Book Blog 2016

I have to admit, I did not expect The Leviathan to be such a confusing, strung out book. Although I eventually found a way to enjoy seeing the world through his perspective, Hobbes managed to confuse me for most of the book by spending the first 20 chapters attempting to connect every fundamental building block of life in one coherent line of succession, from physics, to human nature and fear, to government organization. He could have just blatantly stated his opinions on government and let the reader decide whether or not to support him, but it was like Hobbes actually wanted to convince through proof instead of just opinion. After building up his generally true proof however, Hobbes lost my support with his belief in an almighty sovereign ruler who had too much power and not enough regulation.

Hobbes claims his ruler is chosen by the people for the people, but in his perfect world the sovereign can never do wrong, can not be punished, and has ultimate control when giving punishment and making decisions. Hobbes constantly talks about how humans want to escape the “state of nature” and create peace, but he contradicts himself by giving all power to one man. Peace comes from treating all equally, not from letting one man enforce peace through fear and punishment. Although I disagreed with Hobbes on many of his large scale beliefs, what surprised me the most was that I ended up agreeing with him on many of his fundamental beliefs: humans are savages and are power-hungry fearful animals, humans can not function peacefully without a form of government to regulate them, and humans must give some of their natural rights to the government to reach and sustain peace.

Although he is an extremist, Hobbes managed to also convince me that a covenant is needed between the people and their government to enforce justice and avoid “Human nature.” There needs to be a clear understanding between the people and government when enforcing, punishing, and legislating, but I do not think that the people should be fearful of their government like Hobbes wants. Instead the government should be a watchful eye over the people looking to keep peace, not through punishment but through reward. The government is there to provide safety and protection for its citizens, not to consistently induce fear.

I ultimately learned that my views are quite a bit more radical than the political compass test first told me. I’m ok with the government having large amounts of power, and the people having limited say in the government, but their needs to be a clear balance between both; A covenant needs to be in place, and the government should have a large elected bureaucracy and many checks and balances to insure all are treated equally. Hobbes taught me that although he is extreme, his core beliefs line up with wanting to keep peace and happiness just like every other political position on the political compass.

In his final chapters, Hobbes begins detail his Leviathan with how the sovereign will administer his kingdom through the Leviathan’s legal system, putting the final touches on his new political structure. What makes me cringe the most about this section is Hobbes’s continual use of “sovereign.” Does he really think that one man can rule a country and make all critical decisions while still staying in between the lines of all Civil and Natural laws? The obvious answer is no, no man is born with the purpose of residing in power over so many others, corruption would ensue, people would lose their heads, uprisings would occur, and a new ruler would be placed into power. You cannot expect an entire country or kingdom to support and praise the decision making skills of a single man without some subsection of its people angry and ready to retaliate. When Hobbes describes the sovereign, it’s like he is attempting to describe god in human form, he claims that the sovereign isn’t subject to punishment for the laws he creates, and that he owns all property of the commonwealth like he was entitled to it from the day of his birth. I know democracy is hard to implement because it takes a bureaucracy of thousands, but it is the only civil way of creating legislation with the least amount of conflict after laws are implemented. Hobbes however hates plurality, and genuinely believes that “censuses” is only reached when one man is advised with opinions, and makes the final decision. How does peace come from a decision that only one man makes?

The one thing I do agree with Hobbes on is his belief that their needs to be subordinate judges to to carry out laws with their own independent reasoning when making decisions, similar to the federal and state level judges we see today. However, Hobbes continues his gibberish rant claiming that the Sovereign cannot be punished at all as he is above failure. To make his argument more interesting, I guess, Hobbes brings God into the mix with his claim that a citizen must aviod divine and civil punishment at the same time and know the difference between the Sovereign and God. To make things worse, Hobbes claims that when “seeing double,” citizens should follow the sovereigns laws over God’s law as God “only comes at the end of the world.” Basically, Hobbes is trying his best to make peace between religion and natural reasoning in governing, in a time where fear and death led people to the church for answers. I personally don’t think that religion and government should be discussed together in the same sentence as religion is all belief and very little reality that governments have to deal with on a daily bases,

After spending the first 17 chapters attempting to connect all fundamental principles of life and human interaction in one coherent set of “geometric proofs”, Hobbes finally begins to outline his belief in implementing a “sovereign authority” that rules all, through the consent of the people: The Leviathan. Hobbes believes the Leviathan is needed to keep humans from the constant “state of nature” where fear and death are present and continuous. His Leviathan, however, also relies on fear and the threat of punishment to keep a social contract. He basically wants a classical era ruler with all the authority.

