I finally graduated, after four wonderful years, with my B.A. in both Philosophy and Political Science from Miami University of Ohio. One of the things I’ll miss most was my column for the student paper, and to celebrate that, this was the last piece I wrote for it as The Contrarian.
http://www.miamistudent.net/opinion/opinion-class-value-students-should-learn-both-in-out-of-lecture-1.2862522#.T7LEO3lYtwE
This week, with my column for the student paper The Miami Student, I take the lesser supported side that factories in places like Shenzhen, China may not be as bad as they are portrayed.
http://www.miamistudent.net/opinion/opinion-foxconn-should-not-be-looked-upon-as-greedy-self-serving-1.2794950#.T0ex23I6QtV
Here’s a recent piece that I’ve had published under my column with The Miami Student.
http://www.miamistudent.net/opinion/opinion-what-s-the-real-harm-with-distributing-notes-online-1.2778202#.TzvfTUz3eKy
Here’s a piece I had published this summer with my student paper. Just an extra something to consider:
Every time I pick up my phone (basically any device be it my phone, iPad, or laptop) the first thing I do is turn to the Internet to check social networking. And what I notice first is the stuff I don’t care about. But circling that drain are hashtags. #Hashtags, if you will. If you’re unfamiliar with the craze, it’s the process of labeling posts with a certain category or relevance that would otherwise go unspoken. (Urban Dictionary can always elaborate for you, if you want the low down and dirty.) #Whitegirlproblems, #1stworldproblems and all the rest of the nonsense people use to relate to others, or comically include themselves in the phenomenon. Sounds harmless enough. But what sort of contrarian would I be if I didn’t disagree?
If you’re any sort of educated person, and you likely are, you know the term existentialism. Simply put you define yourself and life’s meaning and everyone else does the same for themselves. But how is this relevant? In this case, the use of hashtags is a system in which people seek to organize remarks made on the web by category. On Twitter, you can search for them and it’s a quick way to find the subject you’re after. What’s wrong with organization you ask? Well, look at it this way. In dealing with people, they generally do not wish to simply be organized. It’s disheartening to ever think you’re merely a few words with a symbol. I imagine most people feel the same way.
It’s a cheap way for kicks to capitalize on Internet humor. For example, “Hungry, but can’t decide what to eat. #1stworldproblems.” Is it really funny that it’s a problem you can’t decide what you want for lunch because you’re a citizen living in a society that has food in abundance and there is so much to choose from that which hinders your ability to pick? Nope, that isn’t funny in and of itself. People think it’s funny when you say it’s exclusive to your developed nation, because oh yeah, there are tons of starving people in other parts of the world who aren’t #1stworld. But the issue here is not starving people. Glossing over the abundance of reasons why starvation isn’t good, I’ll stick to the point.
Hashtagging creates an environment of desire for inclusion and relation. These are things that on their own don’t seem too bad. The issue isn’t tweeting that you’re a member of the first world and that there are problems that are exclusive to that; the issue is to assume that each and every member of that world is also partaking in those problems. This is where hashtagging makes people poor existentialists.
By operating on the presumption those who read your tweets (or posts since it’s spread to other sites) understand them, you’re continuing to presume they relate to you with that understanding. This requires, because it’s doubtful you intimately know each and every person who reads your posts online, that you further conclude they are like you. Or if not you, like the versions of them you have constructed. As such, you have gone and defined people by that which you post. That hasn’t even accounted yet for what it says about you, the poster.
When I decide that someone else’s hashtag applies to me, I have allowed myself to become defined by another’s traits. It is no longer self-creating or self-defining, because guess what, I’m subject to likeness with the rest of those with #1stworldproblems. If I say I’m suffering from a first-world problem, why not focus on what’s exclusive to me on it? Why allow myself to be defined by boundaries someone else established for the category, instead of allowing my existence to be defined by the specifics of what’s exclusive to me?
In Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1943 philosophical treatise, Being and Nothingness, he says “Life has no meaning a priori … It is up to you to give it a meaning and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.” With hashtagging, it isn’t just me choosing. I’m allowing my being to come under the labels and definitions of pre-established categories, which seek only to make me more accessible to the restof the Internet. So in closing, consider how you define yourself, and others, before deciding they all fall into your constructed view of them.
