yeswesaythings

[yeswesaythings]

An Honor(s) and a Privilege

Questions:

1. What was the goal of your research and how successful do you think it went?

2. What were the biggest hurdles in implementing this project, and which were the easiest steps?

3. Would you recommend that someone do a follow-up experiment to yours in the future? How far into the future? Should it be a regular process occurring every few years?

4. What advice would you tell students interested in performing research related to sociology and psychology?

5. What is your degree in and why did you decide upon it? What do you plan to study for your doctorate?

6. As president of ASG, you were tasked with countless responsibilities. What process did you use to manage your time?

7. How did you manage to overcome disagreements with faculty leadership, and did this ever make you feel as though your decisions were reluctantly commandeered?

8. How confident are you with the leadership of the upcoming Steering committee?

9. Having gone through the process, is graduating with Honors worth it? What would you change?

10. Do you feel that Tech will be able to handle the transition from Honors program to Honors college smoothly, or will it be a long drawn out ordeal?

11. What advice would you give to incoming freshman for the 2017-18 year?

Responses:

1. I will try to answer this question as succinctly as possible; it's going to be more than you wanted, but I think this stuff is really cool.

My research has focused for the last year or so on Honors students and more specifically the aspects of their social lives that may or may not be contributing to their superior academic performance relative to equally gifted non-Honors students.  The qualifier is phrased carefully, as the literature already existing on Honors students has established that Honors students are not inherently more intelligent or innately more adept in the retention of information than their equally gifted peers who did not join an Honors program. That finding carries weighty implications, as it suggests that Honors students' academic success is not, perhaps, rooted in ability, but in some part(s) of their social world. In the case of Honors students, the major difference is their participation in an Honors program.

Now, when I refer the "social world" I do not refer to socializing in our culturally diluted sense of the word. Rather, social life in a very small nutshell is the massive and infinitely complicated network of interactions that occur, which utilize the exchange of symbols - the basic unit of all interaction.  To offer a brief backstory, we are all born into a world that has already been interpreted by others, and most of our early life is spent doing nothing but absorbing the meanings of symbols. Language is a collection of symbols, stop signs are symbols, but incredibly, even people are symbols. In fact, we are all social objects. A reputation is evidence of that claim. Just as we have come to ascribe meaning to a stop sign and we have developed a set of behaviors that are expected of us when presented with one, we are at least tacitly aware that we ascribe meaning to people based on what he have learned about them, and we develop a set of behaviors for acting toward them. In this sense, we are objects to others in the social world.  Furthermore, we are even social objects to ourselves. We are keenly tuned in to the meanings that we believe others are ascribing to us, and those meanings are made apparent by others' interactions with us. In being able to see ourselves the way we believe others see us, we actually come to perceive ourselves as social objects as well. Thus, the self is a social object which is the sum total of all of the symbols we have acquired and all of the complex meanings we have learned to attach to those symbols via interaction with others. That is symbolic interactionism in a paragraph.

So, if Honors students aren't more intelligent, what's driving their academic success?  I conducted two studies, one qualitative/exploratory and one quantitative/deductive. The first study led me to develop five hypotheses for the second study:  As sense of community in Honors increases, as group identity with Honors increases, as self-esteem increases, and as positive experience with professors increases, academic performance increases. I also hypothesized that those who had spent time living in the Honors residence hall would have higher academic performance than those who did not.

Overall, I believe it certainly was a success. Group Identity, self-esteem, and positive experience with professors were each strongly positively correlated with academic performance at the Alpha .05 and .01 levels. The linear regression model ended up explaining just under 50% of the variance in academic performance with just the cumulative effect of  independent variables that I hypothesized. So I think I am on to something big. My discussion section focuses largely on Group ID. It is my theoretical conclusion, based on the data, that the superior academic performance of Honors students is rooted in the extent to which Honors students actually identify as an Honors student. That is, as Group ID increased, academic performance increased, and vice versa. There are a well-known and widely agreed upon set of behaviors that accompany the status of "Honors student" and, depending on how much one internalizes that role, this will determine to what extent an individual adopts behaviors consistent with that role. Quite simply, it is not being an Honors student that makes the difference, it is acting like one. I am confident I will be able to publish the manuscript and I plan to present at any conferences I can find!

2. One of the toughest parts of the project was the theory involved. Not really things like "Smith's Theory of Blank," but really the process of conceptualizing and operationalizing exactly what it was I intended to study, how I would study it, and making sure that the results I got would actually be reliable. Things like, "how the hell am I going to measure sense of community?" (spoiler: an index).  But really, this is hands down the hardest part.  Data analysis is a breeze, getting people to participate isn't really even that bad, and writing it up isn't bad either if you've built a logical foundation. It's what lies in the abstract that can make or break your entire study.

3. I do think someone should follow up on my study, in two different ways. First, I think it should be replicated at other Honors programs, not at the same one. There is no need to perform the study again at Tech. The purpose for replication would be to capture variation in the structure and dynamics in other Honors programs, of which there is much. However, I am confident the findings would remain the same. The perceived role of an Honors student has permeated our culture to a degree that the behaviors associated with being an Honors student are well known. Secondly, a follow-up is needed to delve deeper into that notion of identity as it pertains to Honors. Are there other sets of behaviors associated with being an Honors student that were not captured in my study? Probably. I imagine that as one internalizes the role of an Honors student, one may be more likely to seek opportunities to lead, or to get involved with research, or to volunteer, because "that's what Honors students do."

4. I would say that you had better think this is the coolest stuff ever or you may want to steer clear. Research of any kind is highly demanding and often tedious at times, and research in this field is no different. It is really only the fervor of your own fascination that sees you through to the end product. There is also this sensation of feeling like you know less when you're done about your topic than when you started. Do not despair, for this is a good thing. It means you probably actually contributed, and that our previous understanding of the topic will be momentarily jarred in order to accommodate the new information. New findings are always going to be vexing while they are worked out.

5. My degree is a Bachelor of Science in Sociology. I originally began in psychology and actually did not make the change until the end of my second year. Sociology really caught my eye in a class called Social Deviance. One of the biggest points that was repeatedly driven home in the textbook was the relative nature of deviance across time and space. It's embarrassing to say this now that the concept is so central to the way I see the world, but that was very novel to me when I really started to grasp it, and especially when I began to apply it to other phenomena outside of deviance.  All that which is social is quite relative to time and place. It was then that I really began to appreciate how vast the realm of sociology really is, which encompasses the full spectrum of interaction all the way from two people in conversation to warring nations.  I will continue studying sociology as I pursue the Doctor of Sociology at the University of Georgia for the foreseeable future.

6. I had a number of strategies for managing my time, particularly in those latter two years when I had the most going on. There was one that makes by far the greatest difference, though. In the first month of each semester I would essentially cut myself off from the world and do nothing but focus intently on schoolwork and only keep up with ASG enough so that it wouldn't take any steps backward. In doing so, I was investing my time in exceptional grades early on in the semester, thereby building up a respectable cushion for anything that might go south later. I was also learning the content inside and out, which made grasping new concepts as the semester went on much easier because they would be couched in a framework of concepts I had already mastered. Once that month was over, I could relax a bit on school work and really pour myself into ASG. Going hard in the early game pretty much guarantees success in the end. It's all about that principal investment.

7. Honestly, I saw myself as somewhat of a pioneer of ASG in the sense that I often resisted the status quo as well the pressures applied by those who would see it maintained. I frequently refused to accept tradition as an explanation for the state of things, and I think that was really what convinced others to let me lead at the start. I spent a lot of time while I was president just brainstorming ways to improve ASG and many of those ideas were not popular with faculty when they were introduced. Whenever I arrived at an impasse between a decision of mine and the faculty support it received, I would always remind myself that ASG is a student organization and it belongs to the students. So when I felt strongly that I was in the right on something or that I/ASG was not being dealt with fairly, I would simply put it to the students. Spread the word. "Here's what I want to do; do you want it too?" In hindsight I probably rocked the boat a bit too much at times, and I have a lot of reason to believe I lost favor from some parties as a result. The end product, though, is one that I think the students deserve and appreciate.

8. I am very confident in the leadership of the new steering committee. That's really all I have to say on that!

9. This is a difficult question to answer definitely, as everyone who comes into Honors finds themselves in their own unique situation with its own set of challenges. Some have it far worse than others. Having said that, if it looks like you can make it through the program without losing yourself to the minutiae along the way, it's definitely worth it. I would say that I don't feel like my degree is heavier, shinier, or any more powerful because I graduated with Honors, so if you're just to scrape the surface, get your hours, and leave, I would say it's not worth your trouble. But if you get involved, particularly in ASG, you can really make a home for yourself that will see to your growth as both a student and a person.  

If I could change something about Honors, I would not hesitate to change the way that contract proposals are evaluated. Currently, one person is the sole judge of all contract proposals, and as we are all aware, contracts are the life-saving elixir of many Honors students. They are important, yes, and they should be reviewed shrewdly. I do not believe they are being reviewed shrewdly now. I think that the decisions I have seen passed down regarding contract proposals have been wildly inconsistent and have frequently demonstrated a lack of understanding of the subject matter discussed in them. I have also seen certain individuals have particularly poor fortune with their proposals and cannot help but think there is some bias involved.

I would not expect one person to have a passing knowledge of all things, and that is precisely why one person cannot effectively determine what is Honors-worthy and what is not in all fields. I believe the assessment of contract proposals should be handled by either department liaisons or by the Honors council.

10. My guess is that, through no fault of the Honors Program, Tech will probably screw this one up. Having been quite involved with the discussion of this decision, it became more and more apparent throughout the process that the university was interested in having an Honors College in name only. It does not appear that they are presently prepared to invest what is necessary for the transition to yield anything of real substance, at least not for quite some time. They have approached the conversation with a mentality not conducive to progress. They would like to see results before investment. Show me anything comparable that succeeds in this manner! We do not have the resources to show them the kind of results they are asking for, which is why I say the change will be in name only. It will likely turn off other university Honors programs for some time, as it is my fear that TTU Honors will join a community of Honors colleges known as "fake" Honors colleges.

11. Don't be a people-pleaser. You're here to learn, but you have the distinct privilege while you're at college of "finding yourself." Surround yourself with people who don't want or need anything from you other than your company, and spend your free time doing what brings you joy.

[yeswesaythings]

A Short Introspection

I: Okay, so tell me about your first year of college.

R: Hi, I’m Ryan, and I just finished my first year of college here and I think, overall, it was a pretty good experience. I think I handled the transition from high school to college pretty well. And even though it was a new environment, I feel like I’ve learned a lot from my first year.

I: What’s your major?

R: My major is electrical engineering.

I: What do you plan on doing with that? Do you know?

R: Right now, I have somewhat of an idea. I think I want to focus on the robotics aspect of electrical engineering or maybe with radars and that type of technology. And I think that would be a pretty interesting thing to explore further in the future.

I: What made you excited to get into electrical engineering?

R: I guess it was in tenth grade when I really got hooked on electrical engineering, because I’ve always been fascinated by engineering and the designing. But electrical specifically has the aspects of using robotics as one portion of it, also having to figure out the circuits and the mechanics that make it properly work and function. And I started looking more into that and was very interested in what I was finding.

I: So, let’s look at this semester by semester. Let’s go back to the first semester, to the fall, and pick apart- What were the easiest parts, the most fun parts, and what were the hardest parts? The things that you struggled with the most?

R: The easiest parts were probably talking to people and making friends, since I’m usually an outgoing, friendly person. It’s not too difficult to make friends. And I just sort of explored around and found people I got along with pretty well and had fun with them. The hard parts were probably with some of my classes in particular, transitioning from a high school mindset to, now I’m in college, things are different. You have to work a lot harder for what you want to achieve.

I: Can you go more into the high school mindset versus the college mindset?

R: Sure, in high school you have sort of the mindset of- Or at least for me, I had the mindset of, “I don’t have to work too hard, and I’ll still be able to make an A. It will be fine. I don’t have to apply myself too hard. I can only study for a test for ten minutes and be able to pass it easily.” But then in college, your professors expect more out of you than my high school teachers did, at least, and since the bar has raised so much, if you don’t quickly up your game and start studying more, start preparing more, you will fall behind very fast.

I: Did you notice any stark differences between the first semester and the second semester?

R: Not with the environment, but with myself at least, I did apply myself more the second semester. I started preparing more, studying more when I was able to, and trying to understand, basically, my classes better. And figure out how the best way to approach each topic and subject would be.

I: So you went through a transformation, basically, from the first to the second semester?

R: Yes.

I: Tell me more about that. What all did that exactly involve?

R: Well, since I wasn’t satisfied with my performance my first semester, since it did hurt my GPA quite a bit, I decided I needed to try and work harder, so that way I’d be able to salvage what I could and start improving from there. And so over the Christmas Break, I pretty much got it set in my mind to work harder, study more, and try my best to improve on myself.

I: Did you have any specific goals in mind when you set out, or was it a general, “I want to improve myself”?

R: I guess it was more of a general, “I want to improve myself.” I hadn’t figured out any particular ways except maybe study more. So I was just hoping I’d be able to figure out the best way to improve myself.

I: So for the next year, the next semester coming up, what are your plans and goals?

R: For the upcoming fall semester, I’m planning on figuring out better ways to improve, and this time, I have more of an idea of how to do that. I’m planning on studying more, trying to find groups of people to study with because I’ve quickly figured out I study way better in groups than I do individually. And I’ll actually try and routinely study for classes, make sure I understand the topics we’re talking about when we’re talking about them, and not right before the quizzes and tests. So that way, I’ll be able to hopefully improve my performance. And especially with physics coming up, I’ll have to really make sure I understand what’s going on throughout the whole process or I’ll fall behind like so many people have fallen behind.

I: Hard question: Do you feel that in college, it’s the grades that you make that are more important or the friends that you make?

R: For me personally, I feel closer to the friends I make. I still want to have good grades, but I feel that if I left college with a 4.0 and only a couple friends, or a 3.0 and many friends, I would much rather have a 3.0 and many friends, because I like being social, like having people to talk to. I can help people that can help me out when I need help. And I would rather have some friends who will move on with me in the future.

I: Alright, but let’s say, for example, you have lots of friends. What are the chances that you’ll keep in contact with all of them? In a year, two, three?

R: There’s of course always a chance, a pretty good chance, that you won’t keep in contact with everyone. But you’ll usually keep in contact with a couple of people, maybe a few people even. And who knows how long that friendship could last? You could last a good while talking to someone you still know, being able to see how their life is going, and in the future, you might both find yourself in the same city.

I: Going back to more college specific questions, what made you decide to come to Tech?

R: I actually decided I wanted to come to Tech around 4th Grade because that’s where my mom went, and I knew it was good for engineering and I was like, “I want to be an engineer!” And so I had the mindset, “I want to go to Tech because that’s good for engineering.”

I: Did you have any other places in mind or was it Tech or nothing?

R: Junior, senior year of high school, I was considering Georgia Tech, but since it is ridiculously expensive and extremely hard to get a good scholarship to it, especially out of state, Tech was pretty much the only good option that I could afford.

I: Do you have any plans for higher education after your bachelor’s?

R: I’m planning on seeing what jobs I can get, and if I can get a job that would help me pay for my master’s degree to further study electrical engineering, then I would definitely consider doing that. If not, I might still do it on my own, but probably after at least a year break to be able to get into the real world, to make some more money, so that way I’ll be able to afford the master’s program.

I: Would you ever consider a doctorate?

R: I would consider a doctorate, but it would kind of follow the same vein of if someone would help me get to it or if I would take another couple years off to be able to afford it on my own.

I: Past college, past all higher education, what are your overall goals in life? On your deathbed, what do you want to look back on and say, “Yes, I did that thing”?

R: I guess my goals in life in general are to do at least one thing that will be set in stone, that will be seen for a long time, as something that was good done. Maybe not done by a person that is named, but at least something that will carry on through the future, through generations, and will have some meaningful impact for the better. Like, designing something that would help people out in the future. Like I said, I don’t even care if they would remember the name of the person who invented it, but just having some way to help people throughout the generations. That’s probably what I have for my ultimate goal.

I: So, to sort of paraphrase here, you want to be able to help people, and it doesn’t matter to you if you get the glory of it or not.

R: Yes.

I: Okay, that’s honorable. Sticking to the same topics or so, what are you afraid of in life?

R: Besides my fear of heights, I would say I’m afraid of not being able to fully apply myself and not being able to try and help as many people as I can. Because I do enjoy helping people and trying to help people. But if I’m just sitting on the sidelines, I feel like that is what I probably fear the most, is being incapable of doing anything to stop things happening.

I: How could you go about improving that in yourself?

R: I guess I could try and fight off the bystander effect and be the one person who decides to help, and not be the person who just expects, “Okay, since there’s a lot of us here, maybe one person will do something.” Because usually, no one ever does anything, so I want to be the person that does do something.

I: For high school seniors going into college, what would you recommend to them? What advice would you give them?

R: I recommend trying to get out there, socialize, make friends, so that way they’ll ease your transition into college more, but at the same time, don’t completely ignore your classes. It won’t be as easy as high school, so try and be prepared for what will come for the harder tests, the quizzes, the harder classes. And don’t fall too far behind.

I: And more specifically, what would you tell your high school senior self, if you could?

R: I would tell my high school senior self to actually study calculus more because you don’t know it as well as you thought you knew it. Mrs. Graham didn’t prepare you that much.

I: And looking to the future, what do you want to tell your future self, reading this in a year or five or ten? What do you want to tell that person?

R: I’d tell my future self that you’ve done a good job at least so far staying alive and keeping up and not completely falling behind or getting trampled by all the pressures and stress that college can bring. And I hope that you are doing a good job still being friendly with people.

I: Let’s transition to even bigger, harder questions. In your opinion, what is the meaning of life?

R: In my personal opinion, the meaning of life would probably fall along the lines of trying to be the best person you can be, trying to help people, trying to comfort people. Being there for people who do need you, but at the same time, being able to keep up with the world and things that are happening. Not being naïve to events occurring, trying your best to just improve upon the world and make things a better place. Trying to be the good in the world full of vagueness.

I: How do you, yourself, feel that you are accomplishing these things currently?

R: Currently, I would say I am doing a fairly good job at helping people and trying to help people and being there for people who do need someone to just talk to, or a way to just let out some steam that they’re having. But I could definitely improve upon the future and try and just be able to be there more.

I: What’s your religion?

R: My religion, I am a Christian, primarily the Missionary Baptist denomination.

I: What does God mean to you?

R: To me, God means or God is- He is the way, the truth, the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me. He is the person who has created us all, created everything, and we are here to try and support Him, promote Him, worship Him, and try not to destroy everything that He has made for us.

I: How does your worship of God relate to your life, in terms of the meaning that you see behind it?

R: I guess my worship of God does kind of impact the way that I do help people because I don’t necessarily feel obligated to help people but I feel like that is what I should do, I should be trying to be a nice, helpful person and try and be able to help people just like so many stories from the bible, where there would be the disciples or the apostles who would help people. I want to be a person who is able to help people and if I’m able to, try and tell them about God and see if they are able to- If they’re willing to listen to anything.

I: Do people who don’t believe in God, the agnostics, the atheists, those types, what is the best response? They don’t necessarily see the same purpose in life as you do, but yet you’re still going to have to live with them. You still have to be around them. How do you accustom yourself to that?

R: Honestly, for me, it’s not too bad because one of my good friends from high school is an atheist and we would have occasional just banter back and forth where we talk about our own worldviews, but at the end of the day, we were still friends because it’s not just trying to force your beliefs on other people. You have to be respectful of their beliefs. If they’re willing to listen, just tell them about it. Just see how they feel. If they’re willing to talk to you about what they believe, be willing to listen and not just shut them out. You have to be willing to hear the other side to see if they want to hear your side. And that’s pretty much all you can do. You can’t make people like you or like what you believe in.

I: So, in the end, religious beliefs should not affect how people treat each other?

R: They generally shouldn’t, but that’s definitely not the way parts of the world work.

I: Ideally.

R: Ideally, they shouldn’t.

I: Okay, those were some heavy questions there, so thanks for bearing with me. I think that’s all I have, really. Thank you for your time.

R: No problem.

[yeswesaythings]

(Poe + Chemis)try

I: The best place to start is the beginning, so tell me, when did you start writing poetry?

D: I started writing junior year. I had a couple assignments to do for my Brit Lit class and my teacher was like, “Wow, this is really good! You should keep writing,” and so I kind of did.

I: Who are your influences?

D: Well, I don’t really know writing-wise. Definitely my teacher, Mr. Lancaster, Randy. Randy Lancaster. Everything that I write goes into a folder in my Google Docs called Lancaster, and then there are subfolders in that. But he’s the one that makes me keep writing and everything. In terms of people that I read, poetry-wise, Shakespeare and e e cummings are my two favorite, so they have some influence. I kind of write whatever comes to my head.

I: I know e e cummings, his big thing is taking the typography of the words and using it as part of the artistic work of the poem. Is that something that you do at all?

D: Sometimes. It just depends on what I’m writing. Most of the time, when I write, it’s just- I can’t think straight and so to think straight, I have to organize it into a poem, and so it’s just a flood of emotion and so sometimes, when I’m freethinking, like I’m looking out at the sky and a thought popped into my head, I’ll actually try to type up something and I’ll use the typography there.

I: So, this Shakespeare fellow…what is it about him that just grips you and says, “This guy, this guy’s on to something.”

D: His puns. He has so many puns in his writing, and unless you know the context of when he wrote and what he wrote, you don’t really get it. Like in Hamlet, he uses a sun/son pun constantly, the uncle says to Hamlet, “Oh, you need to spend more time in the sun,” or whatever, because he looks ill, and Hamlet says, “No, I’m too much in the son.” And so son is also a form for king, and he’s like, “No, I don’t like it, you’re stupid.”

I: So, of all his works, which would you say is your favorite one?

D: Merchant of Venice. Or at least of the ones that I’ve read.

I: Why? Take your time.

D: That’s a hard question. I like the deeper meaning to it and I just love the character Portia, the character development of Portia.

I: What is the deeper meaning, in your words?

D: Okay, so basically, in the book, Portia has a bunch of suitors who come and they have to- There are three different chests: Gold, silver and lead. And they have to pick one and whichever one holds her picture, if they pick that one, then they get to marry her. And her father set it up. I like the way that her father set it up because, spoiler alert-

I: I’ve read it, don’t worry.

D: The picture winds up being in the lead casket. And so not many people would pick that one. They’re like, “Oh, it’s probably in the gold or the silver,” because there’s inscriptions on each. I don’t remember what they are.

I: Isn’t one of them the line, “All that glitters is not gold”?

D: No, that’s in the note inside the gold casket.

I: Okay, I’m mixing things up then.

D: But I like it because it shows that not everything is on the outside and the more humble you are… I’m trying to remember, I haven’t read it in so long. There was a way Randy described it that I just really like and I don’t remember what he said. But, basically, the people with deeper meaning, deeper thought processes- The one who thinks, he’s more humble, he’s like, “I’m not worth that much.” But he’s also one that has higher thought process and thinks more and spends more time looking at the world from his perspective and figuring out what that is. So basically, just being yourself and using your mind rewards you in the end.

I: I’ve talked with someone that didn’t agree that Shakespeare in classes, high school, even at the college level. Do you agree or is there any value still to be gained today?

D: There’s a lot of value to be gained from Shakespeare. However, you’re not going to get any value if you don’t want to read it. And that’s the big problem, is that it’s written in Old English, so not many teenagers are able to fully appreciate what he wrote.

I: So, the No Fear Shakespeare and the Shakespeare translated into emoji?

D: That’s a great idea, I love that. It really helps, because you get the story along. And you miss some of the puns along the way because there is some stuff inherent in the writing, but if you get the storyline, his themes and his plot and everything still comes across very strongly if it’s done correct.

I: Is that something worth doing with all literature? Because Shakespeare’s only one author that wrote in that style, and you have authors that wrote even as recently as the 1800s that some people find completely impenetrable. Nathaniel Hawthorne, for example.

D: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s spends one chapter talking about a door, but once you get into the book, it’s pretty good. So, yeah, I think that would be a good idea for any sort of classic literature that everybody needs to read. Because a majority of the time, we determine a classic based on the story and the theme. And you do lose a lot with the writing, but once you read the story and you get the story down, if you like it, then you’re more likely to go back and read the original text.

I: So, it’s simplification with the hopes that people will go and read the real thing later on?

D: Yes.

I: Do you think writing has become too simplified nowadays?

D: What do you mean by that?

I: Well, so for example, you have works like Shakespeare and other authors that you really have to sit down and try to work out what they’re saying. But then you look at the great authors of today, and maybe it’s too soon to say who the great authors are of the 21st century or the 20th century, but would you say that the writing has, not been dumbed down, but it does not take as much effort to read?

D: That’s also because in today’s world, our vocabulary is a lot smaller. Back in Shakespeare’s time, everybody used, I think it was 16,000 to 20,000 different words a day. Nowadays, we use 5,000 to 8,000, depending on who we are. And the 16,000 was the common people. They were very well educated, they had a much wider vocabulary. They didn’t have all this science and technology, but they were aware of what they were saying and the differences between words and what those differences mean. And today, a lot of people don’t even know the difference between homophones, where it sounds the same but it’s a different word. So, I think the writing reflects the society.

I: How do you go about fixing something like that? Let’s say, tomorrow, we have elected ----- as education grandmaster. How do you go about fixing it?

D: Well, the easiest way, if we’re talking strictly about vocabulary and English, the easiest way to gain a wider vocabulary is to read. So just get people to start reading what they like, and once you get them reading what they like, then they’ll read more and more. And they’ll have a wider vocabulary, they’ll be able to use big words like lackadaisical or zealous, and even though those aren’t actually big words, they’ll know what they mean. They’ll use them in casual conversation more. And if you can get them reading, then the writers who read more and who read at a higher level will eventually have higher levels of writing.

I: Okay, so now tell me about chemistry.

D: Do you really want to know about chemistry?

I: I want to know everything about chemistry.

D: Well, where do you want me to start?

I: Your favorite aspect of chemistry.

D: My favorite aspect of chemistry? That’s a hard one. Well, okay, you’ve got the basic trinity, the trinity of chemistry. There’s thermodynamics, equilibrium and kinetics. And within those, equilibrium is the hardest, with buffers, even though buffers aren’t a hard concept. But for some reason, the math always makes it a lot harder than it needs to be. Thermodynamics is nice and easy, the first thing you teach people in Gen Chem 2, just something to ease them into it. Kinetics isn’t that bad, either.

I: It’s all easy!

D: There are hard aspects to most of it, but thermodynamics is definitely the easiest. That’s why they teach it first. And that’s just all about the heat and the entropy, which is the disorder, and why reactions happen and what makes them spontaneous, what makes them happen at certain temperatures just automatically. And then you get into equilibrium and it’s how far the reaction will go, will you have ingredients left over that you started with, and all that. And kinetics is how fast a reaction happens, which is actually really interesting because some happen instantaneously and so you have to go in and set in intermediary reactions so that you can see the reaction happen.

I: So, you’re a chemical engineering major. So, what do you want to do with it? What is your dream job?

D: Okay, well, I’ve got a biomolecular concentration, so there’s actually two ways that I want to go. I either, probably first, and then later- But first, I want to go into research and development of pharmaceuticals. And I want to go into finding a cure for viral infections.

I: So you’re at your bachelor’s degree now. So, is it master’s, doctorate as your path?

D: I don’t know. It depends on jobs. So I’m going to co-op while I’m in undergrad, and if I find a company that wants to hire me right out of undergrad and then pay me to get my master’s later, I’ll do that. Otherwise, I’ll go straight into master’s, because I just like school, which is weird, but I like it. And I don’t want to take a year off because I don’t know that I’ll go back.

I: Would you ever consider being a chemistry teacher of sorts?

D: That was my second thing. I don’t have the patience to do elementary or middle school. And then once I get to high school, it’s just too basic of chemistry. I don’t know, I like the harder stuff. I could do an AP chemistry course, but I’d want to be a college professor.

I: So, if you could design, let’s say, the curricula for a standard, elementary beginner’s chemistry, what would it look like?

D: A beginner’s chemistry?

I: Not even for people that want to go into chemistry, but an, “Introduction to Chemistry for People That Aren’t STEM Majors, But Who Want to Understand the Concepts of Chemistry.” What would you put in there? What would be the most important facets for them to learn?

D: Well, first thing they need to learn is they need to learn that units are important. So, the different types of units, the SI system-

I: Why are units important?

D: Units are- They- See, I don’t even know why units wouldn’t be important. But units are important because different systems- Like, you have a gram and you have a kilogram. Those are both the same weight, but it could be one kilogram is a thousand grams. So it’s going to mess up your math if you don’t have the right units. But you need units. And then, based off of units, you need stoichiometry.

I: What is that?

D: That’s just conversions, basic conversions. So, usually it’s based off of the chemical equation. And you’ll have, like, I believe it’s two hydrogen plus oxygen makes two water. Alright? So you have that, and so you take everything- Let’s say you have two grams of hydrogen, two grams of oxygen. That sounds nice, right? Alright, you’re going to have a little bit of oxygen left over, but that’s fine. Oxygen is good.

I: I breathe that stuff in.

D: So you have the grams, you have the mass. But then you have to get it into moles, because mass is relative based on- Mass is a relative, it doesn’t compute all the way through for each element because each element has a different molar mass and everything. So you have to get it to moles, and that’s the basic amount of how many you have. So moles can be broken down into molecules, into atoms. And that’s by a constant. 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd.

I: That number!

D: That’s Avogadro’s number, also known as “avocado”, “guacamole”- No, I’m sorry, “guaca-mole”, “free shavacadu”.

I: We should stop now, these are only getting worse.

D: I know…

I: What’s next?

D: So, you get everything to moles and then you can just convert based on the ratio of the equation. So you’ve got two hydrogen for one oxygen. So it’s a two to one ratio. And then you figure out which one goes on the bottom, which one goes on top, based on what you have already and make the units cancel. And then you just do that, you do the math out and you’re like, “Hey, I’m going to have, like, two moles of water,” or if you want grams, that’d be, like, 32 grams of water. Yes, I know that! 18.02 is the molar mass of water. I know a lot of molar masses.

I: Wow, that’s so impressive. So, anything else or are those the main points?

D: Well, I don’t know, because you have to get stoichiometry in there, but there’s a lot of basic concepts that I’ve learned, and I remember learning and I remember that it was difficult at the time, but now it’s so basic to me, based on everything else that I’ve built on it, that I just don’t even know what it is that was basic. It’s like, I’m in Calc 3, and I know that I had to learn addition and subtraction, I know that was hard and I know that it was important, but I forget that people still need to learn that.

I: Why is chemistry important? Why is it even something worth learning?

D: Why is chemistry important? It makes up everything, and you hear that a lot. Like, chemistry makes up everything. But when you break it down, you get to see- I like chemistry because physics tells you how the world works, right? That’s cool, that’s interesting. I like physics. But chemistry breaks it down on a molecular level, on a level that we can’t even see. And so, for me, it’s interesting to know what goes on that I can’t see, I can’t experience. But it’s important because we use it in everything. We use chemistry in medicine. We use it in makeup. Makeup is one of the biggest fields of chemical engineers and I refuse to go into it. It’s just used in everything, it’s in the air we breathe, it’s in photosynthesis, it’s in respiration. It’s just a part of everything. So if you want to know anything about the world, we have to know chemistry.

I: So, what made you decide chemical engineering instead of just chemistry by itself?

D: Oh, I love math.

I: There’s not much actual math in chemistry by itself?

D: There’s some calculations, but it’s not math. It’s not thinking.

I: What is it exactly that chemical engineers do?

D: Chemical engineering is such a broad field, so it just depends what you go into. So, like me, with a biomolecular concentration, I’m doing chemistry, physics and biology. And math. So I take all of that and I apply it to real life. So, the major field for that is pharmaceuticals, like going in and figuring out different ways to make medicine, different ways to manipulate human biology with their chemistry and use chemicals to go in- Manipulate it so that we can get rid of diseases, we can get rid of viruses. I was on a roll there, and then it just stopped.

I: There might be someone who is interested in chemistry but then at the same time, they might say, “What is biology but just applying the things I’ve done in chemistry?”

D: So, a lot of scientists like to make fun of biologists because they think that it’s not a real science. They’re like, “It’s half a science,” is pretty much what you hear. And it’s all in good fun and we know that we need biology and everything. It’s like the way all engineers make fun of civ-E’s, civil engineers.

I: You’re so mean.

D: You have to make fun of someone. Who do math majors make fun of?

I: Applied mathematicians.

D: See?

I: Alright, fair enough.

D: But biology is the application of chemistry, but there’s also so much more that doesn’t deal directly with the chemicals. It focuses more on the cellular aspect, whereas we focus on the atoms that make up the cells. So if you’re looking at it microscopically, we look at the smallest possible unit of life. No, not of life. Smallest possible unit of matter. They look at the smallest possible unit of life. And so they focus more on the life aspect, we focus more on matter and what makes up everything, animate and inanimate.

I: So, if you weren’t anything related to chemistry, or math- I already know where that answer would go- what would you be?

D: Nothing chemistry and nothing math?

I: Right.

D: I would be an English major.

I: Oh, okay, it’s not the answer I was expecting. I guess that wraps back around to poetry again, let’s see if-

Poetry

I Run

Smack

Smack

Smack

Power flows through my veins

As my muscles carry me further and further

Breaths are short- but quick

 I fly.

 I fly without even leaving the ground.

Faster and faster

I’ve passed the point where I couldn’t keep going.

 Now I fly forever.

 As I fly, I feel

The power of my muscles,

The strength of my legs,

The obedience of my feet

 I laugh.

 I laugh out of sheer exhilaration

I’m power

I’m strength

I’m obedience

I’m pure determination.

 I run.

 My Rainy Day

Shall I compare thee to a rainy day?

Thou do makest me more melancholy.

Thou art the clouds that scud across the sky,

Except your gloom brings me far more dismay.

When memories of thee tickle my brain,

Thorns prick my heart, and I fall to my knees.

Thou art cruel and mean to leave me be.

Thou came; Thou loved, and thou went away.

 Yet, I love thee still to this very hour.

Your death was debilitating, a plague.

The loss of thee is a scourge upon my heart.

I long for your love; ‘twas a heady power.

But now, alone, I waste away in this vague

Life. Indistinct and bitter, Life is hard.

 The Pickle

There once was a pickle

Who was very, very fickle.

You see he wanted to do

Things the wrong way ‘round.

He wanted to take

The train back into

Good ol’ Cucumber Town.

Now we all know

That a pickle is evil

And cucumbers are good.

So why would we want a pickle to be

Changed back into

A cucumber?

Well, this pickle was set.

He was going to change.

He was on the way to good everlasting.

But then one day, the children came

And ate the pickle.

He never got the chance

To redeem himself

Because he waited too long.

So, the moral of the story

Is to be ready when the children come.

Well, there once was a man

Named Mr. Pickle.

He was very, very fickle.

You see he wanted to do

Things the wrong way ‘round.

He was on the crazy train

And headed down.

Now we all know

That to be mean is bad

And to be good is great.

So why would we want

Mr. Pickle to walk away

From Heaven’s gates?

So, I told the tale

Of the fickle pickle to

Cranky ol’ Mr. Pickle.

Well, he didn’t listen,

So he wasn’t ready

The day the Good Lord came.

What is a Word?

What is a word?

A word is nothing more

Than a series of letters

That we have denoted a certain meaning to.

 What is a letter?

A letter is nothing more

Than a combination of markings

That we have associated a specific sound with.

 So what is a word?

A word is nothing more

Than a series of [combinations of markings

That we have associated a specific sound with]

That we have denoted a certain meaning to.

 But why?

We give meaning to specific sounds

So that we can communicate ideas

To share in and ameliorate the lives of those around us.

 What is a word?

A word is nothing more

Than a series of combinations of markings

That we have associated a specific sound with

That we have denoted a certain meaning to

[So that we can communicate ideas

To share in and ameliorate the lives of those around us].

 If a word is meant to express an idea, a concept, an opinion

If a word is meant to help us share in the lives of those around us

If a word is meant to ameliorate lives

 What are we doing?

 We spout gibberish about garbage and call it communication.

We say words we don’t mean.

We say more words to those across the world than in our own homes.

We use words to destroy and build up.

We stop people from using the words they want

Because we are scared of their power.

 Words are not power.

Power is a word.

Words are not passion and anger and love.

Passion and anger and love are words.

Words are not wisdom and knowledge and advice.

Wisdom and knowledge and advice are words.

Words are tools.

They are neither construction nor destruction.

 It is not the words that we should be scared of.

It is not the sounds that we need to parole.

 Because what is a word?

A word is nothing more

Than a series of combinations of markings

That we have associated a specific sound with

That we have denoted a certain meaning to

So that we can communicate ideas

To share in and ameliorate the lives of those around us.

 Words are useless without their meanings

Use words

Choose them well

But be wary of the meaning that they denote

For that is where the power lies.

[yeswesaythings]

Australia, and Some Stops Along the Way

I: Pretend that I haven’t been here for the past seven weeks already and I know nothing about Tasmania. Tell me about it.

S: You probably still don’t know much about Tasmania.

I: True.

S: There’s a lot to say.

I: Okay, explain to me about it.

S: That was sarcastic. Um, what exactly do you want explaining?

I: I guess that’s a hard question for someone that has lived here their entire life.

S: Yes, very much.

I: I mean, I guess the usual notion when people think about Australia, they think, “Oh, it’s a dangerous place that is full of animals that want to kill you.” How true is that?

S: That is half true.

I: Half true? Okay, so-

S: It’s not to the extent that everyone would think. It’s not like everything is trying to kill you. Only half the things are trying to kill you. But the fact that they’re trying to kill you is there.

I: Okay, so you have to go out of your way, though, to find the animals that are trying to kill you?

S: Depends where you are, really. If you’re in a populated area like this, then yeah, you have to go out of your way, but if you’re out in rural areas, it’s going to be much easier.

I: Okay. I guess I’ll tackle a lot of Australian stereotypes because I think that’s the main thing to tackle. I mean, people think of Australia, they think of the accent. First of all, you were telling me that it’s not just one accent throughout the entire continent.

S: No, it’s very different, like, somewhere down here in Tasmania compared to the mainland. I’m assuming because of the separation. But I think the mainland have a more posh sort of style to it.

I: I mean, is there- In America, for example, the southern accent is kind of seen as less sophisticated and “These people are simpler and not as intelligent.” Is there sort of that-

S: That’s sort of what it’s like here.

I: So people look down at Tasmania?

S: All the time.

I: Really?

S: Yeah.

I: Okay, so that’s kind of the go-to punching bag.

S: Yes, very much.

I: Why?

