Oh Say Can You See That He's Not A He?

Perhaps it is a superficial understanding of 19th century America that would lead you to be surprised by the writing of Angelina Grimke. A white, a northerner, and a woman, she attacked slavery and argued for the rights of she and her fellow members of the "gentler sex". This argument at times had to be taken up against other women, too, who truly believed a woman's place was in the home under the authority of men. In 1837, prompted by one such woman named Catherine Beecher, she wrote a series of letters. In her last one she said: 

When I look at human beings as moral beings, all distinction in sex sinks to insignificance and nothingness; for I believe it regulates rights and responsibilities no more than the color of the skin or the eyes. My doctrine then is, that whatever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do.

This was written at a time when coverture legally stripped the rights from a woman, once wed, and placed her under the control of her husband. Though some husbands of the time were not so abusive of this accepted norm, it certainly helped Deborah Sampson that she remained single until after the end of the Revolutionary War when she was honorably discharged from the army. Otherwise it might have been impossible to join the war, as she had disguised herself as a man and assumed the fake name of Robert Shurtliff in order to fight for her country's independence, simultaneously defying the law and proving the point that Grimke would write years later. That which it is moral for a man to do is moral for a woman to do also. 

Born in Plympton, Massachusetts to the descendants of illustrious Pilgrims (most notable of which being her mother’s great grandfather, the early Plymouth governor and signatory of the Mayflower Compact William Bradford), Deborah Sampson led a life that lacked the luxury one might expect to have come from her pedigree. She lost her father at five years old when, trying to make some money for the family, he died on a sea voyage. Unable to keep the entire family together, her mother would indenture her to the family of the Deacon Benjamin Thomas, who was also a successful farmer, living in Middleborough, Massachusetts. Once 18 and freed from her servitude, she stayed at the Thomas home while she took on jobs teaching and weaving from 1779 through 1780.

Never one to allow confinement to the more womanly duties even while working on the farm, it seems less surprising that she would decide to join the Revolutionary War, which was in full swing. In 1782, she found someone to act as an agent to go enlist her for the army under the name Robert Shurtliff in exchange for a portion of the recruit’s signing bonus.

It must be noted, as a tribute to this young woman’s moxie, that this was her second attempt to sign on to the war. This was done only after leaving Middleborough, where she had earlier tried to enlist herself as Timothy Thayer while in disguise. During this first attempt she was found out when a woman reportedly noticed "Thayer" holding the signing quill the way Deborah Sampson held a pen, which was recognizable due to a finger injury. (Highly concerned with the most pressing and morally imperative issues as religious institutions always are, the First Baptist Church in Middleborough excommunicated her for this, because dressing like a man was not Christian-like.) With her second and successful attempt at enlistment though, Deborah Sampson became the first woman in American history to impersonate a man and join the American Army. 

During the summer of 1782, Sampson volunteered with about thirty other soldiers to scout and flush out Tory soldiers (those colonists who were loyal to the crown) and was wounded in the fighting. She allowed herself treatment for a head injury but, for fear of having her true sex discovered upon examination, this furtive and plucky lady concealed from the doctor a bullet wound in her leg. Such was her determination to continue, Sampson removed the bullet herself, from her own leg, and then returned to her duties.

The secret would soon come to light though. About a year and a half into her enlistment, the truth was found out by the doctor Barnabas Binney in Philadelphia, where she had come down with a severe fever that had been making the rounds in the city. The discovery reportedly happened when, while unconscious from fever, Binney put his hand to Shurtliff's chest to feel for a heartbeat, thereby accidentally discovering that he was in fact a she. 

Rather than sell her out, Binney opened his home to her until the War’s end in 1783, when she had to return to West Point, New York and report under Major General Paterson. Upon seeing her off, Binney gave her a letter for Paterson, which, once delivered, informed him of her true identity and heaped praise upon her character. She would be given an honorable discharge by General Henry Knox in October of 1783 after serving as an American infantrywoman, end up receiving a full military pension, and embark on a lecture tour about her experiences. Seemingly, she was the first American woman to do all three of these.

I'd be surprised if more than a handful of you have heard of her, and what a shame that is. A courageous, venturous, and smart woman, she defied the conventional wisdom of her time and made herself a model for the equality of the sexes. (Such equality was a concept both doubted and denied at the time, and still to some unfortunate extent, today).