Hobbes genuinely  believes that the most effective form of government is a monarchy, where all power is invested into a single ruler. He claims that this tyrannical ruler has a mandate to govern his people and to punish them if necessary. He does address other forms of government such as democracy and aristocracy, but Hobbes continually claims that a monarchy is the most efficient when ruling as the monarch shares the “same” interests as his people, makes the best decisions as he has expert advice, and will avoid sparking  civil wars as “he can not disagree with himself.” I completely disagree with Hobbes and I am kind of shock that he never learned from the failed attempts by past emperors who only acted in their own interests when ruling an empire, and rarely listened to advisors unless it benefited themselves. However, after looking over Hobbes’s bibliography, it turns out his father left him and his family at a young age, and eventually Hobbes left home to study literature at 14, and became an asset to many monarchs who largely influenced his understanding of government and its power. It makes sense that his continuous interaction with monarchs only influenced him to write the Leviathan in support of their rule. Nonetheless, I somewhat agree with the idea of having an aristocracy rule singularly over a country similar to something like the Supreme Court today, but no way in he’ll could I have Donald Trump individually govern and choose who to punish.

Hobbes seems to base The Leviathan  solely based off the “laws of nature” that claim humans are all greedy heartless power-hungry people. He believes without order there is only chaos. I on the other hand believe there can be a balance between being too rigorous and having liberty; it’s called democracy, where every citizen can express their own views and have a small say in legislative decisions.

Following the first 9 chapters, Hobbes begins to more indepthly explain Human power and its division. Hobbes claims that Human power is divided between Natural and Instrumental power; Natural being the physical and mental strength, and Instrumental being wealth and reputation. Hobbes largely believes that Man is greedy and is power hungry, when in reality I believe man just wants to survive long enough to find joy and peace. Through his geometrical reasoning, I begin to agree with Hobbes as he states that Man looks for peace as he fears death. This peace he claims can be subdued with religion and customs but can only be kept with philosophy. Hobbes then goes on to claim the universe was put into motion by a singular prime entity and all religion is false besides Christianity which is the only religion when combined with philosophy that can create peace. Without peace,  the “Human State of nature” will only create fear and death. I very much agree with the idea that Humans are savages when they fear death and need rules to follow. Like the democracy seen in some of the world’s most powerful countries, these basic hobbesian human contracts lay the foundation for future peace.

Hobbes looks at Humans only when they do wrong, and not when they do right. I believe this has caused him to be extremely precocious and untrustworthy of human decision and moral and ultimately making him believe a totalitarian government is the only way to effectively keep peace.  You can see this is his 19 laws to keep a contract and avoid the “human state of nature” as he believes humans will slip up and eventually kill each other through greediness. Hobbes looks at natural and social science as one fluent thing: man derives his beliefs from nature and thus it affects him socially.

After taking the Political Compass Test and finding my political view was most similar to Social Democratism (Left and Liberal), my anti-Political view turned out to be Progressivism (Right and Authoritarian). After little deliberation I chose Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes as my Anti-political view book as from what we learned in class he seemed to be a very pessimistic about human nature and human moral compared to other philosophers of his time. Hopefully by reading his book, I can begin to understand why and how he viewed the world.

Through the first 8 or so chapters, Hobbes systematically lays out his believes in succession of each other as almost a step ladder leading up to his final assessment of human nature that comes at the end of the book. What I question the most about his first beginning steps is his ideas about how space is full of matter and is not an open void. If I was in his position in 1651 however, I would definitely believe that space was solid matter and not an empty vacuum of nothing as I would deep down have hope that humans aren’t stuck in a black void and there’s more to life than just plain luck… Buttt now in 2016 humans have pushed into this void since Hobbes’s death and have been able to disprove his theories with physical proof. As for his other beliefs about sensation, and Imagination, and memory, I generally agree with him, however I don’t like his constant belief in “geometrical proof” that all things are connected as I believe communication and the basic fundamental structure of nature developed less fluidly and more by luck. Hobbes manages to then justify why a governing body is critical to peace, as all men look at life differently and interpret nature from a slightly different view. When disputes occur, Hobbes claims that there needs to be a supreme Judge that regulates all in a totalitarian way thus keeping peace. I some-what agree with him as when regulations are put into place disputes are handled all the same and peace is more easily kept such as the United Nations that regulate international affairs for multiple countries. However, I disagree with his way of approaching regulating in a totalitarian fashion, and instead believe criminals should be tried by jurors and in a more humane way.

