But the discussion that I had last night was going back to "deserving it."
Now, being friends with three Duke University feminists during this scandal, I got some pretty good discussions in. One of them was a Pro-Choice Activist, and the other two worked at the Duke Women's center. I note here that these three people were lower middle class (not rich) (however, two were minorities ((however both of those minorities took lots and lots of Advanced Placement exams and scored 5's or perfects on them) (important and unimportant points of analysis, surely)).
Facadesaside: We talked about what it meant, and what it meant for the school, and what it meant for them as students and their identities. I never thought about what it meant for my identity. There were a couple of times that I felt like I had to reassure them that Duke University is a good school.
Before the evidence proved the Lacrosse players innocent, there was a reaction on campus where a group of Due University professors petitioned the student body. This letter said that the students were partly to blame by facilittating a party culture.
There was then a counter-backlash from conservative students, and one charismatic student lead the charges; asking for those professors to apologize or to be fired. And So On.
I can't remember if the professors had a counter-backlash toward the counter-backlash; except to say it would be a shame if some professors were fired because of this.
(This smacks of a debate I have been considering lately; I can't remember if I've already posted this or not, but the debate is Allan Bloom's scathing attack on students in America being too subjective. This subjectivity comes at the expense of being objective and caring for older classical works. Charles Taylor in his response, The Ethics of Authenticity said that there is an ethical way to go about finding your individuality without losing emphasis on objectivity. All of us just shrug and say, okay. I submitted an article trying to apply this to Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs, but I'm not sure that it's going to run).
Between the pornography and parties,he some feminists call what we're living in a "rape culture."
That is, students and men end up looking at pornography so much, some feminists believe that it is a small step from devaluing women to raping them.
Add that as our second facade: the ambiguity of the intersection between culture (re: the contingencies of the scenario that lead to the rape) and the actual events themselves (re: the actual rape).
Where do we draw the line and how can we tell the difference?
Part three, for continuation later:
I also attended a feminist group at North Carolina Central University. The leader of the group said that a woman should be able to stand naked in the middle of the streets and not get raped.
There's another post here that I'll have to post later today.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Notes on a scandal
We have to speak with the vulgar and think with the learned. - Bishop Berkeley
Berkeley's philosophy was that this world is entirely ideal. This world exists in minds alone. Ultimately this leaves God to be the master-Mind in all senses.
Berkeley's philosophy influenced Bertrand Russell and Immanuel Kant.
The point is that there is an intersection between the vulgar, which is reality, and learned, which is ideal.
When I was at North Carolina Central University, there was a nation-wide scandal called the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. The Duke lacrosse team had a drinking party whereupon they hired a stripper. The stripper then accused the entire team of rape. She had help from District Attorney Nifong. There was outrage. When it turned out that she made up the accusation, there was more outrage.
The elephant in the kitchen was the massive class difference between the rich students and rich campus of Duke University and the poor population of the City of Durham, North Carolina.
According to one person I've talked to, not coincidentally (or coincidentally?), Durham is the descendent of Tobacco slave labor. Tobacco farmers worked in Raleigh and kept the Help in Durham.
It's no secret that the Duke fortune was built on tobacco, however.
According to some people I've talked to in Durham, today, half of the population of Durham is impoverished.
How is the division between impoverished-and-the-rich-blurry? Well, Duke University employs a large part of the city. North Durham is almost completely consumed in business and university related jobs. The medical center offers tons of jobs, as does the normal university-related jobs.
Duke University keeps a modest and yet defensible amount of diversity. At least 1/5 of the student population are minority students.
Duke University enriches Durham in more ways, too. The students volunteer around the city and tutor at high schools.
As mentioned before in this blog, Duke University, like NCSU, NCCU and UNC prefers applicants from North Carolina.
So far as I know, employees are treated well.
There is therefore this explicit and obvious have and have not division. This is emblematic and symbolic of a division between two populations. But there is also a way in which the two are so intermixed that the division is not a division.
So there's this big blurry issue of impoverished Durham versus rich Duke University. On one hand is the fact that 1) "duh" some people who go there are rich, and on the other hand 2) it's like not everyone there is rich, and as a matter of fact we work/are/live/research/and so on at Duke University.
They call it, "Town versus Gown," as in the townspeople versus the students who graduate (in Gowns).
In other words facadesaside, there's all this class struggle stuff behind the actual scandal proceedings.
If this is the case, we're going to see scandals again.
