Processed Nature

Nature is all around us. We can immerse ourselves in nature in city parks as well as national parks. The difference is that the nature in cities is processed. It is a pet nature, a wolf of the wild tamed to the equivalent of the tamed dogs we take for walks in this domesticated nature. It is still real, and beautiful, as nature is, but it is at least partially processed. It is set up, designed for our desires to experience nature while retaining our industrialized ways. Much in the manner that canned cheese spray is cheese, but isn't really cheese. The manufactured feel is perceivable. Perhaps it is something to lament, the detachment from a true, wild nature. But perhaps our desire to hold on to nature in the form of parks and twiggy trees stuck in parking lots offers at least a little hope that we aren't completely disillusioned.

Current Mood: Inquizzitive

Listening To: "Kathy's Song" by Eva Cassidy

So Little Time

We may diversify our life experience portfolios but really we only follow one path. Some change careers, but only once or twice. We only have so much time. They say you can do anything, but you cannot do everything. That is the disclaimer to the encouragement. I want to win the Superbowl as a quarterback. I want to drive through the finish as a winner at Le Mans. I want to be a rock and roll star. So many things I can never be, so many things I can never do. These things take a lifetime of effort and focus, entities that are as finite as our time in this world. There are so many parts of history that I wish I could have been a part of. Things that have happened that I would want to have witnessed. You are in one place at one time. No more.

Current Mood: Calm

Listening To: "Off I Go" by Greg Laswell

Stitches

Engineering weaves ideas and technologies into the fabric of society, first intriguing the world with the sharp needle of novelty and ingenuity, and then slowly altering the very stitches of history in a continually evolving process. Encounters with such technologies that were at a time "once in a lifetime" occurrences become mingled with common practice and daily life. A ride in an automobile, once an exhilarating experience, becomes as desensitized and simple as walking down the block. Picking up a device loaded with an entire music library eclipses the drop of a needle to the vinyl. A trip to the moon, perhaps, like a run to the grocery store for some bread and milk. The small individual stitches of engineering flow into the ever growing seam of life.

Current Mood: Tired

Listening To: "A Man Needs a Maid/Heart of Gold Suite" by Neil Young

Why We're Angry

“Where did the money go?” one sign inquired at the “March forth on March 4th” student rally at San Jose State. That question has certainly crossed my mind in my two years at SJSU. It is a legitimate question—money shouldn’t just disappear. But in the black hole of government, it does. Due to the urgency of the condition of California’s education system, the question should not be “where did the money go?” but “where is it going?” The mission of affordable government-funded education for students striving for baccalaureate graduation is in peril. Action must be swift and precise to save CSU and UC (though neither “swift” nor “precise” are terms the government is familiar with.) Students and faculty alike are angry at the system. The two main concerns are the imbalance in educational supply and demand due to funding cuts, and the inability to get into needed classes.

One speaker at the SJSU rally noted that, “you’ve got to spend money to make money.” Herein lies the first issue with the system: there is no money in the government to make money with. Slurping the mud from the bottom of a dry reservoir is not particularly satisfying. But people find it easier to order funding from the government without expecting consequences rather than emptying their own pockets. On the surface it seems to be simple and painless. But government funding is tainted—the effects ripple through the system until they reappear in the form of higher taxes. Regardless, Governor Schwarzenegger recently approved of a 305 million dollar increase in the CSU budget for next year (Briscoe). It is doubtful, though, that this will counter the 1 billion in cuts from the last two years that are affecting the students now—mathematically speaking it won’t. And this has only added to the frustration of students who want money from the government and continually try to squeeze the blood out of a turnip. However, that 305 million may pave the way for future increases in government funding, and many students are hopeful that this will be the case.

The second issue is the students’ inability to graduate on time due to class cuts. The number of classes and professors cut from the system must be directly and rigidly proportional to the number of students excluded. The result of a discrepancy in that proportion is a situation where students in the system cannot enter the classes they need to graduate on time. This creates a bottleneck as in the current quagmire. Approximately 40,100 CSU students were barred from the system this year due to the tightening of entrance criteria in 2009, nearly an 11 percent annual drop. However, 2610 CSU faculty members were also lost, which is almost 17 percent (Grey). Those numbers do not coincide, and the student body has suffered tremendously because of this. With the interest of our future in mind, it is preferable that all students have access to higher education. Since this is no longer realistically possible without massive increases in state or student cost, student body cuts are inevitable—but should be done with surgical precision to prevent even more problems.