S: I don’t know. Maybe because we’re the nicest state ever?

I: Does that have anything to do with- I mean, the entirety of Australia was a penal colony. But Port Arthur was located in Tasmania, and that’s where basically the prisoners of the penal colony went.

S: Sure, but so was Sydney.

I: Oh, so Sydney also had that, too? But Sydney doesn’t have that-

S: No, Sydney was the first settled place in Australia, then Hobart was second.

I: Okay, I guess it’s still odd. Sydney is usually seen as one of the typified Australian cities, while no one knows who Hobart is at all. Do you have any speculation of why Tasmania is not well known outside of Australia?

S: See, that’s another thing. I’m not sure why not. I guess it’s just, again, it’s not directly part of Australia and maybe the culture is very different.

I: True. Well, this is always a fun question to ask: The food. What’s the epitome of Australian, or at least Tasmanian, cuisine?

S: Well, Tasmania has superior seafood. Definitely.

I: I would guess being an island would help.

S: Most of the food in Australia, though, in general, is a mix of every other culture around the world. We don’t really have our own thing.

I: Sounds like America. I wonder if that’s just a product of Western cultures as a whole, that they just don’t have their own and it’s just an accumulation of all the others. I know vegemite is primarily Australian. It was one of the main foods I was told about before coming here.

S: Have you tried it?

I: I have, and it is- It’s not bad. But it’s not necessarily good either.

S: It’s a very stereotypical thing when people think of Australia, but how much did you eat exactly?

I: I took a piece of bread and then, basically, spread it on there.

S: The key is to spread it thin.

I: Okay, I mean, I didn’t just glob it on there-

S: Whenever I see reaction videos to people outside of Australia eating vegemite, they put really thick amounts on the thing. It’s like pure salt.

I: Yeah, that was the thing, it was like someone made a jelly out of soy sauce. That’s the best way I know how to describe it.

S: That’s a good way of explaining it.

I: And it’s not a flavor that I just tasted and was, like, vomiting everywhere as a result. But it was- Yeah, salty is the main thing, but to such an extreme that is becomes less of a flavor enhancer and becomes the flavor itself.

S: Ultimate question for you: Is Promite a big thing over in America?

I: Promite? I don’t think so. What is that?

S: Promite is, as far as I know, the American version of marmite, which is the original.

I: I mean, we probably have it in grocery stores in our- I don’t know if we’d put it in our “ethnic foods” section or something, but it’s not common.

S: Well, you know how there’s marmite for England, and then vegemite sprouted from that for Australia. Promite was the thing for America, what I thought.

I: It might be, but it’s not something that you’re going to find too often. You’re going to have to search for that.

S: Because we can get that in our supermarkets.

I: You can get the American version in- Huh, not to bash America too heavily, but anything that is too weird looking, we have a tendency to automatically assume it tastes bad. And so you have this thick, black sludge, and it says, “You spread it on toast and it has a salty flavor.” Well, they’re going to turn their nose up at it and say, “Eh, I’d rather not,” and stick with things they’re more familiar with. Deep conversation on vegemite. So, that came from England-

S: Marmite came from England.

I: So, what’s the difference between marmite and vegemite then?

S: There’s not much difference, really. But marmite’s better, in my opinion.

I: No bias, because you’re Australian, of course. So, you’ve lived in Tasmania your entire life?

S: Yes.

I: I guess that answers the question of why you came to the University of Tasmania. So, is it the only university in Tasmania?

S: It is. I guess it’s the only public one. There’s private ones, but they go through UTas anyway.

I: Okay, so UTas sort of has a monopoly on the education of the island. So, is it common- What do you call- What’s the demonym for people who come from Tasmania? Tasmanians?

S: Yeah, Tasmanians.

I: So, do Tasmanians usually go to the mainland for education, or do they stay in Tasmania?

S: Some do. I don’t think most do, though. Most stay here.

I: It’s a nice place. I don’t blame them. Okay, so what are you majoring in?

S: I’ve actually got three majors. So, there’s maths, games and creative technology, and ICT professionalism.

I: So, the big question: What do you plan to do?

S: That’s a difficult question at the time.

I: No one I have ever asked has any clue.

S: I know what I want to do, but I don’t know what I’m going to do to get there.

I: Okay, so what do you want to do?

S: Well, I want my own game development studio.

I: On par with things like Valve and Steam?

S: Not that big. Well, that’s a good angle. But before that, baby steps.

I: What kind of games are you looking to develop? Cerebral ones or more shooter style?

S: Cerebral. Well, a mixture, I guess? You need to reach a more general audience, but I like making things go a little bit different.

I: So, you’ve told me a bit about this research class that you’ve been doing throughout the year. Tell me about that. What exactly are you doing in that class?

S: Well, that’s called Serious Gaming. A serious game is pretty much a game with meaning. So, a game that isn’t for entertainment, or not primarily for entertainment.

I: What’s an example of that?

S: Most education games would be a serious game if their primary goal isn’t entertainment.

I: Okay, so for example, an anatomy type game? I mean, what’s the definition of game?

S: I got a bit of a shaky definition. It’s usually defined as a form of media that provides fun.

I: So, as long as you’re having fun, it’s considered a game?

S: Yes, and then you go further into asking, “What is fun?”

I: I think people have a better grasp on what fun is than what a game is. So, this game that you’re developing right now, what’s its goal?

S: So, that one’s for stroke rehabilitation. So, the idea for that- Stroke patients have to repeat movements over and over again through their rehabilitation, and it gets kind of boring for them. But if you can incorporate something fun, something that means something to them or something that gives it meaning, then they’re going to be repeating the tasks over and over again, willingly.

I: And they don’t have to think about it too much.

S: Yeah.

I: When I was at the cross country team at my university, before school started, we had to do a concussion test. Essentially, we gave it a baseline for how our cognitive abilities were, you know, without a concussion. And so if we ever did get one, we would basically have to take that test over and over again until we were back at our base level. But that was awful to do because, first of all, that was staring at a screen for twenty minutes and these weren’t high tech computers that they were using and it was basically a bunch of, “Here’s a bunch of words. Try to memorize as many as you can. And then tell us the ones that were there. Here are some shapes. Now we’re going to take them away. Now which of these shapes were the ones that you just saw?” You know, things like that. They were looking at memory, how well you could reason and think and memorize things without any damage to them. And the thing I remember walking away from that thinking is, “I hope I never get a concussion because I don’t ever want to do that again.” So I can definitely see the use of what you’re developing. What tasks are you having them do in order to release the monotony?

S: Physical tasks or in-game tasks?

I: Both.

S: Well, physical tasks are usually arm movement, so using a robotic arm that will move them around a big table screen, depending on where they look.

I: So, it’s based on motion sensing with the eyes? Do you know how that works, exactly?

S: I’m not entirely sure. That’s not my field.

I: And then, the in-game activities, what are you having them do?

S: Well, we’ve just come up with the concept. Essentially, we’re trying to go down the mobile games route. Mobile games are generally the thing you can repeat over and over. So, we’ve got a demolition game.

I: Something similar to Angry Birds?

S: Not quite. Yes, but no. The aim is to knock over the building. So, you get a building or structure, but you have to put bombs in, and sticks of dynamite. And then when you detonate that, the building falls like it was on a construction site of something.

I: But I’m guessing that the strategy and the movements are going to be something that takes a bit of thought to them?

S: Yes and no. They look at a spot where they want to plant a bomb, for example. They can go and plant it there. But it’s that layer there of having them playing a game that will enable to move without realizing that it’s still rehabilitation.

I: For something like this, why don’t you just use Angry Birds or something along those lines?

S: Something like that would need a bit more reconstructing.

I: So, where do its deficiencies lay?

S: In its physical capabilities.

I: So, you’re not doing enough movement?

S: Well, if you have to move the slingshot in Angry Birds and pull back on it, that’s kind of not a very effective movement for the rehabilitation. They need to be able to do more. Bigger movements.

I: Something that’s not just a straight line?

S: Yeah, the machinery should be able to do all that.

I: For what you’re trying to improve, what is, at the moment, the time is takes a stroke victim to be rehabilitated?

S: It depends on the severity. There are a few different grades of stroke. I think, actually, in most cases, you’ll probably be in the hospital for a week and you’ll be fine afterwards. I think it’s only a 30% chance that you need rehabilitation after that week.

I: So, if you are in that 30% who need rehabilitation, do you have any idea how long that will take?

S: I think it can take people anywhere between three weeks to eight weeks to months to years.

I: It’s going to be a case by case situation. Has there been lots of research that shows that rehabilitation becomes less effective as time goes on because the people get bored in doing the movements?

S: Yes, definitely. That’s where a lot of the idea of bringing entertainment into it came from. You should be able to, theoretically, last a bit longer.

I: Are you hoping to reduce the time that it takes or are you basically just trying to boost morale or retain people?

S: Morale is a huge part.

I: Because the people getting bored in rehabilitation, is it because it just stretches on forever because they get bored, or do people just leave and they just don’t come back?

S: It’s mainly because they get bored, but also if they’re doing it for a long time, and not seeing any results, they get discouraged, “Oh, this isn’t effective.” But that’s another way a game can come in, a game can show progress. So if you can show them that they’ve made progress, then they’re not going to have the discouragement.

I: It’s like things with little medals and ribbons and whatnot. They have them on the pedometer on my phone, it’ll buzz and say, “You’ve walked 6,000 steps today! Here’s a little medal for you.” And even though I can do nothing with that medal, and it has no monetary value at all, it at least tells me something: “Hey, I did something.” And it keeps track of steps per day, so I can take a quick glance and see, oh this was a day that was good, this way a day that was bad, so I can see what you’re doing there. Is that a Fitbit?

S: It’s a Garmin vivofit.

I: Okay. Yeah, exercise. Do you see this- How far into development is this?

S: Well, our specific project or games for stroke rehabilitation in general?

I: Oh, so is this part of a larger project?

S: It’s the start of something that will hopefully get somewhere.

I: How far along is the general notion of using games to help people for rehabilitation?

S: How do you mean?

I: How new is that?

S: It’s not really a thing. Well, I guess it’s been a thing for a couple years, but it’s not been in play. So, the idea of this project is to research. Well, not so much our part, but the CSIRO team is seeing how effective games are for that. And if that’s successful, it could very well lead on to everyone doing it.

I: Your personal part, how far along is that, so far?

S: Right now, up to this stage, it’s all been about targeting the behavior of a stroke patient, which is like, where the boredom and stuff like that comes from. So that’s how we determine all that. And then working out what kind of counter we could use.

I: Have you met and talked with a lot of stroke patients?

S: We haven’t talked to any of the patients. We’ve only spoken to rehabilitation staff and researchers.

I: What have they pointed out as the major points to consider?

S: They pretty much pointed out the same stuff that we’ve already discussed.

I: So, basically the big problem is the boredom from the repetition and the monotony, so there needs to be something to entertain people. I guess it would be hard to find people that have suffered from strokes in the area. I don’t know where you would- Unless you go to a hospital.

S: Well, I’m not quite sure on the details yet on when they’ll be tested. So, I’m not sure if they’re going to be tested before or after we’ve finished the projects.

I: Do you see this going past not just stroke victims but people that have-

S: Oh yeah.

I: Like, any kind of physical rehabilitation, people in car accidents, just any physical injury?

S: I think it could be applied to most physical rehabilitation.

I: Do you see any- What’s the word I’m looking for- restrictions to it? It can help, but there’s going to be a point when it can’t do any good anymore?

S: That’s very possible. But I think the point of stroke rehabilitation is to reconnect the things in your brain, let it (?) into your movement so you can get your movement back, so you can think about how you’re going to move and to get your motor- Is it motor-neuron movement?

I: You’re the one doing the project.

S: Yeah, so I guess it really depends if they reach a point where- It’s all up to the patient- if they reach a point where they think that it’s not going to go any further, then it’s not going to go any further. But, once again, that’s where an alternative rehabilitation, like games, comes in. Because if you keep offering them even newer games, changing it up every now and again, then they’re not going to have that thought as often.

I: Have you, yourself, gone through the motions of trying to do something similar to what they would do and how quickly you become bored with it.

S: Not really.

I: Okay, that might be something to try out, just- I don’t know how long a rehabilitation session would go, but every night, fifteen minutes, half an hour, you do those motions.

S: That also varies from patient to patient, though. Some people could be there for fifteen minutes, some people could be there for an hour, some people could be there for six hours.

I: You’re keeping that in mind with the game, though, because even a game, after six hours, can get really boring as well.

S: That’s the part that we really need to tackle.

I: Let’s keep going with the idea of boredom. That, as a topic, is interesting because, well, why do we get bored with things?

S: Hm, that’s true. I hadn’t really thought about that.

I: Because something can hold our attention for hours on end, even if it’s not necessarily changing wildly, but then something can change too rapidly, and after a few minutes we become bored with it.

S: I think it might be something to do with how the mind prefers taking in new stuff all the time. So, if you’re seeing the same stuff over and over again, you’re seeing the same result from the same actions, it’s not realty stimulating.

I: But then why do people find comfort in things that are familiar? Is there a sort of familiarity in boredom?

S: Well, I guess if you know something’s safe, then you’re going to keep doing it that way. You won’t deviate into a way that’s going to be not safe.

I: Okay, but it still seems-

S: But, boredom I think is sort of the balance between safety and boredom in that instance.

I: That’s the “ideal”- Well, maybe not the ideal, because there’s always a bit of risk that might be ideal. Maybe at one end, you have risk and excitement and there is sort of the ideal in between and on the other hand, you have boredom and familiarity, and there’s something in the middle there.

S: People who get bored and wingsuit, that’s pretty dangerous. But I guess it’s not boring because it’s something completely new.

I: You can look at boredom almost as- If you considered that you had a set of everything that you could be doing, that boredom becomes a larger and larger subset of that to a point. And so hypothetically, it would be a bad thing if you were able to everything possible because it would get to a point where everything would be familiar, everything would be boring. But at the same time, if enough time has passed- Maybe you haven’t done something for a while, you got bored from it. But then you let time pass and you go back to it again, you can find new interest in it.

S: And that quite often happens.

I: So, boredom isn’t a permanent state of mind. It’s temporary, provided enough time.

S: Perhaps it links to short term memory.

I: So, we become bored with things, but only in the short term, because we forget how boring they were to begin with?

S: I think you’d remember key aspects of whatever the activity was, you’d forget the details. If it was meaningless, and you were just there for the sale of being there, then you’re not going to remember it very well.

I: We remember the high, interesting points and anything that’s boring or uninteresting just gets thrown away because what’s the point of remembering anything about it? In the way of teaching and boredom, this is something I’ve noticed. I’m taking four classes, two of them are math classes and two of them are more on the arts side of classes. And in both categories, I have one of the classes that I find really interesting. And on the other hand, I have one that’s really dull. Now, you could chalk it up to, well, I’m a math major and therefore, I should find the math classes, the arts classes sort of a bit on the boring side. But in both cases, there’s an arts class that I find interesting and there’s a math class that I find interesting. There’s a math class that I find boring, there’s an arts class that I find boring. And I think that that’s one of the things that teachers or professors or anyone that’s going to be in a teaching position has to keep in mind, that it doesn’t matter how well they may know the material, if the student is bored, that they have a hard time of remembering the material, understanding the material, and so it doesn’t do any good. They’re basically there, but there’s no actual learning, just lecturing. I don’t know, what are your thoughts on that are?

S: Oh, I’m going to agree 100%. I’ve been in classes before where I’ve sat there, thinking, “I already know this, or I have no interest in it. So, just forget the whole thing happened.”

I: There have been some classrooms that have gone to games to make things interesting, and have a done a similar thing as the stroke rehabilitation project, where it may be something that’s a bit repetitive or boring, but they’ve gone and circumvented that by introducing a game to make it more interesting. I think there have been classes that have used Minecraft to teach various subjects, ones that you might not necessarily think: Economics, or history, or something. But you put it in the field of game and suddenly it has that idea of- Or that feeling of being entertaining.

S: I think when you play a game, you sort of forget what you’re doing, in a sense. So you sort of draw a separation between the fact that you were doing something not very interesting.

I: So, it’s a distraction, almost?

S: Yes, well, that’s what games are. They’re distractive. They can obviously distract you from-

I: Is being unaware of your learning-

S: I think that’s one of the best ways to learn.

I: Is to be unaware that you’re actually learning? Interesting. Of course, as soon as people then catch on to it, it ruins it.

S: But think of when you’re learning everyday things when you’re younger. You just learn it from observing it and it’s not like hard learning. But you would have retained all of that to now.

I: True, yeah, I guess that’s one thing with the modern education system. Because it’s so structured, and you’re supposed to go to elementary school and you’re supposed to go to middle school and you’re supposed to go to high school and it’s all very structured.

S: Here it works differently.

I: Oh, okay. But there’s still that- You go to school at a certain time and you sit in a classroom and you’re there because you realize you’re expected to learn. And it’s that structure, by itself, that gets rid of any notion of unawareness. You are extremely aware because you are in that setting of, “I’m here to learn things.” And so, in a way, the school setting might not be conducive to learning for that reason.

S: There’s a pretty high rate of people as well, who’d be leaving education like that, not really retaining anything they’ve learned or retaining the things that they didn’t think they needed to learn.

I: There’s this usual complaint in classes, especially math classes, but honestly, the complaint could go for any class depending on what the major of the person is: “When am I going to need this? When am I ever going to use this?” Especially in mathematics. Oh, the Pythagorean Theorem, the quadratic equation. I’m learning this, but I don’t see where it’s being used.

S: I pay the most attention, probably, in games and programming and that sort of thing because I know that I’m going to use them and they have a direct practical application.

I: Yeah, application helps in the progress of learning. If you can see how this is being applied in a sense, then it’s easier to learn it. But at the same time, for example, people hate word problems. So, if you gave them: Solve 3x + 5 = 7, but then you told them some word problem that, in the end, basically involved solving that same thing, people have an easy time solving the algebra equation, but the word problem completely loses them.

S: True. That’s because it’s not, I guess- They learned how to do it non-practically, and then they have to apply that.

I: So, it makes sense that you would teach math in a very theoretical side because then it doesn’t limit you in a single way of thinking about something. But at the same time, it limits you on the scope at which you’re seeing things. You see numbers as just things that you move around and they’re just symbols, whereas you lose all grasp of what it is, why it came into being in the first place. So people can think, “Why do we have negative numbers at all? There’s no negative anything. I can’t have a negative book. I can’t have a negative table.” But then you get into the idea of finance and into debt and things like that. But if you don’t know anything about finance, you don’t know where that would be applied, it just becomes a thing that you have to keep in your head, but without any context.

S: Back on that elementary school, middle school, high school thing.

I: Oh yeah, how is it different here?

S: Well, it’s even more different in Tasmania than in the rest of the country. So, in Tasmania, we have primary school, secondary school, which is high school, and then college, then uni. So, primary is from kinder, which I guess is preschool?

I: What age is that?

S: That’s like four or five.

I: Okay, that would be kindergarten.

S: Well, primary’s from then to year 6.

I: It varies in the States. Sometimes it can go from kindergarten through fifth grade, is considered elementary school. Sometimes kindergarten through fourth grade can be considered elementary school. It sometimes also just depends on the year. I mean, my parents went to a high school that was tenth grade through twelfth grade, that was the high school. And then sixth through ninth was the middle school. There’s no real set setup, honestly.

S: There’s this thing that I think people think is strange about this one is year 11 and 12 is college.

I: Is college university or completely interchangeable?

S: Yeah.

I: Interesting, do you know why that is?

S: I’ve never actually looked into why that is. Because we’re probably the only people in Australia that do it.

I: Yeah, because that was something I was hearing people say, coming out of college. And it was like, are these people that are coming from community college or something? Are these people transferring from elsewhere?

S: See, that’s just from high school, or your equivalent of high school. See, I always get confused the other way around. When people outside of here say college, and I’m thinking, “Oh yes, that’s year 11 and 12.” But they’re actually meaning university.

I: Yeah, I think all of the slang is also what people really know about Australia. All the shortened nicknames: Aussie, Tassie.

S: Slang is huge in Australia.

I: Not that it isn’t huge in other places, too, but it always seems other people’s slang is just that much more interesting.

S: I think if you talked to the average young Australian, you’re going to hear slang in at least every sentence

I: Well, children learn from their parents, so I guess that means that the parents are speaking it.

S: True. But like you said, Tassie and Aussie and all these things, have you ever heard what we call McDonald’s a lot?

I: Oh, Macca’s. I don’t think anyone actually says it, but at one point, Mickey D’s was the McDonald’s nickname.

S: I’ve heard that used before. Not in Australia, but I’ve heard it used.

I: We’re the country that made “fleek” and “bae” and the words “on point” and all those kind of words.

S: I, sadly, use those.

I: I don’t judge. But it’s always interesting to see, because we can look at a culture and say, “Oh, they have such an interesting and weird slang,” but then you completely ignore how many words you use that aren’t in the dictionary.

S: Oh, probably half of what I say isn’t in the dictionary.

I: Alright, I think that’s a good note to stop on. Thank you!

[yeswesaythings]

Approximately 5% of This is the Word Hamlet

I: Easy softball question to begin with, what is the plot of your book?

M: So, the plot of my book is, it’s a dystopian novel about a boy named Max, and his family gets taken from him by the government. And the government, its entire ruse is they claim that the lower class citizens are too sick to work and they can't contribute anything to society and they take them to what they tell everyone is a hospital, but in reality, they are shipping them out to the wasteland, to the desert, where no one is supposed to be able to survive. What they don’t know is that a camp of these outcasts have formed, and they- They’re not doing anything against the government, but they are surviving in a place that is supposed to be unbearable, unsurvivable. And Max is completely destroyed by his family being taken away. And so he goes on this, kind of mission almost, to find what happens to his family because he doesn’t want to lose them. They’re all he had. His dad is the only person he had left. And that’s kind of the baseline of the book. And, I mean, more happens, but-

I: Is the plot just merely fictional or do you see it as being a sort of commentary of something in real life?

M: I feel like it, in a way, it can connect to most people’s lives because we all have this struggle of losing the people we love the most and having to stand up against things that, to us, seem impossible, but in reality, they’re just things that, in our heads, we make out to be impossible. In a way, it connects to that aspect of everyone’s lives. At least, that’s what I want it to do. But in a way, it is just a fictional story. There’s no-

I: Autobiographical elements?

M: Yeah, it’s not my story or anything like that. It does just pull on trying to connect with people, to get them to understand no matter how big or small a task seems, you can do it, as long as you put your mind to it.

I: Do you have a set schedule for writing, or is it just as inspiration strikes you?

M: It started that I was on my own little schedule and I started with the first two chapters and I got those out in two weeks and everything was moving really fast, and then I kind of hit a writer’s block, so now it kind of is whenever inspiration hits me, I start back up on it. So it’s definitely been something that- It’s been a year, almost two years, and I’m only about halfway through it, so-

I: So, it’s seems to be that this was just very spur of the moment, “Hey, I have a story that I want to put down on paper. Let’s see how it goes.” And then it’s just sort of gone from there?

M: Not really, I’ve always really enjoyed writing. I’ve always written short stories and that’s normally where my interests lie, were with one, two page stories that you can write an entire plotline in. And it was really cool for me to be able to express all these emotions and this character development in two pages. And I had an English teacher who got ahold of some of my writing by accident, and they were like, “You should look into writing longer stuff, and try to get into it and a book festival was coming to town, and I really want you to meet this author that I know I think you’ll love.” And so it sort of sparked the whole, “Let’s write a book!” And so I’ve started it, and I want to continue. I want to finish it out.

I: You weren’t entirely sure how to answer this question before, but who do you think are your inspirations? Or at least your favorite authors?

M: I feel like my number one favorite author, and it’s been like since I was a little kid, was JK Rowing. She wrote a series of books, she went from being a lady who couldn’t even afford to take care of her kids, to she’s now a phenomenon. She wrote magnificent books that can touch the heart of anybody who reads them, for the most part. So she’s definitely one. Suzanne Collins is another. And anybody who really- I’m always into dystopian novels and into the fictional novels. So anybody big, who you can name in those genres, I’ll probably going to be like, “I love their books!” But those two stand out the most.

I: And as far as inspiring your own work, though, do you see bits and elements of their own stuff in your work, or do you feel it’s- You can appreciate them in isolation, while at the same time seeing your work as very different from them?

M: I feel like everyone’s writing style is their own, and so the way they write and the way do different things is, like, for themselves. For my writing, to me, it’s completely different than theirs. Now, there’s similarities in the plot line or there’s similarities in the number of people you have, and the main characters and all that. And I feel like everyone kind of connects, there’s always a connection back to a specific writing or a specific author or anything like that. Anybody who pioneered, adventure books, you’re going to have similar storylines, similar ways, but every person, for every writer, it’s going to be completely different.

I: And on the opposite flip side, are there any authors that you particularly don’t like reading?

M: Not that I know of. I don’t think that I ever have- I mean, I’ll pick up books and I’ll start reading them, and I’ll be like, “This just isn’t my book.” Like, I just don’t really enjoy this book, I’m not going to read it, but I don’t have an author that I never…

I: What is it in a book that makes you not finish it?

M: It gets repetitive, it follows the same storyline that you’ve seen a hundred times. I know there’s a book called Legend, and I don’t remember the author of the book, but it was such a well written book and I really love that book. But I found another up and coming author who wrote almost the exact same storyline, they just changed the characters and the places. So, it’s books like those books where the author isn’t original. They aren’t creative in their own way. They don’t put their own spin on stories. Because you can completely copy the storyline of a story and change the entire layout of it just by adding your own creative spin to it. And it becomes your story. You can do that with any writing, that’s what summarizing is, that’s what paraphrasing is. It’s putting it into your writing and making it your own. And so I feel like books I can’t complete come from- When I’m reading something and it’s the exact same as something that I’ve read two, three, four times before. So I know what’s going to happen. There’s no point in me finishing a book if I can guess what’s happening in the book.

I: I guess that also answers another question. I know personally, for myself, no matter how bad a book is, if I start it, I just have to finish it and get all the way through, but you are of the population that says, “Nah, no more,” and puts it away.

M: It’s hard for me to do that. I’m also in both categories, in a way. If I pick up a book and even if the first four chapters are awful chapters and it’s such a slow read to get through, I normally push through it because I know by the end of the book, I could love this book. It could be one of my favorite books ever. I just have to make it to the end, and I want to know what happens. Which is why, even with those really bad books, occasionally, I’ll go back to them years later and I’ll pick them back up and I’ll- If I don’t read the entire thing, I’ll just pick up where I knew I left off or somewhere close and I read to the end. So, in a way, yeah, I will put a book down and say, “This is- I can’t right now,” but in another way, I feel like I can fit into both categories. I feel like a lot of people can. You’ll find a book one day where you just cannot physically get through it and you’ll come back through it later and finish.

I: Well, I made it through Atlas Shrugged, so…

M: I give you props.

I: So, I asked before, but you were hesitant about it. If you won’t share excerpts from your main novel, will you at least share some bit from the short stories?

M: I’ll share some from my main novel. I have to pull it up, hold on. Does it matter where I start?

I: No, just a part that you feel best exemplifies your writing.

M: That’s hard, that’s like telling me to pick, like, my favorite child. I don’t know, I don’t have any of my other writings on my phone, that’s the only problem. I don’t know, I feel like I need to find a really good part so it makes me sound like an amazing writer, and I don’t want to. I don’t have a part where I just want to read it, my story’s very linear, I guess? If you jump into a random spot, it’s weird. But we’ll start here. So, this is- I don’t even know what chapter-

I: You can even just read from the beginning if anything.

M: No, the beginning of my books needs to be rewritten, so we’re not starting there. So, this is chapter three, about midway through chapter three. And, to give it a bit of a position, he has gone into what they call the “potential test”. It is a test that, for this society, determines whether or not they are going to live in the high class society with everything they’ll ever need or if they’re going to be forced to work as the slave class, the class that isn’t treated as they should be, is looked down upon just because they’re sick or they come from a family that is not as well of as other families. And so, in a way, that part of the book pulls from the way society is in general. People are looked down upon because they’re different and that’s how the society kind of runs. So, it starts and it goes:

“My nerves are back in full force as they lead me to a new room. The door in front of me looks more terrifying than any of the machines they had me on earlier. My mind quickly wanders to the memory of my dad, telling me that I need to know how to run and jump. Thinking about it now, it was his way of warning me about the test and trying to prepare me for it.”

Okay, we’ll start here. We’re going to move a little bit farther down, when he’s already in the test. So, he’s running an obstacle course, and it’s pitch black in this room. They’ve made it as challenging as they can make it, and he goes:

“I’m unable to see the ground through the darkness and I can only assume that one wrong step and I’ll fall to my death. I decide to carefully take my step out onto the beam. I’m so nervous I feel myself wobble, but I’m capable of shuffling out about halfway across. I once again begin to feel myself sway. I’m not able to correct my balance before I feel myself fall. I’m barely fast enough to shoot my hands out and catch the beam. My stomachs now in my throat as I carefully pull my body back up onto the beam. Instead of trying to stand on my shaking limbs, I pull myself across and sit sideways. I have to keep myself from looking down as I scoot the rest of the way. My fall has me shaking. I attempt to push away my fear and take off again. Sadly, the beam isn’t the last obstacle.”

Is that good? Because I don’t want to go any farther because this has not been edited.

I: So, a question: What would you say to people that are aspiring writers that maybe aren’t sure where to begin? You know, they have this idea of, “I would like to write a book,” in their head, but as soon as they pull open their laptop, open up Word and say, “Here we go!”, they just don’t know where to begin, freeze up.

M: It’s a process. It’s one of those things that- You know, I planned this book out for weeks beforehand. It wasn’t that you just sit down one day and say, “Let’s write a book.” I mean, some people can and they can write amazing books and they are able to have this entire storyline in their head, but for me, I knew where I wanted to start this book and I knew where I wanted to end this book. And it was the in between that I wasn’t sure of. And I think, as a writer, one of the greatest things that you have, through the abilities that you have, is to make the story your own. You get to choose every color, every aspect, every personality, every trait, every characteristic of every person you put in this book. And it doesn’t matter if anybody else likes it, it’s yours. And so, don’t be afraid of what you think other people are going to think of it. Like, I’m very nervous of my writings because I have had people in the past read through my things when I was younger and they were just awful about it. They were like, “This is so bad!” and so, as somebody who wants to start writing, that’s heartbreaking to have someone look at your writing and say, “This isn’t even worth reading.” It’s really, really hard, but to know that to me, that could have been the best piece of writing that I’ve ever written, it just needs work. And so, if you’re struggling to get started, don’t think of it as a starting place. Think of it as your story. You’re going to tell your story through this character, how are you going to start it? How do you think that person, as a character, wants their story told? So, even if it means sitting down for three weeks and pre-writing this book, preplanning ever detail, every chapter, every step of it, then that’s what you have to do. And if you’re one of those people who, if you sit down and you’re ready to write a book, maybe don’t start with the beginning chapter. Start with what you know you want to happen in the book and write from there. Because you can always fill in the in between. But if you don’t write what you have now, then how are you going to remember in the future when you sit down again and go, “I finally know how I’m going to start it!” But you’ve forgotten where you wanted to go with it. Then it’s not as interesting anymore. So if you have even the slimmest idea, just take that and run with it. Even if it the last chapter in the book, it’s okay to write the last chapter first and the first chapter last.

I: You touched upon it before, but what is your mental process in terms of going about handling criticism with your work? There’s a difference between people looking at stuff and saying, “Oh, this is awful, this is bad!” and then people saying constructive criticism. It’s saying, “This is not the best that it could be.”

M: I love when people can look through writing and go, “There’s a lot of places I see work, that I see places that you can improve tenfold.” And to me, that means, it’s good. The content I have is what they want to see. It’s good enough that they’re not just going to push it away and abandon it. That they’re looking at me and saying, “It’s really good, but maybe put in a little bit more elbow grease here. You know, work out the grammar and the meanings behind what you mean here. This is confusing.” So for me, criticism in a constructive way is kind of necessary in writing because your first draft is not going to be your final draft. You can’t be perfect the first time. So, it takes people who are willing to sit with you for hours and days and go through every line and every word and every comma to make sure that what you’ve written is going to attract people to read it. Even if it’s not a huge audience, those few people who want to read it, they don’t want to read it with all of the mistakes. And so, constructive criticism really is necessary in writing.

I: Your major is education, currently. So, just out of curiosity, why are you going that route instead of, for example, English?

M: I came into college with the idea that I would be an English major. My passion lies with writing and with being creative and doing those odd things that most people are like, “No, you can’t make a career with that!” But when it came down to it, my education wasn’t being paid for by me, and therefore my parents said, “Writing’s not a career.” I said, “Okay.” So we compromised, and so education is my major, but English is my minor. And so, I kind of am able to compromise in that way. I will get to experience what it’s like to be a writer. And even if I don’t get a major in English, I don’t feel like that dictates whether or not you can be a writer, because a lot of times, English majors get into the editing and the publishing field. And that would be cool, but I don’t want to be in that positon. I want to be the one turning in my writing to editors, saying, “Will you publish my book? Will you make this as great as you can make it?” So, I feel like, in a way, that’s why I didn’t choose English as a first major, alongside the parents don’t believe in creative writing as a field.

I: So, for example, ten years down the road, where you’re a teacher somewhere. And then suddenly you get a call from someone that says, “Hey, we want to publish this book that someone anonymously sent in.” Or, “We’re going to make it into a major motion picture,” or whatnot. Would you drop everything and go full-time into writing from that point, if it was financially feasible?

M: I don’t think I would. I think, in a way, my passion is with English, but I read somewhere, “Don’t follow your passion for a career,” because it makes you hate it. Or something along those lines.

I: Explain that.

M: I feel like for me, especially, my passion is writing. I can get so many more life experiences by not just sitting behind a computer all day. So, if I have a career in education, I get to meet so many people with so many backgrounds and so many stories of their own that can help me and inspire me as a writer to either write their stories or write a similar one or incorporate things that I learn from them into my writing, and in a way, I feel like being a teacher is a great way to learn how to write. Because you see these kids’ writings all the time and you kind of get, over the years, a sense of what each individual person kind of sees and does as a human being. And so writing, you can connect your writing with them by just knowing who they are as a person. And so- I don’t know, I don’t know. That’s my answer.

I: Okay, that was a bit heavy of a question, so let’s go to something a bit lighter.

M: We don’t have to, we can keep going heavy!

I: Here’s something fairly light. Typing versus just writing it out via pencil: Which one is your preferred method?

M: It depends on what I’m writing. If I’m doing the fluff in between, I want to do it on a computer where it doesn’t matter if I’m grammatically incorrect. I can fix it or the computer will show me where I’m wrong. For the heavy things in my writing, for most of my major plot twists or for the ending of my books, the beginning of my books, they’re all written on notebook paper. That’s kind of where I started. I didn’t have a laptop when I was younger, so I had to write out all my short stories. So for me, I grew up writing in spiral notebooks. I have buckets of spiral notebooks that are full of random writings that I’ve done throughout the years. And so for me, writing it on pen and paper or with pencil and paper is so much more important. It almost feels like I’m connected more with the story than I am through a computer screen. So I chose, in a way, pencil and paper over computer. But eventually, all of my writing gets put into the computer for editing.

I: When you do writing, what is your environment like? Do you need complete quiet? Do you listen to music? Can other people be around you when you’re writing or do you need to be in complete isolation?

M: It depends. If I’m writing a heavy scene, like a really sad scene or a really exciting scene- It depends. One, I have to have music. No matter when I’m writing or where I’m writing, I have music playing and it goes along with whatever I’m writing. So if I’m writing a sad thing, it’s sad songs. And if I’m doing adventure stuff, then it’s really upbeat and fast motion songs, trying to get my brain into that motion of, “This is the tempo that I want my tempo to be at right now. I want the pages and the words to flow this fast.” If it’s a sad one, I want my words to slow down. I want the reader to have to take a little bit more time to think through what’s happening and to experience what my character’s experiencing and all that. So, I have to have music. And I don’t care if people are around me. But if I’m constantly having someone tap me on the shoulder, I can’t write. I just get too distracted. So, a lot of times, I’ll put myself in a room where there’s only a few people and they’re all working and I can work alongside them in my own little space.

I: Is it in short bursts or is it marathon sessions of writing? I’m trying to get into your mind, of how it works.

M: Yeah, for me, a lot of my writing is marathon writing. I’ll start writing and I really hit a pace and I love what I’m doing at that moment, and so I just pour out fifteen pages of writing, and then I’m like, “Woah, it’s been six hours. I need to go eat food and take a break.” And then sometimes, you know, I start writing, and the chapter I’m working on now, chapter seven, I started writing it and a page in, I was like, “I really don’t like where this is headed. I’m really not connecting with my writing right now.” So I deleted it and I’ll start over again when I feel like it.

I: That transitions nicely into the great thing called Writer’s Block. How do you deal with it?

M: For me, writer’s block comes a lot of the time when I don’t have inspiration. So, I’ve gotten myself stuck, I’ve gotten myself into a place where, with my writing, it’s either not headed in a direction I want, or it’s moved in a direction that I want way too fast for me, and I need to bring it back where I need it to be for that specific scene or action or something like that. So, with writer’s block, a lot of times, I do have to step away from it, whether it be for two days or six months. It’s just that you need time to get away from what you’re doing to come back to it and be able to look at it through fresh eyes. So, it’s been either two days and I’m coming back to it and looking at it and going, “Oh, I see what I did wrong. Here, let me go back and fix that so when I start writing the finish of this chapter, it’s ready to go.” It’s ready to be added into the final manuscript. You know, that sort of thing. But for earlier on in this book, getting into chapters four and five of writing, I got stuck really bad. It was months and months between any writing I was doing. And a lot of that was, I was too scared to go back and just say, “This isn’t working. I need to delete this.” And so, now, as a writer, I’ve gotten to a point where I can look at my writing and I can go, “I really don’t like where this is headed. I cannot fathom what I’ve done wrong, but I can’t have this happening here,” so I just take it out. And I’ll just put it into another document that’s locked away that I can’t access until I’ve gotten to where I want to go. And that way, I can kind of move it along, in a way and still look back and say, “There was some really good information locked away that I need to add back in.” I can add that back in as the fluff or motion in the story to add in on these chapters.

I: Because I was going to ask, with drafts like that, when you’re not sure where to go with the story, do you keep that somewhere or do you throw it away and say, “Forget about it, we’re going to impose some limitations by removing all this information, just to build up from scratch”?

