en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/2414636 Comments by bjc5210 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/12/what-are-your-thoughts-on-everything-we-saw-and-heard-in-lecture-about-native-americans-119-blog/#IDComment143203416 Before I took this class, I only knew a few very small and unimportant details about Native Americans. I knew that they were names of sports franchises, I knew that they were the mortal enemy of the cowboys and settlers that were trying to move west, and that they helped us learn how to celebrate Thanksgiving. After hearing what Sam had said briefly in a few previous lectures, and what he said in the lecture a few days ago, my mindset on American Indians has changed significantly. The fact that it is the largest genocide in the history of the world is extremely disturbing. And coupling that with all the other things that we have done to these people over the years, and are still continuing to do, makes it even worse. I think that there is a reason behind my not knowing about all of these occurrences until I was twenty years old and I believe it all has to do with some form of censorship. If people knew what had happened all of those years ago, instead of it making it sound like Native Americans were savages, people may not feel so great about the roots of this country. That’s not even the part I have the most trouble with. I can understand coming to a new country and conquering the people there. But if you weren’t going to kill all of them, why would you force them to live in extreme poverty. I think it would have been better for the Native Americans if they had just been slaughtered completely and didn’t have to suffer like they currently are. It’s like shooting an animal but the shot isn’t going to kill the animal immediately, so the animal suffers worse and dies slowly and painfully. I guess some American Indians are pretty well of with the whole casino business, but the numbers show that they are the poorest people in the country. The women have the highest rate of suicide and are more likely to be raped than any other race in this country. I just can’t help but feel slightly guilty for all of this. I mean we did come over and wreck them completely, and then gave them a small area to exist. That is extremely unfair to them, but what can we do about it now? The things that set them this far back happened a long time ago and there isn’t much that can be changed about that now. Now I feel even worse because we basically have to tell them, “Just shut up and deal with it, there’s nothing we can do.” Nothing is going to change because the majority of Americans probably don’t even know about any of this. Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:54:58 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/12/what-are-your-thoughts-on-everything-we-saw-and-heard-in-lecture-about-native-americans-119-blog/#IDComment143203416 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/07/how-do-you-feel-about-president-obamas-use-of-money-in-comparison-to-haiti-119-blog/#IDComment141160232 If the money goes to Haiti, I could really care less about underlying reasons that he is raising it. The bottom line is that the people of that decimated country are getting a significant amount of money. President Obama haters will say anything to try and put a negative light on what he is doing and no one can do anything to stop them. Personally I have no problem with President Obama doing this, in fact, I hope he gets elected so there is zero chance that Sara Palin somehow slipped into office. I wish more people that were in control of large sums of money would donate that type of money. I think he is being very smart by using this to his advantage to get something that he wants to retain. Also, the point that I think people would be missing, is that it doesn’t matter if he wins or loses. As long as the people who are in dire need of the money and support, it’s a victory. Sometimes people just get caught up in the smaller details and miss the big picture, and I believe that is what people will do in this situation. And another thing that I would like to mention on the topic of President Obama bashing, does anyone really think that someone else could have done a significantly better job? Realistically the state of this country was already in a down hill slide when George Bush left it in ruins. How someone with an intellect that small would ever get elected twice in this country is truly beyond me. The even funnier thing is that when President Obama goes to do something that seems to be noble along with intelligent, people come out of the woodwork and start bashing him and the things he does. When I read that he was going to donate a billion campaign dollars to Haiti I thought it was an ingenious plan for reelection as well as a large amount of humanitarianism. After thinking about it for awhile, I truly realized that the President Obama naysayers really have no argument to go against the President doing this. I mean, if I were trying to get reelected I would absolutely do something similar. It’s just plain smart, and no one can argue that. I think that people just give President Obama a hard time because his skin color isn’t white. I think this because President George Bush was a white president and he didn’t have nearly as much bashing as President Obama does, and in my opinion he was a worse president. So to conclude this blog post, I hope that President Obama succeeds in raising the money for Haiti and is also reelected, even if it is to spite his haters. Sat, 9 Apr 2011 03:52:10 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/07/how-do-you-feel-about-president-obamas-use-of-money-in-comparison-to-haiti-119-blog/#IDComment141160232 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/15/is-this-an-action-of-white-supremacy-119-blog/#IDComment135916842 I have not seen the graffiti that is claimed to be located on Beaver Avenue, but I doubt that it was intended to be anything other than a joke. I believe this because there haven’t been any hate crimes or white supremacist outbreaks in State College. Why anyone would think this would be appropriate, or funny to write in a public place is outrageous. The action is also extremely immature. The fact that anyone would think that something so serious would be seen is funny is just plain ignorant. Perhaps the author of the graffiti was unaware of the seriousness of what they were writing. Maybe the way white supremacy and racial comments towards other races’ is joked about by comedians