Friday, November 09, 2007
The Truth of Inconvenience
"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,'
declares the LORD."
-Isaiah 55:8 (NIV)
Peace and blessings,
No this post does not have anything to do with Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth," but you have to like my play off of the film's title right, lol? I just wanted to share a few thoughts about an experience I had Wednesday night. After I got out of class, I got something to eat before I started walking to my car. Because of the crazy parking situation near campus, I park about 15 minutes (walking distance) from campus and just walk it, because it's all day parking. As folks living in the Bay know, it is starting to get pretty cold at night. Once I got to my car, I noticed that my gas light came on. My initial thought was "man, I really don't want to stop for gas on the way home." Therefore, I prayed to God that I could make it home without getting gas, and I would get gas tomorrow. The reasons I really didn't want to stop for gas were:
1) I was a little under the weather, so, given that I was just walking in the cold for the past 15 minutes, I noticed that the cold weather was starting to get to me, so I wanted to get home as soon as possible. Furthermore, I really didn't feel like standing out in the cold pumping gas.
2) On my way walking to the car I picked up a broccoli and cheese soup bread bowl from Quizno's (yes, I had to give you the specifics because it is off the hook), and I wanted to get home before it got cold.
3) I knew that I had a lot of work to do when I get home, and I know that the longer it took me to get home, the more likely I would want to chill and procrastinate when I got home. I know how I operate, and if I don't "strike when the iron's hot," then I get complacent.
So as you can see, stopping for gas that evening would have appeared to me to be an inconvenience. As soon as I start driving, the gas light goes off and I'm feeling optimistic about my chances of getting home before the gas tank gets really low. However, this optimism quickly waned, as right before I approach the freeway onramp, the light comes on again and the gauage looks real "suspect." Huffing and puffing under my breadth, I turn into the gas station to get some gas. Before proceeding with the story, it is important for me to let you know about my "gas station steez." For people who know me (or at least have visited this blog) know that I am a hip-hop head, and have a substantial collection of Christian hip-hop. Given my views on
This particular time at the gas station, however, was a little different. As I was pumping my gas, I became overly conscious of my blasting of my Christian hip-hop. I admit that this is a result of two ethnic and age steretypes that I held at the moment. Because the woman pumping gas next to me appeared to be a middle aged Asian woman, I automatically assumed that 1) she may not be a Christian and that 2) she would not be interested in being on the receiving end of me blasting my music. I was wrong on both fronts. While pumping gas she asked me who was I listening to. I told her that the artist was Flame and the album as
This experience really taught me about the importance of viewing situations as opportunities for God to work in our lives. Who knows, maybe our encounter had to do with breaking down stereotypes and embracing the
Labels: 13 Letters, Christian hip hop, diversity, Flame, inconvenience, Isaiah, stereotypes, truth
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Everyone playing their part?
Peace and blessings,
First off, I must apologize for the long hiatus, but this past month has been hectic with graduations and moving and all. But as always, I'm back like I left something. The focus of today's entry is something that has been on my mind for a little over a month during a course I was taking. In one of the required readings, Michael Resnick (1996) argues that people tend to view things from a centralized mindset, namely that massive or large-scale events/phenomena are caused by a "central" source. Common examples of this type of thinking include the belief that the productivity of hundreds of worker ants and bees is the result of their respective queens. He further contends that this way of thinking is misguided, because these and other phenomena are not the result of a central source, but of the combined choices and actions of individual agents. To illustrate this idea, Resnick (1996) and colleagues developed a computer program called StarLogo, which allows people to experience various ways in which individual agents work to create unintended phenomena. For example, high school students were able to alter the rules of different StarLogo environments (e.g. cars in traffic, turtles moving in particular directions, and termites picking up wood chips) and see how a series of individual actions can create massive results. To the students' surprise, they found that without a "central" cause, cars eventually formed a traffic jam, the turtles still organized in clusters, and termites still stacked wood chips in a pile. Although these activities may not seem that important, it is the idea behind these activities that we must consider: Individual choices and actions are important, and collectively they are powerful.
