Hang Me Up To Dry

I did not have any finals on Monday... so a free day of sleeping and watching movies and doing nothing, right?

No. I had two papers to write and my spanish final to study for.

First of all, my Crockett paper for Scholar Citizen.... those papers are infamous for being extremely difficult and time consuming. The topic: "Does Western philosophy and science grant us the knowledge to be effective citizens in a culturally complex world?"

Yeah, exciting.

I actually enjoy his papers. They're like a puzzle--its just a little difficult to make sure all the little pieces of argumentation fit together. This paper I had a lot of trouble with though; I worked on it Monday, got stuck and gave up, and then yesterday I was in the library from 5:00 pm until 9:30 pm. It was terrible. I was having problems.

Every once in a while someone I know would walk by, say hi to me, and then we would talk for a while..... I eventually figured out that putting on headphones and keeping my head down would make it look like I was extremely busy and I could accomplish a little bit more.

I argued that an effective citizen in a culturally complex world is someone that strives for social justice and peace. Western science and philosophy and their goal of discovering a unified redemptive truth is noble, but it does not lead to the creation of effective citizens. Science itself can lead to effectiveness, as a lot of tools can; a scientist might feel compelled to discover a cure for AIDS. However, that scientist is not motivated by science alone. Sure, he or she may be motivated by money or fame, but a lot of people are first motivated by intellectual experiences.

I defined intellectual experiences as both literary and experiential. One may read about the world through various pieces of literature (this includes worldwide religion and philosophy), and by reading numerous sources, that person will have a better idea of humanity. It is then that he or she is able to construct a more well educated view of humanity. The same goes for the experiential. People learn more from first-hand experience than anything else. Reading about something in a textbook will not do as much justice as actually visiting and touching your subject matter. Therefore, when trying to gather “truths” about the world and how people live, the best way to go about those goals is to personally experience as many different aspects of humanity as one can and to develop and interpret those experiences in order to comprehend one’s own opinions regarding the meaning of life.

And as someone develops their intellectual experiences, then they will be compelled to become effective citizens and strive for social justice.

Ta-da!

I have no idea if that gives my paper any justice at all... but I tried.

oh, and I was so angry last night... The paper is supposed to be 5 pages long double space... Only after printing my paper and rereading it, someone else said "Hey Adam, isn't it supposed to be double spaced?"

Yeah, I wrote my paper single spaced... which means I wrote about twice as much as I was supposed to.

And I stayed up even later fixing it and getting rid of some stuff. grrrr...