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Written by John Rozewicki
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Wednesday, 06 September 2006 |
Search for Meaning
There are a few meanings to the word appreciative. Most of them have to do with the idea of value; either you're attaching value to something or recognizing the inherent value in something by being grateful.
I find that while the word is used most often in this sense, it is not the most important meaning. The most important meaning, in my life, has been the third one listed on the Dictionary.com page for appreciative, "to be fully conscious of."
A Lack of Musical Appreciation
I had an epiphany today while sitting in class thinking about how all the musical recordings we were listening to in my audio class were starting to blend together. I was paying attention. I wasn't dozing off. I was fully engaged. We were given dates and the names of important musicians, but none of it was sinking in. The epiphany was my discovery as to why none of it was sinking in.
If my professor were playing Nirvana, The Beatles, or anything I knew about, it would not have run together. I would have been able to understand. I know who Cobain and Lennon are. I know why they are important to me. I know that when I listen to their music I feel encouraged to think. The difference between how I feel when I listen to music that's important to me, and how I felt in class was really depressing. I felt badly because I knew there were musicians that worked on these songs that really cared about them, and I wasn't having any of it.
The epiphany I had in that moment was the realization that I had no appreciation for what I was hearing. I heard the names of bands or individual musicians, but none of that meant anything to me as a person existing 70 years after the recording date. It was completely separate from everything I knew, and I wasn't being given the pieces to fill the gap between what I knew and what I was being told. I didn't feel a drive to know in that moment. I was already knowing the music, I was listening to it. I felt a drive to appreciate and understand.
Appreciation is being fully conscious of the importance of things. I wasn't being given that in class today, and I felt it.
Knowledge is No Longer Power
Knowledge has been dethroned as the key to power. Everyone has knowledge now. It's being piped into our bedrooms 24/7 and faster than ever. Knowledge is real easy. Anyone who can use Google can find out anything they could ever want to know. Understanding all of it is the more difficult part. The power isn't simply in knowing all the facts anymore. The power is in knowing how all of them connect together, and being able to explain their significance.
Those sentences there are exactly the definitions of the words, appreciation and understanding, which are the ultimate roles of education. Google can tell us every single thing doctors know, but we will always go to doctors because they have an appreciation and understanding for how all those things fit together that we cannot have without 10 years of training.
The Drive to Appreciate
This drive to appreciate is what I feel separates me from a lot of my peers. It's not that they're dumb, or they don't want to know things. It's not even that they don't care. It's just that they don't have this drive to appreciate and understand. I don't mean that they're ungrateful. I am not speaking down of my peers. There are more of them than there are of me. Whatever they are doing is almost inherently the proper way to be doing things; I am the one who doesn't fit.
The attitude my peers have is very Zen. They are interested in a few things, and they have a drive to appreciate and understand those things. Outside of that, it seems like any other pieces of information are exactly equal in standing to every other piece of information that ever existed. They can know it, or not know it, as they need to know it. The internet is built for them. It creates a collective knowledge base so that they can have it when they need it. They're going to be fine.
Conclusion
One could argue that true knowledge includes understanding and appreciation, but I would argue that understanding and appreciation are more often included in the meaning of the word, wisdom.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Sunday, 03 September 2006 |
Opposition to Pessimism
The College Board says the SAT scores are a-droppin’. Everyone is gettin’ dumber, and the world will soon tilt off its axis as people forget how to breathe. That is, if you were to believe some of the alarmist responses to this new data from a bunch of people who feel vindicated in their opinion that young Americans are very close now to being technically classified as ‘post dumb.’
Of course this is fantastic hyperbole, but it does seem to reflect the general feeling about the American young people that many have. And, I disagree with it completely. I’m not an optimist by any stretch, but I find myself becoming one in opposition to people whose pessimism is such that behave as if the sky is falling.
Questioning Statistics
Before any conclusion about the data can be reached, we must first ask the important question: Are lower SAT scores really a significant problem? I don’t think they are. It’s just simple reason. The College Board is saying that they’re seeing lower scores than they have in the past. But they’re seeing that in a test that changes every year, and recently underwent significant structural changes. Any discrepancy in test scores is most likely to be the fault of the testing instrument rather than the people taking it.
And even if the SAT were a perfectly calibrated testing instrument year after year, do any of you that didn’t score tip-top on the SAT feel like you’ve ever had trouble in an area the SAT tested? Finally, a more important question; when has the SAT ever been relevant as a general aptitude test?
When Was the SAT Ever Relevant?
Answer, never. It’s a knowledge quiz. When I took the SAT, the math portion was a test of how well you remembered algebra and geometry concepts. It didn’t test overall reasoning skills. I was an AP Calculus student at the time that scored lower on the math portion than I should have because I couldn’t remember geometry and algebra that I had taken 2 years prior. Yet, my reasoning skills were good enough to land me in advanced placement classes.
