Week 9

One of the biggest reasons for leaving the land you once called home and moving to a New Land was religious freedom. Two of those religions, Deism, and Society of Friends were two of the religions around at this time. Thomas Paine’s writings brought him a great amount of criticism, but mostly passion from the vast amount of people who read his works throughout the years. He was called the voice of the common man, he had the ability communicate the ideas of the American Revolution to the common person as easily as to intellectuals. One of his most famous, some would say most important piece of writing, “Common Sense”, came out in 1776 originally anonymously because of its treasonous content. Printed and sold by Robert Bell, Third Street, Philadelphia, it sold as many as 120,000 copies in the first three months, 500,000 in the first year, going through twenty-five editions in the first year alone Paine donated his royalties from “Common Sense” to George Washington’s Continental Army saying: “As my wish was to serve an oppressed people, and assist in a just and good cause, I conceived that the honor of it would be promoted by my declining to make even the usual profits of an author.”

Thomas Paine wrote the famous The Age of Reason in 1793 which promoted Deism. Deism is the belief that observation and reason in the natural world is enough to justify the existence of God.  Deists do not believe in miracles, the absolute rightness of the Bible and the Holy Trinity. Deism was prominent in the Enlightenment when people wanted the right to think for themselves and interpret the natural world for what is it. Deism holds that God does not intervene with the functioning of the natural world in any way, allowing it to run according to the laws of nature that he configured when he created all things. God is thus conceived to be wholly transcendent and never immanent. Deism does not ascribe any specific qualities to a deity beyond non-intervention. Deism is related to naturalism because it credits the formation of life and the universe to a higher power, using only natural processes. I am no way a religious historian so if I am wrong I apologize , but from the sounds of Deism, it seem a little similar to Judaism, in the way that they don’t believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and Deists don’t believe in miracles.

Society of Friends, or Friends is a Protestant Christian tradition originating in mid-17th century England and founded by George Fox. Society of Friends based their message on the idea that Christ has come to teach his people himself: stressing Christ's direct relationship with a universal priesthood of which everyone is a part. Going with this idea, Fox claimed that true believers could engage the risen Lord directly through the Holy Spirit without ministers, priests, or the sacraments. Everyone was capable of God’s love, including woman. Many of the early ministers were women, who travelled both around Britain and overseas to America, preaching. For this time in history, to include woman in religion was a huge step forward in the right direction. Today Society of Friends members are known as Quakers and they came to America in the 1680’s to New England and after being persecuted for their beliefs up there, they settled in Pennsylvania established by William Penn. Today Society of Friends members are also known as Quakers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_%28pamphlet%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