M: The first time I got rid of something, I completely deleted it. And I learned my lesson because- I think the first time I ever just deleted something was chapter two, and it was the second half of chapter two that I was writing. And I looked at it and I was like, “I really don’t like this. This isn’t my favorite writing style, either. I’m not using words I really like.” I wasn’t using the context correctly for certain things, so I just went back and deleted it. And when I rewrote chapter two, I used a lot of the same ideas, but I didn’t have the information I originally had. Because when I, as a writer, do that first hard draft or rough draft of it, it is very, very too the point with what is happening. And it takes me going back and adding to that writing before I can consider it my first writing of it. And so I shouldn’t have gone back and deleted it, which is why I learned later to, if I am not liking something, I normally take what that is, I control-x it from the paper, I cut it from the paper, and I’ll put it onto a Word document called- I don’t remember if it’s called Drafts Cuts or Edit Cuts or something like that. And so I have just pages of writing that I’m not going to use until I commit.

I: So it’s just sitting somewhere. And so you don’t look at it until you’ve actually written something else that’s taken its place?

M: Not really. I mean, if I am in a place where I am going to continue writing, I’ll write it through and then I’ll kind of look at the two and say, “Oh, these are really similar. That’s a really good idea that I missed that I want to add back in.” I’m like, “That’s where I needed to add something back in.” And then once I have the information I want from the two, I’ll just delete it from that draft completely. And then I’ll have the final, what I have in my book written.

I: Do you mainly focus on one piece of writing at a time or do you sort of bounce around the story?

M: I definitely bounce around. I mean, I wrote the last chapter first, so- Well, not really. I wrote the first chapter to start it off, but this book started as a short story. It was a story that a friend of mine- We play a game in the summers when we’re off school and we get time to kind of do whatever. We’ll send each other five objects and whoever we send it to has to respond to us with a short story that includes those five objects. And it can be any short story they want, but it has to include those five objects. SO if you read through the original first draft of my book, the first chapter is the entire short story, tells the entire book in the first chapter. And so I kind of went back through and, you know, one of the objects she had me use was a giant rubber duck, and so in the original short story, there was a giant rubber duck in this path that he runs. So, I had to go back through and, you know, make it a little bit more realistic because you’re not going to be running in a dystopian society and come across a twenty foot giant duck.

I: Yeah, who has large rubber ducks?

M: I don’t know! And that’s the point. The point was that when I wrote this, it was supposed to be something hilarious to get people laughing and when I came to that point where I was like, “I want to write a novel,” I realized that short story was perfect. It held everything I wanted for a book. So, I wrote that and then I skipped to the last chapter because I knew where I wanted to book to go. I knew that the ending of this book was going to be this huge reveal of so much information and people are going to be so mad at me by the time they finish the book. I’m just going to be that author. And so I did, I wrote the last five paragraphs or so of the book. And then after I wrote that, I wrote kind of the middlish section and then I sectioned off each chapter by how much information I wanted in each one, and that’s how I made my book flow. So I really do kind of jump around. That was a really long way of me saying, yes, I jump around.

I: That’s interesting, the writing exercise there, with five objects, you write a story.

M: I’ve always played that. I don’t know how long, it’s been forever since we started this and she has to be one of my biggest writing inspirations because she currently is writing her own book and it started as not a short story I’d given her objects to, but one that she started. And then she just really liked the way she started it, and started that as a book. And so I take a lot of my inspiration of writing from her.

I: Now I wish I could ask her questions now.

M: She doesn’t even live in this state anymore, so that’s hard to do.

I: Do you know any other similar games, or- I don’t even know what the correct word would be for that, exercise?

M: Exercise, I guess, would be a good one. Activity? I don’t know. There’s a lot. There’s websites, all kinds of websites where you can generate random objects. And I do feel like Pinterest and Tumblr are great places to get ideas, because you can go to a Pinterest board and type in “Writing ideas” and people post all the time about things that they want to see in a book. And if you just find one and you’re like, “That idea is so amazing. I have such a great plan for that,” like, that’s your book, that’s your story. Even though you got the idea from somewhere else, whether it be a dystopian society where everyone has a timer on their arm for when they’re going to meet their loved one. You know, it could be anything and people will give you those ideas and even if you just write a short story and post it back to them, a lot of times, people rave about things like that. There are entire apps and forums for people to get on there and just write whatever they want, whether it be fanfiction or romance novels, fantasy, all of these types of stories. So you can find exercises and activities everywhere. And I know this one came about from a school activity that we did in, like, the third grade.

I: I’m actually curious about your opinion on things like fanfictions and reworkings of already existing stories. Do you feel that’s a legitimate form of storytelling?

M: I do! Because that is someone’s way of expressing how they feel a book should have ended or it’s an alternate ending. And so for a lot of people, if you read the Harry Potter books, you could have, in your mind, just absolutely despised the fact that Hermione ended up with Ron. And so someone out there also felt like they despise the fact that Hermione ended up with Ron. And so they write this story for you that, even if it is the entire Harry Potter series, the exact same, the ending is completely different because they’ve changed such a major aspect of the story. And I feel like fanfictions in general can be someone’s expression of themselves through their writings. And so, with fanfictions, a lot of times, they’re looked down upon as not being true writing, and in some way, you could never really publish a fanfiction because it could be considered plagiarized. You could get, you know, lots of legal issues with that. But, in a way, for these forums that allow writers to express themselves, fanfiction took off. And it’s one of those things I read. I love reading fanfictions, whether it be about One Direction, or Harry Potter, it can be anything. And a lot of times, somebody’s just created this amazing storyline that just twists a little aspect of a book that you love and you get to enjoy it in a completely other way.

I: Would you say something like it’s a gateway into writing, something like that?

M: Yeah? I don’t know…

I: Like training wheels for writing?

M: It’s not even training wheels, really. And I don’t think it’s offensive to people who write fanfiction because I’m sure they get comments all the time about it not being real writing. But for them, it is writing. That’s their way of writing a story. It’s their take on a different idea. And so I feel like it’s not really a gateway, it’s writing in itself. And so, for some people, fan fiction might be where they start and they get their hands into the whole, “This is what writing is,” and then they take that information that they’ve learned in whatever rewrites they’ve done and they get to put it into a completely different story in another book. And so, for writers- I don’t know. Fanfiction, I got really defensive about it. I’ve never written fanfiction before, but I feel like for a lot of people…

I: What does writing have as an advantage over, say, stuff like movies and television in terms of storytelling?

M: You get more information. I don’t know, for me, reading a novel gives you so much more than a movie can because you in your head get to imagine what all of these characters look like. Yes, the author gives you a template. They say they have brown hair and gorgeous green eyes, and it gives you this template, but you get to construct everything else, the face shape. You get to construct, you know, what kind of clothes they get to wear, and all of these little aspects that in movies, they put together anyway. But in your head, you get your own reality of this book, and you can ask 15,000 people what they think of this one character from a book and 90% of the time, they’re going to give you different answers. And if you have a sketch artist come in and they have you sketch the characters they see, they’re going to be completely different sketches because each person can either connect it somebody in their lives and they can kind of envision them in this story, or they get to create their own character within this author’s descriptions. And so, I feel like with books, you get that, whereas with movies, you get the detail but not as much, and a lot of times, people say movies are worse than books and I agree with them because you don’t get as much detail. You don’t get as much in depth with the movies because if you look at- I don’t know a good series, I can’t come up with one off the top of my head…The Percy Jackson series! That’s a good one. The movies for the Percy Jackson series are completely different than the books. And in a way, it made me so mad watching the movies because I envisioned in my head what all the characters looked like, and for a lot of readers, reading is like a movie playing in your head. You don’t see words, you see pictures, even if there are just words there. So, with them putting that on a screen, in production, it doesn’t always turn out how the readers envision. So, I feel like books are better?

I: So you definitely agree with the sentiment that books belong to the readers, not the authors?

M: I think, in a way, they belong to both. Readers have their own hold on every book they pick up. And, you know, there’s that quote, that readers live a thousand lives, whereas people who don’t read only live one. And it’s true, because each book connects to you in a little bit of a different way, and whether the author meant to or not, their writing becomes, in a way, a part of the person who’s reading it, because they input themselves into the story. And they’re, you know, standing in the background, watching this unfold before them. And for the author, they wrote this entire book. They, in their head, had a vision of what this book is going to look like to them. And so they own that story. But the readers also, they pick up that book they buy, that copy of that book, and it’s theirs. That story will forever be a part of their story because they read it. So, yeah, readers do own part of the book.

I: So, in English classes, people don’t like reading, don’t like writing because it’s forced upon them.

M: In a way. I feel like there are some people that, if you hand them a book in class, they don’t care to read it. It’s find with them. But a lot of students, at least ones that I knew, they hated reading in class. Books that were assigned to us, they were books that somebody, somewhere on a board decided, “This is the curriculum we want our students to learn,” and they didn’t ask, they didn’t advise with teachers in the schools, like, “What kind of books do the students really connect with? What can we have them read that they’re going to enjoy, that we can pull information out of and teach them?” And so, for students, I’m being forced to read Shakespeare. Shakespeare was written hundreds of years ago. And so, for a lot of people- I mean, you can love Shakespeare, I love Shakespeare. But for a lot of people, you’re being forced to read something that doesn’t, in any way, contribute to what you’re doing today in life. It’s written in old English, so you don’t understand it. No one’s translating it for you. And so it’s like you’re reading an entirely different language. And so they learn that books are schoolwork. And so they never take an interest in reading on their own. And I feel like if you gave students the opportunity to go to a library and pick out any book they want, any book that catches their attention, and you let them read it, just don’t assign them to read it, then I feel like kids learn to enjoy reading. They learn to incorporate reading into everyday life because it’s an escape for some, and for some, it’s entertainment. And so it teaches them not to rely on computers and TVs for entertainment. It teaches them that books give you the same values that you can get from a computer screen, but you get to incorporate yourself in a story. I feel like, for kids, it’s just not fun to have teachers look at you and go, “You have to read the next sixty pages of Oxbow by Monday,” and you’re like, “Okay, I don’t want to.”

I: If you were suddenly at the head position and now, “Oh, I have to decide what the children need to read,” what would you pick? I mean, this might be along the same lines as what are your favorite books in general, but that could be two completely different categories. What are your favorite books and at the same time, what are books that you think kids should read, or at least you feel have valuable lessons to them?

M: In a way, I almost want to say that I don’t think I could choose, because to me, every student is individualized. Every student has their own set of needs that they need in a classroom. So, for a teacher, you learn those needs throughout the schoolyear. And you kind of figure out, this student only engages in the classroom when we’re being creative, when we have activities that they get to be hands on and they get to experiment and learn in their own way, versus the students who only learn when I tell them, “This is what this is.” So they’re very much auditory learners, or they’re visual learners. And so for reading, it’s kind of the same thing. Every student has their own style of book that they like to read, or their own style of readings, so they don’t read as fast, they don’t read as slow. So, reading in a classroom becomes a lot more difficult. And so I couldn’t say that you can only assign five books for the entire schoolyear. I feel like you need to give the teachers options. So you can say, “Here’s a list of fifty books that we’ve approved for you to teach in the classroom.” And I know for a lot of teachers, they would take that list and they would say, “Well, this is fifty books my kids get to choose from. This is fifty books that I can now walk into a classroom and after the first two weeks, when I’ve kind of gotten a little bit of a grasp on these students, I can say, ‘Alright, guys, we’re going to have some reading that we’re going to do. Here are your options. We’re going to go to the library and here’s a list of a few books that you can choose from and we’re going to split up into groups. And each group is going to read their book, and they’re going to have class discussions and I’m going to help out with those class discussions. I’m going to move around from group to group.’” And as they’re reading these books, and you are a teacher are moving around, you get to help them that way. And so, I feel like, in a way, I would kind of change the structure of reading in classrooms.

I: You’re basically making it a guided book club.

M: Pretty much, because I feel like that’s the best way to do it, to get students that are interested in the same types of books together and get them to talk about these readings, talk about how, “I love the way the author made- “, let’s say his name is Jimbo. “I love the way the author made Jimbo go on this adventure to a forest that he’s never been to before, and the trees are talking to him!” You know, kids get excited when they get to talk to people who have read the same things, books they enjoy. But if you force a kid into a classroom and you’re lecturing on Hamlet, kids are quiet. They either haven’t done the reading because they don’t enjoy the reading or they’ve done the reading, they may not understand it, or they’ve done the reading, they understand it, but you’re forcing upon them ridiculous questions and aspects. And so you’re trying to force them to pull information that they don’t already get on their own out. Whereas, with you giving them books that they enjoy, they can take those books and be like, “You know, the trees are nature.” And so then you can pull out a discussion about, well, what is nature to this author? What do we see this author using nature to describe in the story? And they get to experience and, in a way, kind of think for themselves about these books. You’re just prompting that thinking. And so, I think education has some problems when it comes to mandated readings for classrooms. It shouldn’t be that you’re forced to read these books. It should be that you get a chance to choose, even if you are given ten Shakespeare plays or something like that or sonnets. You’re like, “You have to pick one to read,” you get to pick one that you enjoy. I can pick sonnet 86, and if I enjoy sonnet 86, that’s my sonnet. I enjoyed it, I want to read it. But if I don’t want to read Hamlet, I don’t have to read Hamlet. I don’t know, I’ve rambled.

I: I mean, playing devil’s advocate here, kids are picking stories, books that they feel that they would enjoy. But what if then, as a result, they’re ignoring all of this great literature. They’re doing the old, “Judging the book by its cover” and saying, “Oh, this looks awful, this looks boring,” and then, as a result, missing out on something that they might actually enjoy in the end?

M: I can see that. I can see that if you give them that freedom, there’s a good chance they’re going to take it and run. So I feel like, if you did incorporate it even a little bit as they’re younger, just the book club reading, as they get older, as they get into high school, where Hamlet is expected as being read, they can kind of appreciate a little bit more the reading of it. In elementary school, which is where I’m really focusing with, where I’m going to be teaching. That’s kind of where I focus. But with elementary school, kids are just required to read. Teachers are meant to keep their kids on reading levels. Well, if you can get a kid to enjoy a book, reading on a reading level’s not hard. It’s just finding similar books. And so, teaching kids to enjoy reading at a young age like that encourages them in the future. If we do mandate books to be read in middle school and high school, then at least they can understand a little bit more in those books. And so, yeah, for the classroom, I have to read Hamlet, but I can always go to the library. I can pick out the new incoming books about this girl who wants to help her mom, so she gets on this bus and she goes on an adventure. And so they get to enjoy those kinds of books and still get the information from Hamlet. I don’t know, I think a lot of what I’m saying is just to get kids interested in reading really young, letting them choose their books when they’re young. That way, when they get into high school and into middle school, they can appreciate what they’re being forced to read, even if it’s Moby Dick or if it’s Hamlet or if it’s-

I: Say Hamlet one more time.

M: I had to read Hamlet in high school and so it’s the only one I can come up with as a book that I was forced to read. I did have to read the Scarlet Letter. I don’t like that book. That is one where I can say that I don’t like that book.

I: Okay, now we’re done for sure.

M: I think so, how many minutes?

I: We’re at nearly fifty minutes at this point.

M: That’s ridiculous.

[yeswesaythings]

On Becoming Better

I: Okay, so to start, when do you think your self-improvement journey began?

L: I guess the biggest leg of the journey so far started about the spring semester of college, 2016, I guess I can assign a real start date. The spring semester was probably the worst semester I’ve had so far. Luckily, there’s only been three, so it’s like a small pool to pick from, but hopefully it never gets that dark again. It was just a very bad mixing of things, emotionally and in terms of workload, and I ended up crashing and making a lot of very poor choices grade-wise and physically. So I don’t want to go back there and I don’t want to handle things the way that I handled it back then. I just want to do better, I guess, and that’s the drive that’s kind of been there since that happened.

I: So, is it mainly mental, physical, psychological?

L: I kind of break it up into parts. I have a desire to always be improving physically because that hasn’t always been the case. I’ve gone on little explosions where I’d drop forty, fifty pounds and I get in really good shape and I can run a million years and I can do a pushup for every grain of sand on Earth. And then I have episodes where I just eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and I sleep and I play video games and do absolutely nothing and I gain all the weight back, and then I feel awful about it. So, physically, I definitely want to improve there. Emotionally, it’s kind of been the same story. There are times where I feel absolutely on top of the world. And then there are times where I actually feel like I’m in this absolute pit and I don’t know how to get out of it. There are just times that I just sit around and I do a lot of crying, and just that kind of stuff, I guess. So, I do kind of break it up into different things. I categorize. Like, physically, I want to- It’s a goal, like I want to eat right and work out a certain amount. And if I don’t do that, then I won’t give up and try again next week. I’ll be like, “Okay, I messed up. But let’s keep going. Let’s keep working this week.” Because if I leave it off until next week, then that’s just more room to go backwards and that doesn’t fly. Emotionally, it’s the same deal. I just try to be better. I try to be relatively better every day and obviously, there are external factors that don’t always make that true. But I feel like I try to work on something that gets me down or bums me out, I try to focus on that. And every time it happens, I try to focus on not being as bummed out about it or finding a way to stop being as bummed out about it. Just, something like that.

I: There are some people that are of the opinion that if you want to improve yourself, that you should not be around people that are not in that same mindset. What do you feel about that? For example, there’s the quote, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” If you’re trying to self-improve and you’re around a bunch of people that themselves, really aren’t looking to improve, is that wise to do on your part, even if you’ve been friends for so long? Do you still associate with them?

L: I definitely haven’t blocked anybody out of my life. That’s a lie, actually. I just realized that. There are a couple people, I guess, that I have blocked out of my life because they were a negative influence on my life. Actually, two people. One of them was this girl that was a huge- She was mentally taxing to be around. She did absolutely nothing but complain to me. She degraded me, she talked down to me a lot, she told me that I wasn’t worth very much. She told me, on thing specifically that I remember, is right after I went through my big black belt test that I lost fifty pounds for. I went through three days of sleepless hell during the test. The second we got out of it, I went to eat to celebrate and she was like, “Hey, you shouldn’t eat like that or you’re gonna gain all that weight right back.” She said things like that and it just, in the moment, it was probably the most hurtful thing. I mean, there have been more hurtful things that have been said, but in that moment it was probably the most angry I’ve been at somebody for saying something. So, I got her out of my life, and she- It was an improvement, absolutely. I don’t miss having that person around. And then there was another that was basically- We had a sort of relationship right at the end of my spring semester, after all of that stuff happened. And she got me involved in things I didn’t want to be involved in, I guess. So, I got out of that situation and I feel like that was definitely a good idea. But I feel like in the general, that most people I haven’t had to remove from my life. Even though some people won’t be in that mindset, they won’t be in the mindset of constantly improving, they still will be the kind of people that learn and they grow, even though they’re not working on it. Or they’re not- It’s not in the front of their mind, I guess. But everyone has the capacity to learn from things, and to grow from their experiences, as long as they realize when they’ve had a learning opportunity. And I feel like, for some people, knowing a learning opportunity comes easily and for some people, it takes a lot of work. And that’s why I’m working on it so hard. Is because I feel like I need more work to realize it, I guess.

I: Do you have an end goal in mind? Or is it just “improve” as the goal?

L: I feel like I do have a couple of end goals in mind. Ideally, I guess, the thing I’ve been looking at physically is I want to get rid of my love handles, which is such a weird, arbitrary goal to have, but I feel like I can get there. I feel like as long as I keep slowly and gradually improving, I can get there in a healthy way, in a more healthy way than just a miracle diet that then I gain them right back, like two months later. And emotionally speaking, I want to be a little bit better at handling things, obviously. Like, that’s the most broad way I can probably describe it, but I want to have a better system for dealing with things. I don’t want to jump to anger at some of the times that I jump to anger. I don’t want to immediately be sad at some points. I want to be the kind of guy that can be stuck in bumper to bumper traffic and not be really all that worried, or be all that anxious.

I: Which of your goals at the moment, or habits, do you think that you’re doing really well on and which are some that you feel like you have been slipping on, or still need major improvement?

L: Well, this week in particular has been a fun one. I got some news that turned out to be fake, and that news drove me up the wall, furious. Like, stark-raving mad. So, I got angry about it and that anger and stress led me to have a couple of days of poor eating habits. I haven’t worked out this week. So, this specific week has been a low, but I’m also planning on turning it around and hitting it extremely hard, starting pretty much right now, I guess. Like, I don’t see any reason to be fed up over it anymore. It’s just kind of like- It’s just one of those things that once you realize it, once you realize that a thing is happening, then that is the moment where you have a choice as to whether or not you’re actually going to act or improve on that thing. If you don’t realize it, if you don’t look inside and you’re like, “Woah, okay, this thing is going on,” then it’s not always as easy as just, “Oh, I should stop being angry”, I guess.

I: I’ve asked you this before, but do you do any sort of meditation or journaling as that source of introspection to fix these sort of things?

L: I am trying to get into meditation more. I used to meditate on and off and I’m trying to get back there now to the point where I meditate. Meditation and yoga, specifically. I’m trying to get some stretching done every morning and a little bit of just breathing and relaxing. Like, focusing on breathing done every night. In terms of journaling, I feel like that could be a very good idea. I haven’t acted on that yet, though. That might be a next step.

I: For people that are wanting to self-improve but they’re not really sure how you even begin something like that- As it is, that idea by itself is extremely vague. What do you tell them? How do I begin this journey?

L: Well, in terms of the physical, I feel like for a majority of people, if you want to improve physically, then there’s a very simple answer. It is: Find someone who definitely knows what they’re talking about. Whether it’s a health advisor or a friend who practices good health, there are people out there who are able to give you much better advice than the Internet can give you. And so, once you realize what a goal of yours is, then it becomes a lot easier to start working towards those goals as long as you have the baseline information. Like, knowledge really is power when it comes to that. But I actually mentioned something that is also very important. I feel like the first step should probably be having those goals. If you don’t know what you want, you just say, “I’m going to improve myself,” then it is just going to be a vague mess. Like, once you say, “I want to improve myself and I want to constantly improve,” you need to have those goals in mind. You need to definitely have specific things that you want to work on, whether they’re small little goals or they’re big, overarching goals, or they’re both. They just need to be goals.

I: A lot of self-improvement advice- For example, if you go on the subreddit for self-improvement, you see all the various things that have people wondering, “How do I do this? How do I better myself?” And the usual examples of things that people tell them to do usually wind up being along similar lines, like eat better, drink more water, sleep more, read more books, this, this, and this. After a while, doesn’t it almost feel like, “Oh, we just all sort of become the same sort of person,”? While we may be a really healthy, good person, it almost feels like we’re losing a bit of our own selves, our own uniqueness. Playing devil’s advocate here.

L: That is a good point. That is 100% a good point. That is why, in terms of some things, I looked at it and I said, “You know what, if I’m going to do this right, I’m going to do it my way.” I’ve had a couple of things where people have thought that I’m not approaching it in the most efficient way possible. And I’ve decided that that’s just going to be because it’s me.

I: What’s an example of that?

L: An example of that is, I have a friend who trains at the same martial arts academy that I do and she eats perfectly. Her diet is absolutely 100% spot-on. And I don’t think she’s had a slip in three years, or something. She does an amazing job keeping her eating habits in check, and because of that, she is very, very in shape. Like, she’s in very good shape because she also works out a lot. And so, I’ve realized that maybe one day I’ll be there, but for now, I still like Wendy’s and Chinese food and tacos and all those things. I still eat those things, I still enjoy those things. I eat more in moderation and I eat not always to be stuffed to the brim. Sometimes I eat just to hold myself over for a while. Sometimes I’ll just have a granola bar or something. But there are still plenty of opportunities where I eat and I don’t feel bad about it. I will have days where I’m like, “Okay, I’m gonna go crazy and I’m gonna binge out,” and that’s just part of the process. Those days don’t always have to be failure days. Those are just days that you have to plan for and you have to take into account, leave in the big picture, kind of.

I: As a more general question, what is it that you think makes you, yourself, unique? Different than other people?

L: Makes me different than other people? Well, I’d say compared to other people…

I: Not just in terms of self-improvement either. Just as your person as a whole, what defines you? It’s a bit of a big question I’ve sprung on you.

L: Yeah, yeah. I’d say I’m happy. I’d say I’m significantly more outgoing then I used to be, at least. I can talk to people, I can have a good time. I hang out with people if I want to, but I’ve also got an introverted side, so some days I like to just be alone, be relaxed, just go on a nice hike out in the woods. I can be fairly energetic. I can be pretty damn energetic, to be honest. Ooh, this is a good question.

I: Take your time.

L: I guess, one big thing that I see is I try my hardest not to complain about things, and I try my hardest not to use things as excuses. For example, even though this week has been kind of a failure for me, and a lot of it is probably because of the things that happened in my personal life, I’m not trying to use that as an excuse. I’m just analyzing it as a failure. But back to the not complaining part, I have noticed recently that there is a lot of inherent negativity in people’s mindsets about things, and I try my hardest not to be negative about everything because I just feel like that degrades the esprit de corps, I think?

I: The overall mood.

L: The mood, the morale. I feel like it needs to be bolstered constantly. It seems like everyone is always down and out about something and I feel like there’s a lot of world out there. And people keep missing the forest, not even through a tree, but through a fucking leaf. That is, actually, funnily enough, something that I’m trying to improve on. Trying to hopefully make people a little bit more optimistic, I guess? It’s one thing that I’d like to do.

I: I mean, if I can be honest with you, you’ve been actually a huge inspiration in terms of self-improvement this last- How long have we been here? Four weeks, so a month or so. Because when I had that conversation with you a couple weeks ago, and I had talked about how I felt that cynicism was the default position for people to go into. It was way too easy to fall into. And then being a positive, genuine, sincere person was really hard to do. As a result, a worthwhile goal I decided after that was that I’m going to become that kind of person. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed at all, I’ve tried to be more positive since then.

L: Yeah, definitely.

I: And the hardest part about it is that when you shift your mindset into thinking when someone says something, instead of agreeing with them, saying, “Yeah, that’s awful, that’s bad,” you sort of have to shift your mind and say, “No, wait a second, let’s look at the positive side of this. There’s something here we can learn about.”

L: Exactly. Now, it’s so easy to just be negative and make degrading jokes about things like depression and suicide and make really dark conversation into your laughing point, your everything, but I feel like for every car that splashes you on a rainy day, there’s a backpack with a laptop in it that didn’t get wet. I feel like for every teacher who drones on and on in class, there’s an opportunity to learn still present. I feel like people view things in the wrong way and it just feels like the kind of thing that everyone can improve on. Like, even the most optimistic person has a bad day.

I: And that’s something I’ve definitely run into as well, that there are times when it just feels like, “I am tired, I am miserable at the moment.” And if someone comes up to me with some sort of complaint, what does my brain want to do? It wants to go, “Yeah!” I want to just say, “Absolutely! Life is awful. Life sucks right now.” And it’s just so much effort and energy to say, “No, come on, let’s be happy. Let’s smile.” And the problem with it, too, is that it can come across as extremely fake, sometimes. If you are always this positive person, there’s this idea that, “Oh, no one is actually that happy all the time. They’re obviously putting up some sort front as a result.” And maybe there’s too much of a stigma against being “fake”. I don’t know, what’s your take on that?

L: I feel like in the context you’re talking about, that could be a sign to a very negative society looking at someone who is different and saying, “Why are they different? Why can’t I be that way?” And instead of trying to improve themselves, they look at that and they say, “Oh, it’s because they’re ‘that way’. It’s because they’re hiding the fact that they’re on the same level as I am, instead of just admitting it, and admitting to how terrible and cynical this world is.”

I: So there’s almost sort of a revealed truth in cynicism people feel. “Oh, if you’ve claimed that the world is awful, then you see something that other people don’t see.” There’s “maturity” to it.

L: Yeah, definitely, definitely, absolutely. It’s almost unfortunate how accurate that is. I mean, you can see it in modern media. A lot, actually. Some of the funniest shows on TV right now- Like, I’ll admit they’re absolutely hilarious, like Rick and Morty and shows like that. They are completely grounded in a very- It’s almost like laughing at how absolutely terrible everything is. And they say it like that. They say it like it’s an absolute fact, that everything has to be terrible. And I just- I mean, if it works for them, that’s cool.

I: But there’s a distinction to be made. That’s a show. In that case, that’s where we put our art, where we put our emotions. And so we can make a show that says, “Everything is awful,” and express our emotions that way, but still admit that the real world itself does not reflect what the show is here. I mean, it’s just like, we enjoy movies with lots of violence and people are getting heads blown off left and right. But we can admit we enjoy that while at the same saying, “We don’t actually enjoy that in real life.” There’s sort of that separation. And so we can enjoy shows like Rick and Morty that say, “Oh, everything is awful,” and cynicism, and we can laugh at it and say, “Ha, there’s a bit of truth to that, sort of.” But then we can look at the real world and say, “But let’s hold on for a second here.” This is a fictional show at the end of the day.

L: Yeah, I definitely agree with that, and I hope that that is the general there. But if I had to judge simply based upon the way some people view everything and how it seems like they can’t get through a full conversation without some sort of negativity, then it gets a little bit more iffy, to me, I guess.

I: How do you convince someone that their viewpoint of the world is wrong? Do you straight out admit and tell them, “I’m sorry, but the way that you view the world is extremely flawed,” or do you basically hope that they learn from example and say, “This person’s actually happy all the time even though I believe the world is awful. Maybe I’m wrong.”

L: I guess leading by example is definitely a better approach. I don’t think that there’s any good way to say, or any constructive way to say, “Hey, you’re digging yourself into a pit of despair and you could snap out of it if you wanted to.”

I: Because with a topic like this, depression always comes in at some point, too, and that’s not something you can tell someone, “Be happy now. It’s your choice.” There are a lot of people who are going for self-improvement that, one of their biggest hurdles is the fact that they are depressed. And so, though they keep improving, they still have that- I don’t know if baggage is the right word, but they have this extra thing that goes along with them, and it’s just a matter of how do you become a more positive person when something that is beyond your control is telling you, “No, too bad”? Another hard question.

L: Oh yeah. That is a part of it that has been an issue in the past. I mean, I’ve been to places where I don’t know if it was a full depression, but it was depressive symptoms, and those depressive symptoms lasted for quite a while. One thing that I realized was that there are things that people say will help with those kind of things. But those things are, like, running, and getting out there, and getting active. And the kind of things that you wouldn’t dream of doing when you’re in that state. The kind of thing that- It’s like the biggest hurdle of the world just to start thinking about doing something that is seen as a solution. Going to get therapy can be seen as giving up. Going for a run, well, most people don’t like running. It’s just that kind of thing, but amplified. So I definitely agree that it is a very difficult place to be, and it makes the journey way harder. I guess it’s an issue of momentum. I mean, no matter where you are in life, if you make a habit out of something, you’re going to tend to do it more often. We’re momentum-based beings. Once we’ve started something, we don’t stop doing something unless we have a reason to stop doing something, unless something makes us stop doing something. So, that’s kind of what helped me. I eventually just started forcing myself to do it, just decided to force myself to do things, and I almost- I kind of channeled the negative energy. Instead of being a, “I don’t want to do this,” into a, “I’m going to do this.” I guess, I kind of tried to channel it into a more determined light. And that’s kind of where I got myself by the end of it. It definitely wasn’t like that at the start at all. But it was just kind of momentum-based. I just had to make that first step. The first step was the hardest step. And then every step after that has been easier and easier.

I: Going back to a comment you said earlier, that seeing therapy, seeking help, is considered giving up, to an extent. It’s perceived as that. Not necessarily that you believe that. But why is there that perception? Why is there this idea that you have to do everything yourself?

L: I feel like it’s sort of a social stigma. I feel like people are- I don’t know, I feel like a lot of modern life has almost become a contest to kind of be like, “I’m going through the most crap, by myself.” Like, “I have put the heaviest workload on me. Look at what I’m doing.” Or, “I am putting the most work on myself,” or “I’m having the worst day,” or “I’m having the worst week,” or “I’m having the worst year,” or that kind of mindset. But even though they have that sort of mindset, at the same time, people will look at people who are trying to get help and look at people who are trying to not have as hard of a time, and they will judge them for it, they will pass judgement. And they will say, “No. What? Why would you do that?” Or, I guess, they just don’t always understand it. I guess on a completely different train of thought, actually, people who don’t need therapy will not understand why you would get therapy. They’ll think, you know, “Why do you need it? It doesn’t make sense.” They’ll be looking from the outside and they’ll say, “But your life seems alright.” So, I guess, people don’t know everything about a situation, so when they look at a situation, they’ll say, “You’re kind of taking an easier way out.” They just don’t understand.

I: It almost seems like the opposite of participation trophies, in a way. You have people complaining that, “Oh, they got a trophy, they got an award for doing nothing at all. They just showed up and participated.” But now it’s suddenly a- They’re trying to get an award for being- I don’t know, something that’s not actually a thing that you want.

L: Yeah, I guess that ties back into the cynical world. I mean, it’s an angry, unhappy place and you’ve got to find a way to be happy in it. I mean, there’s going to be bad influences, there’s going to be people who grind your gears, people who just try to pull you down with them, and it’s not easy to go against that society. But I guess it’s something that I deem important.

I: Regardless of what you personally perceive of it, how do you think religion helps in terms of this viewpoint?

L: I feel like it can definitely can go both ways, and it is completely based upon the interpretation or the context that you come into because there’s definitely a lot of controversy around different parts and different aspects of religion. But there are cynics and hateful people on either side, just as there are very kind and very open-minded people on either side. So, I feel…

I: Overall, because for any group, there’s always going to be people that are extremely negative, extremely positive. But as a whole, what is your take on it?

L: I guess to put it concisely, if you are a cynical person, it’s not going to matter if you are a cynical atheist, a cynical Buddhist, or a cynical Christian. You’re still going to be cynical at heart. Now, they may teach you, depending on the religion, they may teach you to be a certain way, they may teach you to act a certain way, and they may teach you to think a certain way. But the thing is it doesn’t mean that you’re going to. You may be able to preach it, but that doesn’t mean that you practice it.

I: So, do you think, for example, if elementary schools started having classes that were something along the lines of teaching positivity, that in the end, it wouldn’t do much good because it would be up to the kids themselves, and not necessarily any outside influences?

L: That seems kind of like abstinent leaning sex education that occurs in middle and high schools. It seems like it would be as successful as that would be, in my humble opinion.

I: Which is that they don’t work?

L: Not at all.

I: Alright, well I think that’s good then. Thank you for your time.

L: Yeah.

[yeswesaythings]

The Same Topic It Always Seems to Be

This was recorded in August 2016, prior to the election.

I: Okay, so the last time we talked, the political climate was…a bit different. It was at the end of 2015. Most of the candidates were still in the race and neither Republican nor Democrat seemed decided. Now we’re at a very different point in the election cycle. So we have Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee and Donald Trump, amazingly, as the Republican nominee. And I was reading over the past stuff from before and I agree with some of the stuff that I said from before, but then looking at it now, it seems…some revision is necessary in terms of what’s going on. I mean, one example I had was that I thought that people said, “Oh, Donald Trump is stupid.” Okay, well maybe they don’t understand exactly what’s going on, that he’s smart and he’s just using the system for his own gain. But at this point, it doesn’t make any sense what he’s doing, because he has the nomination. All of the stuff that he was doing to get attention and draw people to him, that is done at this point. He has no reason for all this other stuff at this point. Except to basically- It’s for his own personal gain, if anything. It’s nothing political anymore. So what’s your take on it?

D: On the current situation with Trump that is?

I: Yeah, or I guess the political spectrum as a whole.

D: Right, right. Well, I think we’ve had an interesting few months, to be honest. Moving away from the big “T-word” for a few seconds, the whole Hillary email debacle, there have been a lot of speculations, and a lot of forays on, apparently, the Republican side about, you know, fudging votes and having an inefficient or untruthful system. But I think we’re starting to see- I don’t know, this seems to have gone from the light-hearted sort-of unexpected entertainment of the earlier debates to a very dire situation on both ends. Because I think, at least the Republicans, or the conventional Republicans, are starting to realize that with this individual as their nominee, they are in a very awkward state because 1. This person isn’t even necessarily a politician as we know it. 2. This person, very clearly, has shown that the way that they have an audience at all is by essentially bucking the system, and not listening to anyone. So that almost kind of defeats being part of a party in a lot of ways. So I think- And also the Democrats, just looking at this from afar and realizing that, you know, this sort of thing can happen to a political party. And now they’re probably looking at their own structure and asking, “What can we do to prevent a Trump in our own party?” So, it’s really just an interesting scenario on both sides. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I think it’s definitely a tester of fortitude for both parties in a way.

I: I mean, in a way, you could argue that Bernie Sanders was the Democratic party’s Trump, but nowhere near as…extreme? I mean, he was very much calling out very big players, but he wasn’t ever divisive. He wasn’t ever destructive. He, for the longest time, was trying to avoid any criticism of Clinton, basically. It was just, “Let’s just talk about the policies. Let’s forget about the other people. Let’s talk about the problems.” And in that case, with that email leak, that the DNC actually rigged it so that Hillary did win, it leaves people in a tough spot, especially, because- Do you know the Vlogbrothers at all?

D: A little bit.

I: So, John Green came out with a video yesterday on the reasons why people don’t vote, and the number one reason that people had was that they didn’t want to pick between the lesser of two evils. And the only problem I have with that is- There’s the whole argument that, okay, sure, an individual vote doesn’t really matter in the long run, but it’s the aggregate number of votes altogether that matter. But at the same time, the only way that the whole “not voting because you don’t want to differentiate between the lesser of two evils”, the only way that would really make a difference is if no one voted. That’s required so that neither one is picked. Basically, if your whole idea is, “I don’t like either of them, I’m not going to vote”, whether or not you vote, one of them is still going to get picked. And so in the end, you really don’t do much. And your other option is possibly, okay, well, third party candidate. But if no third party candidate actually has your interests in mind, it’s kind of, again, what are you supposed to do? You’re again voting with someone you don’t agree with, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place.

D: Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. It kind of reminds me of some of the Bohemian-American movements of the 1960s, when certain people tried to make small communes and essentially abolish the need for money and a capitalistic system altogether within a small circle. And it’s this sort of thing where they thought that this would sort of take on because there was this principle behind it. Meanwhile, obviously, food was scarce and the quality of goods they had was probably very low, but it’s this idea that, you know, “Oh, if we’re not engaging in money, then the other people are going to be weaker.” But rather, obviously, because of the way that economic works, if you’re not engaging with this money, then technically it makes everyone else’s money a little bit more powerful. I’m not saying that that necessarily applies to voting. It does to a degree. But at the same time, you have to realize that it’s about being involved, not standing away from the situation. Because standing away from the situation, rather, makes the people who are involved all the more powerful. And if they’re people who you really don’t support, to a degree, then it’s a hard place to be in.