and people in everyday life has made it seem as though it is okay to say things like that, even when it really isn’t. I’m not sure people truly know how brutal members of the KKK were in the past to many African Americans. It truly isn’t funny at all. Potentially if they knew the true meaning behind the words they wrote, they may regret their action. Or maybe they knew exactly what they were writing and actually support white supremacy. I guess the only people who truly know are the people involved in writing this. What I don’t understand is why people think this is funny or that it is appropriate. The fact that it is the year 2011 and things like this are still going on just baffles me. I wish everyone could just get along with one another. The world would be so much simpler and happier if skin color wasn’t the reason you disliked someone. But I really don’t see it ever going away. Racism and discrimination is going to go on forever. Whether I like it or Sam Richards likes it, or anyone likes it. It is impossible to get every single person to change the way they think about people of different races and colors. It’s really a shame that it is that way, because it doesn’t have to be. People could set aside simple and irrelevant matters such as race but they won’t because of the way they were raised and the way that things are still just ignored is the reason this will never go away. In the grand scheme of things this one act of graffiti isn’t a very big deal. The big deal is that people still have this frame of mind and think that one race is better than another race. It’s not just white people who are the problem. Other races look down on whites because of things that happened in the past. We all just need to settle our differences and get along. Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:47:00 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/15/is-this-an-action-of-white-supremacy-119-blog/#IDComment135916842 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/08/how-have-the-choices-youve-made-and-determinism-affected-your-life-119-blog/#IDComment127384558 I guess my free will didn’t really come into play when I decided to go to Penn State. My Dad works at PSU which means that I get a 75% discount on my tuition so that made the decision pretty much a no brainer. Plus I probably would have gone here anyway because of the close proximity to home. However, once I was finally on campus, every decision that I made was my choice. I have made a number of decisions since I have gotten to Penn State, none of which I regret. Not all of them have been the right decisions, but I like to think that there is no such thing as a bad decision. No matter what you decide to do with your life, even if you fail at something, you still learn from that experience. You can always play it safe and make the easy choices, but it’s when you take risks that you truly learn and grow as a human being. People put so much emphasis on success that failure receives a bad reputation. I don’t think anyone has made the right choice every time a situation arises, and I bet they are better for it. I personally have come up short when it came to things I wanted to accomplish, but that didn’t keep me from trying. Sometimes you just need to say to yourself, “I can do this.” And when you have the right mindset, you can accomplish anything. I don’t think I would be in college right now if I didn’t have an attitude that kept me determined. I also know that college isn’t easy but if I had given up, I would have regretted not trying harder for the rest of my life. Everyone stumbles at some point but those who decide that they are going to dig in and keep trying until they achieve their goals are the people that are happiest in life. I also like to think that I was dealt a pretty good hand in this life. I know that there are people out there that are much worse off than I am and the fact that I know that keeps me driving forward. I feel blessed that I was born into a loving family that has never given up on me even though they have had ample opportunities to do so. As long as the people that love and care about me are behind me, I will keep working hard to make them proud, and succeed. I also realize that people don’t have loved ones supporting them, and if they can succeed, then so can I. If it wasn’t for learning from past failures and being determined to overcome those failures, I wouldn’t be writing this blog for this class. Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:03:11 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/08/how-have-the-choices-youve-made-and-determinism-affected-your-life-119-blog/#IDComment127384558 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/03/why-dont-we-live-like-the-monkeys-119-blog/#IDComment126076922 If we all lived for the sake of living, the world wouldn’t be a better place. It wouldn’t be a worse place either. It would be like it as before we were able to learn and we were just apes. We wouldn’t even be able to judge if it was good place, we would be more concerned about our next meal rather than how we thought our neighbors thought of us. The only reason that we have the issue of racism and discrimination is because our brains are more developed than chimpanzees. If we were less intelligent, we would still be living in the forest hunting animals with rocks and our bare hands. This is a pretty easy question to answer. The reason we can’t even speculate on this is because we don’t know what it’s like to live like an animal. The best way for us to try and understand how the world would be is to go to the zoo or to go to Africa and watch wild monkeys and view how they live. Because this is what the world would be like, except there would be no civilization. It would be forest and jungles and no global warming. We wouldn’t have thoughts or feelings, what we would have are an instinct to survive. Nothing else would take priority over eating and finding ways to survive to live another day. We wouldn’t even have the ability to judge and look down upon on others. In a sense the world would be a better place, but we wouldn’t even know it was a better place to live because we wouldn’t have the necessary amount of brain power. Also the leaders would be decided by the physicality of the males, not how intelligent they were. The alpha male would be the leader because of his physicality, not because he was the smartest. That would definitely change the way our lives would be lived. It really wouldn’t matter though because we wouldn’t know what it was like to