Once this idea was made clear to me, I started to think about a movie I recently saw, V for Vendetta. In a nutshell, the movie was about a man who sought to achieve justice on behalf of all the people who lost their lives in the past and are currently being deceived, due to the lives and cover ups of a corrupt government. Sounds familiar? Examples of such lies and cover-ups addressed in the movie include immoral medical experiments resulting in the deaths of many people, and government-fueled ideologies that elicit fear and compliance. Again, sound familiar? I don't know about you, but the syphilis experiments in Tuskegee and the "war on terror" comes to mind for me. Although the movie included good action scenes and the main character was very fascinating, the most significant scenes in the movie came not from the main character, but from the actions of the "community." by 'community" I am referring to the everyday citizens who realized they were being deceived and collectively did something about it non-violently. After discovering "the truth" about their government, huge multitudes of people marched to a central location (for the specific reason of the march and location, go peep the movie) and the government powers nor law enforcement could stop the because it too many people on one accord for a righteous cause. The most memorable line in the movie for me was the statement: "the people should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of its people." While most of us would agree with the first part, we rarely focus on the second part. Governments should "govern" its citizens in a way that reflects not so much fear in terms of being scared of its citizens, but fear in the sense that the government respects its citizens enough to the point where it is afraid to deceive and disappoint them. There's all this propaganda and focus on how much love citizens don't have, have, or should have for their country (i.e. patriotism), but I pray that the hearts and minds of all governmental officials are oriented towards showing love, devotion, and allegiance to its citizens.
In sum, I wanted to draw-out a connection I made between the StarLogo program and "V for Vendetta." Although the former is a computer program and the latter a major motion picture, the common thread is that they both demonstrate the power of individual choices and actions. Further, they show how agents can create massive change by each playing their role in collective action. It doesn't happen often, but it puts a smile on my face when education and popular culture converge for a cause worth considering.
Source: Resnick, M. (1996). Beyond the centralized mindset. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 5(1), 1-22
First off, I must apologize for the long hiatus, but this past month has been hectic with graduations and moving and all. But as always, I'm back like I left something. The focus of today's entry is something that has been on my mind for a little over a month during a course I was taking. In one of the required readings, Michael Resnick (1996) argues that people tend to view things from a centralized mindset, namely that massive or large-scale events/phenomena are caused by a "central" source. Common examples of this type of thinking include the belief that the productivity of hundreds of worker ants and bees is the result of their respective queens. He further contends that this way of thinking is misguided, because these and other phenomena are not the result of a central source, but of the combined choices and actions of individual agents. To illustrate this idea, Resnick (1996) and colleagues developed a computer program called StarLogo, which allows people to experience various ways in which individual agents work to create unintended phenomena. For example, high school students were able to alter the rules of different StarLogo environments (e.g. cars in traffic, turtles moving in particular directions, and termites picking up wood chips) and see how a series of individual actions can create massive results. To the students' surprise, they found that without a "central" cause, cars eventually formed a traffic jam, the turtles still organized in clusters, and termites still stacked wood chips in a pile. Although these activities may not seem that important, it is the idea behind these activities that we must consider: Individual choices and actions are important, and collectively they are powerful.
Once this idea was made clear to me, I started to think about a movie I recently saw, V for Vendetta. In a nutshell, the movie was about a man who sought to achieve justice on behalf of all the people who lost their lives in the past and are currently being deceived, due to the lives and cover ups of a corrupt government. Sounds familiar? Examples of such lies and cover-ups addressed in the movie include immoral medical experiments resulting in the deaths of many people, and government-fueled ideologies that elicit fear and compliance. Again, sound familiar? I don't know about you, but the syphilis experiments in Tuskegee and the "war on terror" comes to mind for me. Although the movie included good action scenes and the main character was very fascinating, the most significant scenes in the movie came not from the main character, but from the actions of the "community." by 'community" I am referring to the everyday citizens who realized they were being deceived and collectively did something about it non-violently. After discovering "the truth" about their government, huge multitudes of people marched to a central location (for the specific reason of the march and location, go peep the movie) and the government powers nor law enforcement could stop the because it too many people on one accord for a righteous cause. The most memorable line in the movie for me was the statement: "the people should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of its people." While most of us would agree with the first part, we rarely focus on the second part. Governments should "govern" its citizens in a way that reflects not so much fear in terms of being scared of its citizens, but fear in the sense that the government respects its citizens enough to the point where it is afraid to deceive and disappoint them. There's all this propaganda and focus on how much love citizens don't have, have, or should have for their country (i.e. patriotism), but I pray that the hearts and minds of all governmental officials are oriented towards showing love, devotion, and allegiance to its citizens.
In sum, I wanted to draw-out a connection I made between the StarLogo program and "V for Vendetta." Although the former is a computer program and the latter a major motion picture, the common thread is that they both demonstrate the power of individual choices and actions. Further, they show how agents can create massive change by each playing their role in collective action. It doesn't happen often, but it puts a smile on my face when education and popular culture converge for a cause worth considering.
Source: Resnick, M. (1996). Beyond the centralized mindset. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 5(1), 1-22
Labels: action, choices, community, government, movie, people, revolutionary, truth, unity, V for Vendetta
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