Berkeley's philosophy was that this world is entirely ideal. This world exists in minds alone. Ultimately this leaves God to be the master-Mind in all senses.
Berkeley's philosophy influenced Bertrand Russell and Immanuel Kant.
The point is that there is an intersection between the vulgar, which is reality, and learned, which is ideal.
When I was at North Carolina Central University, there was a nation-wide scandal called the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. The Duke lacrosse team had a drinking party whereupon they hired a stripper. The stripper then accused the entire team of rape. She had help from District Attorney Nifong. There was outrage. When it turned out that she made up the accusation, there was more outrage.
The elephant in the kitchen was the massive class difference between the rich students and rich campus of Duke University and the poor population of the City of Durham, North Carolina.
According to one person I've talked to, not coincidentally (or coincidentally?), Durham is the descendent of Tobacco slave labor. Tobacco farmers worked in Raleigh and kept the Help in Durham.
It's no secret that the Duke fortune was built on tobacco, however.
According to some people I've talked to in Durham, today, half of the population of Durham is impoverished.
How is the division between impoverished-and-the-rich-blurry? Well, Duke University employs a large part of the city. North Durham is almost completely consumed in business and university related jobs. The medical center offers tons of jobs, as does the normal university-related jobs.
Duke University keeps a modest and yet defensible amount of diversity. At least 1/5 of the student population are minority students.
Duke University enriches Durham in more ways, too. The students volunteer around the city and tutor at high schools.
As mentioned before in this blog, Duke University, like NCSU, NCCU and UNC prefers applicants from North Carolina.
So far as I know, employees are treated well.
There is therefore this explicit and obvious have and have not division. This is emblematic and symbolic of a division between two populations. But there is also a way in which the two are so intermixed that the division is not a division.
So there's this big blurry issue of impoverished Durham versus rich Duke University. On one hand is the fact that 1) "duh" some people who go there are rich, and on the other hand 2) it's like not everyone there is rich, and as a matter of fact we work/are/live/research/and so on at Duke University.
They call it, "Town versus Gown," as in the townspeople versus the students who graduate (in Gowns).
In other words facadesaside, there's all this class struggle stuff behind the actual scandal proceedings.
If this is the case, we're going to see scandals again.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
When you do something for a while and then it turns out to be fun
Meditation: The only reason that we like doing certain hobbies and routines is because we have broken through a facade in the first place.
Something that I have had a hard time trusting is myself; especially something that I do for a while and then it becomes fun.
Out of all of my main hobbies, and boy do I have a lot of them, it just seems like patterns of stuff that was fun and I kept going. I have them all separate in my head such that I can't help but think that I continue them for different reasons.
Diamond wrote, and I've rewritten this a couple of times on this blog, that "All happy families are alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways;" which is a rewrite from Tolstoy. In other words, success is the conglomeration of each individual success. Unhappiness or unsuccess is when a family succumbs to one individual problem (or more). In this way, happy families are all alike in that they have answered all of the problems that the unhappy families did not.
Take the zodiac and palmistry, both of which I consider under the same headings. I consider them under the same heading because they are both superstition. I used to be big into palmistry. Was I ever good at it? Can you be good at these things?
Pretty good to get sucked into oblivion with superstition; fun that is. No fun to look bad doing it, however. When have I looked bad doing palmistry? Plenty of times. It's worked out sometimes. But what's the criteria for working out?
Take another hobby: extracurricular music, playing the electric bass guitar alone and with friends. I started because I wanted to be like my brother and be like people who were ahead of me in school, one year up to be exact.
Why did I keep going? Well because it was cheap and fun and it made me both happy at the time and I wasn't too embarrassed about it afterward.
Writing. I've written a whole lot and it's hard to say where and when it starts. I started really heavily writing to my sister Paige in the second half of my senior year of High School, and then a whole lot during my year off between high school and college. I had a fallout with the Natural Resources Library, where I worked, and then I started writing for the Technician. My sister Paige encouraged me to keep a blog, and some of my friends were blogging, and here we are.
Reading? But I feel as though everyone reads.
But the question is: why do I feel like I've got to keep going with these hobbies? And how could I apply that to stuff that I want to do? (Like stuff that is not as easy to do, or that I don't want to do, like difficult philosophy tests, writing and running flashcards, doing difficult readings for school, and so on).
I remember in High School, and even College, I've told myself that if I get down to some studying, I will end up liking the work.
Such is true! And in fact, the only way to do studying, or studying successfully according to Richard Palmer, is to have fun while you are studying.