I: A vote has a meaning behind it. If you vote for Trump, that says I’m for Trump. If you vote for Clinton, that says I’m for Clinton. If you don’t vote, there is no way for anyone to know what your message is behind that. It could be, “I didn’t vote because I didn’t feel like it.” It could be, “I didn’t vote because I didn’t like either of the candidates.” It could be, “I didn’t vote because I just forgot about the election.” So, as far as anyone trying to accomplish anything going that way, they aren’t. But at the same time, what do you tell people who are in that situation? Because you can always do a write-in, but as people say with third parties and anything that isn’t either one of the two candidates, you’re basically wasting your vote.

D: Yeah, that’s been said a lot of times. But I think third parties do play, at least historically, an important role in a lot of ways because they show, I think, a growing demographic of people who are becoming not only politically aware, but more politically involved in such a way that they’re willing to not necessarily compromise their views and actually go with a very specific party that caters to those views. Because I know a lot of the people who originally, on the outset, supported Bernie Sanders are finding themselves trying to back Jill Stein because those people, from my point of view, who backed Bernie in the first place were very active voters, very active voter base. So I think, even if for example, Jill Stein gets maybe ten percent of the vote, I think that’s actually a very impactful thing, because it shows that 1. As a country, we have a sizeable enough population of people that are willing to get involved, so that when something- Or when there’s a political situation that’s in front of us, say another Trump, who’s actually possibly dangerous to the country, is on the voting bloc, then people can rally together and say, “Hey, we’ve done this before, we know how to get ourselves together and organize. Let’s stand for another party that’ll at least take away votes from that individual and hopefully keep them from getting into power.

I: But I think, of course, the dangerous candidate in question, I think Trump has said that he would see that as basically it being rigged against him. It’s the politicians I guess and whatnot that are scheming in the background that are trying to not get him into office, when it should be the people, the voices that say whether or not they should be in office. And so it’s a matter of how much control do we want the politicians to say in who leads and how much say do we want the people to have? As it is, we still have the Electoral College who decides, while the popular vote is a separate thing. But at the same time, the popular vote, while strong as a whole, each individual person can’t do so much, while the individual people in so far as the Electoral College or at the politician’s level are more powerful, I guess, per unit member. What do you think, as far as giving politicians power instead of the people to decide who rules?

D: Right, I think the United States is a very interesting country in principle, obviously, as a sort of successor of the British system, the Parliamentary system. But I’m seeing this as a sort of calling, because I remember when I was over at King, during the fall semester and the original debates were going on, at least the Republican debates. A lot of us actually came down to the common area, Republican, Democrat, we didn’t care, just to watch these people talk. And to actually discuss amongst each other and actually share our views. And I think that wouldn’t have happened without the debate being there. I realize I’m slightly going off on a tangent. I’m going to return to the original point. But basically, I think- I mean, a lot of people try and put words in the mouths of the founding fathers, but it seems to be that this system was intended to be a sort of balance of powers, because obviously if you have a complete democracy, then a demagogue can just take complete power instantaneously like that, which seems to be what Trump would like to happen. But if you have a small, you know, essentially Roman system, then you have the equivalent of a ruling elite, which can basically decide as a cartel what’s the best for everyone. So I think what’s best is a sort of balance and I’ve noticed that a lot of people, even though they seem to be relatively bored with local politics, are starting to become more interested in them because Trump has sort of acted as a trigger for at least the Republican party members to say, you know, “Am I interested in this guy? Am I not?” And typically, that’s just a huge calling card as to, you know, this person’s alignment politically. So in terms of that, this election is, I think, important also for the local, which is pretty much in my opinion the base of the entire American political system, the local representative system, because if people become more involved in that, then essentially the federal just follows.

I: I mean, you said that the American system basically came as an offshoot from the English system. It’s interesting, looking into the parliamentary system of other countries, that they are actually starting to head into a direction that’s more- What are they calling it, presidentialization? In a parliament, they don’t elect the Prime Minister directly, they elect a party and whoever has the majority or plurality of the seats in the house, they choose who the Prime Minister is amongst themselves. And what’s basically happening is as time goes on, it’s less about the party and more about what candidate that party is going to make as their Prime Minister. It just seems interesting that, for example, America is having more parties recently with Libertarian and Green, that we’re sort of almost heading in a slightly more parliamentarian way, while the parliamentary systems, those governments, are heading into a more presidential system. And I’m just wondering if there’s some point where it just reaches some equilibrium where they’re basically indistinguishable from one another?

D: So you’re saying, at least in the Western scale, a sort of globalization with a balance between this presidential system and this party based, Prime Minister system?

I: Well, the more parties you have in a chamber, the more chaotic it is. That’s why a lot of governments don’t like the whole proportional system, where it’s basically, if you have a certain percentage of votes, that’s the percentage of seats you get. And that’s nice in principle because then this many people of the country wanted this party, so they’re going to have some say in there. But unfortunately, you have so many parties that are talking at one another and who might not have anywhere near solvable or reconcilable viewpoints, and so nothing gets done. For example, the presidentialization of the parliament almost makes sense because since you have so many parties, it feels nice to have this one person you can say, “They can have the final word and unite,” whereas the United States, we’re having this constant polarization battle between either this person has all the power, or this person has all the power. And we’re saying, “Well, hold on a second, what if we add some more voices into it, we can actually sort of dilute this power struggle.” So that it’s not just this constantly teetering scale. And, yeah, it just seems that at some point, it going to get to the point where they are practically the same thing. And hopefully it stays there, somewhat balanced.

D: Well, the presidentialization of political systems is- I don’t know, I find it interesting because with, at least African politics, that’s always been a big factor. It seems to be, at least with those systems, the African systems, that the president is typically a simple figurehead for their respective party and, rigged votes aside and all that, it seemed to be the party that was in charge. And I feel like, at least in the United States, a lot of people have honestly, because of the gridlock situation, gotten fed up with nothing getting done. And I think the better question is what that something that needs to be done is? But that aside, people have gotten really frustrated with that, so I think, yeah, a lot of people are interested in trying more shades of political parties and I think it’s very viable to see a big third party.

I: I was talking with someone, actually, from Nigeria, and he’s in favor of constitutional monarchies over everything else. In America, the head of state and the head of government are the same thing. But in places like England or Australia and places that have parliaments, the head of state and the head of government are two different things. In England, you have- Oh, who’s the current Prime Minister? David Cameron?

D: No, it’s currently Theresa May.

I: Theresa May is the head of government, while the head of state is the Queen. And she’s sort of this figurehead for people to rally behind. They can look at her and say, “She represents my country.” And so while the head of government may come and go, you at least have this somewhat stable figure for people to rally behind. And the United States doesn’t have anything like that because basically every four years or eight years, that person is going to change. And, at first, when he said he was a fan of monarchs, I thought, like dictators? That doesn’t really make a lot of sense. But I kind of see where he’s coming from, to a point, but it’s always been one of those things that I never really fully understood, the importance of the royal family, from the perspective of- I mean, it would be one thing if it was a country mascot or something like that. Because that almost seems like it is. Like, welcome to England! Home of the British royalty! And you just have all of these people in these giant caricaturized royalty costumes and whatnot. Because it would be one thing if these were just somewhat normal people, like we decide we’re going to rally behind you. But these people live in multimillion dollar mansions. It’s all the tradition and history behind it that still exists there. The royal wedding is this worldwide, televised event. It almost seems, going back to American elections, the president feels more like the head of state than the head of government, in how much people pay attention to the individual themselves. Barack Obama, for example, there were so many pictures of- Here’s Obama laughing at a kid dressed like the Pope because he thought was adorable and cute. We’re rallying behind the president because we think he’s charismatic and likeable and a great guy. But it’s very little, “We like the president because he has good policies and things like that.” That was mentioned, that was talked about, but it really wasn’t the focus a lot of times. And another thing that people don’t like about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is that neither of them seem too incredibly charismatic, in a sense. And so, they’re thinking even less about the head of government, and more about the head of state section. “It’s not so much that we don’t like your policies. We don’t like that you would be our mascot.”

D: Yeah, that seems to be a really enormous part of the global backlash against Trump and the fear amongst a lot of, not even heads of state or heads of government, just average people in other countries about this whole election cycle. The idea of essentially the last standing superpower being represented by a billionaire madman, completely unpredictable, who appears to have a moving head of hair, or not moving in many case. But it appears to be a very demoralizing situation that a lot of people would feel would reflect badly on our country, and the people who obviously would enable such a person to be elected. But I do agree, it’s hard to detach that personality from this sort of “mascotization”-effect, because when you think of the sixties and you think of the political situation, a lot of the time, Kennedy’s face or Jacqueline Kennedy, you’re thinking about the political family that was in charge at the time and you’re thinking about that person’s personality and the seventies, with Nixon and conspiracies and all that sort of thing. I think it’s almost inevitable to think that way, but I would at least hope that that wouldn’t have too significant a bearing on how we, I suppose, choose our leaders, but unfortunately and obviously, it does.

I: What are your predictions? Let’s say the election comes through and- Well, we’ll do both. If Hillary is elected, what do you think the state of affairs for America in the next four years look like?

D: State of affairs? Politically, at least, I would say, essentially what she’s been saying. Essentially, more of the same, more or less. I wouldn’t necessarily know what her legacy would be, as in her focus, policy-wise. Because she seems to be more focused on essentially catering to the interest of, obviously, the cream of the crop of the Democratic Party, in a way, and preserving our current president’s legacy. So I would just generalize by saying more of the same, if I had to guess. Unless she went off on some interesting tangent, which I couldn’t personally see, but I would find interesting.

I: Alright, and then on the opposite side, predictions if by some miraculous, terrible miracle, Trump got elected? Is it as bad as people say?

D: No, I don’t think so. I think there would be a significant amount of gridlock on both sides. And I would also think that there would be some enabling factors on both sides, too, interestingly enough. I think that, socially, at least social policy-wise, I think we’d pretty much be going in the same direction, to be completely honest. I can’t see Trump actually acting on a lot of these social policy topics, like gay marriage and abortion. I can’t, honestly, see him acting on things like that because he just doesn’t seem to care, even though a lot of his base seems to find those topics important. Economically, I do see him possibly having some interest in NAFTA and other such foreign trade deals. As far as repealing them, it would be a very dangerous situation, but I don’t really see him working that much actually, so I don’t see that much changing, honestly, if either one of them get elected, to be honest. Interestingly enough. Although the mood of the country would change significantly, that’s what I would say would be the big change. And that mood could affect the next election. I think that’s my greatest fear of any candidate being elected.

I: I think that’s one thing with Trump. Basically, he has set a precedent that if you say crazy things, you can go pretty far. And people will vote for you. And so, it’s a matter of, if he wins- Actually, if he wins or loses, the fact that he’s gotten this far speaks a lot to its success. But as far as the mood, though, what are the respective moods?

D: Right, right. Well, with Hillary Clinton, I see a much more, I suppose, confident, older population. And by older, I don’t necessarily mean the Baby Boomers, I think more of our parents’ age. You know, fifty, sixty. I think that they would feel a little bit more secure in the political situation, even if it was gridlock, simply because of the fact that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, the Clintons in general, are at least responsible for at least some amount of surplus in the nineties, of economic situations and general welfare. As far as the youth would go, I’m not exactly sure, because I think, democratically at least, there would be some backlash and obviously there would be some people who would be jumping onto, obviously, sides like the Green Party and other things like that. But I wouldn’t expect too much, just a, probably, general skepticism and pessimism over the election process. For Trump, I would say that the mood would be one of- I find it interesting that every time that Trump has said one of these outrageous statements, his political team has to scurry onto the media and figure out a way to-

I: Spin!

D: Exactly, to figure out a way how to spin what he said into something that’s not so abrasive, or seems more reasonable. And I think that that might be the entire mood of the country, to be honest. We’d possibly be finding ourselves defending ourselves, at least character-wise, from a lot of angles and we’d be trying to figure out, okay, so if this guy who got here isn’t actually representative of our values, then what is? And I think that that would become a big, big debate in the United States. Bigger than is it right now.

I: He’d be basically changing the zeitgeist, almost? Insofar that from here, we diverge into a different path, instead. I mean, it’s a matter of- I’ve argued that since people are voting for him, it means that there’s a fair population that shares his same beliefs, which means that there is a fair percentage of the population that this is not crazy, this is the way things should be. This is how the status quo should be. And so, if he does get elected, we could see a fork between the people who do think that and the people who think, “Well, no, not really.” I mean, nothing as extreme as after World War I, when people decided that all our values and everything that we’ve held dear to us are completely wrong because they made us do World War I. But something similar to it. The fact that our political system managed to vote this guy in means we need to change everything.

D: Right. I’ve been thinking about that. It seems that with the United States, when we’re thinking of where we’re going, we often think in terms of the past. And that’s reasonable, because most people think in terms of the past. You know, where am I going to be in a few days, as opposed to where I am now, a few years, etc. But the United States is interesting because it’s gone through so many distinctive stages that we actually name them by their decade. When people say the fifties, you think of suburban houses and nice cars and your white picket fence. You think of the sixties, seventies, eighties, you know, they all have their certain moods.

I: But isn’t it interesting how it’s only ten years that it takes for a mood to shift?

D: Right, and that almost seems to match the eight year shift typically attributed to a political party and their president coming and out of power. So, in terms of thinking about Trump in relation to this- I think I’ve lost the initial point, or the initial statement that you made.

I: It was basically in terms of Trump gets elected, how does it change everyone’s opinion on their worldview as a whole?

D: Right, right. I don’t know. It’s a good question. I feel like there would be an intensified tribalism between political parties, where people find themselves identifying themselves even more than they are now with their political party. Often times, when someone comes on the media, it’s in very small text, but you always notice by their name, there’s a D or an I or whatever political party that they’re attached to and I always found that interesting because, you know, at least as a slightly younger person, at 15, I was like, “Why even show that?” Because if they talk, well, we’ll decide if what they say is legit or not. But that can be a very significant deciding factor as to whether or not people listen to you or not in the first place. So, I think that it would lead to an intensified sort of grouping of people into their political parties, and this political party believes in this, this one believes in this. And we would see from there, essentially, the blame be shifted on whichever group, essentially, supports Trump the most. And they would probably be pummeled into some sort of either obscurity or self-destruction as, to a lesser degree, the conventional GOP has over the last thirty years.

I: Do you think the Republican Party is on its way out as a political party?

D: No, I actually don’t think so. I think the situation right now is one of fracturing, rather. I think we saw it with the Bull Moose Party, back with Teddy Roosevelt as well, a similar situation. But I think this one might be even more significant because now we don’t have a party separated really over- I wouldn’t say it’s really been separated over a candidate. I think Trump has just been more of a catalyst than an enabler for that. I think it’s more separated over principles and the message it’s trying to send. Because I found that a lot of the older Republicans are a bit more socially- At least policy-wise, they’re more socially careful as to what they say they’re values are and they seem to be a little bit more focused on the economics of what the party wants to get through. Meanwhile, it seems that these new neocons, as perhaps they may be called, are more focused on the values, and after the values have been fixed, everything else will come into play. So, if that’s the case, then it’s kind of one of those situations, almost, yeah, like you said, analogous to the Democratic Party and Hillary and Bernie. It seems that there’s one party that’s more focused on the structure, and then another that’s more focused on values.

I: Well, it’s pragmatism versus idealism, essentially.

D: Right, and that pragmatism has come under heavy fire on the Republican side. Paul Ryan, you know, who attempted to be a bridge, for a brief time, between Trump and the conventional Republican Party. But unfortunately, that actually backfired on him after, essentially, Trump calling him out. Eventually, Trump backtracked, but that didn’t actually work out for him. He got boos at his rally and it was one of those situations where you’ve made this personality, now you’ve got to sit in it. It’s not an easy situation.

I: I think, since we last talked, the media’s role has shifted significantly in their goals, I guess? Before, it seemed to be- It almost seemed to be they were along for the ride. Like, “Trump’s made news. Let’s put him in the news and whatnot, let’s see what happens.” And suddenly, when he’s the nominee, it’s very much suddenly, every media group seems to be focused on making sure he doesn’t get elected. And it seems to be one of those things where they are reaping what they themselves sowed.

D: I think, at this stage in election cycles, it’s convenient for stations to bring on people who represent their respective sides. So, I think a lot of that feeling is attributed to people bringing on people who are very anti-Trump, Republican or Democrat, and people who are very pro-Trump, and having them talk things out. But I think that with the media, it’s been interesting to see, at least for me, how often the name Trump is in a headline just in a day. And it’s just this consistent matter where if Trump is on, then chances are it’s high viewing time, or it’s prime time, or whatever. So it’s essentially an enabling factor to getting them views, in my opinion. I don’t think it’s necessarily much more complex than that. Yeah, as far as the political pundits who come on, it’s typical talking heads and people yelling at each other. But the fear mongering is interesting. I do find that an interesting factor in a lot of the discussions that they have. Not quite sure what to make of it, necessarily, apart from, “Don’t get this guy elected.”

I: This is a question I don’t know if people have asked, and it’s probably way too early to consider, but if Trump gets elected, does he get a second term?

D: I think the mere nature of Trump being elected would hit us harder than- No, I don’t think it would hit us as hard as his nomination, but it would hit us pretty hard. His nomination was certainly a blind sighting moment where the Republican Party did not see a lot of what happened coming. First, it was Jeb Bush who became his target and then I think it was Christie for a brief time. And then obviously, it went to Cruz and eventually he won. And Rubio even dropped out and there was this huge backlash, but it wasn’t necessarily against Trump, it was against- Yeah, I guess it was against the media. Because they found that a lot of the debates were centered around Trump and a lot of the candidates actually vocalized that concern. So, hey, if he gets views, I’m sorry but they’re going to him over you.

I: It makes sense for them, on their part, to do that. It would be ideal for them to be as neutral as possible, but neutrality is a goal, not a destination.

D: Right, right, but as for a second term. Wow, I can’t even- It would be- Within four years, I think it would be very interesting to see how not only the media, but how people perceive and start to see the media changes. I think that would be the most important part if he got elected, would a reelection happen. Because if the media’s significance continued in this situation, then it’s pretty much up in the air, to be honest, because either side could really take it at that point. But if the media starts to become as Trump would like it to be, not necessarily a servant, but more of a tool, and it didn’t necessarily have its own agenda, then I would definitely see a Trump reelection, if he did get elected in the first place. I could see a reelection possible, as a sort of perhaps character story that, you know, Trump has changed his ways and he’s becoming mature and he’s growing into the presidential role and now he can be the strong leader that you guys wanted and everything like that. And they could definitely spin a story like that and it could work. It definitely could work. So, it’d be interesting to see.

I: Is he self-aware about what he says? Going to the beginning of the last thing, I had said, “Oh, he’s not stupid, he’s smart and he’s manipulative.” But at this point, it just seems- I don’t the best way to describe it. It’s like someone that found out that they’re really good at something and then they just do it, all the time, regardless of context.

D: In fact, I almost liken it to playing Grand Theft Auto, in a lot of ways. And it’s interesting because Trump has come into this political party, which has already found itself fractured, as a sort of outsider who stands for the non-establishment, automatically. So, he came in like that. And if you think of it from that context, then Trump, I think, perhaps, sees it as a fling in a way. Because in reality, he doesn’t have much to lose. He’s essentially going to lose, one, his time, obviously, if he loses. Two, the money that he’s put into the election himself, which was a significant amount to start out with, before he got some financial backing. And three, perhaps some- Actually, he’d probably be more popular than he was before the election, to be honest, whether that be hated or not hated. As some people say, all publicity is good publicity. So he wouldn’t be losing much. In fact, he might be gaining some. However, the people who decided to politically align with him, or have, I think are in a much more dangerous spot. Mike Pence, for example, his vice-presidential pick. His role in conventional government, if Trump doesn’t win, I’d say is essentially over. The Republicans would probably put him on blast for enabling Trump in a way and a lot of the other people who worked with him probably wouldn’t see the inside of a political campaign again.

I: It’s almost very comparable to Sarah Palin. She just sort of popped up as a last minute, strange Vice President pick for McCain. And then for a few years after that, she was in the news for quite a bit as some sort of pundit for people to talk to and interview. And then at one point, I think, there was some sort of reality show or something with her? And then she left the governor position, and it was just sort of a half-life before she sort of faded into irrelevance. And at this point, she’s- That’s going back to the 2008 election. That’s been eight years at this point. So at this point, she’s basically irrelevant. But the time right after the election, she was still someone that garnered a lot of attention, even if it wasn’t all that much that she could add to the conversation. And I think that’s going to be something similar with the Trump supporters and politicians. Palin was never exactly a strong politician to begin with, and what these people will do, they’ll get some attention after the election, depending on who’s elected, but it’s the half-life of irrelevance after that. But because it’s Trump- I don’t think it’s something we’ve considered yet, is that even if he loses- Think of Sarah Palin, she still had attention after the election. Do you think Trump’s going to stop after he’s not elected? No, we’re never going to hear the end of him.

D: Yeah, I think it was a power vacuum that was bound to be taken by someone. There were a lot of frustrated voters, obviously, and, I think, the Republican side garnished the most frustration because, at the same time, they had felt that their position in the political realm was to stop the Democrats and to stop what they were doing and to return the values to a similar, more conservative era. And essentially what they felt was that their own political party wasn’t even serving those goals, so I think it was inevitable for someone like Trump to come along. The only question was how far they were going to take it. And I think Trump was the perfect candidate for that because in a lot of ways, I would almost like to see this whole situation as a small conspiracy theory. Because if I were a Democratic leader higher up, perhaps someone in the background, and I wanted the Republican Party- I was seeing some fractures, if I wanted it to implode from the inside, I’d say, “Okay, well, let’s look at the most volatile population here,” and then you see the neoconservatives who are very focused on this single message and I’d say, “Well, we can get someone who feeds on the wants of these people in a way that, one, he’s a strong leader, two, he doesn’t take crap from anyone, and three, after the election, as a bonus for him, he doesn’t really lose anything.” I couldn’t think of anything better than a billionaire in New York who essentially answers to no one, runs his own business and wouldn’t lose much by losing in a political cycle because he’s not even a politician. That would be the ideal person, and it seems that we got Trump.

I: That makes sense, and actually, if I had any sort of political power, the thing to do now would be to have some moderate candidate come up claiming to be a Republican or whatnot that says, “Wait, I can be your savior away from this maniac.” What you essentially do is split the Republican vote, and then it automatically goes to the Democrats. And this Republican savior doesn’t even have to be remotely Republican or anything. They just have to say things. It could be sort of a strange thing if they did wind up getting elected and it’s like, oh, turns out, nope, they were just a distraction more than anything.

D: Right, I think fracturing is a big part of the destabilization of political structures, and I think for the first time in a long time, we’re starting to see it in one of our two major parties. I think it’s important for- Even though we’ve never personally dealt with as a country, our change of powers have been relatively simple. I think it’s important to look at other countries, especially countries past and their unstable past and seeing how, with this fracturing, what happens after? What do you do with the pieces and how do you make sure that certain pieces of these shards aren’t going to become radicalized to the point where they’re essentially an untouchable bloc of people, which it happens. It happens a lot. It even happened to a degree with the War Hawks in the early 2000s. Nowadays, although the Democrats won’t say it, there’s a sort of stigma against people who backed the Iraq war, as these War Hawks who just sent these people off to die. You know, you wasted a lot of our money, but obviously, that’s not a big part of the discussion right now. So, it’s been an interesting sixteen years. Very interesting sixteen years.

I: The fact that sixteen years are relevant to this I think is something that people haven’t been looking at. I mean, in history, it’s really hard for things to be spontaneous. Things happen for a reason. It wasn’t necessarily that it was random chance. Not that things don’t happen by random chance. But there are a lot of things that happened because this happened, that caused that, and that happened because of something else that cause that, and this caused this because this. So you can look at the current situation we’re in right now and sort of trace back why exactly did it happen? And you can go back to 2000, you can go back to what caused the things, we can go back to 2001, 9/11, that had something to do with it. 9/11, the reason that happened, we can go back further to the Persian Gulf War and the Cold War. And it just goes back. The reason for the Cold War is essentially because of Communism, World War II…

D: Industrialization, we can back even before then.

I: World War II happened by World War I. And this because countries had alliances. It’s an unending tunnel as you look down.

D: It’s an interesting mess history is because in a lot of scenarios it seems, at least to me, that it’s almost like cleaning a countertop in a lot of ways, where these bacteria that you can’t even see. You know that they’re there and that there are a lot of them, try and spray a lot of them out. You will get a lot of them out. But unfortunately, some of them are resistant and they will come back in higher numbers and then you’ll say, “Well, how did this happen?” Well, it’ll be this small factor that you couldn’t even see in the first place, but hey, now it’s right in front of your face, so what do you do about it? You do it again. And then there’s another one, and it comes back, and it’s just this cycle that keeps repeating itself. But as far as that relates to America, I think one of the most important things about this whole Trump fiasco is the hat. The “Make America Great Again” hat. MAGA. That whole phrase. And the fact that even people who vehemently hate Trump will ironically wear the hat and will say, “Ha ha, MAGA.” And it’s this interesting thing where-

I: If you do something ironically, you’re still doing it.

D: You’re still feeding it, which I’m not saying people shouldn’t have fun on either side. You know, obviously, that hat is subject of corniness. It’s a very simple hat and it’s not very well designed. But at the same time, it’s this thing where you’re still giving him attention. For example, Batman versus Superman movie. Lot of bad reviews. People went into the movie knowing there were bad reviews, but they just wanted to see how much of a train wreck it was. They wanted to watch it ironically from a distance. But that still put money in the pockets of Warner Bros to make Suicide Squad in a not very different way? Which essentially enabled them not to learn from their mistake in the past, which leads to this cycle where, you know, “Why are they like this?” Well, because, whether you see it that way or not, you’ve enabled them to be. You’ve paid them, even to see their mess. And if they get paid enough to let you watch this mess, hey, they’re going to do it again. Yeah, so I think attention and the way that social media even works in the first place and the media in general is a very big part of this election cycle. I think people who have stayed away from mass media the way that we’ve been accustomed to it have a very different point of view on this election cycle, and I’d like to see what that point of view is.

I: Well, where would those people be?

D: I think a lot of them would be perhaps in more rural areas, obviously. And also, seeing how people in other countries see this election cycle, too, is probably very instrumental in evaluating it after it happens.

I: I mean, the interesting thing about this election is it’s not the first election to use social media, though it is a very important part of this, but, oh gosh, political memes.

D: Yes, memes.

I: It goes back to the old adage of, “Just because something is clever doesn’t mean it’s true.” And so you stick something on a picture of a frog and then you throw it out there and it’s something that people can rally behind. And because it’s something that enjoy, you can stick whatever you want on it. There’s nothing to do with election here at all. But it still manages to add something to it. I mean, for example, there was the whole Bernie/Clinton poster where it was like, “Bernie would agree with something everyone agrees with, and Hillary would do something that no one would like.” And it’s just like, sure, I guess this gets the feeling across of maybe what people feel about the candidates. But neither of these things have anything to do with the election. Bernie doesn’t actually going to give you homework answers and Hillary isn’t going to say, “I’m going to tell a teacher.”

D: Yeah, I think there’s this interesting principle that I actually picked up from the movie The Social Network as I was watching it. It was in the very early stages. Obviously, this is a somewhat fictionalized story. But the character of Mark Zuckerberg essentially said something to his partner, who is essentially funding the venture, he says something like, “We can’t monetize it yet. We don’t even know if it’s entertaining or if it’s good.” And the fact that that is the base before you bring in monetization, which is something that as its base, people would not be interested in at all. You don’t want your money taken from you, that’s ridiculous. But if it’s funny or it’s interesting first, and then they ask for money, eh, maybe you’ll do it. So if you apply this to memes and the way that humor in general actually affects peoples’ values and moods, it makes a lot of sense as to how if you have something funny- Like, it really could have been any characters with the Bernie and Hillary thing. But you chose to have it funny first, and then you put those slide on top of it. It’s almost an indirect way of- At least, the people who find it funny and the people who have read it and think it’s funny, they’ll at least consider in their head, because if you’re funny, or what you’ve made is funny, then chances are, they don’t hate you completely. Chances are, they think that they may have something in common with you. So then, when they see those faces, it’s like, “Hm, interesting, maybe I need to look more into this Hillary Clinton. Is Hillary a crook?” And then you start to get these leading questions and you go down this cycle. And I’m not necessarily saying that’s that way most people make their points of view, but I think it’s little moments like that which are very important and which also relate to how shows like the Colbert Report and the Daily Show have such relevance in our culture.

I: Well, neither one exists anymore.

D: Well, the Daily Show does. Trevor Noah, he’s in charge of it now. But it’s not even that. It’s also our late night shows as well. You have things that are “apparently” not politically involved like Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and you have shows like that where, you know, they’re supposed to not be involved. But then there are little hints of political leanings, here and there. Typically, they lean more towards liberal because obviously, as members of the entertainment business, they probably lean more that way. And it’s this system where, I think, as time has gone on, a lot of Republicans have felt that the system is rigged against them. And Trump definitely plays on that. So I think we’ve had a lot of factors to come up with this.

I: Well, a good example is Last Week Tonight. I mean, he had one episode of that which was entirely, “This is why you should not vote for Trump”, which, if that itself doesn’t give a clear point of view. But another thing was he did one on the Republican National Convention, and the next week he did one on the Democratic National Convention. And the Republican National Convention was basically how big a fiasco it was, and the Democratic one was basically the leaked emails about the DNC for half of it, and the other half was about Trump some more. And it was one of those things where people were like, “There’s very clearly not equal coverage going on for both sides of these things.” But I guess it just depends on what side you’re on, that you’ll actually take note of it and actually care. Because people that are Democrats will say, “Oh, he didn’t spend as much time complaining about the DNC. Oh well.” And then Republicans are going to say, “He didn’t spend as much time complaining about the DNC. This is bias.”

D: I guess people see what they look for, in a lot of cases.

I: These kinds of things, if you are on one side or the other, it’s not like this video was going to convince you to change your mind, anyway. It’s basically the people in the middle that are. And so, in that case, that’s when the bias really does affect people, is when they haven’t decided yet.

D: I definitely think that some of the recent events going on with entertainment in general are pretty important to people’s reactions to this political cycle because even on kids’ cartoons, I see references to Trump. And I find it interesting because these same cartoons do not show Hillary or Bernie or even Pence. Just Trump.

I: It’s a mascot.

D: Yeah. It’s a very poignant thing to do. I mean, whether the writers or animators know it or not, this is the one political figure you’re showing. So whether or not the kids have an already positive, negative or somewhere in between, or sarcastic or ironic impression of this character, you’re feeding onto that. And what’s also interesting is that there’s been a steady rise in the number of more politically retaliate comedians. I found this small group on YouTube called Million Dollar Extreme, and they recently got a show on Adult Swim. Now, the head of Million Dollar Extreme is this guy named Sam Hide and what’s beyond interesting is the way that he’s become popular. Now, it’s this system where- He’s not devised a system to become popular, but it’s interesting to see how I remember looking at a post by a friend of mine on Instagram, I think. And it was this double photo, two photos, side by side, of apparently the people who killed Alton Sterling. And one of them was Sam Hide, holding a rifle. And I said, “I know that Sam Hide did not kill Alton Sterling. One, he’s not a police officer, two, he does not live anywhere near the area where Alton Sterling was shot. And three, why?” But it was this thing where I was like, you know, just by having his name there and the photo there and him having a gun, you automatically have this political point of view of, “Okay, he hates black people,” or something like that. “He must be conservative, he must be this,” and then his name is there, so hey, let’s search him up. Oh, he’s actually a comedian. And it’s this thing where he’s sort of fed himself into a cycle of ironic meme-posting where this guy is clearly against the current political establishment, which I think we’re going to see more of those types of comedians come on, and I think that’s going to be a big part in the Trump base’s future relevance in our cultural conscience. For sure.

I: Alright, I guess this is as good a place to stop as any. Thank you for your time!

D: Yeah, no problem.

[yeswesaythings]

Life, Liberty, and a Third Thing

I: To start, can you define what it means to be a libertarian or what libertarianism is in your opinion?

D: Great question- it leads a long answer.

First, the technical: With a broad brushstroke- and I borrow this from Sen. Paul and Gov. Johnson- libertarianism is favoring freedom in both the social and economic spheres. Conservatives tend to like (or say the like) economic freedom, but not so much personal freedom or freedom abroad. Liberals tend to be better on social issues, but worse on economic freedom. Libertarians favor both.

I tend to agree with Friedman on general principles: 

Then, the personal: For me, it goes deeper than that. Libertarianism is about allowing and encouraging the beauty of humanity to flourish. Most laws tend to suppress the human spirit. Particularly as a Christian, I'm in favor of encouraging that spirit.

Natural law, which is well enshrined in the Constitution, is well reflected by libertarianism- or at least by the libertarianism I embrace.

I: When you say that most laws tend to suppress human spirit, what do you mean by that? What would be a good example? I'm guessing that spirit and rights are fairly synonymous in this case.

D: I should add something to my first answer:

Probably most laws- certainly, far too many- have the opposite effect of their stated intentions. The Patriot Act limited our freedom by violating rights to privacy, No Child Left Behind made education even worse, and the War on Terror has created more of it. The welfare system has had particularly negative effects on poor people. Having been part of it, I will happily attest to that.

This Question:

If rights are limited, the spirit is suppressed, though they are separate things. It is your right, for example, to speak freely. Speaking freely is an expression of your spirit. These examples, I believe, answer the first part of this question best:

Economic:

As someone of limited means, I usually travel by bus when I go somewhere because it's cheaper than driving. Since I have no car in Washington, DC, I use Lyft and Uber. Governments have attempted to restrict ridesharing in many areas, which means that anyone without a car is further limited if they wish to travel within the city. Regulation also prevented me from becoming an Uber driver in Knoxville because my car was too old.

When I worked at Waffle House, the taxes out of my check limited me from an income perspective, too.

The vast array of economic regulations make it very tough to own or operate a small business. Laws against collecting rainwater are anti-self sufficiency, and limit people from pursuing that dream. The requirement to purchase healthcare is another- or limiting what can be sold- forces people to choose things other than what would be their first choice for investing their time and money.

Personal:

Though economic regulation is more harmful, personal regulation is more directly felt, though the two ARE tied together.

Forcing someone to register a marriage in Washington is a sign of submission in one of the most personal decisions a person can make. It's not the government's business, but they add themselves to a process that they stymie, and they turn people against each other with the gay marriage question. Had the government washed its hands of the matter, marriage would continue to be strictly a personal pursuit.

Drugs are another great example. Whether someone wants to get on drugs, or get off of them, the state stands in the way. Smoking marijuana is illegal, as is heroin. Yet, one of the best treatments for heroin, suboxone, is tougher to get legally than it is to get illegally. Standing in the way of treatment requires more effort on the part of people who wish to leave a mistake behind. Most importantly, the police state that the War on Drugs created in many areas forces many to live in constant fear, rather than pursuing their dreams.

I: So, watching the interview with Friedman, he obviously didn't want to do away with government entirely, but shrank it down to justice and protection as its two main purposes. Do you agree with that, or is there or more or less that the government should be doing? And on the topic of less government, how do you feel about anarchists? I wouldn't call them libertarians, although there are some similar goals involved.

D: It would be great for the private sector to supplant the state, but I don't advocate for overthrowing it. A government, for example, can be voluntary (until now, I've used it interchangeably with "state". I should not). A group of people who agree to abide by the rules of a condominium submit to a government. The coercive institution that forces rules on people without their consent is the state.

I'm favorable to anarchist arguments like those of Jeffrey Tucker, as has to do with Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, but not to those who simply ask the government disappear or be overthrown, as those actions lead to Tyranny. Lawrence Reed and the Foundation for Economic Education (fee.org) argue that a good government (by which I mean state) comes from moral people. While Nirvana is not for this world, the more moral people are, the smaller the government can realistically get.  

Friedman's reforms would be a giant step in the right direction. However, even his reforms are so extreme for the moment that it makes no sense to advocate for them, which is why I'm supporting the Rand Paul reforms (randpaul.com/issues).

Rather, it makes no sense presently to advocate for implementing all of Friedman's reforms right now immediately.

I: How quickly or slowly would it take to adequately put all the reforms in place? Years? Decades?

And your mention of Paul is a good segue into an important topic currently: The presidential election. Rand Paul is running on a Libertarian platform, the only one of the dozen Republican candidates. He follows his father, Ron Paul, and Gary Johnson, previous candidates with similar platforms. Do you think libertarian candidates have a better chance in the 2016 election than they did in 2012?

D: Rand Paul is libertarianish, but his views have broader appeal than the strict platform of the LP or ideology uninformed by reality would.

So, not quite a capital L Libertarian platform (thankfully), but certainly a Constitutional platform.

While he has a much better chance of winning, it's for more reasons than a friendlier political climate. For example, our organization is a lot better.

I: Wait, so is there some problem with the capital L Libertarian party, or is it just that they aren't as well known?

D: Capital L refers to the Libertarian Party. Lowercase l refers to the philosophy of libertarianism, or of being a libertarian. The differentiation is similar to that between the Republican Party and conservatives, or the Democratic Party and liberals.

I: Okay, I think I understand. Rand is, I would guess, named after author and philosopher Ayn Rand. Her philosophy objectivism and libertarianism overlap at some points. What is your opinion of her and how do you think she affected the modern day libertarian philosophy?

D: Incorrect, but a common mistake. It's short for Randall. (http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/08/23/rand-paul-wasnt-named-after-ayn-rand-dad-confirms).

I'm honestly not a big student of Ayn Rand. I personally think she's correct when she says that all human action is the result of selfishness, if selfishness is described as pursuing your own utility. For example, if I help someone across the street, I get something out of it- it satisfies my desire to do good. If I innovate, it's an expression of my spirit, and I derive utility from that. I also believe pursuing our own individual dreams is a great idea, and that it's generally the best way to help others, in the same way Adam Smith described. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

Ayn Rand was a type of libertarian, but Objectivism is its own philosophy and extends far beyond the question of the role of government. It deals with fundamental points of human nature. Any Objectivist ought to be a libertarian, but not all (or even most) libertarians are Objectivists. She's done a great job selling the ideas of liberty through her fiction, and I appreciate it. I have essentially very little to say about how her philosophy has affected libertarian thought- I really don't know. I do object to her associating liberty and atheism specifically. The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics (ifwe.org) does a great job analyzing Rand's philosophy from this standpoint. They do a better job analyzing liberty elements in Christianity, and are a GREAT resource on that topic.

Though I'm not as familiar with the comparisons as I'd like, Ayn Rand, Jeremy Bentham, Robert Nozick, and John Stuart Mill are great for comparisons in "utility" philosophy.

For the most succinct liberty philosophy, Frederic Bastiat's book, The Law, is fantastic. I could send you a free copy, if you like.

I: Sure, thanks! Is it an ebook? It might be a bit inconvenient if it's a physical copy.

