Shades of Gray

The trouble with labeling mankind is that it is a label. Trying to put a single sweeping statement across all mankind is like trying to organize the animal kingdom. There is always the platypus that screws you over. There is no single baseline statement you can say about all human beings over all time because there are always the outliers. The only universal truth I know about people is that they need oxygen to live. The truth is that people don't fit into these nice neat little categories and there are situations where the things set in stone turn to sand. This is just life. There simply isn't black and white and those who view the world that way are naive. The world has it's black and white but it is mostly full of the gray. People cannot fit into nice neat little packages because they are people and have their own free will. They have the option of rational thought or blind beliefs. They get to choose how and what they do with their lives. These options are not always the same or far reaching, but they have options all the same. People should be taken as the individuals they are not as a massive group that can be defined in a single sentence. When people stop thinking of others as individuals and start thinking of them as a group bad things happen. Hitler certainly broke down the Jews into a single category and the KKK weren't hanging for peoples individuality. Breaking people down into groups just leads to bigotry and prejudice. If breaking humanity down into small groups is bad then it stands to reason that trying to fit them under one universal umbrella can't lead to anything spectacular. I believe that you should take each person one at a time. There is no way to overwhelmingly prove that people are mostly bad or mostly good. There is no computer that can diagnose the human condition. There is only the way you feel about the people you know personally. I don't know all of humanity so I don't think I am fit to judge it. There are people that are bad and people that are good but the majority of people are somewhere in the middle.

Utopia (No Place?)

The world is a screwed up place. This is quite obvious since we need a whole unit on feminist literature and a whole month to celebrate blacks. I don't think the world Martin Luther King Jr looked forward to for his kids had such a month. This is because I think he wanted everyone to be treated equally so we didn't feel the need to celebrate one particular group over another. This is by no means a statement that Blacks don't deserve a month or Martin Luther King Jr doesn't deserve a day. I just think he wouldn't have wanted a world that required a month to rectify racial tensions.

Call me naive but I never think of my friends as black or white I call them by name because that is who they are. I don't think less of anybody because of gender or race but I will think less of a person because of the way they act. I never even really thought about race until probably my teenage years. This is probably because I am a white boy.
Edna has all these troubles because she is trying to have her independence and free will. She doesn't want to be someone's doll, only her own person. She was held back by her society, husband and lover. All society wanted to do to her was make her someone's property. This is the same problem with slavery and most of the conflicts of the world. People want to have control over those around them. Control is an illusion. This is quite evident when Edna who is supposed to be controlled by the society and husband dies for her belief.
When it really comes down to it Yule Brenner from Cool Runnings has it right "We're different. people are scared of what's different." The human race as a whole tries to exert control over the things that they fear. Whether that control is a night light or a nuclear arms race it is the same thing on a different scale. The truth is the unknown has to be controlled for people to feel safe. The status quo has to be maintained and change must never come. Every time a plan is made or a schedule people will follow that schedule until doom. If things are going according to plan people will go along with it no matter how horrible. (see the holocaust or if your Iranian overlook it)
What I'm really trying to say in the random paragraphs above is the world should be a place where no one judges you based on race or gender. No one has to pass a law to get women or minority groups equal pay. Colleges don't have to hit certain percentages of racial groups. The truth is the only way a person should be judged is by their merrits. You should only get by on your skills not the color of your skin or a y chromosome. The fact is the world should be a much better place, but it isn't. The world is a screwed up place.

January Monthly Connection

Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart was a very likable character for me the one issue that I had with him was that he committed suicide. I believe that ending your own life because of your problems can never be heroic. If Okonkwo had sacrificed his life to save his people that would've been a heroic death, but he sulked away and hung himself in the dark. His death did no one any good and was just basically running away. Okonkwo comitted suicide to escape the reallity that his tribe lost its heart and was slowly conforming with the Brittish. He believed they should have fought but the tribesmen acted like old women and basically gave up.
In other cultures such as the Japanese suicide is a very noble thing to do to save your honor. When samarai were captured or defeated they took their own life to defend their honor. Suicide was looked on as preferable to living with the shame of their defeat. Our culture doesn't have the belief that suicide is noble. There are laws and religions that prohibit it. People today look at suicide as murder just of oneself.
I definatly belief that suicide is not an acceptable or noble thing. The pain suicide brings to the family of the victim is all I need to say that suicide is unacceptable. For me there are a few acceptions to this. I believe that people who are terminally ill and suffering should be able to end their own life because they cant better it. Suicide can also be heroic when you consider soldiers staying behind to fight a rearguard action knowing they will die. These people sacrifice themselves to protect other people. Okonkwo did neither of these. He took his own life as the easy way out and I do not believe a true hero should do that.