I can't help saying that I don't believe her example should teach that in order to prove their equality to men, women must take on the roles traditionally confined to men any more than men must do the corollary. (Though, one can't deny the pressure has historically been on women, while the assumption of dominance has been on men). With that being said, it certainly doesn't hurt, and at the time was perhaps necessary. She not only took on such a role (apparently only out of the desire and ambition sourced in her personality) but surpassed any expectations one might have had of her. She did what she wanted. She proved herself. She looked the social norms and legal restrictions of her day in the face and said "Fuck you." And she contributed to the birth of a new nation. Whether she wanted to be one or not, Deborah Sampson is a feminist hero, and a hero of character. 

Deborah Sampson 

(Photo Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/modern-day-female-civil-war-re-enactors-honor-women-who-fought-men-north-and-south-180951249/)

Comfort and Joy: Christmas for an Atheist

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

            The guns were silent across much of the Western front on Christmas day of 1914 when approximately 100,000 men in the British, Belgian, French and German armies called a truce for the day. By some accounts it began as Christmas carols emanated from the opposing trenches, which were often separated by no more than 100 yards, culminating in the two sides singing together. How the truce itself began and spread along the front is debated, but what we do know is that many soldiers exchanged gifts of food, cigarettes and other items, and makeshift soccer balls would be kicked around between the men of enemy nations who’d been sent out to kill one another. This was to the vexation of the commanders who feared their troops might recognize how similar they really were to their enemy, adopt a “live and let live” mentality and lose the will to fight. Though troubling to the military leaders, these are the very reasons the Christmas Truce has become immortalized. Even if only for a single day, masses of men whose job it was to annihilate or be annihilated recognized their brother’s as such and, in what is the paragon of the spirit of Christmas, made merry and even had the audacity to enjoy their common company amid the start of a war which would steal the lives of nearly 10 million soldiers and almost 10 million civilians.

            Symbolic of how the Christmas season is about emphasizing our likeness as brothers and sisters and coming together to make peace, the story of the Christmas Truce begs us to ask, if they can come together and make merry, why can’t we?

            Christmas Spirit morality would, however, be left incomplete without reference to Charles Dickens’ candid and percipient novella A Christmas Carrol, where the main character Ebenezer Scrooge is the personification of pure materialistic greed. We the readers are taught the necessity of viewing one’s own life from a third party perspective, holding up a mirror so that we can ask whether we really are giving our best (or any) efforts to live a life well loved. Not until he is forced by the Ghost of Christmas Past to watch his younger self putting his greed into action does Scrooge see how he's affected others and forged the chains of his current loveless existence. 

            The central moral to A Christmas Carol is that we reap what we sow (although there is also socialist appeals throughout). We all aspire to be desired and to be remembered. To love and be loved adds a certain fullness to life. Our legacy in this temporal world is our only opportunity to live on past our death, and all decent people want that legacy to be one well remembered. In order to create a future life and legacy we can be proud of, the holiday season encourages us to acknowledge and inspect the chains we may be forging for ourselves.

            None of this, you might have noticed, involves any justification from or grounding in religion. The holiday celebrations have very unchristian origins as an alcohol-enhanced Nordic solstice celebration that was co-opted by Christianity (which also presents us with a very questionable “reason for the season”). There was some revisionist work done by the New Testament authors to place Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy) by positing a census which required people to return to their home towns. The issue with this is that the census describe doesn’t seem to have taken place. There is no record of it, nor of a Jewish man performing miracles and being crucified. This is quite a giveaway considering what good record keepers of such public events the Romans were. Even so, people weren't required to journey to their hometowns for censuses and, if they had, then it wouldn’t have occurred in the winter. 

            Further, none of the values we attribute to the Christmas season depend on religion or religious belief. Has someone ever given a convincing reason why you or I should believe, on no evidence and against reason, that a man was born via parthenogenesis and was the son of the creator of the universe (who we also must believe exists)? Or, that if we do not believe in this man’s existence, forsake this life to follow his teachings, and give incessant praise for this Dear Leader who knows all of our actions as well as thoughts, then we will be condemned to torture for all eternity (such is the boundless mercy of His love)? And why must one believe such unbelievable and immoral propositions to appeal to the common humanity we all share, practice self-reflection and spread joy to others? Rejecting these assumptions, we can easily designate the holiday and its December season to reminding ourselves to turn our attention inward and meditate on the love we have and whether our actions are increasing or decreasing the deserved happiness of those around us. The holiday has fortunately become something secular, though has unfortunately also become a consumerist, shallow time of year with much though not all of the gift-giving being more akin to an obligation to spend lots of money than a time to express appreciation through more meaningful gestures.