D: It's a short book, but you can also read it here: https://mises.org/library/law

Would you like a hard copy?

I: Alright, yeah, I'll be sure to check it out. I'm about to go overseas soonish, so like I said, it would be inconvenient if you needed it back anytime soon.

I guess I'm surprised. I always thought that libertarianism and objectivism were more closely related than they were. Hooray for learning! Fair warning now, I'm about to play some extreme devil's advocate.

Libertarianism would call for easing drug offences, limit gun control, and since marriages wouldn't be through the government, people can marry whoever and whatever they please. Aren't we just letting people do whatever they please, without fear of retaliation from the law? Couldn't we argue that all this is doing is turning a blind eye instead of intervening in circumstances where help from an outside source would be beneficial?

D: I wouldn't. It's a free gift from me to you, or a free gift from whatever think tank I request it from. Great for reading on the plane, bus, or train, or in the car.

Duly noted.

You could make the argument, but it doesn't stand. My particular belief is that reform needs to be somewhat gradual in order to be lasting or effective.

That said, there is deontological and consequentialist libertarianism (as is the case with most or all large political philosophies).

From a consequentialist standpoint, eliminating mandatory minimums (for more on this, look at Families Against Mandatory Minimums- FAMM, and the Criminal Justice Reform tab on Rand's campaign website) allows for people to advance in society by not over-penalizing them for a victimless crime (the biggest reason given for drug laws are to protect people from themselves, so jailing them for hurting themselves, IF it is to be done, should be done with the individual in mind rather than giving them bigger problems).

Marriage is a spiritual and religious issue. From a legal standpoint, it is a contract. If no person is harmed as a result of the contract, why regulate it? At the same time, it makes no sense for the state to endorse one set of values over another, so "legalizing" gay marriage, rather than simply removing government from marriage, is not ideal.

Intervention is only beneficial where someone violates someone else's rights. So, rather obviously, it's good at this point that there are laws against murder, theft, etc. In all other cases, I believe it's a tenuous argument at best, though I'll allow that a gradual approach is the most realistic way to address some of the state's most egregious rights violations.

I: What would those be?

D: The one I had in mind was the way we deal with drug laws. Then, there's our foreign policy, overregulating the poor, taxation, and many, many more. There are other egregious violations that should be ended immediately, like the state behaving as it did at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

I: Does taxation fall within this scope?

D: I referred to egregiousness concerning social issues because it is easier to identify particularly awful things regarding social regulation than economic regulation.

Taxation certainly is an awful thing, particularly at the rates and in the ways it's practiced. However, since it is not as violent a practice as, say, unwarranted SWAT raids on against innocent people, I'm hesitant to use strong language when discussing taxation in the greater context of what our government does that it should not.

All of that is to say, yes and no, but taxation ought to be somewhat gradually reduced because it has been made a fixture by the spending to which it is tied.

I: I understand that the general notion that "taxation is theft" is popular among libertarians, but is the idea to remove taxation entirely or to reduce it to a more reasonable amount? Many government programs, quite of few of which are arguably necessary or useful (e.g. infrastructure, libraries, fire and police departments) depend on that money. What unintended consequences might that have if not handled carefully?

D: It would be great to eliminate taxation altogether, but a reduction is much better than maintaining the current level, or an increase.

Ron Paul talked about the revenue from tariffs and excises as sufficient to cover the governments expenses if we eliminated the income tax (and for some time, this country had no income tax).

You can take it farther by going the Ayn Rand route and having the government rely on voluntary donations (which would go up in the absence of taxes- people do care about charitable things, especially when those things are seen as central to life). Of course, one could make the argument that this would make the government more susceptible to the donor class, which brings us to the root of our problem.

Ultimately, governments are a reflection of a people's morality. Where people want their governments to play more active roles in their lives, rather than taking responsibility as individuals and communities, government grows. Where people favor a people-powered economy and society, government shrinks.

I: In my university's introduction to politics class, the professor asked whether freedom or equality was more important overall. The vast majority raised their hand for equality. Libertarians, as I understand, would go the opposite way. Why, in your opinion, do other people hold equality so highly ranked compared to liberty?

D: The question slightly implies that the two are in contradiction with one another. So, I have two answers to this question. It would also be good to read my answer in the context of this short video:

In my view, the idea of equality as a goal, when it comes from a leftist economic standpoint, extends from the zero-sum fallacy. It has also been a historical fallacy- the robber baron myth- that liberty begets abuse of one powerful group by another. Nothing could be further from the truth. Where government grows, it tends toward abuse. Where the private sector, which is by definition non-coercive (except under fascist and corporatist regimes where big business gets in bed with big government and the two meld together) grows, there is a greater tendency toward happiness and utility for all concerned.

The second answer is that there might be some libertarians who value equality, but they would probably see the best road to equality as one of free markets.

It may be of interest- if memory serves correctly, Marx wrote of a second road to Communism, which involved essentially a speeding up of Capitalism. The idea was that as economies of scale grew, and things became progressively cheaper, we would reach a point where everything was essentially free. To the degree that we are not hindered by government, this is to a large degree happening. The poor today have much more than the rich did many years ago, and so the disparity in overall utility and happiness is lower. As a small example of this, I feel many times happier because I have been able to sleep in my car and eat food from WalMart and discount grocery stores than I would if I did not have my car. The next level of utility, so to speak, might be owning a home, but that would probably create less utility than my original ownership of an $800 car.

I: That's actually the second video with Milton Friedman that you've referred to. Would you consider him as a sort of economic or political role model for yourself? And to consider the secondary path to communism, I know that many find the philosophy abhorrent completely, but does this alternate path make it more acceptable?

D: Friedman is a good thinker, and expresses the ideas of liberty pretty well. His clips are also pretty well categorized and readily available.

The question of liberty role models is tricky because it depends on what one is trying to do. For example, I think of someone like Ron Paul as a role model because of his commitment to principle, as demonstrated by his years of fighting for the same principles. I would be less inclined to think of Penn Jillette as a role model- though I appreciate and use his work- because his method of messaging is one I don't agree with. As to Friedman, whiile I certainly appreciate his work and his messaging, and I might be inclined to look at him like a role model, I have not sufficiently studied his biography to  make this kind of assessment.

Totally so, if I understand the argument on it correctly. Both Capitalism and Communism aim to make life better for people, so as long as everything is done voluntarily, I don't see any reason to object to equality achieved through freedom.

I would add the caveat that free markets did something Marx probably would not have predicted- they have consistently raised up poorer and poorer people out of the most extreme poverty, while at the same time making richer people richer and able to achieve and afford futuristic technologies. So, there may still be a disparity, but, from a utility standpoint, the expansion of the "cake" of goods and services gives everyone bigger pieces such that their utility is more equal, as is the satisfaction of their most basic needs.

Pertinent to your last question, too. There are some we could say socialism, or socialistic elements, when done voluntarily, work, but I this is still very true in a general sense.

https://www.facebook.com/EricJulyTX/photos/a.902593793140961.1073741827.896453500421657/1030102060390133/?type=3&theater

I: In regards to Penn Jillette, what about his methods don't you agree with? I understand he's a magician, but I doubt that's what you're referring to. And with the free markets raising people across the board higher, do you believe that it's the relative difference in people's incomes, not the absolute difference, that is driving the march against "economic inequality"? That is, I might have a 50" TV, but since you have a 60" TV, I might feel bereft as result. Is that a valid comparison?

D: Jillette- Have you seen the show "Penn and Teller's Bullshit"? If not, it's on Youtube. The PETA episode is a good one, though I don't believe it has much if anything to do with libertarianism. I like the structure and the ideas. I don't like the profanity or ingrained contempt.

Income inequality- Essentially, yes, though a very large portion of economically left people will not recognize that free markets lift all boats.

Cynically, and this is of course describing the march to equality from the left- that's almost completely correct. People tend to want what they don't have- the next best thing. Manifested in freedom-minded people, it produces a desire to earn that thing. In state-minded people, it manifests as a desire to have the government take that thing from someone else. The idea of free college is one example of this. However, it is worth noting the left comes very close to getting something very right here. College IS too expensive, but it's because government has subsidized it with crazily low interest rates on loans. Socialists are also correct to oppose corporate welfare as "socialism for the rich".

Ideologically, the march to equality (from the left) is more like "John can barely feed his family and pay the rent on the land in the tent they live in. Warren Buffet is a millionaire." Then, people feel Buffet should be taxed to subsidize "John". However, rewind a few hundred years, and John would have been a serf, and both he and the lord he worked for would have shorter life expectancies and lower standards of living.

I: I guess I need to look into lower classes throughout history. Being middle class, I don't see firsthand what lower class families and individuals do and don't have in their lives. There are of course extremes, e.g. homelessness, but living in or renting a house with heating and running water is certainly progress in some sense, as compared to the living standard even fifty years ago for lower income people. But if everyone is raised up, the inequality gap still exists. I've seen many discussions on how inequality in wealth and wages stills leads to trouble, even when the standard of living is satisfactory all around. What would you give as a rebuttal?

D: Perhaps. Or, in a general sense, you know that the progress and technological innovation that has gone on over time raises the standard of living for everyone. You are correct to point out that running water was a novelty fifty years ago.

As far as a rebuttal to the idea that inequality still creates problems, it depends largely on what problems any given person says it creates. There are two I'm familiar with: One says inequality creates envy, and so the rich should voluntarily offer a hand up to the poor, and the poor should seek to emulate, rather than despise the rich, if material gain is their objective. I am generally favorable to this argument.

The other says inequality also creates power differentials, which lead to abuse of one class by the other. However, historically, this has not been true, except where and with respect to where government has grown. Additionally, with respect to the kernel of truth it does have, I refer back to Friedman's explanation of why, if the ultimate goal is achieving equality- or getting as close to it as possible, it is better to make freedom your first goal, and use it as a means to achieve equality.

[yeswesaythings]

The Infinite and the Finite

1. What does death mean to you? Is it a permanent end or more of a transition?

2. Do you believe in an afterlife? If so, how is it structured? If there are multiple destinations, how do they differ and what are the reasons for getting into them?

3. Would you want to be immortal? Does your answer change if you're the only immortal versus everyone in the world being immortal as well?

4. If you knew that you would die tomorrow, how would spend your last day alive?

5. Suppose that when and how you died could be known ahead of time. Would you want to know?

6. Would you prefer a short, but busy and fulfilling life, or a long, but relaxed and uneventful life?

7. Do you have a preference with what happens to your body posthumously? Would you prefer burial, cremation or something else entirely?

8. With concerns of overpopulation, would it ever be right to displace cemeteries to make room for the living?

9. Would you ever sacrifice yourself for the life of another (e.g. medical emergency)? Does your answer depend on the person being saved?

10. What is your view on the death penalty? Are there ever times when killing is justified?

 1. Death

2. Afterlife

In Hinduism, we have a God for each department, just like the ancient Greeks, Romans or the Egyptians. Brahma, the creator, evaluates your Karma, and writes your destiny on your forehead, and sends your soul to Earth to live a physical life.  The good and bad you do in your past life highly influences everything in this life such as your birth, death and everything in between, like joy and suffering.

Even though he has already written your destiny, this has a duality (just like the prophecy in Harry Potter, which would only come true if you chose to act on it) You choose one of the two paths, you either act on your destiny and do what you came here for, or you get sidetracked, and do bad deeds for which you pile up bad karma.

Chitragupta, is the God who keeps a note of every good and bad deed you do on this planet. Death is just a transition of the soul. When our physical time on this planet is up, the God of Death Yama, evaluates what Chitragupta has recorded, and sends you to either heaven and/or hell. (the concept of hell is similar for the ancient Chinese and the Hindus, where there are 28 different realms in hell, and the soul gets punished according to the bad deeds they have done in their physical life).

But even this phase is not permanent. After the soul has enjoyed the fruits of their good deeds and/or the punishment for their bad deeds, the soul is sent back to Earth to live another life i.e. reincarnation. And this cycle continues on.

3. Immortality

I don't think I would like to be immortal, and neither would I like it if everyone was immortal, because if no on dies, there will be no place left for new people to be born right?

4. Dying tomorrow

Personally, i have thought about this a lot as I was very depressed when I was younger and have contemplated suicide many times. I don't any more though, but if I knew I was dying, I would write beautiful notes for every person who has influenced my life in any way, and spend the day in meditation and prayer.

5. Knowing your death

In theory, it sounds good. It sounds perfect. Time to put my affairs in order and all. But in reality, I am not sure how I would actually react to this. I would like to think that I will do something worthwhile which makes people remember me by, but there is also a chance that it would probably just make me give up on life and just cross off days on a calender until I died.

6. Life

I spent three years of my life at home, after high school due to some reasons, and it was very ''relaxed'' and uneventful. And they were the absolute worst years of my life. All my friends moved on, and i had no one to hang out with except mum and dad. I gained extra weight, my mind was stagnant as there was no stimulation. They say that an idle mind is the Devil's workshop. This was 100% true in my case, and I hated everyone. Surely, a short and busy fulfilling life is the best.

7. After Death

8. Overpopulation

After I die, I most definitely want my body to be cremated. This is not only because I'm a Hindu, I also believe that taking up space for my dead body is unnecessary and that space could be used for something else. But I might just be saying this because its tradition to be cremated in Hinduism. I know that other religions like Christianity and Islam put a lot of emphasis on burials. If the family of the people buried in the cemeteries have no problem relocating or displacing it to make room for the living, then I am all for it. My grandparents in India, live on top of a displaced Muslim cemetery, and they and their neighbours are perfectly happy. (Except on one occasion, where builders were laying the foundation for a new house in the area, and heavy rains left the entire area flooded. One of the stray dogs brought back a human skull from the foundation lol and everybody freaked out. They had to specially bring an Imam to get the skull buried according to tradition).

9. Sacrifice

I would sacrifice my own life for my mother, father and sister if it means that they can live. I know I will. But if I have kids, I have to be brutally honest and say that I will have to rethink this decision as wouldn't want them growing up without a mother. Unless it's for one of my kids. In that case, I will give up my life for them, because I cannot live with the knowledge that I could have saved their lives. God forbid I never have to be in such a situation!

10. Death penalty

Terrorists, who think they know more than the God they claim to worship, who stand against other people just because they have a different belief system, who kill because they think killing will bring a change, these terrorists deserve the death penalty. Not because killing them will bring a change, but because they are a threat to the very way of life of others.

 Sreelu 

I: So, in Hinduism, you said that the gods were set up in a way that’s like Roman, Greek or Egyptian so that there are- For each of the facets of life, there’s a different god. So, how many are there in total?

S: Oh, there are so many. Like, there are over 3,000.

I: Wow, okay, that’s more than I was expecting.

S: Yeah, well, the main gods are like, eight or nine, but all the others are like- There’s a goddess for light, there’s a goddess for shade. It’s like that. But those are all small, like demigods. But the main gods, there’s like nine.

I: Do you know the names of those main eight or nine?

S: Yeah, the first one’s Shiva, who’s- Okay, I’ll start with Brahma, who’s the creator. He created mankind. He’s pictured very old and very concentrating and very calm. There’s Vishnu, who’s the preserver. People usually pray a lot to him. There’s Shiva, who’s very- Like, Vishnu, when you see Vishnu, he looks like a king. He has a lot of jewels and stuff. And Shiva, he’s very simple. He’s the destroyer. People often picture him in a cemetery.

I: There is a quote by a scientist around the World War II era that, after they created the atom bomb, in sort of a regretful phase, they said, “I have become death, destroyer of worlds,” which is apparently a quote from one of the Hindu scriptures, I believe? He might be talking about Vishnu, who might have said that, possibly.

S: I think it might have been Vishnu.

I: Alright, so that’s three of them.

S: Yeah, the goddesses, or their wives, is Saraswati who’s for knowledge and finance. She is Brahma’s wife. Vishnu’s wife, Lakshmi, she’s for wealth, prosperity, and like, every positive thing. Cleanliness, and light instead of darkness. And Shiva’s wife, Parvati or Gauri, she’s for health.

I: So, all the smaller demigods or lower ranking ones, if that’s the best way to- Are they all on equal footing in terms of god status? You said some were demigods. Does the average person keep track of all of them, or is just sort of that they exist but you tend to have a certain group that you pray to consistently, and the others are-

S: Yeah, usually it’s these six gods. Shiva and Gauri have two sons, Ganesha, the elephant god, remover of obstacles, and his brother Murugan.

I: Okay, now, there was one God that was for light and one that was for shadow, shade, for example. Are those two- I’m not going to say they’re in conflict with one another, but is there sort of a balance between pairs of them in that sense? Can you elaborate on that a bit?

S: Like, what do you mean?

I: Like, if I have- For example, even in the higher ups, so Shiva and Vishnu, they’re sort of opposites in a way. One is very opulent and grand, one is very simple and ascetic. Does every god have a contrasting god to their nature?

S: Well, I’m not sure about every god, but most do.

I: Okay, sort of the East Asian concept of yin and yang, sort of like that. I mean, at that point, that’s confusing a bunch of different religions together, so I don’t want to do that. But okay, this is going back to my class four years ago. So, Brahma is the main head creator, in a sense? No?

S: No. Well, there’s this legend which says about the creation of the universe. So basically, the universe, when it had the Big Bang, it manifested itself into this all-powerful mother goddess called Shakti. And she created Brahma first and she was like, “Hi, I’m Shakti. Marry me, because I’m female, you’re male.” And he was like, “You’re so- You’re too powerful for me to marry. I can’t marry you, sorry.” And then she creates Vishnu, and he’s like, “Sorry, nope.” Just simple like that. And then she goes to Shiva. She creates Shiva. She’s like, “Will you marry me?” And Shiva says yes. She had third eye, and so he says, “If you give me your third eye, I’ll marry you.” And she’s like, “Oh, okay,” and she gives him her third eye. And this third eye, which is like, really powerful. It’s like, it’s here. It’s like the source of all energy, kind of like the Allspark in Transformers. Yeah, and he doesn’t know how to use it. So, he opens it and a lot of energy comes out and she becomes ash. Yeah, he, like, burns her to ash. So he’s like, “What have I done?! I was going to marry her!” And then Vishnu and Brahma come and they’re like, “Divide this into three parts,” and they put one part in this- There’s the ocean of milk in the skies, and they put one in that ocean. One then turned into Saraswati, who’s Brahma’s wife. And one becomes the daughter of- I forgot his name, but yeah. And so each of them get to marry one part of her. So basically, she’s the one who created the universe. Except mankind, which Brahma created.

I: And then from those gods all the others came as a result? They’re sort of the children of those three?

S: No, usually most of the other gods are like avatars of these gods. They’re not children.

I: So, what do you mean by-

S: Like different forms, like incarnations.

I: Oh, okay, so for example, I think the Buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu, I believe? I think they said the ninth, or something along those lines. So, the cycle of reincarnation, that’s an important part of Hinduism. So, one aspect of it- This has been a question of mine. So, a tenet of it is that you shouldn’t harm living beings because there is the possibility that they could have been, in a previous life, someone that you knew at some point or that they- I’m explaining this very badly. You can take over at any time.

S: I can understand what you’re saying.

I: But is it only animals or is this also plants and all living things as well?

S: Well, mostly it’s animals because they have nerves and they can feel pain.

I: Okay, my question was always that a lot of times, vegetarianism is a part of it. I’m a vegetarian, so I can totally understand that. But I guess the question was always-

S: I thought you were a vegetarian when I saw those lentils.

I: Oh, guilty. So, if people did become plants as well, then in that case you’re kind of restricted to eating rocks at that point, which, you know, you can’t really do. Okay, that does clear things up then in that case. So then the idea of, then, your Karma, decides where you go in your next life? So, then it’s very much action based. So if you do good things in your life, then you’ll wind up on a, I guess, more- I don’t if privileged is the word, but a better life? And if you do bad things, then you’ll wind up in a worse life in the next time around?

S: Yeah, people often think why, if there’s a god, there is so much suffering in this world. But it’s all because of your Karma, what you’ve done. Like, for example, if you had a bird in a cage, and the next life you wind up doing a petty crime and end up in jail for your whole life, and you’re like, “Why me?” but then in your past life, you’ve imprisoned a bird, so it’s like that.

I: So that’s interesting, because that’s not something that many people would even consider to be a bad thing, to keep a bird. So, I’m guessing then- Question, where are you from specifically?

S: South India.

I: Okay, so in that area, are there any zoos?

S: Mhm.

I: Okay, so in that regard, that in a sense, is keeping an animal in a cage, in a way.

S: It is.

I: So are there a lot of protests from Hindus there to say that you are locking up these animals? You’re basically putting them in jails?

S: There used to be, like when my parents were younger. But now, people tend to forget the real essence of religion, just like terrorists. They forget what religion is, it’s all about inner peace, but then they just become fanatics and they just keep following the rules of Hinduism but they don’t really know what Hinduism is all about.

I: So, I understand, for example, Islamic extremists are big in the news, but I don’t hear too much about Hindu extremists. Like, I think Hindu nationalists, is that what they’re usually called?

S: Yeah.

I: What are their grievances against the world? What are their complaints? What’s their problem?

S: Obviously, it’s people from different lands have come and occupied India over the centuries. And obviously, when the Mughals came, that’s when Islam entered India and when the Portuguese and British arrived, that’s when Christianity came. They think religion is like an outside thing, and they hate every other religion. There are really scary Hindu extremists. They’ll be hiding in very deserted roads and if you’re in a bus, they’ll just catch you and they’ll kill anyone in the bus who’s not Hindu.

I: So do they go to each person individually and ask them if they are Hindu?

S: Yeah, they’ll be like, “Give me your passport, give me your ID.”

I: So, do the IDs list the religion of the person on them?

S: No, but they come to know if it’s a Hindu name. Like, even if my name was Sarah, but I’m a Hindu, they’ll kill me because I’m Sarah. It’s like that. But’s it’s very less common. And there are the nationalists, as you said, mostly in Mumbai and places like that. We have this festival called Raksha Bandhan, which is where you tie a Rakhi around your brother’s arm and you’re like, “You’ll protect me,” and they give you money and stuff. So on the day of Raksha Bandhan, these nationalists, they go around parks and restaurants and if they see two people together, they’ll tie a Rakhi, and you become brother and sister, like that. And because Hindus really believe in this Rakhi thing, they’re like afraid to go out on Raksha Bandhan or Valentine’s Day, especially.

I: Okay, so tell me about yourself. That’s kind of a big question.

S: That’s the most difficult thing!

I: Well true. Start with something fairly simple. So, what brings you to Australia?

S: Steve Irwin. When I was a kid, I used to watch his shows and I really liked the concept of conservation of animals. I always knew I was going to go to Australia, and after- I started engineering but I haven’t finished it. After that, my dad was like, “You should really do another degree because you’re not really satisfied with engineering,” so I was looking up unis in Australia. So I saw this one. I’m a natural wildlife and wilderness student.

I: Are you looking to combine those two degrees, like environmental engineering?

S: No…

I: Okay, so what are your plans once you graduate?

S: Orangutans. I’m going to do more to help in conservation because most rainforests are getting converted into palm tree plantations. Habitat loss, oh my god, don’t get me started!

I: No, go, go ahead.

S: Yeah, you know most people think that most of these palm plantations are owned by small farmers, but they’re actually large-scale multinational companies who don’t care about the environment at all.

I: Basically nothing is happening to stop them? I mean, how do we lose each year in rainforests and just natural habitats?

S: I mean, I read about so many stats that I can’t remember all of them. But I know it’s a lot. Mostly it’s only WWF which do a lot of conservation work in Malaysia at the moment.

I: What would be the best thing to tell people to really convince them that these things are worth saving? Because, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here, I could say that from the position of someone that’s high up on a business somewhere that, “Oh, well, you see, we as humans are the dominant species as thus, we can do what we want with the environment. All the other animals can do what they want with the environment, you know? No one’s regulating or controlling what their actions are. So why should we be regulated and controlled in the same aspect?”

S: But it’s only going to harm you at the end. It’s going to come back to you. If you keep- Yes, most people say that they are trees, we’re not building houses. They are trees so the animals can live in the palm trees instead of the rainforest. But every animal has their own habitat and they can’t live in another habitat. And if you keep cutting down the rainforests, all the animals are gone and then there’s no diversity. And if there’s no diversity, even the remaining rainforest will be dying out because there’s no diversity.

I: Yeah, because once a disease hits or something, when there’s less diversity, then it manages to wipe out more things as a result. So, what specifically about orangutans fascinates you?

S: Well, they’re so peaceful and- I don’t know how to say it, reclusive?

I: Oh yeah, so they keep to themselves, basically?

S: Yeah, and they’re so rare in the rainforests. If you go to Sarawak and you go on a river cruise, you can see the proboscis monkeys, the spider monkeys. You can see them, but you can’t see the orangutans because they never show themselves. And also, if you see into the eyes of an orangutan, you feel how human they are!

I: I think, what, chimpanzees were the closest genetically, but I think orangutans are up there as well. We’ve got gorillas that learn sign language, in a sense, and it just seems at what point in the future will human-animal communication be possible? It’s just really interesting to think about.

S: I think Jane Goodall learned a bit on how to communicate with the chimps. Like, I know one thing. That means danger.

I: That’s interesting, because that’s something to think about. Because that almost looked like a smile on our part, so they have their own body language and way of showing things and it’s going to be completely different from us. So, you know, they might stomp and do things like this and that could just mean that they’re really happy about something, whereas something like a smile could mean, you know, “We should be really afraid right now,” which is the exact opposite.

S: I think people should make their kids watch shows like the Wild Thornberrys. It’s really cool.

I: Oh, such a good show.

S: I loved it.

I: Going to the next topic; so, immortality. So, you said that you really don’t think you’d want to be immortal and, you know, if everyone’s immortal, then in that case, how do we put in anyone new because no one’s dying off. But also, in a way, immortality doesn’t really work with Hinduism as well because there’s no rebirth, no reincarnation if no one dies. In order to be reborn, first you have to die, essentially. And I guess at that point, yeah, there’s no real refutation to that that I can really put. Unless you have anything else that you’d want to add to that?

S: Yeah, I think what you said sums it up. Because the concept of rebirth and stuff in Hinduism, it’s about the soul learning about how things work in the universe. And the reason for rewarding it with heaven and punishing it with hell is so that it learns and gets rid of its inconsistencies and becomes closer to the soul of God. That’s the point of life.

I: To become pure, essentially?

S: Yeah, like, have you seen Lucy?

I: Yes, okay.

S: So you know how she becomes at the end. People are like, “Where is she?” and she gives him a message, “I’m everywhere.” So that’s what God is. God is everywhere.

I: Okay, you were talking that in hell, there were 28 different sections, each for a certain type of crime of bad doing. Is there, either in the Hindu religion or in your eyes, one bad doing or crime that is sort of ranked the lowest, that is the lowest you can do? I mean, for example, this reminds me of- I don’t know if you’re familiar with Dante’s Inferno?

S: I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t read it.

I: So, it’s a self-narrative piece by Dante who basically finds himself walking along the forest and then suddenly he stumbles and finds himself in hell.

S: Oh no…

I: So, there’s all these layers in it. And at the beginning part, you sort of have limbo, of people that are not quite in purgatory, which is the stage between heaven and hell, but they’re not in hell either, so they’re sort of in this weird state of being nowhere, really. And then the top layer of hell, you have people that are punished for various crimes as it goes down. So, the further down you go, it’s usually the worse crime that was committed. And the punishment usually has something to do with the crime that they did. At the very bottom, there is basically a three headed Satan. And it’s very cold in Dante’s. It’s very different than the usual form, where people think that it’s this hot, blazing inferno. It’s very cold at the very bottom and inside the mouths of the three headed Satan, you have Judas, Brutus and Cassius. So, Judas being from the story of Jesus, who betrayed Jesus for silver pieces. Brutus and Cassius are part of the Julius Caesar tale. They were ones that betrayed Caesar and took part in stabbing him. In Dante’s eyes, betrayal was the worst form of crime anyone could do. And in his mind, these three people were the worst of the worst. So they were at the very bottom in the coldest depths of hell. So in your eyes, or in the Hindu religion, is there one specific bad thing that is considered- I don’t if unforgiveable, maybe not to that extent. But just something?

S: Well, there’s this movie. I really don’t know particularly about that, but there’s this movie that shows that helping somebody when you have the time and power to, but you just don’t just because is the worst.

I: Okay, so making excuses…There’s a similar story-

S: No, not for simple things, but maybe you bought a new car and you want to go to the temple first and do a worship or something, and then suddenly, somebody’s dying and then you don’t want to take them to a hospital because the seats will get dirty or something. That’s the worst thing ever.

I: There’s a similar story in Christianity, the Good Samaritan. Basically, it comes down to whether you ask one of two questions to yourself. There is, “What will happen to me if I help this person,” versus “What will happen to this person if I don’t help them?” And depending on which question you ask yourself, it kind of shows where you are in the balance of- I guess, where your moral compass points, essentially. So, yeah, I think that falls under the same line of, if you have the ability and you can help someone but you choose not to, that is the most despicable, at least in your eyes or- What was the movie called?

S: It was called Anniyan. It was a Tamil movie. It’s about this guy who has a split personality and then he changes into this raging, very angry, frustrated individual who punishes people for all their wrongdoings, like in hell. But then he has a backstory of why he did it. But it’s all about hell in that movie, so he punishes people according to what they did, or what they would do in hell. Scary, but accurate.

I: I need to see that movie then. Okay, so this is going to be very personal, and if you don’t want to talk about it deeper, that’s fine, but you talked about in the Dying Tomorrow question, that you’ve contemplated suicide many times. Do you want to go into any more about that?

S: Yeah, I’ve gotten over that stage where I’m, like, scared to talk about it. There was this point in college, which is like, eleventh and twelfth grade where I had no friends. We basically moved cities, so it was like a new thing. We moved from a city to a village and I was such a city girl, so nobody accepted me and I had no friends. I used to listen to lectures alone, and eat lunch alone, and also I had no friends in the neighborhood.

I: So you were just isolated.

S: So alone, yeah. And I used to tell my mom, “Mom, I think I’m depressed. Maybe we should see a psychologist or counselor or whatever?” And she’s like, “No,” because was so in denial about it. And I’d just sit around and think about, “Maybe I should just kill myself?” and stuff like that. One time, there was this temple I built out of cardboard for Ganesha. It was a really tiny miniature temple and it was on top of the mantelpiece. And this one time when I- There’s nobody in the house and it was raining and I was in a really dark place and I thought, “Today’s the day I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to do it.” And then I took the knife and all, and I was going to do it, and then suddenly there was a big clap of thunder and I slipped in some water and I fell and knocked the temple over. And then I fell and then the temple was just near my face on the floor and I was like, “Okay, this is a sign from God that I shouldn’t do it.” And I didn’t do it, and now I’m glad I didn’t do it because I have so many friends here and I’m so happy.

I: Well, I’m really glad that you’re passed that hurdle and everything. I’m glad you’re here, too!

S: Thank you.

I: Welcome to life. It’s a beautiful thing. So, in knowing your death, you said in theory it sounds good but you wouldn’t want to because you feel that it would basically just be almost like- Once you know something, you are just constantly self-conscious that it’s happening and coming up.

S: Yeah, it’s like cancer patients. They know they’re going to die someday and they hate life. And they’re all frustrated, but there are also some other patients who are like, “I’m going to live life to the fullest!” You never know how you’d react to it.

I: I mean, the biggest part of this question is- Because it’s one where it could be a blessing or it could be a curse depending on what the answer is. For example, if you’re going to be one of those people that lives to be 110 years old, well if you’re told that when you’re twenty, suddenly, “I have 90 years to live!” And so it’s almost one of those things where you can take risks and chances and everything because you know, “Oh, well I’m going to live for a very long time.” Whereas, if you’re twenty and then it’s said, “Oh, you’ll die when you’re 46.” That’s one of those things where I’m nearly halfway through my life at this point. In both cases, it could be seen as a way to live life to the fullest, the 110 year old person, because they know that they have a long time to live and that they’re not going to die anytime soon, and the 46 year old person, because they know that, “Oh, well, I’m going to die very soon, so I need to get everything off my bucket list right now.” You said that you wouldn’t do anything in terms of- No, maybe I’m mixing that up with another person’s answers. But, I mean, do you have, yourself, a bucket list that you’ve created? Things that you want to do before you die in this life?

S: Yeah, I think it’s mostly travel and see places.

I: I see you have Australia off your list at this point, so is there any other specific places?

S: Yes, I would love to go to the Amazon rainforest and stuff.

I: So, self-guided tour or with a large group of people?

S: Doesn’t matter how many people, but people who know the place- Like, if you go to Peru and you don’t speak the language and you don’t know anything, it’s not as great as if you go with a person or a friend who knows everything.

I: Do you know any Spanish?

S: No, I know the words you see in America movies, “loco”, which means crazy. Also, I just wanted to say, the fact that you said 110 and then you said 46 says a lot about how positive you are about life.

I: I mean, I guess it’s just a matter of- When people think about life and death, teenagers and people that are young tend to think of themselves as invincible. So I think when this question is posed to people that are younger, they tend to think it more in a positive light, “Oh, I can see in the way beyond when I’m going to die. It’s so far away.” Whereas if you asked this question to someone older, even if it is that same age, it’s suddenly a lot closer. And as you get older especially, years and time just go by so quickly. And so suddenly, oh, something happens in a year. Suddenly that year has just gone by, and it’s just one of those things where you didn’t even have time to fully realize all the time that was going by. So, I mean, thank you, I guess. I didn’t think of myself as particularly one way or another positive or negative in my outlook of life. But I guess it’s good to get an outside perspective. So, overpopulation, and what happens with your body after death. So, you said cremation. Is that a thing ever, when a body is not cremated, but buried and then that person in the next life is able to identify that this was a body that I used to inhabit?

S: Sorry?

I: I guess that’s one question, do people remember or know their past lives? Like, not necessarily directly, but traces and hints of it in memories? Or is each life sort of self-contained so that they don’t run over each other at all?

S: It’s like, when people believe in ghosts. It’s like, they have something unfulfilled, so they need to fulfill it, even after they’ve died. It’s like, if you were a really big, famous violinist in your past life, then in your next life, you might be interested to learn music. It’s kind of like that. My mom definitely thinks I might have been a vet or a dog in my past life, because I love dogs.

I: What do you think? I mean, do you have any specific interests at the moment that might give you a hint of what you were in a past life?

S: Not really. You never know which one it is. You just think, “Oh, I’m just passionate about it.”

I: There is the concept and idea of “old soul” versus “new soul”, so someone that has been through a lot of reincarnations or rebirths- I mean, what’s the correct term for that? Is it just rebirth, reincarnation? Is that the term that is usually used?

S: Mhm.

I: Do you have any concept of that? Do you have any guess or feeling of how many times you have been reincarnated?

S: No, no idea.

I: And then, another question as well. Are there still new souls coming into being or is it still the same from the very beginning that are constantly coming in and out?

S: I think it’s the same. Probably, I’m not too sure.

I: Well, in that case, everyone at this point should have gone through hundreds, thousands of rebirths. That’s crazy to think about, wow.

S: You could have been anybody, Julius Caesar.

I: I mean, that’s something to think about, of all the famous peace-seeking people in the world, that Jesus and Gandhi, for example, could have been the exact same person in different forms.

S: Yeah, that’s what mostly people think about all these incarnations of Vishnu, because they are the most influential people. Like, most people say Buddha. When people starting taking up Buddhism instead of Hinduism, people got really insecure and that’s why they added him into the incarnation, just so that, “Oh, it’s all Hinduism. It’s not Buddhism. It’s not separate.”

I: Are there still, sort of, conflicts between Buddhist and Hindu thought in a way, that people are sort of- I mean, is there sort of a spiritual fight for which path to follow? For example, I think the closest equivalent would be Christianity has different denominations, so you can be Catholic, or Protestant, or Anglican or Lutheran or-

S: Seventh Day Adventist.

I: Yeah, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness. And so, for the most part, they all identify as Christian but there are some that the split is sort of in a way that is not exactly friendly. So you might have some Unitarian Universalists which are very liberal in their beliefs and open to questioning, whereas you have a lot of hardcore southern Baptist, which are very strict, literal, straight by the book for everything, and very conservative. And that there might be a little bit of animosity between those groups as a result. And I know Buddhism and Hinduism, while they originate in similar locations, they’re not the same religion at all. But is there sort of a spiritual conflict between people in terms of which one is-

S: The better religion?

I: I guess so, because they share a lot of similarities between the two.

S: Mostly, Hindus believe that Buddha’s principles are similar to Hinduism and they might not be entirely Buddhist in principle, but they are fine with learning more about it, because they believe that Buddha is the ninth avatar of Vishnu. But Buddhists have this thing that Hinduism is too cluttered, and that Buddhism is more simpler, and should be followed. But there’s no clash, there’s no battles which have taken place. Mostly, it’s among Hindus which is the conflicts.

I: So that’s when you get into the terrorist groups and the like that you were talking about earlier.

S: Yeah, there are a lot of cults in Hinduism, like there are the Shaktas which believe that Shakti is the mother goddess who created everything, and there are like, Vaishavites who believe that Vishnu is the all-powerful god. You know, you see these Hare Krishna people in orange clothes. They believe that Krishna is the supreme god. And there are Shaivites. Like, I’m a Shaivite but I like Vishnu. I even have a tattoo of him. It’s about how much you want to force your views on other people.

I: Okay, yeah, so I guess that was kind of getting into a question earlier, that there are groups where a certain god is ranked a bit higher than all the others, even the main few. Where does the desire, or where does that decision get made in someone’s life of which one is the highest, all-powerful one in their eyes? Is it someone- For example, Vishnu is the destroyer-

S: No, Shiva is the destroyer.

I: Oh, no, Shiva. I’m mixing mine up. Like, Shaivites, since Shiva’s the destroyer, are these people that see- Is there philosophy mainly that everything comes to an end, and therefore-

S: No, they basically pray to the nature of Shiva. Shiva is, like I said, very simple and he doesn’t wear clothes, he just has, like, a leopard skin thing. And then he wears snakes around his neck and he meditates in cemeteries. He is very innocent in nature and he’s very passionate, and if you pray to him, people will say that he will give you whatever you want, like, very easily compared to other like, his wife Parvati or Vishnu, because he’s so giving. Also, there’s this thing. If you pray to Shiva, he’s a bit deaf. So, if you say, “Oh, God, why am I suffering? Why do I have so many problems in my life?” He only hears ‘problems’ and then he gives you more problems. So it’s, yeah, tough.

