Law and Order

When people lack teachers, their tendencies are not corrected; when they do not have ritual and moral principles, then their lawlessness is not controlled. -- Xun Zi – Confucian philosopher


People are born good but need a positive environment in order to fully prosper with the “Way”, Xunzi argues that it is only the environment which can save a person from immorality.

LAWLESSNESS

I was driving down the road and looked at my speedometer, the school of cars was doing about eight miles an hour over the maximum speed limit, with a few strays weaving in and out to gain position. I thought to myself when the cat is away the mouse will play…no enforcement. Why must man reject authority, think outside of the orthodox box, think of themselves as above the laws of the land, and just do whatever it is that suits their fancy, contibute to the lawless behavior and have little concern for the safety and welfare of others, just because nobody with authority will witness it, they wouldn't be punished. I sounded like an old man expressing desires that the denizen acheive progress into a higher plateau of awareness.

Why is it so hard to obey the speed limit? It doesn’t matter what the posted speed limit is, people exceed it by at least five miles an hour, more if they can influence other drivers by pushing them or making frustration gestures. Is it the effects of the caffeine, the peer pressures, or the competition. Are they still lawless and immature jerks when they are not behind the wheel, usually not.  Usually they return to their non- Andretti normal-selves, hidden in the deep recesses of their complex minds during the driving experience. Is it that childhood sing-song “Well, everyone else is doing it….” rationalization? Do I have to say, “If Johnny jumped off the cliff, would you jump off the cliff too?”

I think it just must be some sort of a ‘venting’ personality that drivers acquire once they get behind the wheel and their engines start, “Gentlemen, start your engines.” Venting is O.K., much better than holding all of your frustrations in, then reaching the point of explosion, enduring internal rants of a silent cacophony of antisocial schizoid hysteria I suppose, or going completely nuts, losing it, and shooting people like they do in Southern California. Does it do any harm? probably. Is it safe?, no, not really. Why don’t we change the laws, make the speed limit seventy again, would people supersede the limit to eighty miles per hour then… yes. It’s just the way things work, but I don’t like it.

Maybe Xun Zi was right. We live in a poor environment, we have no teachers, we need role models, we need to re-think our principles, fully prosper by following the path, learn to know ourselves and control the animal instincts within us, and avoid the influences of the crowds in an unmonitored environment. We need to save ourselves from a mortal immorality, become better people, far above the animals and insects of the world, and take our places on the throne, instead of becoming carrion on the battlefields of unfufilled desires, incessant frustration, and  constant confusion.  We need to survive be alive, mobile victors, and undead; where we have the ability to write the history of our actions as we see it, as it really happened, clean and right, without feeling guilt or remorse. The way that we were intended to live our mortal lives. To better understand ourselves and why we do the things that we do, control them, become disciplined and resist the temptations to fall back into the fold, uneducated and without a doctrine. People, slow down, smell the roses, enjoy life and reduce your stress, chose the right because you want to, not because you have to, be what you should be, happy and enjoy the time you have here. Peace.

The Writing Process Reviewed

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all. ~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

Everyone can write, it just takes a little practice to get good at it. You can start out by following a recipe, follow the step by step instructions, be sure to include the right amount of all the ingredients, in the right order! This will get you going. Then you have to add a little personal flair, put in a little of your own 'secret sauce", and exercise working with your weak points, they will never get better if you don't,  lift those pens and wiggle those fingers in a nice little dance on the keyboard. Don’t have any fear, if you need a little time to think, be sure to take it! After all that’s where writing comes from in the first place, your mind, thinking, your research, your thoughts and ideas. If those aren’t there…. Then you are just doodling, and that’s fine…it’s called pre-writing in high society, but then when your mind kicks back into gear, rev up those motors, give it the gas! And go baby go! Cause sometimes you run out of gas, and there ain’t nobody goin' to help push ya up the next hill, you got to build up your momentum….

..and that’s how you write! 'dat’s the process..now go and do it! don't be shy, everything is going to be just fine.

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard American Novelist and Screenplay writer

“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” – Socrates

THE END  ...THE BEGINNING...

Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal. A parable.” – Frederick Nietzsche

Our course has almost ended, we knew that it would come someday, the final paper has gone through all the stages of development, modification, reflection, review, proofreading… and now the grading shall begin.
Our futures will be brighter because of the work we have done here, the lessons learned, the application of those lessons to the work must now begin, better products, better communication, better understanding, and better lives. Our dividends have matured; we reap the bounties of our labor, glory in the fruit of the harvest, rest, reflect and then move on. Thanks everyone for your support and sharing your thoughts, your human thoughts and feelings. May the force be with you always, live long and prosper. Grok on...and on and on...keep writing.