My Virtues

1.     Loyalty: to always be trustworthy.

2.     Compassion: Continue to care and help others

3.     Perseverance: Always continue fighting, never quit

4.     Wisdom: Never stop learning, Knowledge

5.     Ambition: Drive for success

6.     Honesty: No lies to self or others

7.     Acceptance: Don’t judge a book by its cover

8.     Gratitude: Appreciating things more

9.     Trust: Be able to trust others

10.   Courage: Always stand up to what’s right

11.   Creativity: Continue to be different

12.   Peace: No more fighting, words or fists

13.   Justice: Always remain fair

14.   Integrity: Marinating strong moral principles

15.   Cockiness: Knowing that I can always change how things end up

16.   Change: Always be open to change of location or heart

17.   Love: Be Loved and give it back

18.   Respect: To who should be

19.   Service: Put others before myself

20.   Expression: Talk about what bothers me or makes me happy

Mid-term Learning Reflection

In advance I apologize for not posting this on time, I guess I am the only person in Richmond that lost power yesterday. Other than this assignment, I have been on time for every assignment this semester. Overall this has been a great first half of an English class. I have been reading and listening to more great writing works over the last seven weeks, than I have my whole life. Every Tuesday I visit the weebly.com website to carefully read about what is due for the upcoming week. For the most I try to do the committee discussion responses first, but it seems like the people in my group will wait until late Monday to post it, which makes it hard to write a response if they are posting to the board late Monday night. So I will generally respond to anyone who post to the committee board before 8 p.m. on Monday. For the second half of the semester I will be responding to people’s posts in greater detail and with comments on their experiences and thoughts. I incorporate my understanding of the class material into my weekly writing assignments, or at least try to. My favorite readings so far have been the latest one, involving Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Both were so important for this country, and I love reading about our Independence from Great Britain. I loved being able to write about having an experience in Nature, for an assignment. It was a great change from reading and assignment and writing a detailed response.  One complaint I do have is that I have no idea how I am doing in this class, unless there is another place to view grades, blackboard doesn’t show any grade. Great reading so far, I hope we stay in the current time period for a little more than we have with other time periods, great readings. Overall great first half to English and I hope to earn an A by the end of it.

Gay Marriage/ Gay Rights

I don’t mean to offend anyone’s beliefs on marriage, or religion for that matter, these are my beliefs and that’s fine if they are not yours. A great majority of people in this country believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. For some reason in this country homosexuals are looked at as second class citizens. Like the slaves that were forced to work our land in the early days of America, or the African Americans during the “Separate but Equal” time in America, homosexuals can’t change who they are. What a joke, Separate but equal, the Jim Crow laws were introduced in 1876 to remind everyone in the United States that everything wasn’t so equal.

Today, some people use gay marriage as a main point of why they will vote or not vote for a person to represent them in government. It seems kind off silly, that you could vote for a representative on one issue, because of all of the other points that a representative believes in, but It is an important issue. I didn’t live through the times in history that I previously mentioned, but for the time that I have been alive, people who are gay seem to have it pretty bad. When you read and see stories about people who are killed, or kill themselves for being gay. Some representatives and priests speak about gay marriage and being gay like there is something wrong with you. People and kids hear this and believe it, then they treat the people around them horribly for being gay. It reminds me of the persecution that the Jews have been going through since the start of time. Hitler tried to get rid of all the Jews and all of the gays, to make one supreme race. I know this does not deal directly with gay marriage, but it all goes together with what people who are gay have to go through, very similar to slaves. There was a story not too long ago, about a Rutgers student that was taped by his roommate while he was having sex, or kissing a guy. Everyone at Rutgers found out about it, because the kid that tapped his roommate showed it to a bunch of his friends, and when his roommate found out about the video, he walked to a bridge and jumped off to his death. When I was in middle school there was a kid, Peter Lurie, I haven’t seen or talked to him since High School, so I hope he is having a better life then he was when I last knew him. Peter was not afraid in what other people thought, he showed this, by the bright colors and the make up that he wore. For his own good, I remember thinking that I wish he would dress like everyone else, but he wasn’t everyone else and one day I can remember screaming coming from behind a wall on the side of my school. Peter was getting the shit kicked out of him and the kid kicking him was yelling, “God doesn’t love you” “faggot”, and other hurtful things like that. Only thing I was thinking as the teacher was pulling Peter off the ground is that something needs to change. Up until a couple of years ago, gay people couldn't even fight and die for their country. I feel like 50 years from now, people are going to say, ''can you believe that people actually used to care about a stupid of an issue as gay marriage, everyone should have the right to be miserable for the rest of their life."

Living a Full Life

What does living a full life mean to me? A full life consists of not only the great times in your life, but also the bad times. In my opinion, family, friends, and money are the most important factors in determining a complete life, but you need all three. Some of the richest people in the world, have no friends or no family that they speak to, and I think if you asked them honestly if they were having a good life, they would say no. My idea of a full life today, could be a different idea tomorrow. Being twenty three years old, my idea of living a full life is, that when I am ready to die, I am staring at the ocean, surrounded by the people who I love the most in the world. Today it would be parents siblings, hopefully wife, children, and grandchildren in the future. Living a full life means that at the end of it, I can say I enjoyed the good and the bad that life has to offer, and I succeeded.  

