Politician's the Name and Lying's the Game

Politicians are about the lowest of the liars that anyone could ever know. They are the ones who claim to know the "greater good" for society. Behind this veil of uncertainty, there are lies and scandals. Why do Politicians lie? Many of the lies committed by politicians are meant to aid them in their own selfish advancements in the ladder of power. 

One such scandal is the Teapot Dome Scandal in the 1920's in Wyoming. Oil that is supposed to be reserved for only military use was rented out to oil companies and profited by Albert Fall, who was at the time put temporarily in charge of these oil reserves. Before the Watergate Scandal, this was considered the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics." Lies are seen in the littlest things that people do every day, to the most extremes such as this scandal that influences and changes the lives of entire communities at a time. Is there such thing as a "good" lie? Are there instances when politicians actually lie for anything other than personal advancement? 

The Teapot Dome Scandal proves that those in power would do anything it takes to maintain their wealth and authority. Lying to the head of the oil reserves and forging documents to appear as legal documents, is a few of the untruthful acts acted by Albert Fall. 

Gender Roles

It has always been accurate to say that a woman should worry more about her physical looks than a man, but now as the years have progressed, men have been taking many measures to maintaining their outer appearance as well. When presented with the image above, why would I choose the orange pair of legs to belong to the men, if I am aware that in this day and age, there are men who shave their legs just as there are women who do not shave their legs, although the latter being less common. There are certain expectations to both genders and that classifies what society believes is masculine and feminine. 

By observing this image alone, the colors chosen to represent each pair of legs signifies what is to be expected of the genders. Orange, being close to pink in that they are both components of red, is darker and holds that non-feminine feature of boldness and strength in comparison to a heavily tinted form of red that we all know as a girl's color. It is incorporated into daily lives that certain colors belong to certain genders, such as pink, lavender, and light green being some of the few lighter colors expected to be associated with femininity. Usually, as a contrast, masculinity is associated with darker, more dirty colors. The choice of a darker color in the orange pair of legs already retains that masculinity that holds true to the answer expected of many to choose that those are the male legs.

Another major factor in this juxtaposition is body hair. Who is to say that both of these pairs of legs are female, or that both are male. A grand majority of people, if asked, would assume that men are the ones with hairy legs and that women have smoother legs. This assumption is again based on what society expects of the genders to be like. Women should groom and men should maintain their brute masculinity in its entirety with body and facial hair; although in that case, women cannot normally grow thick facial hair, so it would be safe to assume that anyone with thick facial hair is most probably a man. Even so, women can grow out their leg hair, and walk around with unshaven legs. This is definitely not common in Western culture, but many European women, and other women without those teachings are sure to have legs just as hairy as those of men. 

I thought this one long and hard, as to which is the man and which is the woman. I want to say that the pink pair of legs are female, but only because that is what I was grown to believe, and I myself expect. Although the times of sexism are coming to a close, there will always be that separation between the sexes in what is expected of them, whether that be in how they physically look, to how they should act. Stereotypes will always linger in the minds of the people.

My Own Personal Hell

When the concept of hell comes about, Dante's Inferno is one of the first images that bumps into someone's head. Flames engulfing lost souls, and torture chambers specifically designed for everlasting turmoil. Although this image has been accepted by many religious groups, I come to wonder what my personal hell would consist of. Is it filled with images I don't want to see, or is it physical torture with wounds that never heal? Taking a little more time to think about it, I would think my hell would have an underwater theme. Water would fill the chamber up until the last bubble of air bursts due to the lack of space for anything but water. This water would be ice-cold, which is ironic in that most think of Hell as a fire pit, but the lack of heat can burn just as much as fire. 

Rare creatures would live in these waters, behind the large boulders that are scattered throughout the sea floor. Plants would fill the spaces in between as to make it hard to move around, or even see for that matter. 

When someone dies, and enters my chamber of Hell, they do not grow gills, and still need air to breathe, but with no room for anything but water, their lungs will eternally burn and fill with water as to suffocate the body. The creatures mentioned above would have large eyes and small sharp teeth. Their appearances are only part of the scare, they also let out a high pitch screech that bursts eardrums to flimsy tissue. These demons lurking the waters would never eat a lost soul, but will constantly attack, only to be attracted again by the fear that soul has exerted into the waters, this fear being practically tangible and most definitely edible by the demons. 