Throughout the first 8 chapters Hobbes looks to reason with opinion and faith and human judgement and tries to find a universal set of principles to govern humanity with. I do believe that humans need basic principles to live by and to control the chaos of the developing world.

 

Living on Earth scares me. I am just one of 7.45 billion humans that coat every inch of habitable space on a sphere of rock that is circling another sphere of hot plasma at nearly one thousand miles per hour in an empty void that the science community likes to call space. On that sphere of rock, humans organize themselves into countries and states and towns and talk politics to each other for fun… that’s how I see the World. Most of my time on Earth I’ve tried to overlook politics and not worry about the petty disagreements that politicians base their campaigns on. I believe politics are based on the conflict between being civilized and being human. Some of the major points of conflict in politics focus on whether or not killing babies and murderers is morally right, or whether or not taxing the shit out of hard-working people is just, or whether or not it is civilized to discriminate against others based on race and color. Personally, I believe that each man and women has the right to work for their own chance at independence and no other man has the right to favor his life over any other living thing. According to The Political Compass, I am a Social Libertarian.

I’d like to think that I haven’t been influenced by anything but my own opinion, but I know that like every other human in society, I have been brainwashed by my parents and the media and my friends and Mr.Zuber. By far, the media and the internet has had the most influence on my political beliefs with its ability to go completely unrestricted and it’s extremely liberal twitter posts. Personally, religion has had nothing to do with my political stance as it’s hard to accept advice from a book written before humans knew what disease was. Like religion, my family has not influenced my opinions very much, as many have turned conservative with age and support radical politicians that will say whatever they need to get elected (my grandfather has 2 Trump stickers on the back of his car, and we call him “Polish lightning”).

I support an active and strong military, but not an intrusive one that spends its time reshaping and controlling other countries governments. I believe in the right of Freedom of Choice as it’s the mothers baby and just as she has the right to feed the baby within her whatever she wants, she has the right to choose whether it lives or not. I also believe the government should regulate the US economy more as without it, humans go from being civilized to being greedy capitalist animals. I support increased taxing on the rich as long as it does not affect their way of life.

Is it a bad thing that I started more books than I have finished, and spent more time reading my history textbook than fictional books all together, and prioritised English class slightly less than my other core class? Was I too Obdurate when Ms.Rooks tried to convince her classes that reading could be fun if you found the right book, or was I just plainly apathetic when it came to sitting down and reading? Either way, I dreadfully have to admit that I only completed 5 of the probably 10+ books I opened. What’s pathetic is compared to past years, this year I was the most efficient completing books (besides 6th grade when I avidly read). Out of the books I read, my favorite was probably Having Our Say. I was and still am interested in how those women survived sooo long with such a positive outlook on life. Through the racism and hate they experienced, both Bessy and Sadie still managed to forgive past oppressors; that shows true character in my eyes as what occurred during the 19th and 20th centuries will scar our nation for the rest of its existence.

This semester was concentrated with Non-fiction reading; little to no fiction for me. I can’t bring myself to read a “fake story” (although in the past, non-fiction was all I ever wanted to read). I don’t know if society is shaping and implanting the idea in my head or it’s just me getting older, but if I can’t believe a story could be true, I can’t read it…or maybe I just haven’t tried lately, idk? I Digress…A Non-fiction book I would recommend to any high school student who can’t quite grasp the reason they should get a high school education would be The Other Wes Moore. The author, Wes, was able to parallel both his, and the other Weses life so seamlessly that it offered the reader a great comparison between two similar boys that ended up taking two completely different paths in life.

