Journal 58: I Exist

Basically the quote is saying that us people are self-centered and we think that the world revolves around us. From the movie, King's Speech, the speaking instructor asked the king why he should listen to what he have to say. "Why should I listen to you?" "Because I have a voice!" We tend to think that we are important and that people are to listen to us when we think we have some brilliant idea. It doesn't take the most self-conscious person to declare that he made some changes in the world. Everyone feels that they contributed somehow to society and that they are important enough for everyone around them, everyone in the world, and the universe to hear what they think and what they ought to say. However, the world is a big place. The world is filled with a lot of people and a lot of different thought. To logically, through close inspection, think that the world needs to know what you're thinking out of all the other people and out of all the even more thoughts that every person has is simply too demanding. Unless a person of high eminence or importance or power, even people in the same community, same career, would be reluctant to hear what one another has to say all the time.

Journal 57: Free Write

Again with the free writing journal. Free write is a gift, a present, because during free write we can write about whatever we want without the confines of academic field and educational purposes. It is a time for students to freely express their thoughts and not just to think about what the authority wants us to think about. Free write, although might be confusing sometimes, is actually an opportunity for students to practice free thinking. Some students are ripped of their creativity so much that they are incapable of thinking freely outside the box anymore. here is a box.
                                              
|                                             |
|                    O                      |
|                   -|-                     |
|                   / \                     |
Many people thinks inside the box but the true power of human imagination and strength lies outside the box. Free write exercise enables us to reach in deeper to the very element that makes human different from animals. Our thinking power and capacity lies outside of the box and the majority of brilliant ideas lies outside the box.

Journal 56: Power

There are different power structures all over the world, however, in every society there is some kind of social class classification that people are grouped into and sometimes referred to by their social class. For example, in India, the Cast System is very strict and there is an explicit grouping of population in India. There must be to marriage between 2 different class of the Cast System and lower classes of the Cast System aren't even supposed to communicate much with the higher classes. People are judged and looked at through an nondiscrimination eye that only sees different between social classes. In the feudalism system, the difference isn't that obvious and there aren't as extreme rules against classes however, there are still class distinctions, knights, nobles, kings, serfs, peasants, and other classes. Marriage between different class in feudalism society is prohibited and greatly discouraged and there are certain occupation and activities that are only available for certain high class. In today's society, there are different social classes, for example, blue collar and white collar labor difference, high class, middle class, and low class difference, business man, lawyers, and physical laborers. But the difference aren't as big and the rules aren't as strict.

Journal 55: Public Speaking

I used to have massive trembles when I go on stage because I am afraid of all the numerous possibilities of mistakes that I could make such as loss for words, stutter, or wrong pronunciation. However, after speaking more often in public, either to a class or to a crows of unfamiliar faces, I began to outgrow that fear. However, my physiological effects still last. I still shakes, sweat, and tend to forget what I am supposed to say, but I am not  as afraid as I was a few years ago. Public Speaking skills are useful in terms of getting your ideas across even when it's not a friendly communication. It boosts your self esteem and it strengthens your confidence little by little as you stand more often in front of crowds and take over the floor of a discussion and then later reassured by your peers or the audience a job well done. It is a good feeling when you project your ideas across the room, across the hall, across the park, etc. and then getting recognized by the crowd. It is a good feeling to feel that you're in power, that your speech makes sense, and that people are listening to what you have to say because what you say matters.

Journal 54: Nature's Nature

Nature has two sides. One side is the nurturing of all kinds of living things on the planet and a home for all nonliving things also. It nurtures the plants that grows on earth and in the soil; it nurtures the horses running on the grassland and the eagles soaring in the sky; it nurtures the fishes in the water and the worms underground. Everything is part of nature. Some would say that the human civilization and the artificial industrialization and urbanization are a violation of God's will or the code of nature and eventually people will suffer the wraith of nature. Some people also refer to global warming as the wraith of nature because nature is fed up with human polluting the environment. However, when we think about the skyscrapers and the cities and towns, how is it so different from ant hills and beehives. Surely they have less pollution impact but anthills and beehives still do alter the environment around them. To what extent does organism endeavors and product count as unnatural. Usually we think of unnatural as haring the environment. However, we do not know if the beehives and anthills had caused an effect in the world because nobody recorded the world before anthills and beehives for us to compare. All we know is we have altered the CO2 emissions in the world and as a result the world is getting hotter.