            I was lucky enough myself to never be indoctrinated with the trappings of Christianity, so this holiday, full of joy as it is, is entirely secular for myself. Religious though my father was (and that my mother’s family is), Christmas never was a religious event for me growing up. On Christmas Eve my parents, brother and I would tune into TBS for the 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story while drinking hot cocoa. During Christmas dinner with our relatives, the closest we come to a prayer is the lighthearted reference to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where we all say “grace” (“The Blessing!”) instead of anything recognizable as an actual prayer. Despite a family who is modestly religious, Christmas never involved any recognition, praise of, or giving of thanks for the alleged birth of Jesus. In fact, the only aspect of my Christmases that is recognizably religious is the tradition I began in high school of attending Christmas Eve mass with my best friend and his family. (I first went before I realized I was an atheist, and liked the church because on my first visit they told a non-religious parable which emphasized the moral of happiness being a choice - a result of one’s mindset and chosen response to circumstances.)

            Never having had religion placed at the center of the holiday season, it becomes apparent how I so easily dispel it from the whole Christmas enterprise. It simply isn't necessary.

Holiday's cause us to get along for a day by emphasizing our similarities and putting aside all of our minor differences, whether of different ethnicity, language, class, or what have you. I tell you the truth, we want to spread comfort and joy and we feel and intrinsic satisfaction at being the cause of this feeling in others. The experiences these actions evoke in ourselves and others are reason enough to embrace the urge to act upon them. As for popular traditions, I enjoy the movies, the cookies, the shopping mall Santas, the Christmas lights, and I enjoy giving thoughtful gifts and reminding the people I care about that they never go unappreciated. I use the season as a time to reflect on myself and how I am imacting the lives of everyone around me. This is how I approach Christmas as a nonbeliever, and why I continue to celebrate it every December. 
Happy Christmas, friends. 

           

                

War With North Korea

I wrote this in response to an article in my university's newspaper that I found to be lacking and irresponsible. Without any further introduction needed, here it is.

                Hundreds of thousands dead, to give an optimistically low estimate, is what awaits us if war breaks out between the United States, our ally South Korea and North Korea. Most significant is that the vast majority of these victims will be Koreans, especially from South Korea. This means we have an even greater obligation to avoid armed conflict between our forces and that of the North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim Jong Un at all costs.

                In a recent article in The Quad that meant to paint a picture of what war with North Korea might look like and who would win, the author did little else than describe a numbers game of how North Korea’s military might compares (or rather, doesn’t compare) to ours. While obvious that much accurate research was done on the points he tackled, the article’s title was betrayed by his giving no description of what a war with North Korea might entail, and the article irresponsibly boiled it down down to an issue of who would ultimately win in the long run, disregarding the losses both sides would take along the way. This is as misleading as those who, when talking about the possibility of war with Russia, explained that our military and nuclear capabilities were greater than theirs. Yeah, this is true, but it fails to take into account the number of casualties that would be piled up in the process of claiming victory. This is not a battle with Yu-Gi-Oh cards where the person with the greater attack points wins with no real damage to herself. This is real life.

                Just north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea are thousands of conventional artillery, laid into the mountainside. As describe in the Huffington Post, “[b]urrowed into hard granite mountain faces and protected behind blast doors, 15,000 North Korean cannons and rocket launchers are aimed at the glass skyscrapers, traffic-choked highways and blocks of apartment buildings 35 miles away in Seoul ― and the U.S. military bases beyond.” According to Mark Bowden in The Atlantic, a U.S. military official estimated that if Seoul was broken up into three-square-foot blocks, the guns would be able to pepper them all within hours. Seoul and its surrounding areas are home to about 25 million people and bordered by mountains and a river, making evacuation a near impossibility. (If we were to evacuate, it likely would be before a first-strike. This could not be done while going unnoticed by the North Koreans, thereby tipping our hand to the imminence of a strike on their territory, and almost certainly prompting the firing of these artillery.) Kim Jong Un is holding not only the North Koreans hostage to his regime, but also the South Koreans, who he will pull the trigger on at the first sign of an invasion or large scale attack. This is what stops us from attacking, and which Mark Bowden noted was the reason that former President Nixon did not retaliate militarily when North Korea shot down a U.S. aircraft, killing over 30 service members.