IRT was a blessing this year; It gave me many chances to sit completely silent in a room of 30 people and read. Although there may have been times when I substituted reading with studying, I still enjoyed reading when I did it. If I could make one suggestion, it would be to set a “minimum pages read” grade like you use to do just because it would keep students like myself more focused on reading a book, and not studying for another class or a vocab quiz. Blogs were fun (When I got a good grade on them(:  ) and the 20 mins of reading time was a solid amount to get through 20 pages of a book.

When tackling Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun also Rises, book clubs have been a savior. Talking with members about context and character traits has made understanding and reading the book easier and more enjoyable. Although there aren’t many clear connections that can be made in The Sun also Rises, I personally can connect to Jake in the novel as he seems confused and uneasy about his current situation; like he doesn’t know what to do with his time, and where to turn next. Like him, I don’t know what to do with my future and what to do with my present. Similarly, I struggle with the transition from a busy school life to a wide open summer schedule just like Jake struggles with the transition from the Military to normal life.

It might be because it’s 1:30 in the morning and I am really tired, but this quote from The Other Wes Moore hits me really hard: “When we’re young, it sometimes seems as if the world doesn’t exist outside our city, our block, our house, our room. We make decisions based on what we see in that limited world and follow the only models available” (Moore 178). Does that mean that my decisions and mindset are directly influenced by my living situation, and my supporters? Would I be a different person following a different path if my parents couldn’t afford to live in this neighborhood and if I went to different schools? Once I leave the protection of family, will I change as a person?

This week I finished 80 pages of Having Our Say in the hour of in-class reading time we had, but never got the chance to read any of the book outside of school because of the upcoming AP tests. My only outside reading was spent finishing chapter 30 for apush, making the total pages read from the apush book one thousand. I can’t believe the book is finally finished because it was not as bad as I expected. The total hours read probably topples 70 easily… kinda scary that I spent almost 4 days of my life reading about American history.  By the way, this blog will be quite a bit shorter than my others because I decided to start it the night before the AP Chemistry exam at 9:40, sorry.

This weeks blog focuses more on an idea instead of an actual object or thing. My life is only  17 years of time, not even two decades. In my 17 years I’ve spent close to 24,000 hours in a “constructive learning environment,” around 50,000 hours sleeping, at least another couple thousand studying,  and the rest on summer vacation. That one sentence can easily sum up 99% of my life so far. Idk if I should feel mad about spending 1/5 of my life in a classroom (assuming i don’t die before 100), or just sad with the fact that without spending more time in the classroom, I won’t amount to much more than a physical laborer following the ideas of Taylorism making $17 dollars a day. Can you imagine what it will be like when I am one hundred and have grandchildren, and have a floating wheelchair propelled int0 the air by magnets (It better be invented). I digress.. What I meant to say is, I can’t begin to imagine how the Delany sisters felt after 100 years of living, even after reading their book. The Delany sister’s simple phrases like, “Life is short, and it’s up to you to make it sweet” only frighten me into wondering, how can I assess if I lived a full life?: happiness, advice on how to live a full life, a calculator telling me if I will live to one hundred (72).  Is the secret key to living to one hundred to never marry, and live with your siblings, and not have a family, and independently follow your own goals and dreams, “When people ask me how we’ve lived past one hundred, I say, ‘Honey, we never married. We never had husbands to worry us to death!”(34)?

My personal goal is to not live to one hundred, but to instead be happy and have people who remember and miss me when I am gone. Humans were put on this Earth to love and eat and recreate, If I can fulfill those three things at least I did what I was suppose to do. *drops mic*

 

Finishing this week with only 1 week before AP testing starts, I’m beginning to have a panic attack because the tests will be incredibly hard and drawn out.. why do they have to be all in like a 2 week period?.. it makes literally no sense.. thanks college board.

This week I managed to read close to 200 pages by finishing Al Capone does my shirts and starting Having our Say. I didn’t get to read much of either book at home throughout the week because I was occupied with 30 pages for an apush chapter and had Band UIL rehearsal for most of the 4 day week. However, I was able to knock out Al Capone does my shirts with an hour of reading on Friday and got to page 82 in Having Our Say. Out of the 70 mins of in class reading time I got through 72 pages between reading both books. I was truly inspired by both Bessy and Sadie’s optimism and strength in Having our Say so I wanted to learn more about the history many African American women like themselves lived through to find equality in a world against such thing.