Journal 53: Slanted Truth

Slanted truth. Honesty is not the best policy. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, it's never definite. There are times when honesty is required and highly respected but there are also times when honesty would be totally disastrous and even more misleading than a white lie. Adults lie all the time to avoid hurting kids, unnecessary arguments, and misunderstanding. For example, a adults lie about Santa distributing presents. This obviously is a straight up lie. However, some might still regard it as a slanted truth because the essence of Santa distributing gifts, for a kid, is mainly that a good kid will be given a present on Christmas. This technique is for adults to provide an incentive for the kid but instead of just listing a rule that if you do good you get a gift on a certain day, they add a little flower and butterfly on the incentive just for fun. This could be seen more as a slanted truth because it's a slight distortion of incentive policy however it is also just a big fat lie. Another reason people lie is to avoid stuff. For example, people lie all the time about not having enough time when the truth is they have a lot more than enough to do the homework 4, 5 times with the given amount of time. Also, when asked to go to prom, the most frequent answer that means no is they already have a prom date and a lot of times it's false.

Journal 52: Hopes?

Hope is a very interesting aspect of human emotions. Some people can be greatly helped by hope; for example, when a person feels suicidal and feels like the world is hounding him and that there is no more incentives in living, hope can bring that person back up standing and escape a suicidal fate and maybe eventually get better and become successful. However, there is also a bad side of hope. For example, one can be hoping for something great to happen, maybe the arrival of a loved one or finding of a treasure, either way, the feeling of not getting what was expected is a feeling worse than simply not getting the same exact thing. The higher your expectation is the higher you fall. Expectation is like roller coaster, the higher and faster it is the better it is and the more pleasure you derive from the ride, however, if the roller coaster derails, if the hope and expectation wasn't the same as reality, the harder you will fall from the roller coaster, the more pain, the more disparity, the more agonizing it will be. Hopes sometimes can make you feel more pain or maybe it could alleviate pain. Another use of hope is in school. People always hope that they could do the homework with the same quality tomorrow so they never do the work the day assigned unless the due date is the next day.

Journal 51: Pessimism

A pessimist looks at a glass of water and says it's half empty. An optimist looks at a glass of water and says it's half full. A realist looks at a glass of water and says there's 50 ml of water in the cup. The opportunist apologizes for finishing the cup of water while the people are arguing. Pessimism is the tendency to expect the worst out of every situation and feel bad about any opportunity and situation. Some people uses pessimism as a defense mechanism. Expecting the worst result so if the result proves to be unpleasant he would have already guessed and prepared for it, but when the result is pleasant he would be even more joyous. However, this is not what a true pessimist think. Even though he might not feel the unpleasant event like a surprise that hit from nowhere, when the good thing happens he would inherently and instinctively think that the good thin will lead to something unpleasant and bad. Some people are then stuck in the vicious cycle of always expecting the worst out of everything and never enjoying life as they scrutinize every opportunity and fear every pleasant events. Sometimes I behave as a pessimist because I don't like getting my hopes up and then crushed. Also I believe that if you believe that something will happen then it won't so I try to tell myself that it would not happen so as to not jinx it.

Journal 50: Ze Soul

The soul in Emily Dickinson's poem refers to a person's emotional attachment. What she means by "The soul selects her own society" is that the soul, one's emotional attachment, will find what it believes in, what it loves, and what it wants to follow. She uses soul instead of logical thinking such as people, mind, or the brain because she wants to emphasize on the emotional part of the person choosing the "society". She wants to emphasize this because she liked two older married man and she wants to express that she did not think about it logically. If she had considered this with 'logic', 'consciously' then she would know that this will be an outrageous feeling and she would not tolerate it. She is saying that she loved these two men not because she had done a cost-benefit analysis but because her soul selected these two men and there is nothing she can do about it. Once she had fell in love with them there is no changing her feelings because "the valve" closed off like stone and is stubborn in that she cannot alter what she had chosen unconsciously. It is kind of defensive in that she tried to defend herself that she didn't mean to fall into reclusion and depression because falling in love with them wasn't her logical intention nor was she able to change her mind.

Journal 49: Tanka Poem

So about nature,
I like mountains and rivers,
Watch it as sun sets,
But what I really adore,
I like trains, I just love them.

I do the laundry,
Though sometimes I eat good rice,
I still do homework,
Lots and lots of pencil marks,
On my coffee stained notebook.

I don't always laugh,
When I do I laugh out loud,
It can be noisy,
I think you might hear it too,
But wait let me eat that cat.