My reasoning for choosing such a gloomy pit of eternal torture is because I have a fear of drowning and being dragged to the bottom of the ocean by some unknown creature, only to be devoured. Sharks terrify me, as well as the mysterious dark unknown that the ocean is. Not being able to breathe, is torture within itself, but adding heart-pounding sights and creatures that not even nightmares can create, this is my own personal hell.

Response: What, Me Care?

The discussion about the importance of empathy and how it has dropped throughout our fellow man is quite shameful. If people are no longer "understanding" of each other, such as Scientific American suggests, then does that mean we are no better than any other animal? The article "What, Me Care?" describes humans as not the strongest and not the fastest, and if the only thing that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom dwindles, where are we on that pyramid now?

Scientist, David R. Hamilton, wrote a blog entry about a year ago about the difference between empathy and compassion. Compassion is when you feel FOR a person, and empathy is when you feel WITH a person. Empathy is much more personal in that the person being empathetic understands the other person's feelings and suffers with them. It is not just feeling sorry for someone else, or wishing them the luck to get out of their terrible situation; empathy is going through the pain together with someone else. With that being said, there seems to be a real lack of it in the world today; everyone is fending for themselves, and when it comes to someone suffering, others tend not to care. CBS News demonstrated through a long experiment whether children were born empathetic, or if it was a train that was learned through example. I came to my own conclusion that babies are so pure, that they naturally want the "good" thing, represented in this video by a stuffed animal in a different colored shirt. Other studies show that empathy has gone down 40% by 2000. What has caused the statistics to plummet?

Many believe it's technology that is creating this brick wall between ourselves and those around us. Technology is limiting the actual human contact one may usually have if one were to be left without a computer or telephone for say a week. If that person had no technology, that person would then be forced to go out in public and actually communicate with a bank teller to pay their bills, or go to the store to buy clothes instead of ordering them online. Technology has limited interaction, and therefore people do not feel much empathy toward each other as they used to.

Technology is not bad, and that is my disclaimer. I enjoy technology, as many others surely do, but I do also believe in too much technology. High schools nowadays are trying to incorporate as much technology as they can, but that can only limit the students and make them ill-prepared when confronting potential bosses or clients. Everything must be balanced, and that is basically what Jamil Zaki, author of "What, Me Care?" is trying to portray through the article.

Empathy in Humanity

People usually go out of their way to understand the situation of another somebody else, in a manner to understand and feel for them. This is also known as empathy, a motif seen in "On Compassion" by Barbara Lazear Ascher. In this short story, Ascher brings up and important question in society: Why help others? 

She illustrates multiple examples through the protagonist, a black homeless man, that presents this question through the perspective of that unfortunate position. One example is when the speaker notices that a bread shop owner is constantly giving another man, who is dressed in rags and smells like urine, bread and coffee each time he comes through the door. The narrator questions this kindness and tries to understand the shop keeper's reasoning; is it "Pity? Care? Compassion? Or does she simply want to rid her shop of his troublesome presence?" After further research, I came to the conclusion that when most people give, they expect to receive in the future; this does not necessarily mean that they expect the person they helped to repay them, but usually a person does expect "good karma," or they simply enjoy that feeling of aiding those in need which is considered being repaid in gratitude.

People help those in need because they usually think that if they were ever to need help, they would like others to help them as well, such as the video suggests. 

The other story read in class was "Human Cost" by Jonathan Kozol. This story had a different tone, but still maintained the empathy motif seen in "On Compassion." Throughout this excerpt, illiteracy is the main issue discussed. There are many poverty-stricken families that don't have literate adults to execute important necessities such as paying bills and reading contracts for credit cards or rent. Both authors preach to the reader that there are faults in humanity, and poverty is a main issue seen in both pieces. Those people unfortunately can't usually process human kindness as seen in "On Compassion" when the protagonist didn't know how to accept the dollar donation, or they can't receive that kindness when it is needed such as when the man in "Human Cost" was lost on that one way street and couldn't receive help from an officer over the phone. Both Kozol and Ascher use examples that tug at the audience's heartstrings as to get their individual points across about illiteracy and human kindness, respectively. 

Empathy for humanity isn't only a motif in works of literature, but seen all around. Homelessness is becoming more and more rampant due to the economic collapse, and families are being thrown into the streets. Empathy is required to help our fellow man, and survive. This is the main lesson that both Kozol and Ascher taught me through their works of literature.