Final Book Blog

Though I disagreed with his idea that there is no idea worth dying for, I still found the book to be very good and one of the better books we had read this year. Throughout the piece I had felt a sense of pity for him that would surge at certain points such as when he was constantly sedated to calm him down or when he was denied his ability to leave the hospital. I agreed with his final idea that if the entity pretending to protect your freedoms is actually distracting them then you should rebel but I also found it very curious because it forced a further analysis of any conflict the nation has entered in. You are forced to look and see if the fight was really necessary or if the nation had somehow taken away some of your rights in the name of that conflict. Though his initial idea was one that i disagreed with, in the end his conclusion was one that is hard to refute.

Something Interesting, blog for Tuesday

I found the slow progression of his realization about the full extent of his injuries to be interesting because it mirrored the slow formation of his opinions about the war and its effects upon him and his generation. As he realized how truly injured he was, he began to form a more concrete opinion about the war until he had decided it was a war that had forced many unwilling combatants to sacrifice their lives for what the “high up” people had deemed a worthy cause, but a cause that the true combatants felt no connection to. On another level, as he steadily became more aware of his increasingly worsening state, his opinions became more and more pessimistic. This led to him coming to the ultimately brutal conclusion that nothing was worth truly giving your life for because you would never be able to experience what you sacrificed for, a conclusion a man filled with depression could only draw. It seems to me that this would indicate the fact that Joe held no true love for anyone, because that is where a comparison to such a sacrifice can truly be drawn. Mothers say they will sacrifice themselves for their children. Loved ones will sacrifice for each other. If he views nothing as being worth a sacrifice then he never truly loved anything, making him a little less believable as a character.

March of the Flag

In The March of the Flag, the idea is given forth that the Philippines should be taken for a multitude of reasons. This includes the fact that it is a God given ideal that the United States should spread its influence as far as possible (manifest destiny) and that the United States should force its government on the Philippines because the Filipinos are incapable of governing themselves, just as a child is incapable of truly controlling himself. One of the primary reasons, however, is purely economical. He wants the natural resources the Philippines have to offer. These ideals would not sit well with Joe because, while he has the idea that nothing is truly worth dying for, these ideas are purely material. While I believe that there are some things worth dying for, none of these material reasons fall into that category, and Joe would find this idea even more repulsive and would view the author as one of the “them” who sent his generation off to die for mere money.

Johnny Got His Gun vs. America The Beautiful

In “Johnny Got His Gun”, Joe comes to the rather premature idea that there is nothing worth dying for because you cannot possibly experience that which you made the ultimate sacrifice for. This pokes a hole in the ideas put forth in “America the Beautiful” where D’Souza states that in order for a war to be won, people must believe deeply in the war and be willing to sacrifice greatly for it. I will not say these ideas clash, for they do not. D’Souza is not saying every cause is worth sacrificing everything for (which would go against Joe), but rather that for a fight to be victorious people must be willing to do so. I find myself fundamentally disagreeing with Joe’s conclusion. Not only can this not be applied on a large scale because Joe is a single individual but also because there are so many examples pointing in the other direction. For example, Harry’s mom sacrifices herself to try and help Harry survive Voldemort’s attacks, showing her willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice, directly clashing with Joe. No but really, on a serious level, if people didn’t think there were issues worth dying for then no one would sign up for the military. No one would act as a suicide bomber. No one would sacrifice their life for another’s. Joe’s view, while understandable due to his predicament, is a rather premature idea that would be hard to apply globally.

Civil Disobedience

According to Thoreau, resistance is a vital part of democracy. Though Thoreau holds contempt for most forms of government he realizes the necessity they sometimes hold for people but urges people not to take what the government tells them to do at point blank. Further, he believes that going through the general democratic political means set up in government is not the correct path either, feeling that if a law is felt to be wrong, then it should be ignored and broken rather than have people attack it legally. To Thoreau, the resistance to the government is what truly shapes it and forces its action to truly represent the will of the people. If the government knows its people will act when upset it will fear its populace and do as the populace wishes, which is what a government should be doing from the beginning in Thoreau’s eyes. Thus resistance is not a nuisance for government to deal with, but rather an integral part that protects the populace while shaping the government that represents them.

Gender Inequalities: A Two Way Street

Throughout the whole time on the gender topic we have constantly discussed the idea of “feminism” and “sexuality” without ever discussing the topic no one wants to touch, or that no one even wishes to acknowledge: masculinism. We have constantly talked about how women are paid 80 cents per dollar a man makes in an equal workload environment and how women are viewed as weaker, but have never talked about the disadvantages a man or father faces. Though I will admit that women are still disadvantaged in certain places of society, the point I am trying to raise with this blog is that it is not a one-way street. Though it may not be talked about as much, there are certain advantages women have and in a class discussing gender I feel it is only right to look at both sides of the argument.

One of the first topics is the fact that men are often sentenced to longer prison sentences than women for similar crimes. Along the same line, the idea that “women never lie” leads to a bias against males within cases of rape, and in some cases men are not allowed to face their accuser. Also, the idea that men have to pay higher premiums for life and disability insurance and in some countries, they have to pay higher income taxes. The last two concerns for general males is the increasing suicide rate among males which is not being addressed and the lack of health concerns shown for men (in that breast cancer awareness is constantly promoted but prostate cancer awareness isn’t promoted as much, despite similar mortality rates).

Applying to parents individually, however, there are several large concerns in what appear to be glaring double standards. The first of which is the way in which there is discrimination in child custody after a divorce, with the idea that a mom can take care of a kid better than the male counterpart. Also, the idea of alimony and child support where the male has to pay money to the wife or pay to support the kid, which I could understand if it applied to men who took custody or if it paying this support automatically entitled the father to visitation rights, which it does not. Possibly the most troubling, however, is when it comes to arguments over abortion. If a man wants to have a kid but the woman does not the man has no say. The woman can abort anytime she wants without the father’s consent. The bigger part of this, however, is the idea of male abortion. If a male does not want a kid, he should be allowed to renounce all legal ties to the child if it is still within the time of legal female abortion. This is exactly the same as if the woman had aborted the kid in that she would have no legal responsibilities or if she were to give the child up for adoption. She is able to sever all ties to the child, both legal and socially, but the father is not allowed to.

As stated above, I do not intend this to come off as misogynistic nor am I suggesting that a man’s life is hard while women get all the advantages, for that is not true. The point was merely to show that men have their own disadvantages and in a class such as ours it would be important to discuss both sides of the gender issue.

What is Marriage? Question 2

Wolfson deliberately explains marriage in an extended fashion to show the great power it truly holds. He uses this time to demonstrate, not only the social bond marriage holds in that people automatically understand what marriage means and don’t question what marriage truly means, but also the extending government benefits that go with the idea of marriage. He uses the definition that it is primarily a union between two people symbolizing their love for each other and their hope that the love will last. I find that his definition and summary of its benefits its fairly accurate, but he doesn’t include the definition anti-gay groups have given. While I don’t agree with the religious argument anti-gay groups often present and I am relatively sure he doesn’t as well, it should still have been presented in the argument to make a more balanced passage. Overall, his definition of marriage greatly aided his argument and seemed to be a decently fair and balanced representation of marriage.