I Wish I Was an Onna Bugeisha

The Strangest Thing

2008-01-09T18:52:00.000-06:00

So often we claim that we will never fall in love again. And yet we repeat the cycle over and over again. We meet someone. We pour on all the good qualities we can muster. We spoil them and show off our bright shiny sides. We build our lovers up to be this wonderful, amazing, too-good-to-be-true monument. But all too fast it begins to fade. One person stops trying. As a result the other becomes frustrated and starts to demand more. We abandon all of our good intentions and discount all of the thoughtful gestures. And then all too soon its over, in the blink of an eye. And we start to wonder... What did we ever see in them in the first place? Was there a time when we were so happy? What happened to that time? Why did we both stop trying? Why can't we stand each other now? So then, we fight. We tear each other down until there's absolutely nothing left and then we're left tired, drained, powerless and hopeless yet again. We pout, we cry, we wallow in our misery until we can't any longer and then lightning strikes and it all happens again...

The Time Has Come

2007-11-01T11:50:00.001-05:00

As I find myself approaching graduation, I am sad to say that I am disappointed with my college experience. I can fault no one but myself and yet I feel as if the 120 credit hours that I will have received by next semester have been in vain. Perhaps I have grown as an individual, on a personal level, but I don’t feel as if my education has improved much at all. I feel so empty when I look back on the abandoned promises given to me by the hundreds of college admissions brochures that bombarded my mailbox during my junior and senior years of high school. All of the pictures of great halls filled with inspiration, students yelling out in passion, seem to be mere phantoms in my memories. Indeed I have learned and acquired the knowledge promised to me in the degree plans and syllabi of my classes, but I have not received an “education.”

In ancient times, a university was thought of as a place where people would go to follow and indulge their passions. But sadly I am guilty of following the same passion that many students of my generation follow, the love of money. We go to college in hopes that we will be able to get better jobs and make more money. Arthur Levine and Jeanette Cureton conducted a study to expose the idea that today’s college students “want a different type of relationship with their colleges from the one undergraduates historically have had. They preferred a relationship like those they already enjoyed with their bank, the telephone company, and the supermarket.” Students now feel removed from their universities, as if they are indeed just another number to be churned out from this “knowledge factory.” It feels as if we merely need to pick up parts, or upgrades if you will, of knowledge in order to become a perfect working product of society. We can pay the factory and get put on the conveyor belt and four years later, we come out augmented, improved, a better model that will be more useful and efficient and thus, more valuable to our “consumers” or employers. Pick up one component of History, a few components of Language, another component of Mathematics, and throw in a little bit of Science and Voila! We’re already through our first two years, halfway towards completion, but what have we really achieved?

Universities were once thought of as places that “merely brought a number of young men together for three or four years.” They were places where people went to delve deeper into their passions, and study subjects that not only interested them, but also engaged them. Today’s students merely follow a curriculum, they meet the minimum requirements, and leave. There isn’t a university culture of learning, there is a university culture of obeying, following, and detachment. Each student functions like a lone vessel, with a thousand individual components interacting in one place. Each component has its own motivation that pulls on the student. Each student must think about work, friends, family, finances, sleep, and, of course, education but many times all the other influences overshadow that of education. We forget that education is supposed to be the force that will better the other aspect our lives. We get so caught up in just trying to survive that we forget to take the time to develop passion in something. “There’s a sentiment currently abroad that if you step aside for a moment, to write, to travel, to fall too hard in love, you might lose position permanently.” So perhaps we need to change the way we view our education, we need to integrate it more into our lives. We should take a step back, and take the time to learn something, if even one thing, well.

Perhaps the detachment is so noticeable because of the particular university that I attend. It is a generic smaller state university so focused in the studies of engineering and higher science that many of our students hardly ever step outside. So many people desperately cry out for more school spirit, and yet it will never change until the students feel more passionate at an individual level. Perhaps there is something that could be done on both sides, by the students and also by the university. The university should help to remind students that they shouldn’t just be focused on trying to obtain a piece of paper to hang on a wall, but instead they should find a passion. Students should take time to explore those passions. We shouldn’t declare a major. We should declare an interest. So luckily I have one semester left to find an interest, and to truly explore it. If you have the luxury of more time, I suggest that you develop a true passion and study it, and it will mean so much more to you than a tiny, thin, piece of a tree.