Living through this recession the last couple of years, has taught me a lot. Making better decisions on how to use my money wisely in the future, is one of them. Another, is to never be comfortable or satisfied. When you get comfortable at a certain job, that’s when they can take it away. It happened to my father, he was with the same company for fifteen years and in 2008 when everyone around him seemed to be getting fired, he did as well. He thought his job was safe, he mentioned loyalty, when I asked why he thought his job was fine. I want to be able to say that when the going got tough, I didn’t back down and I succeeded. I was never really bad with money before, but in the past couple years I have really cut back and began to save for the future. My ideal life would be owning and operating a sports bar near the ocean. Working in restaurant now and for the last five years of my life, and taking business classes at Reynolds to finish my Associates Degree in Business Management, will help point me in the right direction, but a lot of work still needs to be done to make it. After I’m done at Reynolds, furthering my education onto a four year University is in my best interest. Making a business plan and and forming a LLC is definitely a start as well. Location and marketing is huge, you can have one of the best restaurants in the world, but if people don’t know about it, or it’s not located in a good area, you will be closed soon.

I think one of the successes in having a full life is making the lives of the people around you better also.  One day to not have to worry about money, would be amazing, because it would give me the opportunity to do what I’m most passionate about, helping people and animals. I would be volunteering every day at local shelters or food drives. I think the greatest feeling that you could have, is by making someone else feel great. Help building or donating money for parks for kids and dogs would be a dream. Overall a full complete life is being successful in family, friends, wealth, and helping the less fortunate.

Learning Reflection

I have read and listened to more writing in the last 3 weeks, than I have at any point in my life. I am not complaining at, it has been great reading, reflecting, and exploring in nature. I felt most engaged in my writing of my moment of Sublime. Reflecting of all the good memories I had with my friend. The moment I felt most distant, was when I read that we had to set up and write a public blog, never doing one before, but it was easy and I enjoy it. Most helpful is the detailed list at the top of the week assignments page that lists what’s due for the week. I would say that what surprised me the most was the great feedback that everyone in my group is giving each other. Also the language, I knew going into it, that the language was going to be different, but I was still a little surprised. What has helped me, while reading the assignments, is listening and reading along, if that option is available. I will sometimes stop and take notes on what I have read. Overall a great first four weeks, hopefully the rest are just as great.

Week 3

If someone were asked to describe me, somebody that really didn’t know who I was, or what my personality was like, they would describe me as a very quiet and shy person. Like most people I can be shy at first, to people who I am unfamiliar with. Quiet I am not. I am the type of person who loves to make people laugh and keep people entertained. It’s funny, I guess, that through the years of trying to make people laugh and entertain them, it has been the time that I have gotten into the most trouble in my life. Whether I’m in school, in church, on a sports team, or at work, the time when I try to make people laugh seems to be the only time I get in trouble. For instance, when I was at football practice in High School I was the kid running laps after practice, not because I didn’t know what I was doing during practice, it was because I was the one mimicking the coach yelling at us and making everyone laugh. At church I would sing songs with weird voices, and change the words, to what I thought was funny at the time. In school I was a good student, but I was the class clown. In the Fourth Grade, my homeroom class was also my science class at the end of the day. In the morning we would have to watch Chanel 1 news, it is or was a student news organization show that ran nationally. One morning when my fourth grade science teacher, Mrs. Wolf, left to use the bathroom, I taped a fart machine that I got at the fair to the bottom of her chair.  Everyone in the class knew about it, and by lunch it seemed like everyone in the school knew about it. I am surprised that the secret lasted until last period when I made it sound like Mrs. Wolf exploded in her pants.

I also love to argue, I am the type of person who goes down fighting, the type of person who even if he knows he lost the argument, everyone will know his opinion on the subject being discussed. At no point has an argument ever even come close to becoming a physical fight. Emerson states that if you trust yourself, then you can truly be content in whatever you do or wherever you go, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Looking back on the past now, there is always going to be stupid things that you want to take back, but I think they make you who you are today. Am I the person who still likes to make people laugh and entertain them? Yes of course, but am I going to put a fart machine under my managers chair, while he is telling us our goals for the company, hell no. If I did make some people mad with some of my antics as a young man, they knew that there was no malicious intentions in any of my actions.