                While aptly described by Sam Harris as a moral maniac, we know Rocket Man is not totally irrational. While giving no regard to the well-being of the Koreans who he claims to have divine right to rule over, his actions in regard to hostility toward us have been quite rational as a strategy of deterrence and keeping us on our toes. Having Nuclear weapons is an almost certain deterrent to other countries’ desires to remove you from power, so long as they have reason to believe you would use them, which we partly do have. However, we are sure Kim understands that while launching a nuclear missile on the American mainland (once he can do so, which may be before the end of Trump’s presidency) would not be the end of America as a country, the response from us could be the absolute annihilation of North Korea as a country. While a moral maniac, he is not dumb. Although, there is always the chance that I am wrong, and he is one of the people who really do deserve the ascription of the word “evil”, being willing to let his people go down in flames just to wreak mayhem on the world. We must assume the worst though, and hope for the best.

                So for the sake of argument let us imagine a conflict broke out and assume, entirely unrealistically, that we successfully took out North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, that we managed to avoid the destruction of Seoul, and that Kim’s government was toppled. We would then be left with a stateless North Korea, which holds a population of around 25 million that have been told for 3 generations of leaders that it is a master race, almost naturally destined to be in conflict with the United States (an idea that has to be kept constantly alive by Kim’s regime), and spread over a mountainous terrain where pockets of resistance could easily gain footholds, likely led by Kim’s current military commanders and leading to a guerrilla land war. This would cause a refugee and humanitarian crisis that would make a post-Saddam Iraq or Civil War Syria seem like a playground. Keep in mind that these people have been isolated from the outside world almost completely, largely uneducated, told they are a master race ruled over by a man through divine right, and that their very existence as a state revolves around opposition to (some real but many imagined) threats from the United States. This is also their justification for the pursuit of military might. If they acquire the ability to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear missile, they will be safe from our deadly reach. Do we expect such a population to cooperate with an American-occupied post-war Korea?

                So we come back around to the question, what would a war with North Korea look like and who would win? We would certainly win the war against Kim’s government. But, this would likely come by the sacrifice of millions of lives, and it can’t be stressed enough that nearly all of the lives lost will be Korean, meaning we not only have no right to instigate a war but have a responsibility to avoid one at almost all costs.  The result of such a war would inevitably be an American-South Korean victory on the battlefield, but also would be one of the largest humanitarian crises the world has seen, made more difficult by pockets of political and military resistance. Adding to the confusion is the uncertain position of China and how they might respond should war occur, as well as how Russia might try to capitalize on it given their trade with the North Korean government. At the moment, there is just no good outcome for the conflict between America, her ally South Korea, and our adversary North Korea. 

Illegal Immigrants in America

Approximately 11 million immigrants currently reside in the United States without legal documentation. This group has been the subject of very polarizing debate, especially during the previous election year, and the conversation surrounding it is often emotionally driven and filled with assumptions that may or may not be accurate. With all of the catch-phrases and conventional wisdom surrounding this topic, I thought it was time to learn about the reality of the current situation in regards to illegal immigrants and decide on a rational approach to fix the problem. In the coming paragraphs I will provide the information and statistics about different aspects of this issue, such as the number of illegal immigrants, where they hail from, the rates of crime among illegal immigrants within the United States, how they come here, and how much they contribute to taxes and take out of welfare programs.

When discussing illegal immigrants, we need to understand who this population is made up of. The stereotype of most illegal immigrants being Latin American is not inaccurate, although there is a sizable minority from other regions as well, and the reasons that the majority are Latino are only a matter of geography. In March of this year, the New York Times released an article titled Here’s the reality about illegal immigrants in the United States in which they provided information on the proportion of illegal immigrants and their countries of origin. It states that of the total 11 million, about 6.2 million hail from Mexico (although a Pew Research Center report claimed this number dropped from 6.4 million in 2009 to 5.6 million in 2015), 723,000 from Guatemala, 465,000 from El Salvador, and 337,000 from Honduras (these make up the vast majority of Latino immigrants). There are also sizable numbers from China (268,000), India (267,000) and Korea (198,000), with the rest coming from various other countries. While there are many newcomers, a majority have been living in the States for some years. According to the Migration Policy Institute, an officially non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C., about 60% of illegal immigrants have lived here for ten years or more, and about 20% have been here for five years or less, which leaves about another 20% that have been here anywhere from six to nine years. This means that an estimated 80% have been living here for more than five years.

