education than I have and, depending on the source, and I don't know what to believe anymore. I am skeptical, which I learned from Introduction to Natural Science (NS 150). You have a doctorate degree and were more than just a little off base when you mentioned American vehicles and sales in China based on what you told us in class (Where does knowledge come from? - February 9, 2007). I don't like to feel foolish when I discuss what I ‘learned’ in class.
I was questioned as to my comment that 'blacks [slaves] were Americans by proxy'. Based on your reaction to my comment, I wondered if I should again feel foolish. I immediately questioned my understanding of the word or phrase. After looking up a definition of proxy, my feelings are just that – what I feel, and I feel I'm right. Had a slave been asked, shortly after arriving on the shores of America, if s/he wanted to stay or go back to his/her family, his/her home in Africa and the only way of life blacks knew at that time, you have to be kidding if you think the slave would have said 'I would like to stay, break free from my master and go find a wilderness to live in here in the colonies because I will then be free!' Not a chance. The slave didn’t have a voice in the matter and the decision for what was in his or her best interest was to be enslaved and to work on the plantation, or what was in the interest of the master. The slave didn't have rights – the choice was work or die. A slave wasn't even considered human. How can s/he grasp the idea of wilderness? I am certain, however, that all slaves had a FIRM grasp on the concept of FREEDOM. Freedom, in its most primitive form, was the feeling they had six months prior to their arrival on the colonial soil, give or take a month.
My discussion thus far leads me to the discussion on race. I may have been heard saying race is an idea that we, as humans, promote and keep alive. Abby said it very well that our genus, homo-sapien, are created genetically the same. Race is then, by its definition, a socio-economic necessity in order to project superiority through nothing more than words. Lo and behold, around the 17th century, some fothe fist scientific explanations for the word race were introduced to coincide with imperialism and colonialism. African-Americans, Blacks, niggers, anglo-saxon, white, whities, honkeys, jews, italians, kikes, spaniards, spics, polacks – there are more words but they all clearly associate our minds to race and the words mean absolutely nothing unless we associate them with race. However, wars have been started and millions have died as a result of race and religion. This ideal is ridiculous but what am I going to be able to do to change even one persons opinion about the subject? Nothing! I am able, however, to quietly teach my children that there is more to think about.
In order for change to take place, there really isn't anything I can do, alone, to change what is happening around me. I can’t do it alone and there are those more intelligent and eloquent than I to institute change. I will throw my support behind them and agree and disagree with what I see for those brave enough to take a stand, to speak up. I am too meek, weak or scared to institute any significant change by speaking up and taking a stance. I want to be anonymous, staying out of the spotlight. I want to continue to judge right and wrong based on my socialization and through self-realization. I will do my best to teach my children and those around me to do the same. I cannot lead but I will also not follow. I simply don’t want to stand on the front line. I don't know who or what to believe these days.
I have allowed myself to be moved, to be motivated by the idea that global warming is happening and I, we, have to do something about it, now, or certainly perish through a long, unpleasant, horrific death (no, wait, my grandchildren or their grandchildren are going to suffer, is that right?). However, after plunging myself into this firestorm and others storms since class started, I realize that after my frothy frenzies I have whipped myself into, I am most comfortable, in my mind, leading by example right where I started before this semester began. In my heart and mind, I was doing the right thing to begin with.
Work Cited
Race. Wikipedia.