There is a slough of possible actions that would help ease the situation if they weren’t behind a political brick wall. For example, cutting the pay of the management staff in proportion to the active faculty’s pay cuts. As of 2004, the president of each campus made 200-350k annually not including a 9k auto stipend, housing bonuses, etc (James). Those numbers have steadily increased in the last four years. Ten to twenty percent of the entire budget of each CSU (consequently the entire system) goes towards paying the salaries of the lucky few (James). But they were caught by the safety net long ago, while the students and professors still fall towards firings, class unavailability, and more anger and frustration. Without a proper overhaul, the California higher education system will suffer more heavily from the symptoms already present. Those include: graduation bottlenecking and subsequent bottlenecking in transfers from community colleges and high schools, more budget balancing fiascos, and the “rob[bery] of the entire world of an educated populus.” It is an unfortunate consequence of a macroeconomic downturn and an imbalance in the supply of and demand for education. An overhaul of the entire system is necessary, but throwing more money at it seems to be the only temporary fix. “This is bullshit,” read one sign at the SJSU rally. Welcome to California.

Barnes, James. "Six-Figure Salaries Common in CSU." The Spartan Daily. N.p., 20 Apr 2004. Web. 16 Mar 2010. (Link).

Briscoe, Erin. "Local Students Rally To Save Higher Education."Southwest Bakersfield News. N.p., 5 Mar 2010. Web. 16 Mar 2010. (Link).

Grey, Marge. "The Impact of the California State University" The California State University: Working For California. N.p., 26 Nov, 2008. Web. 16 Mar 2010. (Link).

Current Mood: Productive

Listening To: "If You're Going To San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie

God Bless La-Z-Boys

“We’ve become a country that sits down…and listens to people shouting about freedom, but now people equate freedom not with the acquisition of knowledge but with comfort,” congressman Wayne Gilchrest said. “The whole concept of freedom has become the idea of comfort, with a complete lack of responsibility. In today’s America of leather seated cars and political blogs, sometimes it seems like he is right. Americans have sacrificed true freedom for manufactured freedom and comfortable ignorance. Two factors among others have accelerated and solidified this sacrifice: Americans’ attachment to physical comfort and the tube feeding of politics by the media.

The liberation provided by the consumerism imminent in American life is an illusion. Not in the sense that it does not exist—the products that we as Americans have invented and manufactured have “liberated” us in the sense that our horizons have expanded. We can get on an airplane and fly to a remote island. But once we arrive, we find ourselves still immersed in the comforts of consumerism, and on lands controlled by the limiting influence of the same government. And everything from industrially grown beef to mass-produced cars flows through the umbilical cord of comfort that is never severed during our modern lives. People can venture into the wilderness in futile attempt to shun the influence of consumerism, but it always remains attached. A backcountry skier might imagine himself removed from society—he is after all on top of a secluded mountain where few dare to roam. But consumer products are literally bound to his feet and protect him from the elements of nature. Consumer thoughts run through his head—maybe he wants to get wider boards to surf the powder with, or a flashier jacket, or warmer gloves. Consumer blood runs through his veins. In the rare case that that lifeline to consumerism is cut, the results are not pleasant. In 1992 a young man by the name of Chris McCandless left the comfort and the “freedom” offered in his suburban home and ventured into the Alaskan wilderness for “true freedom.” Within several weeks he had died from starvation, because of the lack of the comfortable lifestyle he was bound to. He was reckless, but the cause of his death was not entirely his fault. The complete responsibility he had for his own life was simply too abrupt a change from the society he was raised in. The idea that consumerism contributes to our freedom—that is the illusion. It minimizes our responsibility for ourselves, and our freedom is minimized with it.

A second factor that contributes to America’s detachment from responsibility is the influence of the media. Widespread access to the opinions of the news media has changed politics from a serious matter into a hobby. Americans love drama, to “stand up for their causes” and openly debate their “freedoms” and “rights,” and where “the real America” is. At times in American history, people have had to work for their freedom, and in some cases—the Revolution and Second World War for example—they have had to fight for it. While traces of struggle still exist in a country that continues to strive for perfection, they tend to be over hyped and under funded, thanks in no small part to the extremist political griping from Fox and MSNBC. The soapbox speeches, sign waving, little ribbons and slogans feel empowering, but at the end of the day, it is no more than a game. It is entertainment—entertainment for more American comfort. And with the click of a button, Americans can detach from the action, rest from the battle, and enjoy all of the comfort with none of the responsibility. They do not crawl through dust in a foreign land; gun in hand, fearing for their lives. They sit in a La-Z-Boy and take pleasure in a little afternoon taste of a little media Kool-Aid.