I: That’s a really interesting way- The religion I’m most familiar, which I keep making references to, is Christianity. And in that case, God is supposed to be this infallible, all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful being. And so the same question comes up, “Why is there suffering when God is supposed to be all-powerful, all-knowing?” And the explanation of, “Oh, well, he’s kind of deaf and can’t necessarily hear everything that’s going on,” would be completely off the table in that regard, but it’s interesting to hear in that respect, that, well, “No, that’s a perfectly reasonable suggestion for why there is because the prayers aren’t being answered because the gods themselves aren’t necessarily perfect.” Would that be an assumption that could be made?

S: Yeah, if you’re seeking a really perfect god, it would be Vishnu, because he is very- I don’t know how to put it? Impassionate? Not passionate? Like, he’s very- How you would describe the Father of Jesus. He’s like that.

I: So, are you trying to say impartial, is that the word?

S: Yeah! Yes.

I: Okay, alright, so he’s supposed to be unbiased and looks at everything in a very neutral sense. Okay. Self-sacrifice. And also, this might delve into self-sacrifice, not necessarily for anyone in particular. So, I didn’t mention this part at all but, for example, you have cancer. And it’s gotten to the point where it’s untreatable and you’re basically at this point waiting on the clock until that day that it comes down to. What is your view or opinion on, basically, doctor assisted suicide? Where, in the case that it comes to the point where it’s an untreatable condition, you’re in a lot of pain, and you don’t have much longer to live anyway, though it’s not necessarily certain that you’re going to die in, say, the next week or so. I mean I know, because you’ve had to deal with suicidal thoughts in the past, it’s a bit of a tough question to ask. But I think it’s related to the idea of self-sacrifice, in that maybe you’re not necessarily sacrificing yourself for another person, but it’s more- I don’t know the best way to put it. Because suicide in any sense is a lamentable task. It’s not something that really should be praised or put on a pedestal in any way, but it’s still that sense and idea of prolonging the inevitable? I don’t know how you feel on such matters?

S: I think that if a person if really suffering and there is an option to release them from suffering, I think, if they want to do it, they should. Like, if I had killed myself or whatever, the suffering would have ended, but then you’ve like, put everyone else around you into the suffering. They would never understand.

I: Whereas in this scenario, it would definitely be something that you could talk with family members and friends about.

S: Because it’s a physical thing and this is a mental thing.

I: There are a lot of people against it because they see suicide in any sense as being something that should be avoided at all costs and they almost see it as a disability, when people are that sick, that they can’t do anything. So there are a lot of people in the disabled community that have gone against it because it’s one of those things where they’re saying, “Well, we’re disabled and we’re living through it.” I don’t know if the same argument could be said that someone who is a stage four cancer victim- They’re disabled, but I don’t think it’s the same thing as someone who is missing both their legs. Otherwise, they can live a normal life, whereas someone with cancer is heavily restricted as a result. Sorry, that got really dark, really quick.

S: That’s fine.

I: And then finally, the death penalty. So, you saw that terrorists and people that basically believe that through killing and violence, that they can achieve peace, ought to receive the death penalty because they are, essentially, giving up their right to life as a result of these actions?

S: Yeah, they kill because they think they can affect change in people, but nothing affects change unless they want to change.

I: My only thing with that is that once death and murder sort of become part of the legal and justice system, are we any better that that? When we feel that someone has done something wrong, so we decide to kill them as a result, is that not what the terrorists themselves are doing? They see injustice, they see wrongdoing and they say, “No, you must die because you have done this.” And then the government comes and says, “You have done wrong, you have done injustice, therefore we must kill you as a result.” It just almost seems like a perpetuation of the same thing.

S: Oh, yeah, I can see what you mean. Well, I always thought that when they are killing people, I never saw it in a way that it could be similar to the government.

I: It’s just, in my view, it’s almost sickening how supportive people in some places of America are of the death penalty. In Texas, for example, the governor one time gave a speech in which he basically was bragging that, “We’re the state with the highest number of deaths by death penalty,” and everyone in the crowd started cheering and clapping as a result. And it’s one where, you know, I can understand the idea that, “Well, this person is a dangerous person to society, and therefore, they have to be killed in order to keep society safe.” But it’s something that you do with the understanding that you’re still killing this person and that itself is not something to be really ever proud of. That as much as you might be doing good, it’s still not something that you necessarily want to pat yourself on the back as a result of. I don’t think that people, anyone, has the right to say who has the right to live or die. Because, I, myself, as a person, am just as much of a person as anyone else. And so, to point to someone and say, “You deserve to die,” is for me to put myself above them in terms of their humanity, for me to basically put myself in an artificial seat of power and say, basically that, “You do not deserve to live anymore.” And while we can say, “Oh, it went through a legal system, it went through a government,” all those things are still artificial things that we have created along the way. And so it may very well be that this person has done terrible, horrible things and they deserve a harsh punishment for it, but I never really think that death is ever an answer to it. Life sentences, fine, sure, because even in that case, they can possibly be reformed or changed. But as soon as you put death into it, you remove any chance at all of that person improving themselves.

S: But if they believe so strongly that they are right- I guess locking them up is, like, equally good.

I: I mean, yeah, you have some fanatics that, til the day that they die naturally, that they will believe in their mind that they hold the only right opinions. They are the ones that are truly right. In that case, okay. There’s nothing that could have been done. But do you really want to risk killing them prematurely, I guess, and not have that self-conversion? It’s one where you’re sort of burning your bridges, in a sense. There could have been someone here that could have repented. They could have then said, “Never mind, what I did was wrong and terrible. I regret it.” In that case, while they can’t undo what they did, there’s regret, there’s a sense that they did wrong, which is at least something to consider. But when you kill them after it, immediately, then you have basically removed anything that could have remotely involved that. That’s just my take on it. That’s why I call it, “We Say Things.” Because I put my own opinion. I don’t know if this would exactly be considered journalism because journalism usually involves just interviewing a person, asking them questions. But it’s hearing other people’s opinions, but at the same time, I’m also voicing mine. It’s still sort of a new thing. But, so, yeah. I guess that’s it. Is there anything else you’d like to add at all?

S: Not really.

I: Alright, well thank you for your time.

S: Cool.

[yeswesaythings]

Nihongo wa wakarimasen

I: I know that it is a bit rough for me to start off this by just asking, “Tell me about Japan,” and very vague questions. So, I guess you should start with something fairly specific. What’s your favorite aspect of Japan?

K: I like Japanese food, but I didn’t think so when I was in Japan.

I: Okay, so it’s only after you’ve come to Australia that you came to respect the food more. So what is it about Australian food that lacks?

K: The taste, maybe.

I: So, what, is it just too bland?

K: I think Japanese food is more sensitive. And I felt so- Because I went to a supermarket for the first time and I tried to find some Japanese food, Japanese seasonings but they don’t have any. And some of them were named like, ‘Japanese seasoning’ or ‘Japanese food’, but they’re actually from other parts of Asia.

I: Ugh, that’s disappointing.

K: Yeah, but I haven’t eaten any particularly Australian food. Not yet.

I: I’m not even entirely sure what the quintessential Australian food actually even is. I know there’s vegemite as you know, but that’s not food. That’s more of a spread or something. I don’t think they really eat roasted kangaroo or anything along those lines. But okay, so you said this was your first time coming to a supermarket, here? So, is it mainly, you know, marketplaces and fresh produce where you came from?

K: Yes.

I: Okay, so the whole idea of a, sort of, mass produced, air conditioned enclosure where you can buy all kinds of different foods is not too common, would you say? Or just your area where you’re from?

K: I went to Woolworth’s for the first time and it was too big for me, the size. And also, some vegetables, too big.

I: So the vegetables themselves were too big?

K: Yeah, too big, like pumpkins. And also, milk. Yeah, we usually have one liter, but I saw more than two liters here.

I: Well, what’s so bad about having large quantities of food? It’s usually, in bulk, it’s cheaper so it makes sense to buy it.

K: So, I was surprised because they were cheaper but milk, it can go bad.

I: Yeah, true, so you’re forced to drink more of it in the time that you have it.

K: I cannot use them up, I think.

I: So, while you’ve been here, I’m guessing that you’ve done more cooking than you have going to the cafeteria here? Have you even been to the cafeteria here?

K: Yeah, but when I came here, it was 9:00 PM when I went to Pepperz. I usually eat rice every meal. Well, not every, but for dinner I usually eat rice. But they only had potatoes and I didn’t like it. Yeah, and it was the first meal in Australia.

I: Ah, that’s disappointing. First day, no rice. Alright, I guess it’s interesting to see your reactions to coming here. What were some other thoughts when you first came here?

K: I came here by way of Melbourne and the flight to Hobart was delayed and I got a message from the airline on my phone. In Japan, we can see the information on the screen at the airport. So, I didn’t know which information was true.

I: Oh, so you see stuff on the screen, stuff on your phone-

K: And they are different! And I asked the staff at the airport and they told me that the email was correct. And I was surprised. And also, the departure time was not the time I received. Yeah, maybe a one hour delay. I thought this could not be happening in my country. So, just after I came here, I maybe missed my country.

I: Okay, so you were homesick when you first came here?

K: Maybe for a few days.

I: Okay, how did you find best to cope with that? What did you do to, sort of, combat those feelings? Because I’ve been homesick before, too, and it’s rough.

K: I talked with my friends and family, sent emails and replies, but after I felt that I had homesickness, I tried to not contact them.

I: So did that work?

K: Yeah.

I: So, you’re no longer homesick right now?

K: No.

I: Alright, that’s good because I know that’s a rough feeling. Basically, you have to distract yourself from it enough until you don’t think about it anymore. So, is this going to be the longest time you’ve ever been away from home at one time?

K: Home meaning country?

I: It can mean country or in this case, your actual home with your parents.

K: This is the first time- I lived in Yamanashi for studies for three years, so I lived apart from my family.

I: Okay, so you’ve done this before, in a way.

K: Yeah, but this is the first time staying in another country for such a long time. Yeah, so I didn’t miss my family, but the country, culture.

I: So have you visited any other countries before?

K: Yes, I have been to Canada, but it was only for ten days.

I: Alright, what did you think about Canada?

K: I stayed with a family there and I liked my host father. His name was also Ian, but I couldn’t get along with the host mother and also the host sister. But I had to live with them for ten days. It was hard.

I: What was the conflict?

K: The host mother was always angry.

I: Any reason why?

K: No, no, she likes the feeling?

I: She likes the feeling of being angry?

K: Being angry or being upset.

I: So, you were in Canada for ten days. What was the occasion or reason for this? Was it is just a holiday vacation or-?

K: Studying English.

I: Okay, interesting. So, is that a common practice, to go to English speaking countries to go learn English?

K: And you stay with a family. The main thing is to stay with a family there.

I: Was it like, an independent thing that you put together or was it through the school that you went to?

K: I went to a kind of school, but it was not officially school.

I: So, coming back to Australia now, my question: How long is the plane ride from Japan to Australia?

K: Seventeen hours, plus two hours late, so about twenty hours.

I: That’s- Japan and Australia aren’t that far away?

K: It took nine hours from Tokyo to Sydney. And I went to Melbourne from Sydney by airplane, and Melbourne to Hobart in twenty hours.

I: Like, that just seems like such a long time. Like, my trip from the United States to Australia was like twenty hours. So, that doesn’t seem- I’m having to cross the entire Pacific Ocean here. You’re just having to basically go down a bit, I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem to make sense. But maybe I’m mixing up my geography. But so tell me about these notebooks that you have here.

K: I decided to ask my friends for these notes. My university is famous for diversity and over 19% of the students are from outside the university.

I: The country or the university?

K: No, the prefecture, outside the prefecture the university is located. But in fact, honestly speaking, I didn’t want to go to this university and I hated it for maybe two years since I entered this university.

I: How come? What was so bad about it?

K: In Japan, we usually go to university just after we graduate from high school, but I wanted to go to a medical university. It often takes students, to enter a medical university, maybe two or three years? And I went to a prep school for two years, and when I was twenty, I was worried about whether to go to university even if I couldn’t pass the entrance exam to a medical university. And this university was the only one I passed at the time. And the reason why I chose this university to take an exam was because they only had an English exam. This is because the name of the department was the ‘English Department’. And I didn’t want to take anymore math or science exams and I chose this because of the content of the exam. So after I entered this university, I really, really hated it. Sometimes I thought I would drop out. But after two years, I didn’t hate my university anymore and I wanted to do something particular to the university while I was studying there. I have many friends from different parts of Japan and sometimes they have talked about their prefectures but I tend to forget them. So, I came up with an idea that I would ask them to write something about their prefectures and after that, I was chosen as an exchange student here at UTas and I’m the first exchange student from my university. And I must recruit the next student from UTas because of their partnership.

I: So, you have to find someone here to exchange to your university? Oh, that’s interesting.

K: And I recommend my university to them, candidates in UTas, and I think that the diversity in my university is a strong point, one of the strongest points in my university, compared to other universities in Japan.

I: So, have you found anyone that has definitely said, “Yes, I’m gonna go!”

K: No, but maybe I will find some tomorrow in the event because the lecturer sent the same emails to the students studying Japanese.

I: That would make most sense, that people that know Japanese would exchange to Japan. Okay, so do you mind reading what some of the things in the notebooks say?

K: Most people wrote about their features or dialects. In Japan, some of the prefectures are really famous and popular among Japanese and also foreigners, but there are so many smaller prefectures and they sometimes compete with prefectures next to them. So, people from those prefectures write about the other prefectures in the page of their prefecture.

I: So, negative things, positive things? Like, oh, you know, “My prefecture is the best, the other ones all suck!”

K: No, yeah. But…

I: Oh, do you mind if I take some pictures of these? Not right now, but after this.

K: Okay. But I fully understand that they love their own prefecture.

I: Do you think there’s a strong sense of nationalism within Japan?

K: No.

I: No, really? So is it more localized to the prefecture? That there’s strong pride for the area they live but not necessarily the entire country?

K: Many of my friends or older people who have been abroad told me that they realized that they loved Japan after they left Japan. I think I agree with them. Most of the people I asked haven’t been to other countries for a long time, so it seems that they haven’t realized it yet.

I: Realized that-?

K: Their feeling to country.

I: I can understand where they’re coming from. Traveling to other places, seeing other places is a great, wonderful thing, you experience other cultures, you get to meet new people, you get to eat new food, or, you know, not if they’re serving potatoes when you want rice. But there is always that sense of, “There’s no place like home,” that no matter where you go, there is the place where you came from, your place of origin that, you know, no matter how exotic or strange the places you may go, there’s always that safety and the familiarity of home. So, yeah, I can see where they’re coming from, where they leave Japan and they go to another place, but in that, they learn respect for their home country as a result. So, I mean, what are your feelings, opinions on it, exactly? On traveling abroad?

K: Traveling abroad…Australia is the first country for me to come after I learned English a lot. And I kind of got told to communicate with people. When I was in Japan, I thought the Japanese culture was the only culture. And some of my friends told me, “You cannot adjust to it.”

I: That’s not reassuring.

K: And after I came here, I feel it is much easier for me to make friends with new people, but it was not in Japan. They like to stay together with some particular people.

I: They have their particular cliques and groups they stay with.

K: Yeah, and I don’t like it. So when I discovered it in Australia, I don’t know if it’s a culture or not, but I realized that I thought the Japanese culture is the culture I had to adjust.

I: Really?

K: Yeah, before I came here.

I: So, I’m trying to- So, you’re saying that you had to- You’re feeling that you had to adjust more to Japanese culture than you had to adjust to Australian culture?

K: I realized that there are so many cultures in the world. I thought I understood it in my brain, but I only knew about other cultures through media.

I: Okay, so it was that you had read and you had seen other cultures, but it wasn’t until you actually experienced them that you’ve really, fully understood it. Okay.

K: And traveling abroad will tell me about all I don’t know through the media.

I: So, tell me about yourself now. So, what are you majoring in?

K: In Japan, I’m taking a double major and one is linguistics and the other is education.

I: And then here, I guess, did you have to declare a different major?

K: Different.

I: Okay, so what are you majoring in here?

K: Actually, I don’t have any majors. What I’m taking here is Antarctic studies, Aboriginal studies, Japanese translation and Communication for Management.

I: Okay, so linguistics and education, what do you want to do with that in the future? I know, that’s always the hard question. What’s the application going to be?

K: I’m still thinking. Before I came here, I thought I should become a government officer. I don’t know…

I: What do you enjoy doing? What are your passions, I guess, to connect with a job? Because your career, your job should be something that you enjoy. Yes, I am asking the big questions now, I guess.

K: I like…

I: I mean, like, education. That usually means that you want to be a teacher of some sort. Okay, so what grade or what age of children are you looking to teach? Would you prefer, like, younger kids, five, six, seven, or, you know, more high school age, so fourteen, sixteen?

K: Junior high school and secondary high school students because of the qualifications. And I’m studying out of the English department, so the qualification is English. But I don’t want to become a teacher because I cannot teach students English.

I: Well, where do you think your deficiencies lie?

K: I always liked to study English, so I cannot understand why the other people don’t like it. But one of the reasons, maybe, I think is I have some pen pals, pen friends, in the US when I was in junior high school and she was my motivation to study English. So I didn’t think studying English just meant studies.

I: You didn’t think of it as work. You saw it as a goal, but not necessarily something that you felt was a chore, in a sense. So, do you think it’s an important part of education, to learn other languages? Because you have some school systems that are actually, slowly trying to get rid of the foreign language as a requirement to graduate, replacing it with things like to learn computer programming instead. As a future linguist, possibly, or a future English educator, I mean, do you see the advantages of learning second languages, third languages, languages other than the one that you’re born with, or born into?

K: I think students should learn other languages.

I: Why?

K: Because Japanese is not a major language in the world, and now the population has just begun to decrease in Japan.

I: How come? Like, why is that?

K: Maybe the birth rate and there are so many older people in Japan. I heard that by 2050, the population in Japan will be half.

I: Of what it is today? I mean, is anyone freaking out about this? Is the government, like, trying some mandate of, “You guys need to have kids,”?

K: We have some much money we have to pay.

I: To have kids, you have to pay?

K: No, the government- Can I use my dictionary?

I: Oh yeah, go ahead.

K: Debt!

I: Oh, people are in debt, so for that reason, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to have kids because they feel that they would go into even more debt as a result? So, is it debt from, like, student loans?

K: No, the country has it.

I: Oh, the country itself is in debt.

K: And each Japanese person has to pay three million yen.

I: To have a kid?

K: No, we have to pay. The government has so much debt, like Greece, the Greek government. And so the Japanese government cannot afford education- They cannot use any taxes for education and it is hurtful for the Japanese people to have kids and have their kids go to school. Its cost is really high. And the birth rate has been declining for years.

I: But so this is fairly public and common knowledge then? But I mean, like I said before, is anyone really panicking about it or has it just sort of been accepted as, “This is the future that is going to come,”?

K: The government seems to be doing something strong, powerful. But the lecturers in my university told me that we are also responsible for that because we have the right to vote in the election. And we chose such a government.

I: So, they’re blaming you for the country’s problems?

K: And also, we have to change the system of Japanese societies to solve those big problems.

I: I’m not going to guess that you currently have any just hypothetical solutions in your mind that could solve this? Darn, your country needs you. You could solve the entire problem. But, so getting back to the linguistic question, additional languages are important. You’re saying one, because Japanese is not a major language. So does it give people professional hiring strength? So, it looks good on a resume if someone knows English?

K: Oh yeah. So, the big companies began to recruit students from other countries and Japanese students have to work with them. And so I think we need other languages like maybe English or Chinese.

I: But outside of a business perspective, just from a learning about other cultures perspective, you know, is learning other languages, not necessarily becoming fluent in them, but just to be able to study and understand the grammar and where they came from and how to read them, for example. Like, I know a lot of Westerners, they see the, you know, Japanese Katakana, Hiragana, Kanji, or the Chinese symbols or Korean Hangeul, they can’t even begin to pronounce the words, even if they don’t know what they mean, because they can’t even read the alphabet or anything like that. Do you think that it’s at least worthwhile for people to know the basics of languages of other cultures?

K: Yes, I think so, just after I came here.

I: Oh okay, so beforehand, it wasn’t as important, but after coming here it was?

K: Yeah. All the foreigners I had met before I came here, they had an interest in Japan and they know my country and it was calm for me. And, okay, after I came here, some students asked me where I’m from and I told them I’m from Japan, but that’s it. And of course, there are some students who have an interest in my country, but I realized that I also don’t have much interest in other countries. So, it was not good, sad things. I thought I’d try to learn about their countries, or at least respect their countries cultures and languages. And when I joined an event of UniFriends, I met a student from Sweden. And a week before I met him, he was the person I mentioned, and I asked him, “How do I say ‘thank you’ in your language?” And he told me. And after that, I feel it is easier for me to talk to him, just that tiny thing. And I thought I should try to do the same thing to students here. So, to learn other languages is a part of knowing their cultures, I think. The people from the countries maybe think that they are respected. They feel happy.

I: There’s more of a connection, there’s more of a friendship when there’s an understanding between the two cultures the people are coming from?

K: The multiplier effect.

I: The multiplier effect, okay. So, for example, the two of us, do you think that there is more of a connection now since now I know more about Japan and you know more about the West I guess, as a whole? I mean, the West isn’t a country itself, but English, I guess, it a language that’s a good portion of it. I guess, to reciprocate, I would talk to you and tell you all about America, and then I guess the connection would be complete. But that can be another conversation.

K: Do you know that Japan has not been in good terms with Korea?

I: Really?

K: The history is complicated. And there are hate speeches recently around Tokyo and there is a big Korean city in Tokyo. And some of the Japanese do demonstrations of hate speeches.

I: What’s the cause of it? Or at least, what are their complaints?

K: So many things! They think that some Korean people argue incorrect things.

I: So, is it a disagreement in political ideology?

K: And also what happened in the past.

I: Ah, yeah, history.

K: And also, we have a territory problem. The current Prime Minister in Japan tried to get along with the President in Korea. They are getting along with each other…now.

I: I mean, I’m guessing you don’t have these anti-Korean sentiments yourself.

K: No.

I: I mean, I’ve heard that, maybe in the past, maybe even now, that people describe Japan as a bit of a xenophobic culture. I don’t know how much you agree with that at all. It’s not a nice term to call any country, but I don’t know where exactly the rumors come from. But yeah, I’ve heard there’s this talk that, yeah, Japan is very closed to foreigners, in a way. They don’t find people outside of Japan too- They don’t get along well I guess.

K: No, no. It probably derived from the Edo period. And also, they don’t want to speak English. They feel shame when they make mistakes.

I: Alright, I think we can call it for now.

[yeswesaythings]

Modern Musical Machines

I: Alright, so music, DJing, all of that, remixes, when did you first get into that?

F: It was back in 2013 when I was still in Toronto, and then they had this college or dorm party and I said, “Well, I have some really good music. Do you guys want to like play from my laptop?” and they said, “Yeah, yeah, sure,” and then I played that. Before I do that, I’m thinking, “I can download some program for free from the Internet so I can actually mix in so that the music won’t stop in between.” So, that was like my first time ever trying to even mix any tracks.

I: So, what is it that interests you about it?

F: I really enjoy the people, they dance while I play the music. It’s not my music but I mix, keep rolling, keep playing, keep the music rolling and then it’s just really such a big satisfaction for me to see people, they just listen to the music I mixed and then dance on the music. Yeah.

I: So, is it a way for you to be part of the party without having to-

F: Be awkward, in a way for myself, that I don’t need to necessarily interact with anyone. But still, I’m that part of the party that they’re just not doing what normal people would do in a party.

I: I mean, what is it about parties that you don’t necessarily like too much?

F: They can get really loud and they’re really crowded. And people, they’re trying to talk or they’re trying to have a conversation, but the music’s so loud. And then it’s really painful to, you know, raise up your voice and then people are just like, “Sorry, what did you just say again?” Something like that, it’s not something for me. I can do that from time to time, like normal socializing, but it’s not something I would choose if I have a second choice or other options.

I: That’s something I never understood, that people go to these loud clubs to socialize, but wouldn’t it make more sense for people to go to quiet places to do that?

F: They’re loud places, I think, so that people there would open up themselves? Because the place is darker and noisier, so people, they have to open up themselves to in order to even draw any of the attention from someone else.

I: True, clubs are no place for soft spoken people. They would just be drowned out by the bass thumping.

F: And also, because it’s getting darker, people, maybe when they’re sober, when they’re outside, they can be really shy. But when you can’t actually see the other person, that can somehow make you braver.

I: I can see that.

F: Psychologically.

I: So, do you get a lot of times, people coming up to you while you’re DJing and try to, I don’t know, take over in a sense? Or they say, “Oh, you know, you should be doing this, or-“

F: Oh, you mean they give me advice? How to be a better DJ? Sometimes people will just ask me song requests, or could you play this soon, or can you play that? Or what song is this? Could you please play something different? But no one really wants to say, “Ah, no, no, you’re not playing the right type of music at all,” and then, “I want to tell you what the way is to be a better DJ.” Never really happened, but I do have some people that come to me, “Can you teach me how to DJ?” and then right after, “Tell me, tell me what you’re doing. I want to learn!” Yeah, that’s pretty much about it. I haven’t really encountered any really mean people, yet.

I: That’s good. Yet. That qualifier’s important. I guess, so what are your preferred genres of music that you like?

F: Well, if I only listen to music by myself in my room, I will pick some music that’s really kind of heavy, not much vocal in it and a very, like, strong bass type of music. So if I say strong bass, it could be dubstep, it could be bass house, it could be techno, it could be any type of music that has techno. Yeah, techno or tech-house music. Something similar to that.

I: But then that’s when you’re by yourself. But when you’re in a group of people, does it change?

F: Yeah, definitely, because I always play music not that I would love to play. I always choose music that I think the crowd would prefer to listen to. So again, I’m still guessing as a DJ, I’m still guessing this might be the right type of music for this type of group. Or this type of group and this time of the day. Or for this type of activity that they’re doing. So it varies.

I: So as a sort of cross cultural comparison, you were born in China, you moved to Canada, now you’re in Australia. Do you find musical preferences change with the geography?

F: I definitely come from a very different music background. I grew up in China, and my parents, they listened to a lot of classic music, whether it’s classic Chinese music or classic European orchestra music. Especially my dad, he loved the orchestra. He used to play- What’s the name of that? Flute?

I: Flute.

F: In the orchestra, that type of flute, though. It’s not a Chinese flute.

I: Like, the metal instrument with-? Yeah, the flute.

F: Okay, yeah, that’s called a flute as well. He used to play that. I grew up with listening to all this classic music. And also cinematic music, like music for the movies, yeah. And also, while I’m growing up in middle school, all my classmates, they have all this passion to K-Pop or J-Pop, Japanese or Korean, the celebrities. So that was quite an interesting experience for me, listening to a lot of K-Pop music. Even nowadays, I still because they are just very- Like, very unique, they stand out compared to any other country’s music. And then I moved to Canada. That’s where I sort of started doing my mixing. I wouldn’t even call myself DJ there, but I just really, really enjoy listening to different types of music. I go to different radio stations and then listen to music, what people would choose, and then think: Why is this track so popular, while other tracks people call “underground”? Yeah.

I: If I may ask a kind of stupid or strange question: There’s K-Pop and there’s J-Pop, but is there any kind of C-Pop?

F: Oh, Chinese you mean?

I: Yeah, does that exist?

F: Not that I know of. It’s a very interesting genre, if you have to say Chinese pop song because they change all the time. But for K-Pop, they have this style, this trend. They keep doing things that follow this trend for years. But Chinese, it’s just- It’s really hard to, like, defend one genre and that’s Chinese music and call it Chinese pop. I guess maybe that’s the problem or that’s a reason why there’s no C-Pop.

I: I mean, I think it’s more of a good thing, that it’s so versatile and all over the place. I mean, it seems a bit- I don’t the word I’m looking for is, but- Offensive’s not the word, but that people think of Japanese music and J-Pop’s initially what comes to mind, just that small circle of music, and with Korean music, just K-Pop comes to mind.

F: Yeah, they all have different genres of music. I really like Chinese traditional instrumental music because that has been there for, like, thousands of years and now people, they create in a different way and perform. For example, people play the erhu, or the guzheng, or even the Chinese flute. They have I don’t know how many years history behind that instrument. And then it’s really interesting to learn or listen to that music or even see the performers that do that music. I was hoping that maybe in the future, there could be more electronic producers that mix with all these, you know, Chinese elements into their music, so it could just be really different.

I: You could be the next producer that does that. That could be your signature thing, that it’s electronic dance music but it has classic Chinese flair to it. For your next remix, you know.

F: I’ll take that note.

I: Do you yourself play any musical instrument?

F: I started playing the electronic keyboard when I was four years old and I switched to piano when I was in grade 5. So nowadays, I’m still playing that, but I’m just not taking very, like, professional lessons anymore. They were expensive, the teacher I learned from. She’s a very good pianist, so per hour, you pay quite a lot of money for the lessons. But I always enjoyed playing the piano and keyboard. And besides that, I self-taught myself a little drum kit. I still want to learn how to play guitar. Maybe in the future, if I have any opportunity, someone can teach me how to play guitar. Yeah, that’s about it.

I: So, in the music scene in general, people always have their preferences but do you see any problems or do you have any complaints with the current state of music at the moment?

F: I mean, I’m not even a producer, I’m just a lover of music. Even if there’s any problem or if people are complaining that this music is getting too mainstream, and then there’s not enough people that become more creative with music that they do, I’m probably not the right type of person to be judgmental about it, as I’m nowhere near the professional level of music.

I: That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have an opinion on it. I mean, why do you think that people start to dislike music once it becomes mainstream? What is it about popularity that kills the interest for them?

F: I’ve been thinking about that question as well, why mainstream’s not good enough to keep playing. Mainstream, there’s still good music, but once it becomes popular, people are listening all the time, it just kills that freshness that people, they are seeking for as you are listening to music every day. You’re listening to hip-hop, you listening to house, like typical deep house. If that type of music becomes mainstream, all the famous producers are making the music, and for people, it’s really hard to avoid not listening to that type of music. And you’re not forced to listen to that type of music, but in the long run, people don’t say that they get sick of it, but they want to do something new. They want to have something different. And that’s when people realize, “Oh, those things have become mainstream,” and they want something, you know, not mainstream.

I: My complaints have always been you go onto a Top 20 radio station or something, you will hear the same song, you know, three times over the course of an hour, or something, it seems at times. And maybe the first time, you’re like, “Oh, hey, it’s this song!” By the second time, you’re like, “Okay, it’s this one again.” By the third time, you’re like, “I never want to hear this song ever again.”

F: Normally, when people listen to music, how do they even get to listen to the tracks? Of course, they will just go to a website or go to a playlist. They have all these popular musicians or producers, they have their songs or albums ready there, and you just click play. And then that’s just very easy for people to find those people because they’re very popular. But for other producers or musicians, they are not popular or famous at all. How can you find them? Through which way? So that’s why when people sometimes say they play “underground” music, it’s because they are not popular, essentially.

I: I mean, what is your take on underground music? How do you feel about it?

F: For now, my opinion, I think underground essentially just means opposite of mainstream. But also, underground means a completely different genre of what people listen to today, like right now, which is opposite of mainstream, again. And people who are making those tracks, they’re not very famous producers or musicians. Again, this is the opposite of mainstream.

I: And you were mentioning that people, to find music, they go online, they go and search it out. And since people can just put a bunch of music on their phone, hook it up in their car, do you think that radio stations will be taking a hit in the coming years as a result?

F: Radio stations will definitely give people a lot of, like, sound selections. But also, it’s a problem for radio stations that they can’t play something that people barely know, because otherwise, it’s hard to have that connection, when people don’t recognize a song or none of the songs in a playlist. It’s hard for them to even have this idea of how to listen or, how do you call that, like taste this music? Because they don’t recognize it, they’ve never heard this music from anywhere. It’s hard for people to accept.

I: Do people listen to the radio merely to hear songs that they’ve already heard before? Is it just that feeling of familiarity?

F: Most of the times when I happen to be there, people go to radio stations and listen to music that they’ve actually heard before. And it’s very popular songs and it’s always, maybe, Top 100.

I: See, I don’t understand that because I like going to Soundcloud and then juts picking a random genre and then just looking at the new and recent stuff and just playing through it there because it’s stuff I haven’t heard before. It’s new, upcoming things, whereas the whole hot, Top 100 stuff, it just seems like that’s going to be sticking around for a few months. I’m going to hear that one way or another. But it’s the stuff that you don’t hear, it just seems that someone could make a radio station that was honestly just filled with new stuff that people were coming out with and that they just kind of cycled through. I mean, I know a lot of radio stations, one of their big selling points is “very few repeats!” or anything like that, but you could have a radio station that absolutely does no repeats, that it’s constantly on a cycle of showing completely new stuff. So possibly it came out that day or within the week, but then it’s never played again after that, just to put it out there.

F: Well, the thing for people that listen to some track on a radio station that they’ve never heard before, even if it’s from someone very famous- We’re talking about famous singers or famous musicians- When you’ve never heard that track before, it’s hard to build up some personal bond to that music, to that song? But for people who have listened to it, “Oh, I have heard this song from the mall that I went to yesterday,” or, “I heard this song from a TV show from a few days ago,” and they just build up some- You know, “This song, I recognize from somewhere, and then I know the lyrics, and then I know what to do and I know what’s going to happen.” It’s those kinds of things that people are looking for when they are playing their jam. You know, some people say, “Oh, this is my jam! I love this song. Blah blah blah.” It’s a weird thing to say, why did a song suddenly become so popular? Why does everyone love it? It’s really just hard to explain. But again, for radio stations, if they play something really new without telling people the background, even those from vary famous singers or musicians, it just doesn’t really make a difference to the underground music.

I: There is, I guess, a common consensus that pop music is very bland and kind of predictable, that it’s always a 4/4 beat with a predictable chord progression and everything like that. Do you agree with that?

F: Yeah, basically, that’s what dance music sounds like. Like, a cheeky tune and then loud bass and then some rap or some, you know, vocal and that’s it.

I: I mean, do you necessarily think that predictability is a bad thing?

F: It’s not a bad thing for people who are just getting used to all these tunes. For example, dubstep is not really- It’s way far away from the mainstream chart anymore because dubstep’s really hard to dance with, even with Skrillex back in the day. Again, Skrillex used a very particular- Basically, he changed what dubstep was supposed to sound like. And for people, electronic dance music, EDM, they want something that’s very catchy, not too complex, not too heavy, but also easy to dance to. So every producer realized that and then just tried to close to that point. So before you can even create something new, if you have the pattern in front of you, that just makes it easier to accept your new song.

I: But do you think that kills creativity in a sense?

F: Definitely. Definitely. Because if you are just trying to make something like, “Oh, I want people to dance and I know what they want,” and to plan something, before you even realize it, is this what you want or do you just make something people find really easy to dance to? So it killed the creativity.

I: I’ve heard some songs that they sound more like a genre than a song, that it sounded like someone was looking to make a certain type of song rather than their own creation. So the song was really obvious when you heard it, like, oh this is just someone who was trying to make a drum n’ bass song. This was someone that was trying to make a dubstep song. It loses any individuality where they might be mixing things together and it’s just, no, someone was just trying to fill a formula and make a certain song. And that’s when it starts to get bland. There’s no uniqueness to it. It’s just, yeah, check the requirements. It’s got that, it’s got that, it’s got that-

F: Tick, tick, tick.

I: But there’s no special awards, there’s no gold plating on it or anything. Something else, a complaint I hear a lot is electronic music, the artist that creates it, because it doesn’t require “real” instruments, in a sense, those people really aren’t musicians and that it’s a lot easier to do than traditional music. What is your take on that?

F: My take on that, what is the definition of being a musician?

I: Well, I guess that’s under contest as well, because I completely disagree with it. Because to say, “Oh, you’re not using ‘real’ instruments, that means that you’re not a musician,” well, you know-

F: Musicians, essentially, I think it’s making music. The person who makes music, that’s a musician.

I: But then people argue what is music? Some people don’t think that rap is music. “Oh, they’re just basically talking over a beat,” or something like that, which is an extreme simplification of what it is. But I guess that’s a question: What is music to you?

F: Music is just something when you’re not talking and you’re trying to give people information.

I: Well, that could be a book.

F: True, but in a song, making noise, but you’re not talking.

I: But what about songs that have people talking, though? They’re singing.

F: Oh, you mean rap?

I: Or music as a whole. It’s extremely hard to define what it is because it’s so different in all of its different facets.

F: True, what is music? I never really thought about that question because it’s really obvious when you hear things and you know that is music

I: The 20th century, early 20th century was big on extremely modern and experimental sounds, so you had a lot of things that, okay, these are sounds but it doesn’t necessarily sound…good? It’s extremely chaotic and dissonant and it’s just a cacophony of a bunch of strange noises. But does that exclude it from becoming music, if it doesn’t sound good? Is it necessarily music?

F: Music, it can have beats, it can have melody it can have vocals, it can have lyrics, it can have anything.

I: But even with those things that you just mentioned, if I just had a chord progression on a piano. There’s no lyrics, there’s no beat, there’s no melody, there’s no singing. But is that music.

F: Which way do you mean piano?

I: Just a chord progression of, you know, I – IV – V – IV. I mean, I guess that’s sort of a melody. But then if you just had harmony by itself, just basically a fairly simple thing.

F: But that’s still melody, though.

I: Yeah, I mean, I guess, where does melody begin and where does harmony end.

F: I just realized you might have just asked a really big question: What is music?

I: What is music is huge. I mean, one definition that kind of works is it’s just ordered sound. So it’s not necessarily the sounds that are made, as long as the intention was to have it in a certain way. But even then, I might argue, wind chimes, for example. I mean, would you consider that music?

F: That’s just sound, but does it have emotion to it?

I: Emotion? So, is that an important part of music? That it conveys emotion of some way or another?

F: Yeah, because music is all made by human beings and the purpose of making that music or track or whatever, you have your own purpose of it. You want to tell people, show your emotions, you have all these feelings you want to put in, you know, this thing called music.

I: Here’s something, though. There are computers out there that write music. Not necessarily that there’s a person behind it; that the computer itself has written original pieces. There’s no person behind that. Is that music?

F: Have they done that before?

I: Yeah, actually I’ll show you. I’ll link it into this. So, when you have computers that can make music just as easy as a person can, but there’s no emotion behind it, there’s no intent behind it, is that music?

F: I was thinking that since robots are made by humans, the reason that it even exists and is there to create music was all because of humans. But the fact that robots, they can actually choose what they like or they don’t like, and then put the notes in their pieces, it’s really quite impressive. I mean, it might be happening in the future, that more and more people rely on robots and then robots write their own music instead of humans.

I: Would that necessarily be a bad future?

F: I don’t know. I can’t speak for the future.

I: I mean, think of it this way: What if it was the present. What if you were just told now that all the music that you enjoy was not written by people? It was actually written by computers that had put it together. How would you feel about that?