This isn’t a new problem instead it’s just a new medium. The computer scientist, Jaron Lanier gives some excellent advice in his book, You Are Not a Gadget. It reads, “If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would a machine.” So, read that again, and consider that while may not you heavily consider every little quip you post, and you surely don’t need to, maybe you ought to. Or maybe that’s me, defining your #existentialistproblems.
This fall, I begin what is unfortunately, my last year of undergraduate schooling. To say the least, I will miss it. The entire experience involving academia and other students is one of immeasurable value for those whose hearts are in it. Not to say that sitting in a classroom for 18 hours a week is the way to really open up life experiences, but to do so with so many other people. Martin Heidegger, in dealing with his philosophies about Beings and Others, expresses that a way in which we come to know ourself is through others. A university experience is one of the best places to put this to test. Personal experience allows me to say this, that quick thesis on his part, speaks wonders about our relations with other people. In seeing traits that other people express, or trying to develop your own through interaction, it’s clear that without all the deep philosophy analysis and argument that is provided, things can really be understood in a simple way. All it takes is a little self reflection. Thinking about any person that was introduced to your life, or any person that you ever admired, it is easy to see the qualities you liked most about that person. Considering what people like in others, it’s generally agreed they’d like to see those traits in themselves. Or maybe through interaction with these people, they find these traits in themselves. The point of epiphany comes through these relationships. This point, is when we are able to really value the relationships with have with others, on a level that is outside of use-value, spiritual, or anything that’s commonly examined. This idea, is what helps establish the importance of including more and more people in the educational process. The more minds we are exposed to, the more perspectives that come our way, the more we can learn about ourselves through what we see in others. That’s the core of a University experience, and that’s what we wish to see as many people as possible be able to have in their lifetimes.
While there are non-profits that exist all over the world, and sometimes appear to be rather numerous, it is never true that it is an area of overcrowding. While they don’t all do the same, the goal is usually to do good, and in a way that was previously lacking. It is by no means a new struggle to educate a larger portion of the world’s population, but it is one that we are going to put our effort into. On the horizon, we see ourselves offering South American students the chance to have their entire education experience in here in the U.S., provided for free. This is not just a semester exchange program, this is the opportunity to get accepted into a school, and come out with a degree, at no charge to the beneficiary.
For now though, our plan is to target Brazil, as that is where we are currently most familiar. Brazil is a massive country, and its population size reflects that. With approximately 203,429,773 people spread over 8,514,877 sq km, it is nothing to be underestimated. Flush with resources, specifically people, its hard to imagine why a fourth of the population lives below the poverty line. Yet in the U.S., there exists still roughly a sixth of the population in its federally determined under poverty line category. So the question then may be why not focus on those in the United States? Starting with our vision, it isn’t just about educating those who are already here. But how do we expand the minds of more people? Bringing students here, allows those students that are here to benefit from the presence of the newcomers as well. Not only does the student from Brazil get an education that might not otherwise have been provided, but the classmates of this student stand to benefit from insight coming from another part of the world. It is always a good thing to get another perspective, and by focusing on a more global education, that’s where we go. We go to more perspectives, better cultivation of ideas, and a future that breaks down the focus on borders, then changes it to a focus on people.
Source Material: www.cia.gov
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
If you’re here, you’re familiar with The Pan-American College Fund. This is our non-profit to help provide education, through an exchange program, in both North and South American (with a beginning focus on Brazil) so that both may benefit from one another’s strengths. Where do we stand now? Paperwork aside, we’re going to begin to outline the organization policies (How we’ll find students etc,.). We’ll set up the guidelines as to how you can involved and the sort of help we’ll be looking for. Education isn’t a singular effort, it’s the driving global force in almost every aspect of our lives, so it’s very much about what we can do together.
But of course, we don’t expect you to just hop on. We’ll be outlining why we think the path we’re introducing provides not only a more efficient, but more beneficial approach to publicly funded exchange and education programs. In other words, we won’t just tell you we’re different, we’ll prove it. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to get ahold of us here, where you will find everything you need to know about who we are.
