Stuck in my head.

"Superboy and the Invisible Girl" from Next to Normal.

A few people sung this at fresh faces last night (which went swimmingly and was apparently hugely popular.) and it's been stuck in my head ever since. I could-well, not could, have been- listen to it over and over again. It's such a strong song, and the guy singing at the end has such a strong, high voice... One of those people that makes me wish I had a higher range. But I digress..

Anyway, the show is about a family that suffered a loss. The mother's son died when he was very young, worsening the mother's bipolar disorder. The daughter (main singer) feels like she's living in her deceased brother's (male singer) shadow. He's this immortal identity despite the fact he's no longer with them, and the daughter feels invisible. The show is about a family struggling to survive amid hard struggles.

It's also coming to St. Paul May 10-22. Perhaps I will try and get tickets.

The Scale of the Press

"The more I observe the main effects of a free press, the more convinced I am that, in the modern world freedom of the press is the principal and, so to say, the constitutive element in freedom."

I think DeTocqueville was getting right at an important aspect of America. Through the presses, so many opinions could be shared. Local newspapers would provide all the information anyone needed to read, and each one had a bias that you could embrace or absolutely reject. In this way, people were able to speak their own voice. Anyone was free to say what they wanted if they had a printing press. This is where America flourished Democratically.

Since then, the press has... changed.

I remember learning in APUSH about the downfall of the press, and when a few, large newspapers replaced many, small ones. I believe it was around the beginning of the 1900's (though I could easily be mistaken). I would also say that was a time period where democracy as a concept was not at its glory days. Trusts and big business flourished and the individuals were lost in a sea of incoming cash and urbanization. Funny how both should occur around the same time.

Now, in our current time period, press even further on the decline. Or is it? With new internet media anyone is able to "publish" their opinion; that's somewhat comparable to back then. Except now all you need is access to a computer. Of course amongst the quality reporting there is a lot of hogwash. To me, it still seems like we're on an press boom. Perhaps democracy can always judged against a scale of how the press is flourishing.

Libya.

I don't know where to begin. In case you haven't heard, Libya is in a sort of civil war. I'm not positive on all the details... my understanding was that Libyans, inspired by the recent events in Egypt and protests in other countries, started protesting Kadafi's tyrannical rule. Kadafi in response sent out the military to put down any protesters. They were being shot by 5 inch bullets. Doctors attempting to treat any wounded protesters were killed, and a mass grave was found full of soldiers who refused to follow orders. Now the opposition controls some cities, the government other, and skermishes ensue.


We're spending some time talking about our democratic ideas. In the reading Ryan talked a lot about congregations of people who would get together for whatever reason to talk about anything they supported. Here we have a long history of freedom of speech. Sometimes, we aren't the best at promoting all the first amendment rights. Also, we should not be the "democratic police", going around the world telling people how to run their countries. However, we do have a moral obligation to promote human rights for all. So as people (not necessarily Americans) we should do our best to support Libyans in this struggle. If this means using some of the powers the US has in order to ensure the promotion of human life, so be it. Right now ensuring peace is more important than anything else.

Democracy

is the promotion of the individual to flourish socially and morally; it makes people conscious of who they are and the role they play.

Sentence

I think we're supposed to post this here?

Article, Pg 164: The atavistic pietism of the Puritans gave to the Church the duty of reforming the world and so launched into liberalism in politics and capitalism in economics; it was a religion of commitment.

The commutative feeling of Hoyme hall gives Amcon the feeling of camaraderie and thus ignites the flames of conversation in class and the hallways of St. Olaf; it makes great for great exchanges.

Cute, right?

Looooong Sentences

In class an interesting debate came up about the use of long sentences. What sort of effect do long sentences have? Are they ever really useful? Some points were brought up, such as "Long sentences loose the reader's attention quickly" or "They should be placed at the beginning to introduce all the topics in a linked together order." It is definitely hard to pay attention to long sentences. If you need to immediately relay a point, they are not the way to go. However, they are extremely useful in linking a lot of ideas together. I don't know if that particularly connotes any place to use them within a paragraph, though. Also, most articles could be summed up in a few short sentences. All you need are subjects and verbs, really. But then you loose the poetry of language, and it's definitely hard to make "There is a cat. The cat is fat. It is a fat cat." flow freely. I suppose one must assess when beauty or clarity is necessary. Or maybe the fault is in our own reading. Maybe we need to pay more attention to punctuation.

This was a pretty wishy-washy assessment. As someone who uses long sentences, I should probably advocate for the more strongly.

Founded on Religion

Declaration of Independence inferring that there is a natural law created by greater power.
Spiritural idea of Community, deeper meaning of human equality= that is democracy, beyond voting. All are equal under God, we all are part of some common greatness.
Founded on inner freedom.
No happiness without virtue. Pursuit of happiness is virtual happiness, Not egoistic statiscactiong, BEING WHO YOU AUGHT TO BE AS A HUMAN BEING.
----> Nature & God, to love, etc.
Constitution allows America to correct itself.
Conscience is at the heart of democracy.-- Natural Law

I was going to make this into a post about Natural law, but I didn't remember enough about it. So instead I'm going to make sense of those notes above.

It seems like this program was asserting that America was founded on spirituality, though not necessarily religion. There's a deeper idea of community rooted in Americans (as there should be between all people) that we all should be guaranteed equality because we're human. It's within this radically simply equality that democracy flows from. It's very much the promotion of an individual, but in a communicative sense. Within this greater network of humanity, under the rules of a natural law true to all humans we are bound together.