F: I would feel really mad for maybe a few minutes because some of the tracks I have listened to, I had a really deep connection with the person or the person I thought was a person who made the track. But if it turns out to be just a robot that has done all this stuff, well, it’s proved obviously that robots can do a really fantastic job of creating music, but I’d also feel sad that there aren’t that many good producers out there anymore to put their time and sit there, creating their own music.

I: I mean, something to note, that just because there was no emotion behind creating it doesn’t mean that the emotions you felt listening to it weren’t any less real. You still felt a connection but it was just towards a robot or something, something that didn’t have an intention or emotion behind it, just like you can- Well, this might be a bit controversial, but you can look out at nature and see that this is extremely beautiful. You know, from high up on a mountain, you see the scenery, you see the landscape and you think this is beautiful. But there was no intention of that. There’s no meaning behind it, but does it make the emotions that you feel as a result of it any less real? Some would say that, “Well, this was designed,” versus evolved, but that’s a whole other argument. But I think it’s similar to that. I mean, a lot of art is similar in that you can go to a museum and it’s just a blank canvas on the wall and people like to criticize modern art because, “Oh, it didn’t take any talent and it’s just very basic, bland stuff that someone put on a wall and called it art.” But again, and it’s the same question of just because there was no intention behind it, does it mean your emotions toward it are any less real? Something as simple as that still managed to evoke emotions out of people. It made them angry, it made them upset, it made them disappointed.

F: Yeah, of course my emotions are real. My emotions, that feel all the tracks I have connected to, are real. But if it’s just a robot who composed, who produced all these tracks, it’s hard for me to have that connection with the producer who could actually be a human but turns out to be a robot. A lot of people, they listen to the producer and they want to, you know, maybe one day meet them, go to their concerts and then maybe want hear more stories behind them and how come they created this genre. Just really interesting background stories for those tracks or the genre, why they even exist nowadays. But if it’s just a robot, there’s no story behind it. It just makes it really dry. Of course those who are listening, our emotions are real but who created it? There’s nothing much for us to keep going and keep exploring.

I: So for you, music, among other things, needs a human element to it? That it can’t be created out of nothing. There must be someone behind it that basically made the music.

F: Well, you’ve shown me obviously robots can make music.

I: But even though they can- But for it to be meaningful, in a sense? I mean, a robot made music. Would you listen to it?

F: I would.

I: You would? Okay, but you wouldn’t have the same connection with it?

F: Because I can’t just have a conversation with a robot. Or the emotional level.

I: I guess that gets into the topic of AI. What if this robot is completely capable of speech and you can talk to it?

F: Are you talking about the robots that have their own thoughts, their own feelings?

I: Feelings and thoughts are one thing, but I guess if a robot can speak, it can think in a way. Not necessarily feel emotions or anything like that. But there are robots out there that have the ability to basically hold conversations with people.

F: Because they’re programmed to do that.

I: But it’s not necessarily in a way that is…simple? And just in a way, I mean, you can think of your own mind as sort of a very, very complex computer program. You only have so many words you have to choose from. And you know ways that they can fit together as sentences and you hear certain things and certain sentences and there are automatic go-to response to those things, right?

F: Yeah.

I: Like that, yes, you know.

F: So again, that’s how they program the robots, as close as to human, how their mind works, and then give the response or how they keep the conversation going as a human. And that’s why they’re trying to create a robot to do the very basic things that a human would do, like have a conversation. But what humans do is they make mistakes. A robot won’t make any mistake because they’re programmed to do that, unless they are broken.

I: Absolutely true. Robots can still make mistakes, things break now and then. Do you ever think that- Well, this started as a music conversation but went into robots, but I have no problem with that. Do you think that robots will ever get to the point where they have the same emotional capacity as people?

F: That’s a bit of sci-fi movie. But I mean, again, anything’s possible. Maybe one day, they’ll find a solution that can actually make robots to feel things, to have their own thoughts. But then the questions will then start from there. We’re not even talking about how you’re going to deal with them when they’re having their own feelings and own thoughts. But how would you even define a robot by then, as a thing that has their own feelings and he can do all these jobs and probably way better than human individuals. How are you going to compare the robot with a human? Because it’s literally, like, another species which are way better than human beings.

I: And then going back to the original question, suppose we have this hypothetical robot that can think, can feel, has emotions, is nearly just like a human in every way, and he or she or it- I guess, would robots have genders? I don’t know, but it makes music. Could you have a connection with it then, with the robot?

F: With the robot?

I: Mhm, it has emotions, now it has intentions behind making the music and everything like that. It’s not a human but it has human elements to it. So, these are the tough questions.

F: My answer would be maybe in the beginning, I’m still struggling to accept the fact that it’s still a robot. But since he or she has those feelings to actually create all this music, then I will say yes. I will have a connection with this robot.

I: This got deep. I like it. Were there other musical topics that you wanted to explore? There’s plenty.

F: Okay, so recently, or the past few years, the mainstream music has been changing. So before, like maybe, I don’t even really know, maybe ten years ago or eight years ago even, it was dubstep. Mainstream dubstep was everywhere. Skrillex. People know his name. And then it changed to house. I think house. And then a different type of house music that was quiet. Even now, people are getting more and more into deep house, more people prefer to create deep house. It’s just so easygoing. I really can’t explain why this phenomenon is happening like that. It might have something to do with people’s food, with people’s, you know, lifestyle. With people, they’ve been changing this point of view, what’s the beauty, and then what’s the fashion? And now mainstream is definitely, definitely trap. Trap is between, I think, dubstep and hip-hop.

I: Which do you think causes which? Do you think that people decide what’s mainstream or does the music itself decide what people like?

F: The more people listening to this genre, the more popular this genre is going to be. They always have, like, data, base data, on the internet and people realize, “Oh, more and more people tend to listen to this type of track.”

I: So it’s kind of circular. So that something comes out and then people listen to it-

F: It’s like fashion. This year, the fashion color’s black, next year’s color is red. And the fashion designer, they will have this very, you know, sensitive feelings of, “Oh, I know what’s going to, you know, become really popular for people,” so they can design something for people to wear. Same thing in music. All these producers, they sense what people have been listening to, what they want more of in the future, the recent future, so that they can make something new. Not necessarily to do the things that have already been there, but make something, change something, so that people will be like, “Yes, is perfect for us and we’d love to listen to more.”

I: Yeah, I guess I agree with that. I don’t know what to say to that. You make a fair point. Alright, I guess that wraps it up then. Thank you for your time!

F: Thank you for your time as well.

[yeswesaythings]

Hello Korea or Hell Korea?

I: Okay, so tell me about Korea.

D: It’s very comprehensive, so do you have any questions or any specific areas that you want to talk about?

I: First, compare it to Australia.

D: Let me see, Korea is very competitive. That’s all I can say. And it’s really small compared to Australia, and Australia is like, thirty five times bigger than Korea, the size of their land. So they are really- Like, geographically and culturally, they are really competitive. A person in Korea, they are so- Like, Australia’s kind of laid back, so they are kind of surrounded by nature, environment, so they seem to enjoy their life. They don’t have to compete. They do what they want. But in Korea, we are getting westernized and kind of Americanized in some sense. But we are kind of conservative because of the historical background. So we used to become invaded by different nations throughout the whole period of Korea. So, Japan and the north and some countries that I cannot remember right now. So, they are kind of conservative but they are really open about various kinds of things these days because they want to develop. Like, Koreans want to develop. Yeah, that’s all I can say right now.

I: So, do you see the westernization and the Americanization of Korea as a bad thing, a good thing? Are you fairly neutral about it?

D: I think it’s a good thing, but there are some things that we have to fix because we are not really critical. So, we have to be kind of critical. So, we have to take what’s useful and ditch what’s useless. But we are kind of aimless these days because we try to follow all the American stuff and western things. So I think it’s a good thing but we are in a transitional period right now.

I: Okay, so I mean, for example, right now, what are some good things coming in?

D: A lot of development. IT and agricultural and maritime and in different areas, we are developing very well. So we are trying to create our own areas and specialty. I think it’s a good thing. We basically adopted a kind of system from western countries, yeah, especially from America. We are creating.

I: So what are some of the negative aspects that you don’t like?

D: So, we used to be kind of hierarchical and very competitive but we are getting westernized. But it makes people kind of two-faced, like pretentious sometimes. So we are kind of conservative inside but we are kind of open-minded, like superficially.

I: Okay, so people act on the outside in a western way but still hold the old conservative values internally?

D: Yeah, they kind of clash. The older generation, they are really conservative, so they tell the younger generation what to do and what not to do, but younger generations- I mean, youth generations, they do whatever they want. They are exposed to different aspects of the world, a lot of cultures. They are just really exposed. But older generations, they don’t really like it, they don’t want to take it in. So there’s a clash.

I: So, I know, unfortunately, one of the main reasons people know Korea is your neighbors up north. In Korea itself, is there a present fear from up north or is the feeling that it’s mostly empty threats?

D: It’s a very complex question.

I: Okay, I like complex answers.

D: So, in the north, they put a lot of pressure on us, on the south, and we have been receiving a lot of provocations from the north, but- How should I say this? Yeah, we South Koreans, we are kind of half afraid of the north. So the government, a lot of soldiers at the front, they are really afraid, they are really alert about the south against the north. But we South Koreans, just normal citizens, we don’t really care about what’s going on. But we stay alert, but we don’t try to do anything. I mean, we’re just normal people, because there’s nothing we can do.

I: So it’s sort of in the back of people’s minds for the most part? They’re aware but they’re not terrified?

D: They seem to be terrified but they don’t really care about it, yeah, I think. Personally, I don’t really care about the north, even though they pose a lot of threats to us, but- You know, the relation is really complex. It’s not the only problem, about the north and the south. America is involved, China’s involved and Japan’s involved, too. And some other countries too. So, it’s like a mutual sensation that we have to tackle. Matter, I think.

I: Do you see it being resolved within your lifetime?

D: What do you mean by resolved?

I: Do you think during your lifetime, that people from the north and south, that the border will be erased? That you'll have a single Korea and that the culture will become one state instead of two? I mean, do you think the dictatorship will be overthrown in the near future?

D: I don’t think so. I don’t know. Any other questions?

I: Plenty. Talk about your schooling before coming to the university here.

D: Okay, where should I start? Okay, middle school and high school? So basically, there is- Do you know hagwon? It’s a Korean word. It’s called an academy. So usually after school, I know in America, they have a lot of extra activities, like soccer and sports, things like that. But they all exist in Korea, but we don’t really have much time to play sports. So we are kind of supposed to go to an academy right after school. So we have to take, like, a lot of extra classes to make up for what we learned.

I: So this is the competitiveness part of it?

D: Yeah, it’s really competitive. So, when I was in middle school, I went to school around 8:00 AM but I usually finished around 3:00 PM, but right after that, most of the students, they go to a hogwan academy. So they take extra classes. So I used to finish academy at 9:00 PM, even though I was in middle school. And when I first entered high school, I went to school at 8:00 AM, but we had lunch and dinner at school. And we basically finished high school at 9:00 or 10:00 PM. Every single day expect the weekend.

I: And that’s regular high school? That’s wasn’t with the academy?

D: Yeah, regular high school.

I: Wow, so how many classes were you taking a day?

D: Regular classes were about ten. Like, class one, class two, things like that. It went until class nine or ten. Right after that, we finished school at 10:00 PM, we go to the academy.

I: So you still went to the academy after?

D: Yeah, it’s not mandatory but our parents, they kind of want us to go, because they don’t want to be left behind. They don’t want us to be left behind. They want us to excel, and they want us to surpass other students.

I: So how long did you go to academy after high school?

D: How long? You mean how many hours?

I: Yeah, how many hours?

D: Maybe just one or two hours, yeah, because we need to balance. We need to, you know, go to sleep at midnight so we can, you know, wake up early in the morning and go to school!

I: So, I mean, how many hours of sleep were you getting a night?

D: For me, I used to sleep around six or seven hours, but we spend most of our time in school.

I: I mean, I’m guessing that was extremely rough.

D: Yeah, but there was also physical activity, like, every day but usually about one hour. So during break, like the lunch break or dinner break, so we used to have some time. We can just chitchat and talk to people and we can just hang around. But it’s a very short time, limited time.

I: Did you have homework?

D: We didn’t have a lot of homework, but yeah, we did, we had some homework.

I: Like, when did you find time to do it?

D: I don’t know. On the weekends. So basically, there are school exams, too. So, America has the SAT, right, to enter college. But we have the Korean SAT, too. It’s called the Suneung. So yeah, I can let you know the Korean word later. So we have to be really excellent at different kinds of subjects to go to a good university, prestigious universities, so we have to be good at everything.

I: So the American SAT is reading, writing, math and science, I believe? Or maybe there’s only three subjects. So were those the same subjects?

D: So basically, in high school, there are two parts. Students can choose an art part and a mathematics part. I don’t know what to call it in English because it’s, like, a Korean term. So art, we study like, languages, sociology, social studies and things like that. But in the mathematical part, they study science and mathematics. They go deeply, they talk, study deeply. So I was in the art part, humanities. So basically, there are, like, common subjects that both students have to take for the Suneung, for the Korean SAT: Mathematics, Korean reading and English.

I: So English was required as part of curriculum?

D: Yeah, a requirement, and Korean too. Korean reading. So, depending on the parts- So, for me, I took social studies, like history and ethics and philosophy and things like that. So we just have to be good at everything to enter a really good university. So for me, I was good at English and mathematics and I was really good at social studies but I blew Korean reading, so that’s why I wasn’t able to a relatively higher university.

I: I mean, I think this is a fairly nice university, though. I think you won in the end. So, you’re studying International Relations. So, why did you choose that?

D: I don’t really know. My first major was politics, but I wanted to do something else like business, but my school wasn’t really high enough to choose the major that I wanted. So I chose politics. I didn’t actually know why I chose it. I could’ve chosen something else. So if I got an opportunity again, and if I can travel back in time, I would definitely choose something else like French literature or something because I’m into languages. But when I first entered university, I studied politics, but I didn’t really like it because I didn’t really know why I had to study, so I changed my major. So, before coming here, I succeeded in transporting to the major that I’m in right now.

I: Okay, so you don’t really- I mean, do you plan on continuing with International Relations or-?

D: Oh yeah, I do. So, the major that I’m in, we study various kinds of things in my home university. So we study, like, culture and history and media and economies and it’s really comprehensive. But it could sound like we are scratching the surface, but I think that it’s really good for me to learn, kind of, comprehensive subjects so that I can, you know, expand my horizons and I can know different kinds of knowledge. So, I can choose some specific area and I can study. So for me, I think it’s really good. It was a good decision.

I: So, now, right after high school, did you go straight into uni or did you go to the military service?

D: Oh, so I don’t know, like, if there’s also this same kind of system in America. So, we take the Korean SAT. It’s once a year. I don’t know, I think you have three SATs per year, right? I don’t know.

I: You can take it as much as you want, but I think there are many options to take it.

D: Okay, so especially in November, at the end of high school, like when we are in third grade, we take the SAT, the Korean SAT. It’s compulsory. So, come can avoid it, but if they avoid it, they cannot enter university. So we have to take it. It takes place in November. So I took it and my Korean part was really horrible, so I couldn’t go to the school that I wanted to go to, so I took the Korean SAT again. So, it was like a gap year. So I didn’t enter university, I studied again for one year because, you know, the test takes place once a year. So I had to wait one more year.

I: Okay, so you could only take it during that time, with no other options. Okay.

D: So I entered university at the age of 21, like maybe 20 internationally. So I finished my freshman year and I took a break and during the break, I just did a lot of activities and studied on my own. So after that, I joined the military.

I: So, I mean, I don’t remember if you were saying before, is the two years compulsory or is it optional?

D: Compulsory? What, the Korean SAT?

I: No, no, joining the military.

D: Oh, it’s compulsory.

I: So you have to be in the military for two years.

D: Yeah, it varies depending on which position you are in. So basically, there are four systems, branches: Army, navy and air force. And Marine. So I chose navy. In the army, they basically serve 21 months, Marines, too. But air force, they have to serve 24 months in total. We navy, we seamen, we serve like 23 months. It used to be, like, a three year duration in total back in the past, like five or six years ago. But it changed.

I: Any reason why?

D: The people who already finished their military service, and after that, a lot of younger generations, too, they kind of voiced out a lot because they think it’s a waste of time, getting stuck in the military base for like three years.

I: I mean, did you enjoy your time in the navy?

D: It’s pretty hard to answer. So, like I said before, my time in the military was like a rollercoaster.

I: My dad was in the navy and he spent his time in submarines, so he would underwater for long periods of time, and he said, “It was like being in jail with the added risk of drowning.” So I mean, it wasn’t the most fun time for him. I’m guessing for you, it probably wasn’t awful but it wasn’t completely enjoyable?

D: Both. So, I learned a lot but I kind of lost a lot at the same time. So, I got my back hurt in the navy. So, basically, do you know the Navy Seals?

I: Yeah.

D: Yeah, I know it’s like American Special Forces. There’s also that kind of force in Korea. It’s called UDT. UDT is like a Navy Seal, it’s really similar to a Navy Seal. We also adopted a lot of systems from the Navy Seals. So I wanted to go to the forces, so I could apply for it during my period of the military. So I trained on my own, so hard. So during that training, I got hurt. So I wasn’t able to join the UDT.

I: Are you okay now?

D: It’s kind of squeaky sometimes, my back, so I just need to stretch and do a lot of workouts. I need to gain some more muscle on my back.

I: Does it prevent you from doing things on the average day?

D: Not anymore.

I: Okay, that’s good.

D: So yeah, anyway, I’ve been through a lot. I was an interpreter in the navy, so I kind of translated, that was my position. So, in a sense, I learned a lot. I could kind of maximize my English. So before that, I thought I was good at English, but when I first entered the navy, there were a lot of English interpreters. So, more than 90% of the people I met- Of course, obviously they’re all Korean, but they have been abroad. So one guy that I met, he wasn’t too good at Korean, too, because he lived in America for like seventeen or eighteen years. So one of my friends met him in the training camp. So, he asked him some questions to break the ice in Korean, but he said, “Oh, I don’t speak Korean. Sorry.” That kind of thing happens. So, the people that I met, they were all good at English. So, my English was sort of like this, it was really horrible, relatively horrible, but during my military service, I could just improve it. So, in a sense, it was really good, but on the other hand, during two years, there’s so many things you can do, you know? So you can do whatever you want for two years. So, you can travel around the world and you can just study what you want to do. But being stuck in the military for two years, it’s a totally different matter. So I cannot say that it was totally good or bad. Personally, I think, yeah, it was an experience.

I: Okay, so, I mean, this is kind of a vague question, but are there things about Korea that you don’t think the western world really knows too much about?

D: I think there’s one thing. It’s a cultural trait. So, we Koreans have collectivism, so we move as a group. So Americans, westerners, they’re more, like, individual. So they don’t want to bother people and they’re really personal. So, language has their own things as well, you know, like it’s kind of incorporated into languages, too. In terms of the English language, for example, we don’t say “our parents”, right? Because they’re my parents. So, in Korea, we say, “our parents”. “Our school”, “our parents”, “our friend.”

I: So you don’t really talk about the individual too much, it’s very much-

D: It’s really collective.

I: You sort of reference yourself as the community as a whole.

D: Yeah, so it’s kind of strong.

I: So, I mean, I guess you haven’t been here too long, but you don’t see that even in Australia? That there’s more of the individualism here as well?

D: Yeah, a lot of individualism. But you have seen some Asians up here, right? Chinese and Singaporeans, they move as a group. Have you seen that?

I: I have noticed that, especially at a lot of the O-Week events, that the international student numbers dwindled as the week went along.

D: And I have not seen many Asians during a lot of programs. They’re all Australians or people from America. So, yeah, a lot of Asians, they have collectivism. It’s really prevalent in Asian countries. So, Korea has that trait, too. So, whatever we do, we always move together. It’s not compulsory but we just automatically do that. So even when it comes to going to the bathroom- So, we just go, “Hey, I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll come back right away.” That’s how it works, but in Korea, “Hey, you want to go to the bathroom?” Girls do that especially.

I: So is it guys as well even, in Korea?

D: Guys sometimes do that. But it would be kind of weird in western countries, especially America, “Hey, you want to go to the bathroom?” What?

I: I mean, it’s generally known that women go to the bathroom in a group, but that’s because it’s more of a protection, security measure.

D: Yeah, protection and when they go to the bathroom, I don’t much about what girls do in the bathroom. I think they gossip and chitchat a lot, I don’t know. Yeah, I think girls are all the same, they all do that I think. In a sense.

I: Maybe. Can’t say I’ve met every single girl.

D: So, to summarize it, collectivism is a massive trait that Korea has. Any questions? Yeah, there are so many things that I can convey but I don’t where to start.

I: Yeah, I mean, what’s another- There’s so many things I could ask.

D: Yeah, I’m presuming you haven’t met a lot of Koreans and you don’t know much about Korean culture.

I: Unfortunately, no. So, this is the perfect opportunity. I mean, let’s go with something fairly light. So, the Korean food. What’s the diet like over there?

D: Korean food, we basically eat rice with vegetables. Yeah, we also love pork and meats, but we didn’t used to do that. We didn’t use to like them, but it’s kind of westernized these days. So, we adopted a lot of things from the western countries. So, especially pork and meats, like beef. So we eat a lot. It’s also about a cultural thing because collectivism also dominates the kind of food culture. So basically, when we eat something, we go as a group. So, we go to a restaurant as a group, we order things. It depends, but we basically do that.

I: So, is it rare to see someone alone in a restaurant?

D: It’s rare. Yeah, I can say that. Yeah, a lot of people do, but it could be kind of rare in terms of total population. Yeah, in the school cafeteria, a lot of people eat, you know, alone, by themselves, but in general, in regular restaurants, they go as a group.

I: Okay, in regards to collectivism, how is it with strangers? For example, if a group of people is at a restaurant and there’s another group of people, how likely are they to, you know, form one group together, like, “Hey guys, how are you doing? Let’s go eat together as a group.”

D: Okay, let me confess. That doesn’t really happen in Korea. So, for example, here, in the case of Australia- I haven’t been to America, I think it’s the same. So, when you move around and meet a stranger, someone that you know, we smile. So, “Hey, how are you?” We just go past each other, right, to avoid being awkward. So, it’s, “Hey, how’s it going,” and you do your own things, right? But in Korea, we just don’t care about each other, even when we just move around, walk on the street.

I: So, if you just pass someone on the sidewalk, it’s not really too standard for you to look at them and say, you know, “Hello, how are you doing?”

D: If you say that, you could become labeled as a weird person.

I: Oh, wow, really? Okay. I know that’s kind of common in large cities, especially in America, for people to just completely ignore each other. You just walk on the street and you just look ahead and keep on walking.

D: So, anyway, “How are you?” that exact sentence, it’s really prevalent, right? It’s really dominant in basic conversation when it comes to just breaking the ice or something else.

I: Yeah, just a common greeting.

D: Yeah, “How are you?” Even when you enter a store, the clerk says, “How are you? How are you doing?” In Korea, we barely say that, we never say that. We say, “Hello.” That’s all. It could be a different language system but we barely say, “How are you?” It’s pretty hard to translate as well. We say, “Hello” and “Can I help you?” That’s all.

I: Something, at least in western cultures, I don’t know if it’s something you know or not, but when people ask, you know, “How are you,” it’s almost more of a standard greeting that doesn’t have much weight behind it. So if someone asks, “How are you?” they don’t actually care how you are.

D: It’s kind of a cliché.

I: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of like you’re expected to say, you know, “Hello, how are you?” You’re expected to say, “Good. How are you?” Yeah, no one wants to hear, “How are you doing?” “Ugh, my day was awful, and you know, I stepped on my cat.” You know, no one wants to hear that. I mean, it’s interesting. So basically, in Korea, they sidestep that entirely.

D: And just saying hello, it’s another way to say, “How are you?” Yeah, and I think it’s pretty hard to define. We are all polite. So when it comes to saying, “How are you,” just saying hello, we all respect but it’s a different culture. And what can I say? Yeah, there are more things I want to talk about. Yeah, we don’t really welcome strangers. There are also a lot of parties and things like that, like western parties too, because are kind of getting westernized. But traditionally, we have been kind of really awkward with strangers. I think it stems from just the historical background. Like I said, Korea used to be colonized by Japan and the north invaded Korea. So we have been attacked a lot. It’s still going. So, a kind of community has formed in Korea, you know what I’m saying? So it’s kind of passed from generation to generation.

I: Now when you say strangers, do you mean people that you don’t know in Korea or foreigners from other countries?

D: Okay, so basically, we are not really open- Well, we are getting open, but we don’t welcome strangers, like, Koreans, regardless of who they are. But also, we are kind of xenophobic. So we are afraid of foreigners.

I: America has that a bit, too.

D: Ah, okay. So, it’s not because we are really afraid of foreigners, like because they could attack us, it’s not about that matter. It’s about Koreans suck at English. So, for example, when a foreigner- There’s a Korean girl and there’s a foreigner. So he asks this girl some questions about the directions, but she’s not really good at English so she kind of freaks out. “Oh, sorry, I have to go,” so they just go. Yeah, that’s really common in Korea.

I: Okay, so it’s not necessarily that they’re afraid of the person. It’s just that they wouldn’t be able to-

D: Language barrier. Because most Koreans think they are not really good at English. So if they kind of stutter or if they convey something else, they think foreigners could be bothered. So I think that plays a role.

I: It’s the fear of making a mistake.

D: Yeah, the fear of making a mistake is also prevalent in Korea. So, like I said, we are kind of taught to be really perfect at every kind of subject, too. So, that also plays a huge role.

I: I know that when test scores from all over the world come out, the stereotype is that, you know, China and Korea and Japan are always the ones that are exceling at everything. So, I mean, it’s good in terms of that, but I can definitely see how that could be extremely stressful to live in.

D: Yeah, anyways, so you fear everything. So, once you come to Korea, you’ll see how things work in Korea. So these days, it’s getting extremely hard to get a job. So, it’s a real tradition and it’s a custom. In middle school, we are taught to go to high school. It’s not mandatory, but it’s-

I: It’s not mandatory to go to high school?

D: Oh, I think it’s mandatory to go to high school, but it’s not mandatory to enter university. So more than 90% of Korean students, they all enter university, more than 90%. So, I don’t know, in America, 60% or-?

I: I know it’s not 90%.

D: Yeah, because they don’t have to, right? So they can just get a casual job and they can travel and they do whatever they want to, but here, there are a lot of societal pressures that push us to what I said. So in middle school, we are taught to enter a good high school. So when we enter high school, we are taught to enter a good university. So when we enter university, we are taught to get a proper job, a decent job. So when we get a proper job, decent job, we are taught to get married and we are taught to have kids. So it’s a cycle, a vicious cycle.

I: You’re constantly lectured on your next step in life, and then once you have kids, you tell them, “Go to school, and then-“. Yeah…

D: It’s definitely not a rule, but we just do it for some reason, I don’t know.

I: It’s very similar in America. The “normal” cycle of life: You go to school, you go to college, you get married, you get a job, you have kids and that’s kind of the usual cycle. And so, I mean, today or nowadays, it’s coming to a point where people are putting off getting married and getting kids, but it’s more schooling instead. So, people go to university, they get their bachelor’s degree, and then they go and get their graduate degree, they get their PhD. They worry and focus about jobs. They mainly focus more on their personal life before getting more people involved in it. So you have people that are marrying later and later, like in their thirties, and it’s something people have noticed. It’s especially prevalent in the criticisms from the religious right because it’s part of the Christian tradition that a man and a woman go and marry and then have kids and then if you don’t do that, you’re seen as sort of an outsider, a deviant from it. You’re not going to be publically chastised for being single or unmarried, but it’s sort of an unspoken rule, this is what you’re expected to do, so I can definitely relate with what you guys go through.

D: So, anyways, these days, younger generations, we call Korea “Hell Korea.”

I: Hell Korea?

D: Yeah, Hell Korea, literally. That’s what we call Korea today. It’s a really, like, famous term right now because it’s extremely hard to get a job. I don’t know much about it because I’m not a jobseeker right now. There’s a long way to go to graduate. So, yeah, it’s pretty hard. I think it’s easier to get a job overseas.

I: Do you think, once you’ve graduated from university, that you’ll go overseas to get a job or would you go back to Korea?

D: Yeah, personally I want to get a job overseas. It’s not because I hate Korea. I’m proud of being Korean and I’m proud of being born in Korea, but I just want to explore and I just want to see how things works outside of Korea. I just want to grasp some more opportunities. Because, it’s not a rule that since I’m Korean, that I have to be in Korea. It’s not a rule. So I just want to get a job overseas.

I: I’ve talked with some other people that say that the economy or the government is rough in their country, but so they’re conflicted on whether or not they want to leave or stay because while there are those downsides to it, all their family is there at the same time as well. And so it’s the conflict between, do you go for your own benefit while leaving your family behind, or do you stay with your family to help support them, but then basically get rid of any independence that you have? But okay, so any particular countries you’re looking at?

D: America used to be the first country that I wanted to live in before, because I wanted to study in America when I was in high school. But I couldn’t afford it because of different kinds of issues and financial matters and things like that. So, yeah, several years ago, I wanted to live in America, but these days I’ve kind of changed my mind. So, I study French these days, so if I’m really good enough, if my French is decent enough to live in France, I would definitely live in France if possible. But I also want to live in America right now. So France, America, and Australia are countries that I want to live in. But I don’t know which one I should pick.

I: Well, yeah, it’s definitely something where you’d have to visit each one before deciding. I mean, I can say I’ve been in all three of those countries so I could sort of give you a rundown of them. I mean, none of them are off the bat awful and terrible. I’m not going to tell you no, you definitely don’t want to live there. But Australia seems, as you can tell, laid back. We’ve both been here the same amount of time, so- I mean, America is definitely more fast-paced and we have a bit of a problem with relations with other cultures.

D: Yeah, but that means there are more opportunities in America, in a positive way. So, America is a huge country, you know. They have a lot of things going on, so it’ll be a nice chance to visit them and find out what suits me.

I: With international relations, one thing you could do is come to America, or another country, and be a diplomat for Korea, essentially.

D: But I personally want to work at a company, a global company. In particular, Google. Some really innovative and creative company which makes me really happy and enthusiastic.

I: You don’t want an office job where you sit all day and do paperwork.

D: No, I want to do something that contributes to society and makes me really proud. Yeah, that’s what I want to do. Like, in Korea, yeah, I can get a job in Korea, you know, but it could be extremely boring. Like, more than half of the Koreans that I’ve met, they all say- More than 80% of the people I’ve met say, “I don’t really like my job in Korea,” you know? It’s because it’s really boring and it’s really stressful, so they work overnight. So, in the case of my dad, he goes to work at 10 AM, but he comes back home at 10 PM, more than twelve hours.

I: But that’s his own decision to do so?

D: No, it’s compulsory.

I: Twelve hour workdays, wow.

D: So, the bigger the companies, the more work they have to do.

I: So, what’s the retirement age?

D: It’s kind of increased, maybe 65?

I: 65, okay so that’s sort of similar then.

D: So anyways, if they do a lot of work, they can make a lot of money. They make a killing. But it’s not how they live their life. So, when are you going to be able to spend your money and enjoy your life? You’re not a moneymaker. Yeah, of course I want to make a killing, I want to personally make a lot of money, but I want to enjoy my work, enjoy my life.

I: Yeah, the saying is, “Find something that you enjoy, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Because you’re not going to see it as work. You’re going to see it as something fun and enjoyable that you wake up in the morning and say, “Yeah, I get to go to work!” instead of, “Ugh, I have to go to work.”

D: Yeah, what’s the point of doing it?

I: Yeah, I mean, to make money, essentially at that point. And you can probably fake it for probably a few years, but then after that, it’s just not fun and you don’t see any thrill in it. And if you’re joining the workforce maybe age 25 or so, you know, 25 to 65, that’s 40 years that you have to work a job, and if you hate that job, you know, doing something for a year that you hate is bad enough, but 40 years is much too long for anyone to be doing anything that they hate.

D: So I realized it as well, when I used to study politics. So when I used to study politics, when I used to wake up in the morning, “Oh I should go to school and take classes. I hate that.” I just had that feeling every single day. Really, every single day. But since I changed my major and since I came here, I’m really happy about taking classes and, you know, speaking different languages. So, in my previous major, there were so many things to memorize. Like, for me, I didn’t really like it because it was pointless. And I didn’t want to be a politician, too, but why should I have to study politics. Yeah, I wanted to study something else. And I could just read newspapers, watch TV and I can learn some knowledge about politics from different media.

I: What’s the government system like in Korea?

D: What do you mean? It’s really comprehensive.

I: I guess, you know, is it- I’m guessing it’s a democratic setup?

D: Yeah.

I: So, do you have a president, prime minister?

D: Oh, we have a presidential system.

I: Who’s your current president?

D: Oh, Park Geun-hye. She. It’s a very unprecedented case.

I: She’s the first female leader?

D: Yeah, female leader. They used to be all, like, male leaders in the past, but yeah, she’s a female leader. But she’s not doing well these days. She’s kind of criticized and antagonized these days, because of her sucking at dealing with things.

I: Is she pro or anti-western? Is that part of it?

D: I think she’s pro-western.

I: Okay, so is that part of the reason why she’s getting a lot of attacks from people?

D: I don’t think it’s the matter. I think it’s because she doesn’t- She’s really criticized for being stupid. Like, literally stupid.

I: Oh, like most politicians.

D: So anyway, yeah, there are some, like, programs, there are some video clips that shows how stupid our current president is. So, basically there was a talk. There was Obama, President Obama, and there was our president, too. So, Obama asked her some questions but she didn’t really listen too carefully and she was like, “Oh, what was the question again?” and she didn’t seem to listen to it. And she sucked at English. That was the main problem. So she was also criticized for that and she raised a lot of taxes.

I: Oh, yeah, that’ll get people to hate you.

D: So, she’s so criticized.

I: So, aside from the president, do you have, like, a parliamentary system or-

D: Yeah, a parliamentary system, but I don’t know how to explain that. I don’t know much about politics. I cannot give you any answers for that.

I: Do you know what the current political parties are?

D: There are like right-wings and left-wings. I don’t know, I forgot the terms.

I: Okay, no, that’s fine.

D: Oh, Conservative and Progressive parties. Those are, like, the two dominant parties. There are more parties, too.

I: But so those are the main two, the Progressive and the Conservative are the main two. Do the other parties have seats in, though?

D: Yeah.

I: Okay, in America, you have two main political parties, Democratic and Republican, but they’re really the only ones that hold positions. There are smaller ones, like the Constitutional party, the Green party, and you have like, the Libertarian party. But none of them hold seats in the federal government. You have a few people that are Independent, but they usually side very heavily on one side. A good example is the presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, he is an Independent, but he’s very heavily leftward leaning, on the Democratic side. But that’s something that I’ve always kind of liked with other countries, that the parliamentary system allows for not just two parties to completely take over. That you have other people and other voices.

D: Yeah, we basically adopted the American political system.

I: Well, I think the parliamentary system is more English, right?

D: Oh, what is the American political system?

I: We have a congressional legislative branch, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

D: Yeah, maybe, but I think we basically adopted the American political system. Yeah, because America was involved in Korea for a long time.

I: The Korean War.

D: Yeah, even the Korean War, so America helped us a lot. So they joined our war and they sent a lot of troops to our country. They dominated a lot, so we got a lot of influence from America.

I: Alright, do you have any other things?

D: Do you have any questions? There could be more things that I could share.

I: We can always come back. At the moment- Unless there’s anything else that you can think of topic-wise.

D: Are you curious about Korean girls?

I: Sure.

D: Yeah, it’s a girl matter. Basically, in America, girls and boys, they’re all independent, right? In Korea, girls are more- They play games a lot.

I: How do you mean?

D: Basically, when it comes to dating, they play a lot of games. Not like “game” game, you know. So for example-

I: Playing hard to get?

D: Yeah, playing hard to get. And for example- Okay, let me give an example. There was a guy who likes someone. There’s a nice girl. So a guy likes her. So he asks her for a date, but she thinks like, “Oh, I think he kind of likes me, but I need to play hard to get to be in a higher position.” So, “Oh, I don’t think I can make a time today, so we can hang out another time.” So she plays those kinds of games. So she tries to make a guy, like, desperate and anxious.

I: I don’t think that’s isolated in Korea. That’s fairly standard in America as well.

D: That happens a lot in Korea. They’re getting kind of pretentious.

I: So, is it fairly standard if a guy asks a girl out, that she’s probably going to say no?

D: Yeah, that usually happens. But I cannot say- Yeah, it dominates, but it happens a lot. And usually girls, they usually want guys to ask them out.

I: Yeah, that’s a fairly standard practice. I mean, what is the gender equality there?

D: Yeah, actually, we are equal, but also, male people are- They’re higher. So it’s not like a rule, but it’s like mutually higher. Okay, we are equal, but guys think they’re higher. They think, even at a workplace or politics, they all think they’re superior to women.

I: The social feeling of superiority, okay.

D: “Oh, you’re a girl, so you have to do this and that. You’re not supposed to do this work,” they have this kind of mindset.

I: So are girls sort of pushed away from sciences and engineering and those things? You should focus more on the household and having children and things like that?

D: Yeah.

I: Okay, that’s unfortunate.

D: Yeah, it’s kind of unfortunate. But, yeah, things are changing these days, but that kind of trait still exists. It’s a good thing that Korea’s being westernized in a good way. But we are not supposed to just follow, like 100%.

I: You have to have your own identity in there somewhere.

D: Yeah, we shouldn’t be reckless.

I: Alright, it’s a good start. We’ll probably come back at another point as well, but thank you for your talk.

[yeswesaythings]

A Story of Rebirth

Freedom at Last: My Story of Jesus’s Love

               I was born into a family that quickly established Christian morals without giving much of an explanation as to why they were put in place. I never went to church with my parents and I never really talked about God.

               I suppose the first experience I had with prayer or at least imitating it was when my dad was diagnosed with cancer when I was ten. He ended up being okay so “prayer” was dismissed. I just remember my mom asking us if we could just pray for him, because he was pretty sick. If I can skip ahead to high school, this point was a very challenging time in my life. During a span of three years I saw my family struggle exceedingly with finances and my mom got very sick. The resulting stress caused a break in the relationship between my dad and my sister and me. However, having grown up in a world solely valuing performance and appearances, no one ever saw this side of my family. However, over time my anger and hatred towards my life and the world around me spilled out into outburst against friends and family. My senior year was marked by a constant state of anger and envy towards others and a presumption that if God existed he must not be a good god and therefore I hated him. I was searching for joy and satisfaction somewhere and I thought I’d found it in an addiction and validation from friends.