The verbal portion does do a better job of testing basic reasoning skills, but it shoots itself in the foot by making the subject matter of the questions too obscure. I can do analogies, but I cannot do analogies between two really obscure words that aren’t anywhere in the lexicon of useful verbiage.
The SAT is treated like an aptitude test by most educational institutions, but when more advanced students end up with lower scores it ceases to be an aptitude test. And it also ceases to be an aptitude test when the trend is such that the only people who seem to do super well on the test are the ones who have taken it multiple times and studied with prep courses specifically targeted at the SAT.
What Lower SAT Scores Really Mean
Lower SAT scores just mean students weren’t able to cram as many words or geometric theorems in their head as previous years. I realize that the most recent SAT included a writing portion, but I have a hard time believing that an organization that relied upon a nerd trivia quiz for its flagship testing instrument will be able to accurately assess the new writing portions of the exam.
In conclusion, we are not getting dumber, and the sky is not falling. We’re just not matching up to the same point on a bogus ruler that is constantly changing.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Friday, 01 September 2006 |
All the Rage
News stories about pedophiles on the internet have become all the rage. The stories are so simple that they pretty much write themselves.
Find a big social networking site like MySpace or LiveJournal. Find underage kids. Find dirty old men, and see them interact with these underage kids in an inappropriate and risqué fashion. Pen article condemning pedophiles, the internet, parents, and everyone else involved.
Or, go the alternate route and do a small case study where you document interaction after interaction where you entrap and then out a pedophile, but don't forget to condemn everything involved. That's the most important part. Once all that's done, let the public outcry ensue.
Is Not a Problem
I'm fine with all of this. It might be hacky journalism, but pedophiles are despicable people who should put bullets in their head lest they begin molesting. Bringing such people down is great for public relations.
Oprah's out there busting pedophiles because she was sexually abused herself, and feels strongly. News magazine shows are getting in on the action. Reality television has even come into the mix with their own brand of detective work.
Is a Problem
Like I said, I'm fine with the media doing all of these things. They're doing their job of being a watchdog for the public. They operate on facts, because to not do so would damage their credibility in the eyes of the people who pay their salaries.
If a media outlet is spotlighting a pedophile, I'd say that person has a decent chance of being perceived as a despicable human being by the public when the facts are brought out. Their batting average is good. The problem I have with this concept is when real law enforcement decides they want a piece of this public relations pie for themselves.
Pedophiles Need Bullets Planted Firmly in their Heads
This is not a post defending pedophiles. Sexual interaction with children is wrong. Their brains are not developed enough to be able to reliably render consent, and they have no mental capacity for handling such interaction. Children are hurt when these things happen to them, and the people that hurt children in this way should be punished.
This is a philosophical post about the role of law enforcement in society and how society perceives threats to its well-being. It just so happens that how society has chosen to deal with child molesters and pedophiles is a very good example of my points.
American Society has a Psychological Disorder
As a society, the way America behaves has a very specific psychological definition that I will get to later. Very simply, we do not stop at retribution for our justice. We go one step further, to prevention. We have an intense dislike for the knowledge that anyone may have been harmed at any time in any way.
Naturally, we feel guilty. We wish there was something we could have done. We take action. Unfortunately, most of these things are not practically preventable. They are preventable, but only in ways that severely infringe on the rights of innocent people.
Societal Response to Child Molestation
Child molestation is an extreme example. People have a visceral reaction to the reception of the news that a child may have been harmed sexually. They feel intense rage at the perpetrator of the crime. They want to punish them, and then make sure this never happens to another child ever again. All of this goes double for the people who interact with the child on a daily basis and care about the child. And so we as a society take it upon ourselves to try and prevent children from being molested, by catching the pedophiles before they strike.
Similar Responses
It doesn't stop at child molestation. We see the same exact response to drunk driving in America. A new round of PSA's is littering the air waves right now showing a guy drowning in booze while being stopped in his car by a police officer. Entertaining in a completely mundane way but more than likely wholly ineffective. I'm just doing the math on how well other PSA's have done in the department of actually affecting the public's behavior. I digress.
My point is that we try to prevent people from driving drunk. We create these PSA's. We make the drunken driving laws so that having a thimble full of wine cooler on a full stomach while driving a go-kart is tantamount to a felony. It's the same response, but for a different crime being perpetrated on society.
American Society is Codependent
The problem with both of these is that we're trying to make rules to deal with people who are by definition unable to reason. We're trying to manage the lives of mentally unstable people in our midst so that we may insulate ourselves from the harm they might do us. This brings me to the psychological definition I mentioned early. American society is codependent.
Drunken people do not behave rationally and logically. That is the very thing that makes them drunken people. Pedophiles are mentally deranged people who have sexual compulsions surrounding children. This is not to say that drunken people are equal to child molesters. They are simply two separate examples.