Freedom and happiness also take on more spiritual forms. Freedom is more of a freedom of spirit, and happiness is not hedonism, but virtue (wouldn't Franklin be happy?). There are spiritual truths that we are meant to pursue with our freedom in order to find happiness. Through that, we may discover our deeper selves. It is a freedom to become who we are truly meant to be- the freedom I pressed so strongly to promote last semester.

Religion and the Individual

It's a little foggy now, but I remember at the end of class on Friday a phrase was thrown into the air as we were all packing up our belongings. Someone mentioned how the second great awakening was about individual spiritual revival. I believe it was Arminianism that emphasized the individual's conversion experience. In my notebook I have written "U --> Jesus", which I'm interpreting as an individual accepts Jesus as their savior, as apposed to Jesus approaching them. This peronalism seems to be a pattern within the second great awakening. Religion becomes more voluntary and participatory, a subset of democracy in which one may emotionally invest in.

I can't help but connect this all to Whitman and how he's influenced my idea of democracy to be the promotion of the individual. The second great awakening falls right into that category: promotion of self-discovery, social reform, improving culture... I suppose this makes sense, considering he said that we may all be united under the idea of religion. But the second great awakening came before Whitman's "Leaves of Grass". I wonder if Whitman was at all influenced by the movement. Or perhaps the awakening and Whitman were both influenced by fundamental American ideals.

Hutchinson and Palmer

I remember really enjoying learning about Anne Hutchinson, with her dissent and promotion of religious equality for women. She addressed the idea of being in communication with God, and that personal relationship. Palmer expressed her feeling of her inner holy spirit. Together they created a forum for women (as well as men) to come and feel their religions. Together, they promoted religious equality. Though I suppose there contexts were a little different. Hutchinson was speaking out in a relatively oppressive society, whereas Palmer was part of a larger movement of females during the second great awakening, as Ryan suggested. To imagine females masterminding the second great awakening from behind the scenes is quite fascinating....

Evolving Already

After Whitman's reading I'm already rethinking my definition of democracy. Whitman seemed a lot more focused on the idea of developing culture, in order to understand greater art forms. In our group we talked a lot about how a society is united by its high culture, full of art and great literature. Of course Whitman specified literature, but that was just his own personal bias. The way this culture comes about is through the promotion of the individual. Democracy comes not just from voting, but by creating a beautiful art from the fundamental support of people.

A point our ORC group made that I really appreciated was the one looking at how our society has grown. To a certain degree, we wondered if we could ever be united by a single culture. You look at the development of America and it's always been different groups, maintaining their self identity, because it is (somewhat ironically) American to do so. In a place full of different nationalities and ideals, how would it be possible to unite all people under one culture? Perhaps in this respect Whitman is wrong. Or perhaps it is through these differences we are unified...

Either way, my idea of democracy is evolving already.

Well, Democracy is...

Democracy is fundamentally built on the idea of participatory government. This means that all people should have an influence in the direction their country goes in. I don’t know all the details, but in my understanding of traditional democracy an uneven number of citizens was taken, voted on an issue and the majority opinion would be taken as true. America has evolved. Logistically, it would just be too hard to organize the millions of citizens to vote on all issues. Thus America’s become a sort of representative republic, where citizens vote to elect individuals who (theoretically) reflect an individual’s ideals, and will strive to put said ideals to work. Participation comes from voting on individuals, not causes; this is how our system differs from tradition but maintains vestiges.

Of course, there are plenty of flaws. I could complain about how there are ways to disclude votes, or how electoral college members have chosen not to agree with their districts majority. But I think there are more fundamental ideals to address within “democracy”. Quite honestly, it’s hard to think about these minute details we’ve created when there isn’t a solid definition of what a democracy is. How can we be expected to uphold a golden idea that isn’t solid, but rather keeps falling through our hands?

Whitman approaches this issue. To say he moves us directly to an answer would be incorrect. There are some aspects he does address which I am interested in, however. To my understanding Whitman views democracy as a means for growing individuals. America strives to be a democracy so that it may create beautiful examples of humanity who are intellectually powerful, courageous, and ideological. He speaks of the power of literature, and how the thoughts of the Greeks influence the development of the western world; he addresses artists who created dreamscapes around them. He addresses the need for an American counterpart. Whitman seems to believe Americans were courageous, of course, but lacked intelligence. This fortitude could carry them forward in the democratic experiment the US created, but there was a necessity for education. To go from budding country of idealists to democratic utopia considerable amounts of self- improvement was necessary.

From this discourse I’ve written with myself I’ve discovered something; democracy is about the empowerment of the individual. Yes, it has to do with voting. But a citizen is granted a vote because that means they garner the respect as an person to be able to cast that vote. It moves beyond that though, to the devolvement of a wholesome persona. By creating more well-rounded, strong individuals we may hope to create a more well-rounded, strong democracy. Promotion of literature and “IDEAS” is a flowering of intelligence Americans should grasp and nourish. This way we can be the great country that we claim to be.

This of course leads me to wonder where we have gone wrong. Rather, I wonder if we have improved as much as Whitman expected us to. Of course there have been improvements, in suffrage and otherwise. But it seems as if Whitman imagined the end of this war, a new nation emerging from the ashes it created and becoming the epitome of what it dreamed to be. Perhaps in smaller steps, America’s getting there. I’m still waiting for the quality education system that will turn our students into young Platos and Aristotles. There's also much to say about corrupt political systems where no vote has any influence. And when corporate lobbyists have so much control over what legislation is passed, one has to wonder where the power lies. Have we begun to nurture the idea of a stronger dollar as apposed to a stronger person? Perhaps it's always been this way, but I am able to notice it more within my own era than times I haven't lived in.

The fact that our idea of democracy isn't clean-cut probably doesn't help matters either.