There is often a charge made against illegal immigrants that they are criminals, meaning that they engage in criminal behavior while living inside the U.S. This is a serious accusation which, if true, must have great effects on how we approach the issue, and so the validity of it must be understood. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that of the total 11 million illegal immigrants, those convicted of any crime at all adds up to about 7.5%, or 820,000. The percentage that have committed an actual felony, however, is about 2.7%, or 300,000 people. By comparison, a 2011 research paper titled Growth in the U.S. Ex-Felon and Ex-Prisoner Population, 1948 To 2010, stated that the percentage of people in the overall U.S. population who have been convicted of a felony to be about 8.6%. We can easily speculate on why this difference exists, but what is important is that it does exist. The narrative that paints illegal immigrants as highly prone to committing crimes in the United States is not only unsupported but actually contradicted by the evidence. This means the fear of illegals as violent criminals is unjustified, but also that there are obviously a number who are criminals, even if a small minority. The relevance of this to the overall discussion is that any person illegally residing in the country who decides to commit a serious crime that would make then a danger to others, ought to be deported immediately. However, focusing on crimes committed by specific illegal immigrants and using them to represent the whole in any meaningful way, is a fallacy called the Hasty Generalization. It is illogical and leads to an unfounded stereotyping that hinders any rational approach to addressing the issue, and will only cause unnecessary problems.
To be fair, some people argue that their illegal presence makes them criminals, but here I employ what I call the Mulaney Principle, taken from a phrase John Mulaney said in his 2019 stand-up comedy special. "Just because you're accurate doesn't mean you're interesting." 

  The conventional wisdom tends to be that these immigrants sneak across the southern border that we share with Mexico, but increasingly more have entered the United States legally with temporary visas and then do not leave when those visas expire. The Center for Migration Studies reports that between 2007 and 2014 a majority of immigrants becoming non-lawful residents have done so by overstaying temporary visas (About 66% of new people joining “illegal” ranks in 2014).  However, just less than half still come across the border illegally, demonstrating that the southern border requires as much attention as our internal immigration enforcement. The most effective and efficient ways to do this are up for debate, as far as I am personally concerned, given the complicated nature of protecting the border and the different types of equipment that may be needed in different areas. Others may have more insight on this than I do. 

The jobs that illegal immigrants work range from agricultural work to journalists and more. However, according to the Pew Research Center (5 Facts about Illegal Immigration in the U.S.), these undocumented immigrants are over represented in the farming and construction industry, where they make up 26% and 15% of the workforce, respectively. As of 2014, an estimated 8 million of the total 11 million were a part of the U.S. workforce, accounting for about 5% of the overall number of American workers who were employed or looking for work.

The evasion of taxes that comes with living in the United States illegally is also a hot-button issue for many people, and understandably so. Numbers on this are not so solid, which is unsurprising given the difficulty of estimating tax payment by a population who, at least when they pay income taxes, often do so under fake Social Security numbers. In September of 2016 The Atlantic published an article titled The Truth About Undocumented Immigrants and Taxes, which highlighted the fact that because many illegal aliens pay taxes under fake or stolen Social Security numbers, they pay in money that they are almost certain to never see again. This is the result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which stipulated that any employer knowingly employing an illegal immigrant will be committing a crime. But, in order to not make employers into miniature immigration agents, it also instructed them to accept any documentation reasonably appearing on its face to be real. This opened a black market for fake or stolen Social Security cards and birth certificates, which then brought in payroll taxes from a portion of these immigrants. In the same article in The Atlantic the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Department, Stephen Goss, is referenced as estimating that about 1.8 million illegal immigrants worked under fake or stolen Social Security cards in 2010, and that about $13 billion was paid into the system by illegal immigrants with about $1 billion being paid back in benefits. It is hard to estimate how many pay taxes though, as many are paid in cash like other under-the-table workers and as a result never fill out W-2 forms. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that about 50% pay income taxes, though I have not seen this number substantiated elsewhere yet. People who reside here illegally may also pay taxes in lieu of a Social Security number by using an Individual taxation Identification Number (ITIN). It is worth noting that many immigrants living here without legal authorization very often pay local taxes, even when not paying federal income taxes. 
As Snopes.com points out, Illegal immigrants are not eligible for any federal Healthcare programs, though "six states and the District of Columbia have rules that allow undocumented immigrant children to avail themselves of Medicaid benefits, and undocumented immigrants are also entitled to emergency medical care." (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/illegal-immigrant-benefits/)
They are also not legally eligible for welfare benefits like food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This legal obstacle can be bypassed if they have children or other family members who are legal residents or citizens since those individuals are eligible for such benefits. Children are also guaranteed access to public schools regardless of immigration status, which also gives low-income children (including undocumented ones) access to school food programs. I can not name anyone with certainty who would want to starve a child to death for not having a proper form of legal documentation though.