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”--Winston Churchill

Let the Rain Come Down, Let the Rain Come Down, Let the Rain Come Down on me

"I’m an excellent driver." – Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman –Rain Man 1988)


Do you sometimes feel like everybody is an idiot, you are the only sane person in the world, everyone else is crazy. They’re the ones that are crazy, not me. It’s like living in Raymond Babbitt’s world, your mind is so much keener than anyone else’s, they don’t understand it at all and it’s an useless effort to try to explain it to them, it’s a waste of time, yet another frugal cause. Then you can’t remember how to tie your shoes, so you go buy some cheap penny loafers and put dimes in the slots because you heard that it was good luck.

I accept minimum wage employee incompetence at the cash register, you check out and the penny loafer bill is $13.67; you give them a ten and five dollar bill and seventeen cents, three nickels and two pennies, and they wonder why. You think to yourself, do they ever forget how to tie their shoes too, which string goes where, something about around the tree and back down the rabbit hole, or was that Alice in Wonderland? Am I in some sort of rabbit hole, an hallucinogenic trip, some brain in a bubbling jar of green liquid with wires attached to it, leading to somewhere in a dark room, to an  "Ender's Game" simulator, left here and forgotten after the battle with the Formics, did we lose? Maybe I'm unattended and just imagining all of this, the universe, the entire world, people, penny loafers. Why do they call them that if you put dimes in them? Is that why it’s so crazy all the time, it's my brain in a bubbling jar of green liquid dream? Did Einstein often forget to put on his shoes and walk in the New Jersey snow, or was that just something my mother told me when I was young to make me feel better, more normal? I was so strange, I am so strange, why do we want to be normal? Idiots that can't figure out that I like quarters and not nickles and pennies, I can still use dimes for the penny loafers, maybe it's me and not them, maybe I should put the two quarters in the penny loafers then give her the dollar as a tip; make her think she is doing a great job, make her feel normal. Prove that I have love, a body and am really walking around in a real world wearing penny loafers with quarters in them instead of a brain in a bubbling green jar, without a body, a brain that doesn't need shoes, a brain that doesn't need to know what coins to put in his shoes, or even need to know how to tie shoe strings. It just sits there in a bubbling green jar going crazy, making up crazy stuff, making up the Universe, making up shoes, shoestrings, coins. Why doesn't my brain just dream that the penny loafers cost $14.98, put the two pennies in the penny loafers, keep it succinct and simple. Do brains in a bubbling jar even have a mother? I’m leaning towards the brain in the bubbling green jar theory lately, it makes a lot more sense. An Avatar in this unreal world.

This week we learned how to shorten our three page rough drafts for the seven page minimun length Final Project, make them clearer, easy to understand, simple, succinct in APA format with 30% references and 70% original thought about a subject that you haven’t a clue about until two months ago. “Ten minutes to Wapner. We're definitely locked in this box with no TV. (Raymond Babbit, Rainman, 1988).” Two more weeks until the Composition II for Healthcare Professionals course will have concluded. Three terms to an Associates Degree in Medical Assistance, that should be interesting, more crazy people, more normal people, just like -- that’s the way things are supposed to be. Let the rain come down on me, let it come.

The Value of Peer Reviews

Peer reviews are a very useful tool if done correctly. My experience with them in other writing classes is that those who review my works of art are too polite and only tell me what a great job that I’ve done and really offer no constructive criticism. The draft stage is a perfect time for peer reviews, it’s not done yet and still in the formulation stages, there are going to be mistakes both in style and organization because of that. It’s easy to spot errors and it gives the peer review person every opportunity to point those out, and learn more about their own papers in the process.

It seems like when we are in the revision stages of a paper, we often miss obvious errors because we’ve gone over the paper so many times, a second sight is worth a million bucks! I often have my wife read my papers, let me know which paragraphs need work on, or which sentences aren’t clear, but also what I left out or what is unnecessary. She’s a great peer review person and a wonderful proofreader. On the other hand I am not!

Sometimes I see it and other’s I don’t, then I have difficulties explaining what I think is wrong, there is a void between my mind and my mouth and it doesn’t always communicate effectively, I suppose that is because I don’t often have the opportunity to perform peer reviews now that my daughters are gone and no longer ask me to do it for them.

We need to know the TRUTH, it may offend some, but it’s better than being too nice. We are supposed to express what we like and don’t like about the paper, help identify the thesis statement if we can, and then figure out if the paragraphs follow the thesis structure and fulfill those statements or not. The only way that I could think of doing that, was to use the post draft outline tool, which we learned in the last unit.

APA format is hard enough for me to figure out in my own paper, how the heck will I point out these types of errors in other student’s papers, then what if I am wrong and they follow my advice, how would I feel, who is to blame? It’s a dilemma and I feel that the best way to do this, was to examine all of the papers and decide which ones are correct and which ones are obviously wrong, then go to the Writing Center and verify your findings! After all there is only the title page, first page, in-text citings, and then the reference page and those citings.Sounds like a good learning process to me, maybe the course designers knew that, the blind leading the blind! Oh boy!