Either way, both parties are not mentally sound. To try and control the behavior of people that do not behave logically, with logical laws and rules, is a foolish exercise that only hurts innocent people. Continued attempts to reason with unreasonable people are not examples of sane behavior.
Tha' Po-lice
Police typically have 2 roles. The first is to enforce the laws in cases where a crime has been committed. The second is to keep the peace by preventing crime. The role of police in American society is different from the role of police in many other societies, and the second part is where the difference lies.
The Role of Police in America
Since America was created under the banners of freedom and self-actualization, the populace is very apt to notice the government controlling behavior. This means that in America the police are not able to go as far with crime prevention as they might in other countries.
The Role of Police Elsewhere
Police in the horrible dictatorships of the Middle East have lots of leeway in the area of crime prevention. Citizens may be taken out for simply speaking against the current regime. The police do this to prevent the future crime that might have happened; an attempt at overthrowing the government.
They are keeping the peace for themselves by violating the rights of the citizens. It does not matter to the police that the people have actually committed no crime. They feel the potential for future crime is serious enough to warrant immediate action.
Similarities
This is exactly what is happening when we create laws against drunk driving, and have police task forces dedicated to duping pedophiles into crossing state lines for the purposes of sex with a minor. We are deciding that the potential for future crime is serious enough to warrant there being a crime, even in cases where there is no victim.
I understand that these are laws on the books, but these laws are not in the same class as other laws that have very clear victims. These laws are based on assumed potential victims; not real ones. They may have the same standing in court legally, but I assume that you can understand the clear philosophical difference.
The Consequences of a Role Reversal
By making laws to prevent potential crime, we are reversing the role of police in society and redefining what it means to be a criminal. All of this is to our own detriment.
Diluting the Message
Police resources are finite and limited. The more laws we have on the books, the more work they have to do, and the more it costs us. So when we criminalize things like drunk driving and crossing state lines with plans to have sex with a minor, we are putting more strain on an eternally strained resource and diluting their job description.
All of this stuff to prevent potential crime, interestingly, has the very real danger of making our police force less effective in areas that matter. The areas that matter, to me at least, are the areas in which it is their job to go after a person who has harmed me.
Increasing the Number of Criminals
By making these preventative laws we are redefining what it means to be a criminal in American society. We are deciding that the police should not spend their time detaining people who have harmed real victims. Instead, we are deciding they should spend time detaining people who may at some point in the future harm other people.
This has a drastic affect on the number of criminals we have in our society. No longer is a criminal a person who has wronged society. A criminal is a person who may potentially, at some point in the future, harm society. The most unfortunate part of this is that absolutely everybody fits this mold. Nobody harms society, until they do; not even child molesters.
The Consequences to Drunk Drivers
That is, of course, hyperbole but nonetheless it does describe the philosophical spirit of these laws. The real laws are less drastic, but do still sharply increase the number of criminals available for the police to deal with. Before the drunken driving laws, the only people that were criminals were people that plowed into other people while drunk. Monitoring and detaining these people is a manageable task.
After the drunken driving laws, everyone behind the wheel with a certain blood alcohol level is a criminal. This is not a manageable task for police. Each person responds to the effects of alcohol differently. Some people might actually be fine drivers at a certain higher level, while other people are complete wrecks at a lower level. This means that police might not be able to detect some of these people on the road. This is the reason we waste a ton of manpower on Independence Day setting up checkpoints.
The Consequence to Potential Pedophiles
The police busting potential pedophiles online functions similarly. They set up, basically, a checkpoint online for pedophiles; a checkpoint that functions like a man-made spider web. They don't pull people randomly out online to check them. That's just not feasible. They set up bait somewhere, and then converse with people who interact with this bait until they until break a law.
Once the law is broken, they are able to bust. This job is made much easier by the fact that in many states there are laws that exist specifically to be used in this instance. These are laws which make it a crime to pass into the state with the intent to harm a minor sexually. All they have to do is lure the criminal into the state, save the chat logs, lock'em up, and then prosecute.
In this case, it appears that the role of the police has clearly switched from catching perverts who have already harmed children to the manufacturing of new criminals in-house using the internet.
Summary of Practical Consequences
By making laws against drunk driving and setting up nets for child predators online we are deciding that people who may potentially harm another person in the future are criminals. Unfortunately, this increases the number of criminals in society, and by extension, increases the work for the police forces.
The police are a finite resource. There is no shortage of people committing crimes where there are real victims. In the case of child sexual abuse, many of these crimes go unreported. In order to start making laws that allow the police to manufacture new criminals based on future potential victims, we must first decide that the police don't already have enough work to do in the area of detaining people who have already harmed society.
I'm am all for any of the laws I mentioned being used to detain people who have already harmed other people, but that is not how these laws are being used.