                These are the bare facts and statistics, without the accompaniment of any specific proposed policy changes in order to address the issue as it stands. My own reluctance to extend this is both because of the fear of dragging it on with too long of an article, and because of my realization that I have many more details to look into before I can confidently say that I stand by a specific approach. I can only hope this helped shed some light on the situation and help some people think more rationally about the topic. 

All You've Got To Do Is Not Be A Stranger

A friend here at Ursinus, Alonzo, just left my room after talking for almost three hours since eleven O'clock. We see each other occasionally and say hello, and recently when I see him around he asks why he never sees me (as some people do, because I'm always holing myself up in my dorm doing school work) and he says it half jokingly but half serious. I could tell it seemed like he sort of wanted to talk and I'd been hoping we'd get a chance to hang out soon. Tonight happened to be that time.

I was being semi productive in my dorm doing a bio lab worksheet when there was a faint knock on my door, but I knew it wasn't anyone I normally talk to that comes to my room because I never get a faint, light knock like this. I actually wasn't entirely sure if someone had knocked until I happened to see, from my bed, the peephole on my door darken with someone standing in front of it. I said "come on in" and it happened to be Alonzo. We'd never really talked much before so I was sort of surprised he just came to my dorm. One of the first things he said was to bring up how he never sees me, which kind of amused me. He came by with some school stuff and to see what I was up to, and we momentarily talked about a question on the bio worksheet but then began to just, talk. I mostly listened, which I was happy to do because I enjoy hearing about other people and their stories and wanted to actually get to know him. He's from Guyana, lived there for twelve years and has an accent, which I think sounds pretty cool. Although, I think most accents sound more interesting than the more plain American accents (or so it seems plain to me, as someone born and raised in American). We talked about relationships briefly, and I especially liked how he said he was still sort of getting used to the atmosphere here and thinking differently (which I think most of us are). What he meant, and explained, was that he is getting used to thinking for himself in a way other than how he was told to think growing up. I loved that point because I feel like this is somehting most of us here (and likely at all colleges) are getting used to doing, and some people don't break away from how they were raised to think and don't begin to think critically for themselves. But, I asked for examples. One example, that I think can be a big thing depending where you grow up or how you are raised, is when he mentioned being in touch with your own sexuality and just being yourself. Exploring yourself, acting more freely. One of the benefits to a more liberal atmosphere is that there is less judgement and we can act freely and explore as well as express ourselves. This is certainly true for me as well. We didn't go deep into how he specifically was raised and told to think in terms of this point, but it did make me think of how since we are little, to different degrees, we are taught to be almost shameful of sexuality and that it can be a negative thing and sometimes even taboo. It is, of course, perfectly natural though and there is no reason to suppress sexuality. Sexuality and being a sensuous person (although being sensuous is certainly not restricted to sex) is one of the most natural and thrilling aspects of life. It is extremely pleasurable and something that should be valued. We can learn a lot about ourselves through our sexuality in terms of basic realizations such as what we do and do not prefer, things such as whether we have desires such as being a dominant or submissive person (which may be a result of our personality) or even coming accepting our more hidden sexual desires. We can express ourselves in an entirely different light as well as enjoy life and experience it in a way very different than most other aspects from which we derive joy, pleasure, inspiration or even spirituality.

We talked about drugs as well, how we had both only experienced weed (and greatly enjoy it), and also talked about how I plan on trying psychedelic mushrooms and/or possibly in the future, LSD. He's been curious about LSD too and thinks he wants to try it at some point. We went int that somewhat in depth and when the topic of psychedelics like that being dangerous, I began to explain what I had learned from researching them, although I'm not going to take up time to explain what more we talked about with how the drugs work.