It seems cynical to think about America as a “fake” country, a country made of plastic and processed cheese. After all, we Americans love to think of ourselves as hardworking, as responsible citizens of the world who are free because of our own sweat and blood. But this is the modern world of the “flat-screen TV, the gas-guzzling car, the goods made in China,” like congressman Gilchrest said. And we often forget that it is the often sweat and blood of others that buoys our lifestyle, while we float freely and lazily on a pool raft made of cheap foreign rubber.

Current Mood: Productive

Listening To: "Corporate America" by Boston

Ambition

When you ask a child what he wants to do when he grows up, he will likely respond with great ambition. He might want to be president. Maybe he wants to be a football player in the superbowl. A firefighter. A superhero. Maybe he wants to walk on the moon.

Society robs children. It robs them of ideas, of belief, of truth. Worst of all, it robs them of ambition. Institutionalized education, parental explanation, focus on reasonable future occupations--they dull the sharp edges of childhood dreams. Grinding and grinding, until the knife of aspiration is nothing more than a blunt stick. They learn practical knowledge, but also adopt practical dreams and practical desires. Who are we to define practicality?

The ones who cling tightly to that ambition, that innocent fascination with lofty goals...the ones who contain the fierce desires to achieve, to become, to fly; those are the survivors. They are survivors of relentless although unintentional antagonization, of being told what is "reasonable" and what is out of reach.

When you ask an adult what he wants to do when he grows up, he will likely respond with confusion. Unless of course he is one of those few. Then he may say he would like to be president. A superhero. Maybe he would like to walk on the moon.

Current Mood: Placid

Listening To: "Impend" by Matin O'Donnell

Spirit

As far as the physical universe is concerned, nothing ever disappears--it simply changes form. Ice and snow melt to water, wood and paper burn to ash. This is not difficult to understand. The centuries of human wonder and natural study have produced the comprehension that is contemporarily called "scientific law." This clearly explains the chemical and physical changes and reactions such as melting and burning. It explains the "how." But as solid as this understanding may be, it has a very clear limit. Like an egg hitting the ground, the laws of science are shattered upon reaching this barrier. Beyond the barrier is the spirit, the meaning, the "why."

Death is so instant. Sometimes of course it comes as a process, as a slowly-advancing disease. Sometimes it comes as an oncoming train. But regardless of form, there is that instant transition between existence and nonexistence. It is not tangible. It is not comprehensible. It is not like paper burning into ash. It is not like rain freezing into sleet. There is no change of form. Life simply vanishes. Gone.

Of course death cannot be understood if life is not. It is hierarchical. So what is life? What are feelings? What is emotion? What are memories? The biopsychologist would argue that these have also been explained by scientific law; that all are the result of electric and chemical reactions within the human body. Life could be explained this way, and that death is simply a cessation of those reactions and electrical activity.

Religion obviously fails to explain any of this. With that maimed beast of attempted understanding out of the way, there are only two possibilities left. One, that science and atheism are correct, and that death is final, that once our eyes close for the last time in this world, we disappear, permanently. The second is more complicated, and it involves the concept of the spirit, a nonphysical existence. It is possible that the spirit is something that exists in this world and is tied to the physical body of any living person, perhaps any living thing. It is also possible that the physical and spiritual beings are two separate entities, in two separate places--that the connection is remote, that one may continue although the other may not.

The sole reason I refuse to submit to the religion of atheism is rather ironic. It is not scientific enough. Death has not been empirically tested. It can't be. Because of this, atheism assumes death to be final, which violates the core principals of atheism that scoff at making assumptions. And therein lies the small flaw, the fatal flaw of every other religion created by man: hypocriticism. In the clearest, brightest, most empirical glass tower of religion on Earth, that one, poorly welded seam at its base will crack. It, like all other human creations, both physical and "spiritual," comes crashing to the ground, overtaken by the omniscience of nature.

That, then, leaves the second option. The complexity of this is staggering. What, for example, has a spirit, and what doesn't? Persons? Nonpersons? What about people with alzheimers' and other mental disorders? Are their spirits damaged? Do plants have spirits? Is life in general a collective spirit? The number of questions branching from such a suggestion almost render it too ridiculous to even consider.

It is possible that life just ends. In all likelihood there is a third option, that lies not only beyond scientific law but also beyond the capabilities of the human mind to comprehend. The fact that life is precious, that there is an unknown that is alien and terrifying--has meaning. As far as we can tell, nature is perfect. It is organized, it is methodical...the existence of anything and everything is proof of this. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. If life and is within this realm of perfection, it cannot be created nor destroyed either. There is something we have yet to find.

Current Mood: Placid

Listening To: "High Charity" by Martin O'Donnell