Summary of Philosophical Consequences
The philosophical consequences are more egregious. By expanding the definition of the word 'criminal' to mean a person who may in the future harm society we are creating a situation that gives legislators and police too much power. Everyone has the potential to harm society, and so everyone is now essentially a criminal.
All it takes is for legislators to create enough laws with the attitude of prevention to make America a police state. It flies completely in the face of the ideals this country was founded upon to create laws out of fear that bad things may happen if the behavior of the people is not explicitly controlled.
Conclusion
Unfortunate bad things happen to people all the time. Most of them are not preventable unless we want to create a society where anyone who steps off the established legislated path is a criminal. This means that not every problem has a solution, and to me, that is good news. It means that we don't have to spend resources worrying about potential crime. It is out of our hands.
It is not my responsibility to fix the problems of everyone around me. I wish I could, but it's not feasible. Similarly, society is not inherently responsible for fixing the ills of every one of its members. The faster society realizes this, the happier we will all be.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Friday, 01 September 2006 |
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As of this morning, I can now claim to be a published columnist. Sure it's in my university's paper; The Ball State Daily News. Sure it was an open call for opinion writers. Sure it's a free student-run paper, but being free isn't necessarily a bad thing. Free means that lots of people read this paper everyday.
It's a start and I'm very happy with the column they printed. You may read it here. |
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Wednesday, 30 August 2006 |
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I'm sick, and this means a lack of regular content for you; my loyal reader. I don't have writer's block. I'm not stuck. I've had interesting ideas I've been kicking around since last Saturday. I just can't bring myself to think enough to write a coherent post. I pray you please just ignore the part where the beginning of this post is coherent.
So, as I'm sick, I'm just going to round up many carnivals my name has made an appearance in over the last week. I hope you at least can find something to read over in these carnivals. Hopefully, I'll be able to get something up for Friday.
August 27, 2006
Carnival of Economics & Social Policy
The Carnival of Economics and Social Policy was held over at The Boring Made Dull. Notice that he didn't actually read my article, Ask Not What Your Taxes Can Do For You!, before responding to it in his blurb. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm all about huge government intervention:
Personally, I think that we're all better off when we have less government, not more, and the idea that taking money from Peter to pay Paul via the government doesn't really generate much social benefit.
August 28, 2006
Carnival of the Green
Hybrid Cars are for Losers was featured in the Carnival of the Green over at the Disillusioned kid.
Carnival of the Capitalists
Ask Not What Your Taxes Can Do For You! was also featured in this week's Carnival of the Capitalists hosted by Business and Technology Reinvention.
August 30, 2006
Carnival of Education
There's Nothing to Teach! was featured in The Carnival of Education hosted this week by Thespis Journal.
August 31, 2006
Festival of Job Hunting
Find a New Job has taken it upon themselves to post my article from a few months back, You are for Sale - The First Step to Worthwhile Employment in the Festival of Job Hunting. I couldn't be happier about that. It was a nice surprise to see some visitors floating in from that site when I looked at the logs.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Friday, 25 August 2006 |
I would just like to take this opportunity to say that I consider the recent news that the FDA has declared Plan B - the morning-after pill safe for over the counter sale to be a great victory.
The Facts
Plan B is not an abortion pill. It prevents conception by making sure that an egg is never released. If sperm and egg do not meet then there is no conception. It works exactly the same as the regular birth control pill, and that's because it is chemically identical to those pills. The only thing different is the timing of the doses.
Why the Opposition?
I have no idea why there would be any opposition to this pill becoming over-the-counter. Tylenol is riskier and has more toxic effects than Plan B ever will. We know this because it's the exact same chemical as the normal birth control that has been available for many years. It is safe.
Whether or not it will have an affect on sexual behavior in this country is unimportant. Last I checked, it was not the government's job to control behavior that falls well within the realm of healthy and normative if the proper precautions are taken. Plan B is one of those precautions. Emergency contraception should be available for emergency situations. It should not require a person to wait to get a prescription and jump through all the bureaucratic hoops.
Irresponsibility
To say that it should not even be made available as a realistic option is irresponsible. It is not an abortion pill, and so is completely seperate from that argument. All it does is prevent people from having unwanted pregnancies. If you're fine with unwanted children being born to parents that are not ready, then by all means go ahead and oppose Plan B. Just know that your tax dollars will be going to support those kids when they're let down by parents who didn't want them and become a drain on society.
Personally
I know that, for me personally, it will have an effect on my sexual behavior. Sex is a normal part of life that affects every single person on this planet, and I am a responsible adult who practices safe sex. I will be more comfortable having sex knowing that there are more tools available with which to safely practice sex.
It is not feasible to tell young people to lead safe and responsible lives when the tools to do that are being taken away from them by people who only want to control behavior, and don't care at all about the science of these things.
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