I asked him about Guyana and if he missed it, to which he said he did a little sometimes, but he does not get very attached to a lot of things. I also am the same way in some respects, and when he brought up how sometimes he worries about the fact that certain things don't affect him, I talked about how I used to worry about the same exact thing. He brought up the death of a close family member that hadn't affected him so much, and the closest example I had was when my older brother and I were home alone and my mom woke me up with a call saying he was on the bathroom floor unable to breathe (he managed to call her). I went in and he was nearly suffocating, and while on the phone with my parents they called an ambulance, I sat him up and tried to get him to be able to take in air, and then drug him into the hall where it was cooler and not steamy from the shower. He could barely breathe and I kept pushing him up and keeping him awake and breathing as he kept trying to slump over until the paramedics got there. The entire time, I was absolutely calm and not worried in the slightest. I am, however, used to him being injured and in serious situations (he was also indirectly struck by lighting while swimming and had a gun to his chest in Reading, PA one night) so that may have been part of it. But I had also worried about my own detachment form the situation. We talked about that topic for a bit, and had good conversation on it.

We spent time talking about school work too and how he loves to write, which I think is fantastic. He'd love to be a writer and likes writing fiction as well as poetry. It was obvious he does truly love writing and would like to be a writer, and Alonzo is obviously a smart and thoughtful person who has a lot of ideas that he could use for writing material. It was just great getting to know someone else and talking for hours like this, making a new friend.

What stuck to me was right as he was leaving, I think hinting at us not talking before and me not being as socially outgoing sometimes because of school work, he said "All you've got to do is not be a stranger." Out of nowhere he came to my room, knocked, and we talked for a couple hours straight. These are moments that really make me happy and appreciate people. I really took that away from our talk tonight. All you've got to do is not be a stranger.

Ignorance and evidence rejection

In my hall's bathroom there were two paper-sized posters put up. The one had pictures of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and one other person who I forget, with respective quotes all essentially saying the same thing: The minimum wage should be raised. Although, Clinton and Sanders' quotes were more specific (15/hr). The other had a picture (which I can't seem to get from my phone to this blog) explaining that when adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 is lower than it was in 1968, that in 2013 there were 3.3 million people in the U.S. being paid minimum wage ($15,000/year), and "While whites comprise the majority of the minimum wage workforce (77%), nearly 5% of African-Americans earn the minimum wage or less- that's higher than any other race or ethnicity." The poster also showed which states have their own minimum wage higher than $7.25. the sources cited at the bottom of the posted by their URL links were PBS.org and pewresearch.org. Two reputable organizations.
My friend, the same one who made the comment about public schools, asked, in a tone of voice that insinuated he thought they were absurd, if I had seen the posters. I said they were in all of the bathrooms I have seen and he said he was taking them down, and that they wouldn't be in his bathroom and called the statistics and the message stupid liberal hippie bullshit. That is not an exact quote, but those words were present in the remark he used. I simply said "I assume that you have evidence to support that those statistics are false then, since you don't believe them." His response started with "no I don't have any evidence and I don't need any" (red flag for his argument) then went on to rant that they (whoever "they" are) pull statistics that are false out of nowhere and we don't know if they are true because you can find evidence to support whatever you want. Obviously he was already lacking any logic in his argument, and I told him that no, you can't find evidence for whatever you want- he tried to cut me off and say that you could- and I cut him back off to keep on with my point, saying that you can fabricate false "evidence" but you can not get actual evidence to support whatever you want. That is counter-intuitive. He began saying again, obviously annoyed (I've been priding myself on keeping pretty calm in a lot of confrontations) and grasping for straws to support his opinion, that "they" just go off and pull up whatever statistics they want to support what they think and that it is hippie bullshit, and said quite a few other remarks which, in all honesty, I forget. I cut him off then, and calmly but assertively stated: no, that is not what happened and you are being extremely ignorant of evidence. The pew research center (I hadn't noticed PBS as the second source before this) is a very reputable source and not a source of fabricated information. You are literally looking at objective evidence and out of no reason, other than it contradicting your preexisting beliefs, are stating that is MUST be false without any reason to support that claim. You are not looking at evidence objectively and then coming to a conclusion based off of the information presented, but are outright denying evidence because it refutes what you already believe (what that specific opinion was I'm not sure, but only know that it apparently found fault with the study results). I finished by saying it was illogical and he had no basis for an argument. A brief moment of silence, since he realized there was not a way for him to argue his point, and then tried to play it off and soften the mood by making a random statement, which was something along the lines of "but man, all I'm saying is..the Jews." I stood there for a second, realizing if I pretended it was randomly funny it would be like saying there were no hard feelings and him being wrong wasn't a big deal, and just let the silence sit for a couple seconds before walking out.
I'm aware that retelling the story may paint myself in a bit of a conceited light, and I tried to tell it in a way that this was not so, but I would lie if I said I wasn't confident in my argument and my handling of a lot of situations. This event was on my mind afterwards though and it did irritate me. What we argued over wasn't a huge deal, but the stubbornness and argument from ignorance dumbfounded. Literally denying evidence because it goes against an opinion you already have which is, itself, based on no logic and only close-mindedness. This, the underlying point behind why I felt the need to write about this in the first place, is what is important. I see this type of thinking around me quite a lot, both in my college as well as in my home town. Although it is arguably easy to fall into this mode of thinking, where we make judgments and arguments based off of no actual evidence, but rather off of preexisting beliefs and justifying our points with broad statements which, if looked at critically, give no supporting evidence themselves. It is a pure lack of reason, and it is hard to ignore the fact that such modes of thinking are commonplace throughout the world.