In Having our Say, both sisters are faced with the challenge of being both African American and female in a time when Civil Rights and Women’s rights were just gaining real attention and importance socially and politically. To be both a segregated majority and an unequal, yet completely the same, human in the eyes of the US government, Women like Sadie and Bessy faced oppression and abuse throughout their entire lifes that not many women on this planet today can relate to. The push for equal rights for Women and African Americans started to gain support with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation proclamation in 1863 and the Seneca Falls convention in 1848 within only 15 years of each other. However, to most African American women during the 20th century, feminism came after racial equality as “it seemed to me that no matter how much I had to put up with as a woman, the bigger problem was being colored”(part 5, chap 2). In fact it took nearly 100 years after the beginning of the Women’s rights movement for an organization solely for African American women to be created. The National Council for Negro Women created in 1935 helped to shed light on the job discrimination, racism, and sexism women like Sadie and Bessy experienced. For African Americans of all genders “”education” became the rallying cry of those seeking to improve the lot of former slaves” and gain degrees and middle class jobs (Part 3, page 39).

After flipping through TV channels I came across a series on the History of Jazz and found Ella Fitzgerald, a famous African American Jazz singer who, despite her fame and talent, was still segregated through Jim Crow laws for color. Ella experienced being the only African American women on her tours, giving her no special accommodations for her gender because of her colors. At times Ella was forced to sleep in different hotels besides the ones she was performing at because the owners did not want to alert the guests. Ella produced some of the most popular music of the 50’s and her documentary and life story can be seen here.

 

 

After finishing midterms and starting the final semester of the school year, I’ve managed to get through 200 pages of the non-fiction book, Al Capone does my shirts, including 100 plus pages of Apush, diving into our countries involvement in the Great Depression and World War II. Al Capone does my Shirts wasn’t my first choice read, and I know my pace is dreadfully slow finishing the book. It’s not that I despise reading, it’s just that I admittingly don’t enjoy it as much as I should. I love the idea of leaping into an interesting story or spending time learning about our nations history, but I should do it more than I do now. For my outside-of-class reading time, I spent 10 hours reading about how Herbert Hoover’s laissez-faire Republican ideals only drove the US into a deeper depression causing him to lose the presidency to Franklin Roosevelt’s radical New Deal policies thus saving the United States’s butt. What made reading the chapters so fascinating was the fact that my grandfather actually lived through part of the war and served in the military around the time of the communism and fascism regimes.

Al Capone does my Shirts addresses a very controversial topic that started to gain light in the 1930’s and continues to be discussed still today; mental illnesses and their treatment methods. What makes this so controversial is during the 1930’s, mental illness was critically misunderstood and many unethical treatments were implemented such as electroshock therapy and at worst,  lobotomy or the “hammering of an instrument similar to an icepick through the top of each eye socket severing the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.” Treatments like the lobotomy seem like scenes straight from horror movies, but they were actual methods implemented on thousands of patients in the 30’s and 40’s to calm and sedate them. Some patients had lobotomies done simply for pain or depression as they were thought to cure some of the most basic illnesses today. Most modern medicines for mental illness were not marketed until the 50’s, allowing the treatment to spread to nearly forty thousand people. In Al Capone does my shirts the main character, Moose, has a sister, Natalie, who suffers from autism and their family has tried “a million things.. Aluminum treatments, the voodoo dolls, UCLA, the psychiatrist, the Bible readings, Mrs. Kelly,” and although she isn’t treated with a lobotomy, it could be the next prescribed method of treatment considering the book and the treatment were set both in the 1930’s(268). Luckily Natalie was able to gain help from the special education teacher, Mrs. Kelly, and had not “had a fit since the day [they] got in trouble with the warden more than two months ago.”(173)

While learning about the extreme abuse many patients of the 30’s experienced, I came across an article about the missing Kennedy; Rosemary. Like Natalie, she had a mental illness under 1930’s doctor’s definitions, however it seemed to be mild. Considering she was apart of the prestigious Kennedy family, members thought Rosemary would shame the family, (even though she could still hold conversation and perform in activities) so they institutionalized her eventually lobotomizing her with hope it would help her. There is a link to her story where you can also find dairy entries which only prove her ability to read and write and enjoy life. However, after her lobotomy, (at the age of  21) Rosemary spent the rest of her life in an institution unable to do the activities she was once able to.