This is good. This is Beutiful. This is good and Beautiful.

Why the heck I was dancing on my way to the most intense class I have? I am in a class of 6 students studying our teacher’s specialty, and to top that off, it is an accelerated class due to her pregnancy. In the class she drills us with questioning, and it is most uncomfortable if you are not familiar with the readings. So why the heck was I spontaneously dancing 5 min. bf class in the stairwell outside of the class while listening to my ipod? I’ve heard that song a dozen times but why was I dancing to it then?

There are 2 extremes at this school, and sometimes you can find wise people in between. (I don’t want to polarize this world of my words, but for expression’s sake, this will have to do) I will use the purely scientific person and the purely poetic person in the following ways:

The scientific person is a person who thinks without acting. The poetic person is the one who acts without thinking. Yes I know these are not reasonable words for this definition but bare with me. The scientific person is after that which is good, he seeks to attain and absorb the things, and he observes and learns a great deal in his head. He may look like those guys you call “square”, kind of nerdy, but very smart. Then you got the poet, always writing a song, singing a song, observing the nature but not reading too much. Spends a majority of his time outside using a lot of good-sounding words like “love” and “freedom” but the depth of his knowledge is purely expressional.

So these two people are neither “good” not “bad”.

Now think, why do people in college go out on the weekends and get hammered and partake in types of orgies or the like? What is it about this social art that is so appealing to us that we have this desire to go out and just let it all hang out!

What I am trying to get at is my frustration with the way I am approaching school. Or is it the way this school is approaching teaching? But either way I am in need of getting it out! When we approach learning in such as self-disciplined fashion that just takes the life out of you and leave you a robot – unable to connect with anyone or nature itself like the “square” we talked about earlier, it is a sad, confining place to be. But then if we seek a shallow freedom more than anything without reason or thought behind them, we look like stoned hippies from the Woodstock doing whatever Jimmy Hendrix says (another form of robot). WHERE IS THE BALANCE? What is the most effective use of our time spent in the books? Maybe this quote will shed some light:

. . . Nor let any one be discouraged by what seems, in moments of despondency, the lack of time and opportunity. Those who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them: and what we achieve depends less on the amount of time we posses, that on the use we make of our time.

How often to do despair when we can’t cram another word into our brain from the millions of words we are required to read over a week at school? But then we think it’s because maybe we just need to spend more time in the books to absorb more (maybe we do in some cases). But I want to argue we can somehow create opportunities of learning on a deeper level, more superior than the answering of questions. We are only hindering ourselves if we spend too much time in the moment of despondency, you cannot create more time by thinking about how much time you wasted.

Live in expression of what you know. Learning isn’t all about cramming more into your head, experiencing that which is good and beautiful at the same time can be beneficial, express yourself, it is good for learning, and it is a beautiful form of art (whatever medium it may be).

so this online journal is good for its expressive purposes.

these are posts i have to write for a class, so ill just post them here, hope they dont sound too academic, at least its better than sounding 'religous'.
---on my way to my brothers wedding in shanghai for the next 11 days, missing school. nervous and excited, gonna miss my friends at school alot.

The Damn Ideas

You may have the greatest ideas in the world, but without love they are powerless.

something on education:

I want to talk about something I have been struggling with personally. Relating to the issue of passing knowledge to another human being, the subject of TEACHING! Specifically, I have been extremely frustrated with my Rhetoric.

First in relation to Gorgias, I agree there is pleasant and pain simultaneous while one who is perceived as ‘good’ pursues a good cause. In relation to the lectures of economics of happiness that was presented last year. A sudden raise in income produces pleasure, but not sustainable. Then later, through diminishing marginal return of income (my theory), that individual may experience less degree’s of ‘happiness’ with each rise in income. So the ‘good’ do not find the greatest pleasure in accumulation of pleasurable things, but seeking after that which is good, despite pains and harmful circumstances – they are all apart of the greater cause.

Now – this is hard for me to explain – in relation to rhetoric vs. dialect and the ‘greater good’ we discussed earlier. . .

“Do you think that orators will always speak with regard to what’s best? Do they always set their sights on making the citizens as good as possible through their speeches? Or are they also bent upon the gratification of the citizens and do they slight the common good for the sake of their own private good, and so keep company with the people trying solely to gratify them, without any thought at all for whether this will make them be better or worse?”

I have found, despite how great and marvelous your ideas and passion is about something, you cannot pass that knowledge to ‘impassion’ someone else without something else. There is no teaching moments until a degree of . . . lets say – ‘feeling for the other person’. And what is problematic with Rhetoric is that one person is accountable to himself. He is only thinking of the things inside his head at the moment to pass onto the next (or he is more easily susceptible to knowing his audience. – the level of frankness in a dialogue goes down). What Rhetoric lacks is a genuine passion for the audience. Before a speaker gets up to speak, he must identify the greater goal, and if that greater goal is in the idea or in relation to the idea or knowledge in relation to himself then it will not be for a sustainable good for the people. It could quite possibly make the audience feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. The speaker must identify what the greater good is and work to his best capacity to maintain that through the art of speech.

Dialogue is less premeditative and requires more spontaneity which correlates with more frankness and honesty. Dialogue allows someone to truly see someone else. And that greater good can be pinpointed within the motives of that individual through the conversation.

____________
Ok. forget the philosophy talk,
greatest idea -- no love -- worthless. with me, love seems to correlate with my prayer. the more i pray the more i love live and people.

the greatest among you will be the least. the greatest among you is the servant.
--Jesus said it allthetime.
so whenever you got ideas to save the world, what are you going to do when you sit down with an old ftiend for lunch, is you mind going to be preoccupied with the ideas of how to save the world, or are you going to have a genuine concern for your friend?