have our world led by our intelligent leaders. It would basically just be a dictatorship, except for the fact that animals aren’t smart enough to control people in the way that humans do now. The organization that would be needed is only gained because our brain is further developed than the rest of the animals. The bottom line is that in this situation, most of the things we have now would be gone. The only thing we would know how to do is survive. We wouldn’t have anything other than rocks used to crack open things. No can openers, or cars or even guns. We would have to eat things that we wouldn’t even consider edible. So would the world be a better place? In theory yes, but not for the reasons people want it to be better. Sat, 5 Feb 2011 04:56:17 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/03/why-dont-we-live-like-the-monkeys-119-blog/#IDComment126076922 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/27/who-do-rednecks-look-down-on/#IDComment124378372 I have a question that I would like to ask in response to this video. My question is, why do people look down on rednecks? There is nothing wrong with their lifestyle. Since when is it bad to watch NASCAR, go hunting, drive pick-up trucks, as well as shoot guns? I can understand why some people may have an issue with hunting, but if they have ever eaten a hamburger or chicken than they should dislike the meat manufactures more than the “redneck” hunters. At least when the so called “rednecks” go hunting, it is fair chase and the animal is not just brought in for slaughter like they are throughout the country. More on point to the question, I think that rednecks look down on those who look down on them. If a person looks down on someone who may classify themselves as a redneck for the way that they like to live their life, then they deserve to be looked down on by the rednecks as well. If everyone worried more about themselves and were less judgmental of what everyone else did with their lives, then I believe there would be less discrimination as well as fewer people looking down upon one another. I don’t think that anyone willingly wants to discriminate against others, but that it is just ingrained inside of us to do so. If someone else is cultured in a way different way than another person then they may be inclined to think that they are better than the other person, causing them to look down upon the person. Your enculturation or the way you were brought up, plays a big factor in how you look at other people and other cultures. If you were brought up in the city you may think that people from the country are rough around the edges and less intelligent because they live in the woods and drive trucks through mud for fun. And it would go the exact opposite way for someone who was from the country who may think that people from the city are prissy and rich snobs. In reality, if people took time to get to know people before they judged them, the world would be a much happier and kinder place. But instead, if there is one bad experience with a person of a certain culture, then it ruins it for every person involved in that same culture. I think the moral of this entire story, is that the next time you see someone with a Dale Earnhardt shirt on, take the time to get the know them before you lump them into a large group. If the whole world would practice this same idea, people could get along with others of a different culture. Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:09:38 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/27/who-do-rednecks-look-down-on/#IDComment124378372 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/21/body-image-issues-119-blog/#IDComment124372943 It really depends on the person when trying to find the answer to this question. Personally I don’t have any body image issues, but if I did, and knew that the way my body looked was because of the traits I had inherited, it would cause me to have zero body image issues. If the traits that shaped the way our bodies looked were in fact hereditary, I believe that the majority of people would have less of a problem with the way they look. If people saw the limits to which their body could be changed, they may either accept it their limitations or strive to change their body as much as they could. There will always be people who will want to change the way that they look. This does not necessarily mean they dislike the way that their bodies look. Just because a person goes to the gym to lift weights or run on a treadmill does not mean that they dislike their body. In this hypothetical situation, the hereditary aspect of this would just be the baseline for how a certain person’s body would look. Things such as fat and muscle could be added or removed by working out or the lack thereof. But if in this hypothetical situation it was completely impossible to change the way you looked then I think nearly everyone would be fine with it. The other thing that I was thinking was that the suicide rates would sky rocket significantly. If people were unable to change the way that they looked and didn’t like the way they looked then they may become depressed. The depression could lead to suicidal thoughts which could lead to a person committing the act. I mean, if I was born with a feature that I was ashamed of and had absolutely no way of changing that feature, I’m sure committing suicide would cross my mind. The bottom line is that if we were unable to change our appearance because of our heritage, some people would be happy with it and others would not. Personally I would feel proud to share the same body type and appearance of the people that came before me in my family. There is no shame in sharing characteristics with your family. In fact, it would show others where you have come from and what your heritage was in the past. Also, I think that potentially people would be less self-conscience because there is no way to change how you look and that the only thing you can do is accept it, and be proud of it. It would be a good thing if everyone was comfortable in their own skin. Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:41:40 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/21/body-image-issues-119-blog/#IDComment124372943 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cc%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment122169133 Soc119 Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:06:37 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cc%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment122169133