Justice

2007-10-21T16:58:00.000-05:00

Last week, I participated in a discussion on the topic of justice. My professor had the class do an exercise in which we had to create three principles of justice. Not quite understanding what he was asking for, some of the students asked him to clarify. He was attempting to focus the discussion around a particular authors’ work but did not want to give it away so he gave us the following explanation:

“Do you remember the game Jeopardy? class answers yes. You know how they give you a statement and you have to answer with a question so the clue will lead you to a certain conclusion right? class answers yes again. Okay well, you’re trying to create three statements to create a clue for which the Jeopardy answer would be ‘What is Justice?’ So it is not a definition of justice but a leading principle to Justice.”

I thought that this was a pretty decent description of the exercise. My professor has this way of being able to explain concepts in a contemporary way; it is nice to have a faculty member who knows how to relate to his students. Anyway, so the class broke up into groups of three and four and proceeded to complete the exercise.

The instructions for the exercise stated that we didn’t know which society our principles would pertain to, we had no idea what sort of value system, religious system, or ethics system that we had to work with. So essentially, a “veil of ignorance” was placed on us. So if you’re well versed with literature and justice theories, you probably already know the person that our lecture was based on. Yes, the lecture was supposed to be centered upon John Rawls’ Theory of Justice.

My group came up with the following principles:

1) All individuals are granted, by birth, the right to life.
So essentially, the greatest common denominator of all people is that they must be born and they must die. However, from the moment that they become a part of any society, they are subject to certain laws or restraints.

2) Rights may be revoked if one infringes upon anyone’s right to life.
All people should be granted their right to life unless they do something that hinders the life of another or perhaps their own. Each society may apply this differently however almost every culture has certain punishments for actions, which threaten the life of another. At the most primitive level, many societies had certain practices in place to bring justice to those who murdered or injured another person. Some societies use retribution methods, “an eye for an eye,” others have more developed laws to punish these actions. Even laws against theft would fall under this category because in a way, theft involves taking the resources that someone uses to live so that threatens his life.

3) Inequalities of Power, whether economic or political, are permissible as long as those with power must represent their constituents’ or subordinate’s right to life.

Admittedly we had a bit of help with this one. My professor asked us to think about “unfair” situations and when they would be allowed, a principle to govern exceptions. We decided that an inequality of power would be allowable if the people with greater power still represented the interests of the people with lesser power. Indeed there will always be those with more and those with less but what justifies the difference?

After our professor went around the room to see what each of the groups came up with, he revealed the theories that Rawls designed. The principles Rawls created were very similar to the ones that my group along with several others had defined.

First Principle: Liberty
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties.

Now the first principle we defined differently because not everyone will have the same idea of equal. For a while, America was created upon principles that all men were created equal but the idea of who were men was different. We insist that all those who are born must be equal in the way that they have been given a chance to live. Whether they survive or what they do with their lives may be different from person to person but the fact that they are born should grant them the initial right to the same liberties as any other person. We assume that this applies only to people.

Second Principle: Wealth
I’m not quite sure why our professor had us come up with three principles because Rawls basically defines most of his ideas under two but our second was put in place to explain why not all people are given permanent rights. These rights may unfortunately be revoked at any time after birth, for some sooner, for some later, and for some not at all.

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:

(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged

This is the part of his theory that Rawls usually gets criticized most for. Not everyone agrees that inequalities are permissible. But fundamentally, inequalities must always exist. This part of Rawl’s theory suggests that it is justifiable for some people to have more than others as long as the fact that they have more is universally improving the well being of those who have less. But here’s the catch, so what if one person who has a great amount of wealth is not doing anything that is visibly contributing to society? Does the fact that they are participating in the economy in some way improving society as a whole? What if these people aren’t intentionally improving society and their actions just create consequences that inadvertently improve society? Should they still be allowed wealth?

(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Now, what defines fair equality of opportunity? If we discriminate against those who are less intelligent, is that fair? What sort of criteria should be used to filter out those who are unsuitable to wield wealth?

Onna Bugeisha

2007-10-10T17:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm not trained in martial arts. I can't wield a sword. I'm not Japanese. But I am a warrior. An "onna bugeisha" is a woman from the "buke" class of Japan, the same class which samurai come from. I am a woman. I am passionate, driven, and I refuse to let life get the best of me. I do what I can to change the world, to make an impact. Sometimes its good, sometimes its bad, but hopefully in the end I can leave it better than I found it. I try to live with honor. I'm not particularly religious but I have strong beliefs. I try to live every day with passion, purpose, and reason but alas...sometimes I can only be a survivor, a reactor. I can try to initiate change but sometimes you can just react to the changes around you. Play the cards your dealt. Cliches are terrible but so often true. Here are my writings. Some will be entertaining, some will be boring, some will be about life, some will be personal, and some may be absolutely whimsical but I hope you enjoy them.