Large works like ahem Tolstoy's War and Peace seem like they are impenetrable until we get started on them and keep going.
The limitations are our own, enjoyment is subjective, and we should find the fun and the successful enjoyment through doing the work, and not in anticipation or consideration of the work.
But something tells me that the work is still brutal regardless; depending upon the job itself....
Something that I have had a hard time trusting is myself; especially something that I do for a while and then it becomes fun.
Out of all of my main hobbies, and boy do I have a lot of them, it just seems like patterns of stuff that was fun and I kept going. I have them all separate in my head such that I can't help but think that I continue them for different reasons.
Diamond wrote, and I've rewritten this a couple of times on this blog, that "All happy families are alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways;" which is a rewrite from Tolstoy. In other words, success is the conglomeration of each individual success. Unhappiness or unsuccess is when a family succumbs to one individual problem (or more). In this way, happy families are all alike in that they have answered all of the problems that the unhappy families did not.
Take the zodiac and palmistry, both of which I consider under the same headings. I consider them under the same heading because they are both superstition. I used to be big into palmistry. Was I ever good at it? Can you be good at these things?
Pretty good to get sucked into oblivion with superstition; fun that is. No fun to look bad doing it, however. When have I looked bad doing palmistry? Plenty of times. It's worked out sometimes. But what's the criteria for working out?
Take another hobby: extracurricular music, playing the electric bass guitar alone and with friends. I started because I wanted to be like my brother and be like people who were ahead of me in school, one year up to be exact.
Why did I keep going? Well because it was cheap and fun and it made me both happy at the time and I wasn't too embarrassed about it afterward.
Writing. I've written a whole lot and it's hard to say where and when it starts. I started really heavily writing to my sister Paige in the second half of my senior year of High School, and then a whole lot during my year off between high school and college. I had a fallout with the Natural Resources Library, where I worked, and then I started writing for the Technician. My sister Paige encouraged me to keep a blog, and some of my friends were blogging, and here we are.
Reading? But I feel as though everyone reads.
But the question is: why do I feel like I've got to keep going with these hobbies? And how could I apply that to stuff that I want to do? (Like stuff that is not as easy to do, or that I don't want to do, like difficult philosophy tests, writing and running flashcards, doing difficult readings for school, and so on).
I remember in High School, and even College, I've told myself that if I get down to some studying, I will end up liking the work.
Such is true! And in fact, the only way to do studying, or studying successfully according to Richard Palmer, is to have fun while you are studying.
Large works like ahem Tolstoy's War and Peace seem like they are impenetrable until we get started on them and keep going.
The limitations are our own, enjoyment is subjective, and we should find the fun and the successful enjoyment through doing the work, and not in anticipation or consideration of the work.
But something tells me that the work is still brutal regardless; depending upon the job itself....
Consider It Considerate
Thinking: maybe it's good to be inconsiderate of others to the extent that you don't know what they are going to; to the extent that you don't know what pain they're having.
What is the shut off point of all of this, when is it supposed to be like that, when should we ignore what people are going through?
Is inconsiderate just sloppiness on the authentic, actualized, individual?
Like: if someone is absurdly ignorant of someone else's needs (inconsiderate), isn't that just a commentary on the situation in the first place.
The second person thinks that the other person should be considering him. Isn't this a flaw in the second person, to believe that the first person should be doing something for the second person?
The answer is sort of, sort of, sort of.
Lately I've been thinking that someone who is selfish is like this inconsiderate person above.
What situation are you in to be considered inconsiderate? What situation are you in to be considered selfish?
If someone is locked in their basement making peanut inventions to save the economy of the southern United States, like George Washington Carver, isn't that a good thing? It's not a situation where he could be considered inconsiderate.
What is the shut off point of all of this, when is it supposed to be like that, when should we ignore what people are going through?
Is inconsiderate just sloppiness on the authentic, actualized, individual?
Like: if someone is absurdly ignorant of someone else's needs (inconsiderate), isn't that just a commentary on the situation in the first place.
The second person thinks that the other person should be considering him. Isn't this a flaw in the second person, to believe that the first person should be doing something for the second person?
The answer is sort of, sort of, sort of.
Lately I've been thinking that someone who is selfish is like this inconsiderate person above.
What situation are you in to be considered inconsiderate? What situation are you in to be considered selfish?
If someone is locked in their basement making peanut inventions to save the economy of the southern United States, like George Washington Carver, isn't that a good thing? It's not a situation where he could be considered inconsiderate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)