What is the meaning of life? Surely by now the question itself no longer has meaning. Well, it really doesn't have any more meaning than life itself does. A better way to form that, albeit still no more credible of a question, would be "what is the meaning of human life", since that is really what people are asking. We are an extremely self-centered species and believe everything that happens to us, especially individually, is somehow significant. To ask what the meaning of life is only serves to waste breath. To ask for the "meaning" of life insinuates a predetermined meaning, or purpose, or destination for life that was laid out prior to or at the moment of its beginning. It also assumes not only that we are somehow significantly important but that a supernatural being must exist in order to bestow such "meaning" onto human existence.

 To ask the meaning or purpose behind such a thing as the existence of life is a dead-end, nonintellectual question. We can ask what led to life arising on Earth, however, and how life evolved from its primordial form into the current species extant on the planet today as well as ask questions about our own specific evolutionary lineage. These are feasible questions, A meaning, though? There simply is no reason to believe there is one. I also fail to see how this is disappointing, unless a person chooses to stop there and fall into a depressed view of life because of it. To assume a meaning to life is to assume a creator who has created a preexisting plan for life as a whole and, if religious, a plan for us individually. This is not nearly as freeing or inspiring as reality because this assumption means that there is a plan for you: a predetermined destination that you will end up at. Does this not imply a lack of free will? Just because there is not a greater being who somehow determined the purpose of our existence does not however mean our lives don't have meaning. We know that our lives have meaning in relation to one another and the world, but that meaning does not need to be bestowed unto us by a supernatural sky daddy. We give our own lives meaning, and we decide each morning what we want to live for.

 I was asked during a late-night conversation in my dorm room how, as someone who does not believe any god/s exist, I find meaning in my life. My initial reply was a question: "How does religion give your life meaning?" Then after a pause of silence, I explained my genuine view on the topic. I told my friend that I wake up every single morning and decide what my life's meaning is and will to be. I decide what I want to be, how I want to impact the world and others around me, and how I am going to make myself happy. I wake up and I give my own life meaning, just as you do. It is extremely simple, really, yet also very inspiring I think. We have only one life to live, and rather than deny that and comfort myself with stories of an after life, I accept the reality and use it as motivation to live my life in the way I want to. I don't remember what I was doing in the moment when I had actually stopped denying I had no belief in an afterlife and not only recognized the fact of our simple existence, but accepted it. However, I will never forget the feeling of the moment, which is recreated every time I take the time to think and remind myself that there is nothing after this. It was bliss, and my life has not been the same since then. I have not made any drastic changes as you might be imagining (I haven't gone sky diving or hiked the Appalachian Trail or anything particularly "exciting"), but my outlook on the world was changed and the inspiration I feel from the natural world and the universe was increased tremendously. The way I determine which decision to make has changed. My view of my own future is different and I recognize that I don't want to live a life were I just aspire to meet modern societal standards of what is "successful" but rather want to live a happy life. I will learn and feed my curiosity, love, teach, and appreciate.
I realized a lot of what motivates me to learn biology and other sciences is not to prepare me for any type of career but simply to fuel appreciation. To fuel my curiosity. I learn to learn and I love it. I haven't the slightest idea what I wish to be when I am older, during the years between university and becoming a teacher that is. I just want to learn and the more I learn, the greater the bewilderment I feel when letting my gaze remain fixated on the veins of a leaf, or the ant hiking up its underside, or the spider methodically spinning its web. Appreciation is a big part of what fuels my desire to learn. I want to learn in order to appreciate more deeply.