Other characteristics that are open for analysis would be the flow of the paper, the writer’s voice and tone, their structure,  each paragraph and then down to each sentence, techniques which they probably learned in Composition I, and which I missed out on.

Introductions and Conclusions would be hard to really evaluate, but if we actually read the paper, break it down with the post draft outline, we should be able to see if everything fits, what’s missing and what else needs to be removed or placed into the introduction or theisis, thanks to the new post draft outline tool.

I went back to the Writing Center and reviewed some writing basics, sentence structure, writing a good paragraph, logical fallacies, how to write a good introduction and conclusion and feel a lot more confident in my abilities to be able to give a few good peer reviews during this unit, and hope that I get some good input too.

This is the seventh week and there are only three more to go before the end of the course. The clock is ticking and time is getting short, it’s good to have these checkpoints to help us remember the deadlines and commitments ahead of us.

Solving the World’s Food Shortage Problems

I’m writing about genetically modified foods, are they harmful or helpful? The world population has been growing exponentially; today there are 6.3 Billion people in the world. Normally disease, famine, war, and natural disasters control the population of the species according to the natural resources, space requirements, and food supply of the population’s ecosphere; but Man is so smart that he has out-foxed Mother Nature once again, defeated the inevitable, and overcome some of the natural population control mechanisms. Silly Man, when will he ever learn?

We have too many people and not enough food, we can either increase the amount of food, the quality of the food, and food production, or we can decrease the amount of people we have to a proportionate number according to the amount of food that we can currently produce. We have to do something, why not use science and the knowledge of genetics to achieve the desired results instead of letting things go natural and have people dying inhumanely or becoming unhappy and hungry?

Some of the issues I’ve discovered in my research are absolutely ridiculous and that others are eye openers and surprised me. I often consider knowledge a valuable asset and that wisdom is hard to find, especially in Man, perhaps the facts presented in my final project, preserved in a hermetically sealed chamber will become the new Bible - according to Doc, or cause the formation of a new religious cult, similar to Scientology and Hubbard, which will enlighten future generations about the vast numbers of mistakes we have made in our time and help them to achieve the truly idealist but great goals that we have fallen far short of and  allow them to live in world peace, a Zion like community of Eutophia, Love, Happiness, and Prosperity. NOT! It’s a dang final project paper not the Dead Sea scrolls.

Prewriting Techniques

Sensory Prompts
I use prompts to get the gears going, prompts from my rich life, cartoons, television shows, and movies that I've seen, prompts from pictures or a screen saver, vivid life long memories, magazines, nature, people in the mall, insects crawling in the garden, birds or clouds floating in the air, trees and squirrels fighting the blue jays, women I’ve loved and women that I’ve not gotten along with, friends, friend's problems, problems with friends, all sorts of interesting stuff will come up with prompts to inspire your lists and free writing. Audio learners should also include music and/or ambient sounds which are in sync or out of sync with the visual prompts, you could even burn incense, or spray air fresheners, perfumes, cologne, cooking smells if you wanted some fragrant stimulation. Certain tactile stimulations might help some people, a blanket, a teddy bear, a sword, a yo-yo, a pencil, toys to play with. I would avoid taste sensations, but if it works for you then go for it!  It’s fun and should not be considered work, but play. Be creative and entertain yourself, it's your little prewriting party, you might be surprised what may become useful material for your project. Don't really think about listing yet, just become stimulated, inspired, and enthusiastic about your pre-writing.

Listing - Freewriting
I usually start out with a listing method; pick something off that list then freewrite about it for two or three minutes. Pick another item off the list and do the same thing. This helps stop procrastination, generates some ideas, and begins a little structure and analysis of what must be done in order to complete a paper. Some of the items of the list don’t necessarily have to obviously pertain to the topic of your paper, start out with a wide margin concerning the general topic then narrow the items on the list down to your specific topic, title, or thesis statement.

Bubbling-Clustering-Doodling
Bubble some of the items from your lists, connect the bubbles, establish relationships between the bubbles, doodle, cluster bubbles and doodles together, then create an outline, not a formal outline just from the groups that you’ve doodled together, see how many you can fit into a one page outline. It’s a great exercise to spark the creative flow and inspiration to begin your project. Some people like music, or ambient sounds of waves, wind, forest in the background, the more stimulation you have the more likely you are to come up with something really good for your project, no matter how silly it may seem at the time, make notes about your thoughts as you play around with the lists and freewriting.

Post Pre-writing exercises
After about twenty minutes or so, stop and take a count, what subject was the most  or least abundant, were there any surprises? What is confusing or inclusive, what other questions might need to be answered here? How much of your freewriting was honest, did you do enough research yet? What parts are you uncomfortable with, do you need to clarify a few points in this dark zone?

The next unit will be reflection and sketching to a draft.