               When I arrived here at NC State my sister, who had gotten involved with CRU, repeatedly asked me to consider coming to some of their welcoming events. Although I was extremely apprehensive to start I noticed how differently these students acted and above all, they were willing to listen. I was drawn to this difference so much so I was even willing to go on their annual Fall Retreat. It was there that I heard repeatedly about freedom in Christ and the hope and love it produces. I remember specifically Galatians 5:13 explaining that the human race, including me, was not destined to be chained down by sin existing in this world, but experience freedom through the resurrecting power of Jesus Christ; a man born in humbleness but was the Son of God and came to forgive every sin I had committed, every sin I do commit, and every sin I will commit. I knew that meant that my addiction that had sustained me through the anger and bitterness didn’t have to be my crutch anymore. I learned that I didn’t need to be perfect or live by constantly checking things off a “good person” list. I could be fully supported by Jesus’s love for me and any other sin of this world didn’t have to be my identity, Jesus was my salvation and my identity, I could live free of shame and guilt and anger towards the world. I found joy.

               I realize that this might be a lot of things that might seem confusing or surprising, but I wrote this for when I spoke in front of a meeting at the beginning of this year.  And there is a lot of what I would call “Christianese” which if you have ANY questions about, I’d love to try and answer. Anyways, I appreciate you guys reading this and I appreciate you guys being friends during a hard time in my life.

Nathan Stokely

Some of these questions may get a bit on the personal side, so you are free to not answer anything you don’t feel comfortable talking about.

Can you elaborate more on senior year? I was there and I’m not sure I know the entire story of what happened then.

So, my Mom had been the primary income for my family and she lost her job spring of my freshman year. Our financial situation got worse and worse over the next few years as she couldn’t find anything full time or that could pay her anything. (The economy was really bad) As it got worse and worse so did my family’s relationships with one another. My mom and dad’s relationship basically ended as they started fighting constantly. My dad also started lashing out more towards my sister and I and it just wasn’t a good time. I think there were a couple of times where my dad and I literally went an entire week without talking, and we lived in the same house. So as all that was going on I decided to work so that my family can have another income, but my mom never told my dad that that’s why I got a job. So I had to work so much that I had to quit running. (I was depressed though so I didn’t feel like running anyway) Then in the winter of my senior year my mom got sick. It was pretty bad for a couple weeks. We didn’t know if she was going to make it. It was mostly during winter break so I didn’t see anyone from school and I just couldn’t reach out to anyone. I coped with everything by retreating into my head and just trying to go through the daily motions and acting like nothing was wrong. But eventually some people found out, but no one ever reached out to me to ask how she was doing or if I was okay. And if anyone did ask it seemed like they were asking because they felt like they had to. Eventually my mom got better and things started to improve. She later got a full time teaching job in October after graduation.

When you were angry, why was your presumption that God was not good, rather than that he didn’t exist at all?

So this question is deserving of a lot more explanation than I can give in a few sentences. I’ll do my best though. So, I like most humans, believed that there was something greater than me and the human race. Contrary to Western belief most people would in fact believe there is something that is out of their control and they can’t explain. I presumed it to be God, because I had only heard about God and just attributed the sense of something greater to the God I had heard about. I had been taught, not just by my parents or family, that God loved people, but I looked at suffering in the world and did initially question if there could really be a God. However, I also saw the capability of love by humans and the beauty in nature and just decided that it seems illogical that all that could be attributed to random combinations of chemicals and physics. I get that for some people they think science is enough of an answer, but I also saw the formation of a moral law. That there was a difference between right and wrong. That everywhere and everyone had to have at least some similarities between their definitions of right and wrong. (Even cannibals in the isolated parts of far South America) I saw this by observing that for someone to say that something was “evil” (genocide is an example) there had to be some moral instinct towards an idea of what was “good” (sacrificing your own life for someone else). And I couldn’t see how an atheist’s opinion could answer the question of morality. Because he/she might say that morality and ethics are a social construct and is taught. But isn’t math taught? And isn’t math a natural occurrence in the universe? So I concluded that a God existed, but I knew nothing about him. And with all the bad stuff going on in my life I just drifted to thinking he was not in control and/or doesn’t care, and thus a bad God.

Do you think that it’s justified for parents to impose Christian or any other type of religious values on children before they can have any possible understanding of it?

I don’t feel qualified to answer this question either, because I believe it all depends on WHAT you are teaching them and HOW you are teaching them. The current condition of Christianity is very far from what is described in the Bible. It is very diluted, judgmental, and hypocritical. For example, in the South people are taught that to get into heaven you need to not drink, not cuss, and go to church. However, there is no mention of expressing love for your fellow man or for loving your God with all your heart. We just use Jesus as a “get out of Hell free” card. This is definitely not good to teach to children. Another misconception of Christianity is that by becoming one life all of the sudden become an easy ride into eternity. NOTHING COULD BE FARTHER FROM THE TRUTH! In order to become a Christian, you have to be confronted with truths that are really painful to understand and to see suffering in a more dramatic and despairing way. Not to mention persecution. In America Christians aren’t really persecuted. In the worst of cases we’re called hypocrites and judgmental bigots. (Although there is a rise in violence against Christians) It isn’t fun to be called those things, but it’s better than having my head cut off in Syria or put in jail in North Korea.  

As far as little kids understanding it, the root of the Christian faith is the Gospel and the Gospel isn’t that hard to understand. The Gospel is this:

There is a God and He loves you. He has a wonderful plan for your life. There is a verse, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16” However, most people say they don’t feel loved by God and He seems very distant. The reason for this is what is called sin. Sin isn’t just doing something that society considers bad or your Mom punished you for when you were little. The closest word that can describe sin is disease. It is an inherent imperfection in human kind that cannot be found in an almighty God. If God is really God, then He is perfect. If he is perfect can he act or be considered the same as a person? Often God is described as a person, this is just so most people can imagine what he’s like, but it doesn’t do Him justice. God can’t be a person because each person is imperfect. So, even though each of us were created to experience God’s love for us we chose to go our own way because we believe we can act as God and control everything. Unfortunately, there is a punishment for thinking we can be God and that is separation from God, which is Hell. Hell isn’t a big pit full of fire and demons torturing you; it is an eternity where the worst qualities of yourself can grow and consume your thoughts and actions, because God isn’t there to intercede and give you the power to act out the good qualities you have, like love. So, the problem is this, how do people bridge the gap from an imperfect person to a totally perfect God? This is where Jesus comes in. Jesus was God who became a man and led a completely sinless life. He died on a cross as a physical sacrifice for repayment of all of mankind’s sins. That includes every sin that you and I have done, every sin you and I are doing, and every sin you and I will do, every sin is forgiven. The reward of eternal life is proven by Jesus’s resurrection and triumph over death. Now, through Jesus we can experience God’s love and plan for our lives. However, in order to experience this, we have to receive Jesus as savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives. This is an important distinction because there is another important verse, “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast Ephesians 2:8-9”

The Gospel should be taught, because it gives an answer to some of the hardest questions in life. And if taught at a young age the kids can continue to grow and ask questions. Questions are good! And impose is a strong word. Impose is dependent on how it was taught. If it’s taught at a young age and the parents try to answer any question the kids have and want the kids to really think about it, I don’t think that’s imposing.

What was your addiction?

I was addicted to porn. I know I joked about it, I know that most people would argue it can’t be an addiction, or that it’s okay because it’s not harming anyone. I know that the truth is I couldn’t go more than a couple days without it. I know that I went to it because it made me feel better about myself and it gave me a sense of control. I know that I grew dependent on it and used it as a numbing agent. It had/has negative consequences. I find it hard to really relate to girls and to express real love for them. My thoughts are dominated by me fighting off thoughts of doing things to girls I shouldn’t even be thinking off. I know that it made me more aggressive and believe that girls liked it when I was aggressive and took control. So yeah, it was an addiction and is something I am currently working with people to get over.

What does prayer mean to you now, and how does that affect how you look at your first encounter with it? When you say dismissed, does that you mean you accepted it, or didn’t give it much thought?

So, prayer is a critical part to Christianity. When I first encountered it I didn’t give it much thought afterwards. I thought that I didn’t know how to do it or was doing it wrong. But in some ways I was doing it wrong. There is a misconception about prayer that needs to be corrected; we do not get what we always want or what we pray for, but God ALWAYS provides in some way, at some point. I remember I was talking to ----- and he mentioned that he couldn’t believe in a God who gave someone a 94 on a test, but let children starve to death. And he has a really good point, but God didn’t do anything for that kid who pleaded that he’d be a better person if he could just get an A, but he is always working through people to try and help those starving kids. There are charities, churches, and governments that work towards providing for them. The tricky part comes next, why doesn’t God do some magic trick and end world hunger or bring world peace right now? And here is one of those hard truths I mentioned, He can’t. So God IS all powerful and COMPLETLEY sovereign, but this is an imperfect (what some call a “fallen”) world. That means everything can’t be perfect and life can’t be easy. The end of hunger and the start of peace comes when we die. When people die and are reunited with God, through faith in Jesus, they experience an end to suffering. That is the hope Christians have, a total end to all injustice and all suffering. Sorry, that was a tangent, but I’ll get back to prayer. Prayer now means to me a way of communicating with God. It is a process of being filled with the Holy Spirit which is another critical part of Christianity. The Spirit is something I can explain in another email, but He is extremely important. Through prayer I voice all my emotions, both positive and negative, to God. It is also a time where God can reveal what His plan or His will is. He can direct you to a path that He wants you to take. My current understanding of what prayer is has shown me that in prayer I don’t ask for every little thing I want. Prayer is an act of worship; it is meant to glorify God and Jesus Christ it is not a wish list for God.com. But if it glorifies God and is asking that His will be done, then that prayer is acknowledging God as Lord over all things.

How did the Christian group of students that you met act differently than the others?

So what is your perception of an Evangelical Christian? Mine was that of an ignorant, hypocritical, ultraconservative pig. Not the best of opinions is it? What I found is that there will also be people like that. Just like there will be Atheists who are indifferent to society and cold. These stereotypes exist, but are not the prevailing description of members of either group. I saw in the Christians I am now friends with a love for people that went farther than words; it spilled into action. These people didn’t just say words as an attempt to help me, they got down into the crap that was my life and cared enough to pull me out. I had built walls around myself, not telling anyone the Hell that I felt like I was in. They chipped away at these walls by letting me sit on their couch until 2 in the morning, tears down my face, my voice cracking because the reality that I was still so hurt and angry by the lack of fairness in life. They listened, they explained the realities of life and that life is incredibly hard, but there is always a hope. That hope is the Gospel. The fact that suffering comes to an end and the only thing that’s left is love. I realize that as you read these that they’re just digital letter on a word processing software, but they should be life changing words. There. Is. Hope. Ponder the significance on those three words. But my friends didn’t just care for me, they cared for one another. They checked in on one another, offer encouragements to one another, just because they wanted to. They did things for one another, they didn’t tear one another down. Sure, they teased but never harshly.

How quickly after meeting the CRU group do you think you were reborn? You spoke to me earlier about the fear that you were merely adopting Christianity because all of your friends had done the same. However, these fears seem to be gone. What happened to change your mind that your conversion was genuine?

So I’ll answer question 8 here as well…

I became a Christian around early October the fall of my freshman year. It happened that quickly because the second I got on campus people started talking to me and my time spending with them grew exponentially. However, it wasn’t easy because I did have a lot of questions when I came home for winter break and I had left the community of people who could help answer them. So I began to doubt that it was real. I struggled a lot with porn at that time and I was afraid that I had lied to myself that I could change.

You have a big gap in middle school that you skip over. Did anything of importance happen spiritually during that time, or was it fairly uneventful in this context?

This is actually the shortest answer. Nothing really happened during middle school. I don’t know why, but nothing surprising or dramatic occurred that I remember.

Do you think your story is common for why people turn away from God? If not, what are other big reasons for doing so? And how could Christians go about preventing that?

So I’m confused by this question. Why would people be pushed away from Christianity after hearing my story? Maybe you’re talking about my “Christian values” and my anger towards God. I’ll address that first.

My parents are not Christians. A Christian is someone who believes Jesus did everything needed for their salvation, that they don’t have to/ cannot obtain salvation from simply being a good person. My parents don’t believe that I don’t think. I say I grew up with Christian values because it was just a set of suggestions on “How to be a Good Person.” The commands of Jesus are morally and ethically pure. They are truth. But, due to that pesky human condition called sin, people couldn’t obey these commands. That’s why Jesus had to die as a sacrifice. That’s why faith in Jesus, as a savior, is a saving faith. Now, concerning anger towards God: this is a problem for God to deal with, Christians are only here to help. Christians can’t really prevent something from pushing people away from God. We just love people and point them to the Gospel, that’s about it.

               As far as the big reasons why people turn away from God there’s really only one. And it might seem insensitive, but I’ll explain. The reason is the individual’s pride. The typical example of this is the belief that there is no greater power than us. The issues with that belief is that we don’t even have control over nature or other people. There is a lack of power and control in people that shows each person is weak one way or another person. As for a difficult example, a person who has endured suffering expresses pride in deciding that his life is the lone reason why a God shouldn’t exist. He forgets that everyone goes through pain at some point or another and to say his individual pain is greater than that of another’s is inherently self-centered. Now, for the most difficult example. Someone who acknowledges his pain isn’t the only pain in the world, but instead declares that the presence of suffering is enough to disprove the existence of a God. His pride is subtle, but it is in the belief that he can comprehend every aspect of the universe. He thinks that the biggest negative in the world is reason for a God not to exist, but it is really a reason to belief there is. If we lived in a world without a God, we would not have a moral ideal, without a moral ideal we would not know right from wrong, if we do not know right from wrong then how do we judge that there is suffering? Wouldn’t the presence of suffering just be nature weeding out bad genes and killing of the weak? Wouldn’t the Holocaust have been nature’s way of just killing of the lesser species? Wouldn’t every rape, every robbery, every murder just be nature’s progression to a “better” society? I hope by this point you realize that this is not so. The presence of suffering shows that there is a hope for a place where suffering doesn’t exist. That hope cannot be established in society because humans have always suffered and done evil, it’s that sin issue again. But the solution to sin is Jesus. He gave us freedom from living in sin by grace.

So this is a lot longer than you probably wanted, but the questions you asked needed some careful attention. I wanted to leave you with two poems I’ve written. The first before I was a Christian. It’s from the January of 2014 when I was still struggling with the rejection of ------, ------’s and I’s ruined friendship and all the stuff going on at home. The second is a song I recently heard that really resonates with me.

 “A shoreline exists on the edge of the world.

A pair of lighthouses reside there, guiding men from far and beyond safely home.

Should the worst of storms bring the greatest men to their knees, they need not look elsewhere but at her magnificent beams for comfort.

Many men have traveled the world in search of this great manifestation of heaven, but few are awarded such an experience as to see such beauty and peace.

But I had my turn. I asked upon the great shoreline for requited love and affection, but her lights turned away,

My vessel, like so many others, crashed violently into the rocks below.

I fell deep into the ocean.

Underneath this water, however, the lights of her eyes shine through. I know she sees me, but I remain 20 feet below, drowning.”

A Thousand pairs of fiery eyes

Burn like a serpent down the highway 5

As the Long amber tail to Los Angeles unwinds

I've got resurrection down inside my skin

But for all my revaluating

I just can’t make sense

Of this gravity we're in

 Cause I'm a dead man now

With a ghost who lives

Within the confines of

These carbon ribs

And one day when I'm free

I will sit

The cripple at your table

The cripple by your side

 A thousand miles of pain I'm sure

Led you to the threshold

Of my hearts screen door

To tell me what it is I'm dying for

Gravity comes

 Like a cold cold Rain

To lead me to the rope again

But someone is standing in my place

 Cause I'm a dead man now

With a ghost who lives

Within the confines of

These carbon ribs

And one day when I'm free

I will sit

The cripple at your table

The cripple by your side

[yeswesaythings]

An Inside View Into Africa: Part II

To read the first part of this fascinating interview, go here.

I: Okay, so tell me about precolonial Nigerian history.

C: Well, in Nigeria, there are three main ethnic groups. I mean, there are lots of other ethnic groups too, but the three main ones that Nigerians learn about mostly, like in their history or social studies class are the Hausa, the Yoruba and the Igbo, that’s my ethnic group. Yeah, so the precolonial history of Nigeria really begins- It’s really like the history of these ethnic groups because before the colonial era, there really wasn’t a Nigeria. The land, the geography was always there, but the name didn’t come later until after independence. Anyway, one thing I can start with are the Hausas. You see, in the north of Nigeria, most people that live there are mostly Hausa. The Hausas are a West African ethnic group. They, of course, speak the Hausa language which is the same language family as Arabic, and they’re all traditionally Muslim, too. And their history starts a lot in, I would say, the 12th or the 13th century, or even before that. You can kind of picture them as ancient Greece, almost. Well, like I said almost. Like, in the fact that there were different city-states. Yeah, the Hausa were an autonomous people. They were never under a single monarch or government as some ethnic groups. Yeah, they had different individual city-states which were known for trading with the Arabs to the north of the Sahara desert. And so a lot of their history can be- When you learn about that, you learn a lot about how they traded with different ethnic groups and also, of course, their government and city-states and the way their language developed, and their writing. And of course, the most distinguishing fact about Hausas from the rest of Nigeria is that they’re primarily Muslim, like traditionally Muslim. So with the Hausas, one historical fact that I can throw out right now is with writing. Their language was traditionally written with the Ajami script, which is kind of a version of Arabic because North Africa came under Arab conquest in the 7th century AD. So, gradually they adopted Arabic culture and language and that also spread to West Africa very, very gradually. And so the Hausas adopted and adapted the Arabic script to their own language, and they’re the only ethnic group in Nigeria right now who has done that with a foreign script in the precolonial era. Of course, right now, they don’t write with it anymore but they write with Latin, again, perhaps from the Colonial era. That’s how the Hausa language is written.

And with the Hausas, you also have the Yoruba people. The Yoruba people, again, are also autonomous. I would say so, yeah. Well, I think they have been united under a single kingdom once, but also were different states that were either ruled monarchically, with a monarchy form of government, or like a semi-republic democratic form of government. Very, very semi, it’s not really close to what you would call a democracy right now, I think. They’re very famous for- Well, the Yoruba and the Edo people lived together. Yeah, their history is very related and tied together and there’s also been cross-fertilization of Edo culture and Yoruba culture, so it makes sense to talk about them together. The Edo people were under s united nation once, the Benin kingdom that started around the 10th century AD and then ended during the 19th century. Well, somewhere in the Middle Ages, it started and then ended around in the 19th century. Like, they were Benin Empire and Yoruba were made up of different kingdom and city-states. And the thing that they’re most famous for, really, is bronze castings. They produced high quality bronze castings. It’s just when you just make artwork through metal casting, really, but they used bronze, or even brass, or precious metals like that. When the Benin Empire was brought to its end by the British, a lot of the beautiful artworks were exported to the British museums now, which you can now see them in good condition. Their history is very much- Like, really, a grander mind of their history right now is very much the artwork the Yoruba and the Edo made.

And then you also have the Igbos. That’s my ethnic group. My family is Igbo. The Igbos were also equally autonomous. Really, I would say ethnic groups in West Africa weren’t always single nation-states, in a way. The Igbos were also autonomous, but compared to the Yoruba and also the Hausa, when it comes to artwork and also centralized governments and politics, the Igbos, again, weren’t really- Like, not to the same level because it was highly fragmented, down to the level of the town. Like, you saw independence, like different towns or different villages trying to just have their own rulers. And a grand reminder of their history and their culture is, I would say, nsibidi. See, nsibidi is a set of symbols that Igbo people traditionally use, but the use of these symbols kind of died off around the 16th century. But when people look at them today, people say they look really beautiful and that to me is a good living reminder of Igbo culture, Igbo heritage, and even Igbo history. I can’t really go into too much detail right now about the history of different ethnic groups. What I’m saying right now I think is really the most important. So like I said, there’s the Hausa, there’s the Yoruba and there’s the Benin. Each ethnic group has created lasting impressions, lasting evidence or just lasting works from history, like with the Yoruba and the Edo and their bronze castings and the Igbo with their nsibidi writing system, and the Hausas with, of course, the Ajami script that they originally wrote in and their very heavily centralized governments and their advanced trading economy. Yeah, so in a nutshell, that’s it.

I: So, how does that compare to today?

C: How does that compare to today? Like today, Nigeria? Well, today, culture, tradition, like all of those are still preserved in Nigeria, but of course today, we’re all part of a single country now, so even though were all still a federal republic like the United States, power is still more centralized than the United States. So, like, different ethnic groups don’t have- They’re not autonomous anymore. So, the way it relates today can really be seen in Nigerian politics and also in a Nigeria history class. You see, sometimes in Nigerian politics, similar to how Americans might cry out about underrepresentation of this gender, in a way, we kind of have that in Nigeria with different ethnic groups. Some feeling quite underrepresented, or overrepresented or things like that. I would say the way it relates today, the way all that is like today, like traditions of these different ethnic groups still exist, but the autonomous governments that they were under don’t exist any longer. But the language, art and different clothing styles still go on, although now in the modern era, they are being modernized, maybe a bit more contemporary, just being changed as that cultures changes over time. I hope that answers the question.

I: I mean, what are some examples of it being modernized?

C: Clothing. Clothing is sometimes modernized. It’s sometimes, maybe, made to look more like western clothing, I would say. So, I think, for one example is the dashiki, which is actually a popular shirt here in America, like among African Americans when they have Black History month or something like that. Yeah, dashikis were originally just long robes, but now they’ve been turned into just short waist length shirts, and now the same patterns seen in a dashiki can come in something like pants or even a sweater or a jacket or a whole dress. That’s what I mean. The patterns generally seen in traditional clothing are used and they’re put into more western-like clothing, like what you’re wearing perhaps.

I: So, what’s the government currently like there?

C: In Nigeria? The government currently is- Do you mean like how it’s structured?

I: What’s the form of government there? Democracy? Monarchy? Parliamentary, constitutional?

C: Democracy. Yeah, Nigeria is a federal republic, but like I said, power is a lot more centralized than the USA, that’s what I’ve noticed. And we have a president, we have a house of representatives, we have a national house of assembly and things like that. But we’re not parliamentary, similar to the Westminster style of the UK or any other European nation. And monarchies do exist, actually, but more on the subnational level. I guess what I should have mentioned actually, when talking about how the precolonial culture of Nigeria is relevant to today, is it still lives on in the monarchs. Today, Nigeria has, I think, several subnational monarchies and they’re mostly like a symbol, in a way. Like, real political power still lies in the federal government’s hands. So that’s kind of how the government is structured. It’s a federative republic and subnational monarchies, which are also given recognition but not as much political power. They serve mostly as symbols. A good example can be the Emir of Kano. I don’t know how Americans spell it or say it, E-M-I-R, that’s how I’ve always heard it, Emir. That’s a monarch of some of the Hausa city-states that were originally autonomous, but now their power has become symbolic than political. Another distinguishing factor of Nigerian politics is perhaps not the- I don’t think we have too many competing political parties. The most famous party is the PDP, the People’s Democratic Party, and they produce most of the presidents of Nigeria’s history. But now with the current president, Muhammadu Buhari, that’s no longer the case. His political party is the ADP, I think. I actually forgot what it stood for.

I: You’ve told me before that you actually prefer monarchies because they give the people someone to rally around. Can you explain that a bit?

C: Yes, I like to say I’m a monarchist, but that doesn’t mean I’m an autocrat. That’s not really the same thing. I like monarchies because, yeah, it does give the people something to rally about. To me, monarchies are symbols. They’re a living blood connection to a people’s history and culture, so that’s why I support monarchies. But I don’t support giving monarchs political power. I’d rather they just stay symbolic and political power be more evenly spread, more democratic. So I don’t support autocratic forms of government. Okay, well maybe a little bit. That’s something that I’m actually looking into right now. Which one yields higher economic growth, autocracy or democracy? Anyway, as of right now, I’m a monarchist. I do like having monarchs, but not when they have political power. I think that should be the people. To me, a monarch should stay above political division, not have political power and exist as a symbol, which is equally important. It is because of studying the British monarchy and also Nigeria’s subnational monarchies that I like monarchies.

I: So if today, you got a call from the Nigerian government saying, “Congratulations, Clinton, you are now the symbolic monarch of Nigeria!” what would you do to, I guess, rally the people?

C: Rally the people? Well, it would depend on if I even accept it.

I: Would you accept it?

C: Would I accept it? That’s a complicated question.

I: What reasons do you have not to?

C: Personally, I like living a normal, not too rich life. That’s one reason, but if I did accept it, yeah, I would- Well, it really doesn’t work that way, anyway, somebody calling you. It’s hereditary. But if it did happen that way and I did accept, what would I do? I guess I would just take the office and try and maybe reform some traditions, if need be.

I: So what are some traditions that would be reformed?

C: Like whether a princess can marry who she wants to marry? That sounds too Disney Channel. Yeah, I would say maybe giving people of the royal family the right to marry as you choose, and also perhaps allowing girls to own land.

I: Is that not something that’s allowed?

C: It really kind of depends on where you go to in Nigeria. If you go up to more urban places, more developed places, then of course that’s allowed. But in more traditional, more rural places, it’s not always allowed. At least with the Igbos, my ethnic group, it’s not heard of for a girl to inherit land. It usually goes to a son, or your father’s brother. Either way, women can’t own land, they just work on it. Yeah, I guess I would reform that. But that might not require as much reformation anyway. Like I said, that only exists in- That’s not as common. On the level of the federal government, women are equal to men. On the federal level, on the state level. On the town level, that’s where girls might not have as much rights. But I wouldn’t say that women are treated awfully. No circumcision.

I: Is that still a problem there?

C: Where I live, in southeastern Nigeria, it kind of depends on the culture, the different ethnic groups in Nigeria. Perhaps in northern Nigeria, where people are mostly Hausa or *unintelligible* that may be a problem. But at least to the best of my knowledge, it’s not common, not really.

I: That’s good, I’ve heard that’s a terrible practice.

C: In Nigeria, or-?

I: Just the concept itself of female circumcision.

C: Yes, it’s awful. Yeah, so like I said, to answer your question, that would probably be something I’d reform. Give females more rights. It sounds really feminist but I don’t want to use the word. I prefer equalist, you know.

I: Actually, that’s something I’d like to talk about. What do have against feminism?

C: Feminism, as a movement, trying to give women equal rights, equal opportunities, I fully support that. I don’t have anything against feminism. I just have a problem when feminists think that equal opportunities guarantees sameness, like equal number of men and women in every single occupation or academic field of study or something like that. Gender is mostly a social construct but I do think there are some real differences between men and women. That’s not to say men are better, women are better, or that women can’t vote or do education or go into sports. Of course they can have all that, but I’m just saying that equal opportunities might not always guarantee equal participation from men and women. There are just some things that women might outdo men in, some things men might outdo women in, like perhaps sports. That’s how I see it. In Nigeria, though, I don’t think too many people call themselves feminists. I don’t think men would. Women’s rights is a very complicated issue and even I don’t really understand too much, I guess because I’m a guy so I grew up not really caring. Because the girls around me seemed treated the same as me. I mean, there was one time in primary school when it came to sports day, when the students just played different sports, girls were kind of told to stay back and practice their posture with female teachers or whatever. But I think it’s different now at that same school. Like I said, I don’t have anything women’s rights. It’s just my personal view that there are just some things where women outdo men or men might outdo women. Like, it doesn’t always guarantee equal participation. Like in the social sciences and biology, women outnumber men, and things like that. Oh, but I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist though, I just prefer the term equalist. Feminist, to me, just always kind of sounded really female, female-like, even though it is about women, but- Like, the word is kind of the problem, but the concept itself, not at all.

I: Okay, so you feel that the term “feminist” had been hijacked in a sense?

C: In America, it may have. In Nigeria, I do think there are real social issues that feminists have to tackle. In America, I kind of see them as, you know, “First World Problems”.

I: So, I mean, can women vote in Nigeria?

C: Oh, yeah.

I: Okay, so that’s not a problem. What problems are there?

C: Well one problem, like I said, is how on towns that are still run by old traditions, women might not fare as well because of- Like, land ownership.

I: But I mean, aside from land ownership, is there any other big ones you can think of?

C: I guess there’s also, like, female circumcision which is not as common, but I think it does happen mostly in northern Nigeria. And there’s also education. I think guys have more opportunities to study, in a way, because much of Nigeria is rural. So patriarchal traditions are still there. They’re becoming less and less in power, but they’re still present, so other than land ownership, like I mentioned, education and circumcision. I don’t think I know too many other problems. It’s not even wrong to say it, it’s just I don’t- I’m not a girl, so I wouldn’t know.

I: That’s true. I guess a lighter topic, tell me about the foods of Nigeria.

C: The food? It tends to be- I mean, no surprise, I like it better than other kinds of food. The food in Nigeria I would say is perhaps spicier than American food, which is why I can handle deviled fried rice. Yeah, meat is definitely a part of that and I guess it’s part of the diet. In Nigeria and the food you eat, meat is usually a part of it, and you have to eat that last. Eating it first is kind of like, socially awkward.

I: Why is that?

C: It just kind of is. People kind of expect you to. I mean, there’s nothing really stopping you from eating it first, but you’re just told to eat it last. Like, finish the rice, finish the yam, finish the eggs, and then you eat the meat.

I: I’ve never heard of that before.

C: Yeah, even I still do that here in America with American food.

I: So, even when it’s a bunch of things mixed together, do you still tend to eat the meat last? Like, if you had a soup of some sort?

C: A soup, like with meat in it? Food is usually accompanied with just like one scrap, one ball of meat. But if there’s several, which in my experience is really rare, like I wish it was, then yeah, I guess can just eat that along with the food you’re eating. You don’t have to save it for last or anything like that.

I: That would get really complicated, really quickly.

C: Yeah, and the way food is eaten is of course done with utensils, but traditionally people just usually eat with their hands, like similar to the cuisine in India or the Middle East. It’s traditionally done with just hands. Utensils came at a later stage. I mean, I kind of prefer them at times. So, I guess another stark difference between food in Nigeria and food in America is, I would say, it’s not as fattening.

I: I probably agree with you there.

C: I mean, that’s one thing I really noticed and I remember one time I flew into Nigeria from America, and it kind of just hit me as an epiphany, like “Oh my god, there’s no fat people.” In America, it was there that I realized that people tend to be- I guess just because the food isn’t as fattening that people are kind of slimmer, generally. Of course, not in cases, but generally in Nigeria. And sometimes food can be combined with western food. I mean, it’s part of living in a more globalized world.

I: Coming from Nigeria, what were your first opinions of America?

C: Of America? My first opinions of America when I first came? Well, my first opinions were really positive, and still are. I came and I saw this is a very highly developed country. There are roads with coal tar, not just bare dirt roads that you just have to drive through with the dust. The weather was definitely very, very different. I hate the cold, I still do. And the people are also different. I mean, I notice that people, at least in the south, tend to be nicer.

I: I remember you saying this last time.

C: Yeah, that’s probably the whole southern hospitality thing, I guess. When I came to college the first time, there were people that I didn’t know who would smile at me sometimes or say hi or open the door for me when I’m about to go through it. Yeah, that was actually a bit of culture shock. I remember one time when I opened the door for myself and I was going in, somebody else came through that same door as it was about to close and he was like, “Oh, thank you.” And then I kind of paused him and said, “But I didn’t do it for you?” But I gradually learned that, I guess, he expected me to have left it open for him because that’s just normal. That’s just how people do in the south. That was one difference I definitely noticed. The weather, the personality of people, and of course, just America’s highly developed society. I mean, it’s really good to know that I have relatively fast Wi-Fi and water. I mean, of course we have water in Nigeria, but it’s- I mean, I remember how at my house sometimes, I rarely had hot water. Anyway, it’s always hot in Nigeria, so a cold shower’s recommended sometimes. And everything’s more- Education’s definitely more computerized, like computers are a big part of college education. In Nigeria, not as much, because people don’t really have access to that. And teachers definitely are also different, because corporal punishment is allowed and encouraged by parents and teachers alike in Nigeria. We talked about this once.

I: I remember it, yeah. I guess a question I’ve had is where did you learn your English? Because you have near no accent whatsoever.

C: Yeah, I actually did. I used to have an accent, but one time I came to the USA in 2007 or 06, and from then on, it just gradually changed. I was nine at the time, I think. They say when you’re young, your language is definitely subject to more changes, depending on the environment you’re in. I was in the US for about six months before returning to Nigeria, and that’s just when my accent, I guess, became permanent. It sounded more American. Although it definitely comes out more when I’m talking to other Nigerians. When I’m talking to Americans, I do sound very American. When I talk to Nigerians, I sound American too, that’s what they say. But that accent is, though, kind of there, more so than it would be with Americans. I’m not consciously doing this, it just happens. But yeah, I did learn English, even before America, just growing up. English is an official language in Nigeria. Different ethnic groups speak their own languages, so that’s why we have English. It’s kind of the common language we can all speak. So that’s how I learned English. And surprisingly to most people, I speak mostly English.

I: So, do you know any other languages?

C: I know a bit of the Igbo language, but really not too much. I can understand some conversations my parents have, but mostly just English. That’s also a common thing with young people in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the trend seems to be the younger people are beginning to speak English more and more than the native tongue or whatever. So, I was raised in English, but the accent changed when I came to the USA. Yeah, people are always surprised by that. But I don’t remember being the only one who sounded American because in my school, my secondary school Pine Crest, there were lots of other people, Nigerian kids, who had been to the USA or had been raised there by Nigerian parents for a while before coming back who also had accents like me. So I wasn’t really the only one who talked like this. But most Nigerians generally do have thicker accents.

I: I don’t have too many other questions. Is there anything that you have that I wouldn’t even know to ask? Some special, secret thing?

C: I guess one thing to actually get back to is, we were talking about earlier, kind of the way Nigerians, or just me in particular, see race as opposed to Americans. Yeah, whenever I talk about races, surprisingly, I’m usually arguing with African Americans over race, sometimes. But what I’m just wanting to mention right now is just that, growing up as a Nigerian, like I said before in this podcast, black skin was really kind of just a given. I rarely use the word “black people”. Like, I don’t always see myself as one. It’s just that, my own personal view is that as opposed to people from African countries, African Americans tends to feel a lot more defined by their skin color, which is understandable because of their history that they have. But it’s a surprise to African Americans and most Americans, I would say, that in Nigeria we don’t really see ourselves as- Like, we would never call Nigerian history or African history black history or say that we’re proud and we’re black or anything like that. It’s more that I’m proud and I’m Nigerian, I’m proud and I’m Yoruba, or I’m proud and I’m Igbo. I’ve always just seen the whole idea of white people, black people, Asian people as kind of like a whole European social construct that I just wouldn’t really see myself in. I’m just Nigerian. Black, yeah, but to me, it really just means melanin level and no social implications in Nigeria, no, none. That’s just one thing that I’d like to mention. I mean, there are African immigrants, I guess, who do kind of embrace African American culture when they come, and they start to use the term black a lot more often. I’m just the one who doesn’t, and I also tend to advise African immigrants to not see themselves, their cultures, that way. Yeah, I actually had a friend when I went back to Nigeria, she goes to school in the USA like me, but her state is in Virginia, I think. Or somewhere in the Midwest. Wait, Virginia’s in the north. Somewhere in the USA. And she said that going to America made her a lot more Afrocentric, so when talking about Nigeria, she kind of used the word black a lot more often. Like, she said, “Nigeria should be part of our black history, and the Egyptians were black!” Things like that. That’s something that scares me sometimes, when I start to hear other African immigrants talk that way, I just feel that skin color is not equal to culture. I think it’s really irrelevant to how Nigerians see themselves, so me personally, I wouldn’t like to see a Nigerian or an African talk like that. African Americans can, it’s their history, but it’s just not ours. That’s just me pointing that out.

I: Alright, thank you very- Wait, another thing to add?

C: Oh, I just wanted to add into how African history is taught in America. The main things that I’ve seen kind of wrong about it is the fact that when African history is taught, people mainly learn about the colonial or postcolonial era, and not really the precolonial era, which we’ve just talked about. And the second thing that’s wrong is also when people talk about different African cultures, they only talk about just sub-Saharan Africa. North Africa is given its own thing, it’s the Middle East and that’s not exactly true at all. So, that really has to be corrected, but North Africa is a part of Africa and Africa really does have an amazing precolonial history to study with different civilizations, different empires and cultures that have risen and fallen on the continent, like Ethiopia, Songhai, Mali, the Ghana Empire, all these great inland empires on the African continent. And I really think that that’s what should be taught, and it should be taught from the perspective of the people who lived in these African civilizations and not from the perspective of kind of- Not from, like, a racial perspective where this is just- We’re going to learn about black Africa or whatever because that can lead to crazy conspiracy theories that just have racial prejudice behind them, like ideas that the Egyptians were black or that black people played no role at all in the slave trade or anything like that. That just has to be corrected.

I: How would you correct them?

C: I guess that would start with me being the Minister of Education in the USA. But I guess the way I can correct it individually, as Clinton, is just like I’m doing right now, sharing my knowledge of the African continent with people who are interested in that. That’s one way, that’s a start in correcting that wrong notion that most people have about the African continent, as people just kind of see it as this wasteland. This underdeveloped region of the world, “the dark continent.”

I: Do you think this is exclusive to Africa or do you think other cultures suffer the same misrepresentation in history classes?

C: Other cultures, I definitely do, like perhaps Central Americans, South Asia. Like, I guess poor countries in general, poor regions in general just have this negative representation. But at least in my experience, it seems as though Africa might have it the most because it is the poorest region as of right now, in the world.

I: Okay, alright.

C: Thanks! Nice talking. Always is.

[yeswesaythings]

Help Wanted

I: So, community college, UT, and TTU. What are the differences?

J: There are a lot of differences. There is a price difference, obviously, a drastic one between community college and UT, but between TTU and UT, there’s not much of a difference if you took on all the college amenities, like if you lived on campus and had a full meal plan, along with your college education, it could be the same as UT’s is because for some reason, Tech’s dorms are more expensive than UT’s. But everything else at UT is rather expensive. And the meal plan is better at Tech than it is at UT. I can’t speak for the meal plan at Cleveland State because I didn’t have one there. And while Cleveland state was really easy, I don’t really approve of it if you’re wanting to do more than- I’m going to get a little bit more organized here. I’m just going to tell you the flaws, starting from smallest to biggest.

I: Go ahead.

J: Okay, so I think the flaws with the community college is that while it’s really great for people who are going back to school or just want a two-year degree because it’s real simple, and even if you haven’t been in high school for a while, it’s easy to get back into. However, I would disapprove of it if you were wanting to do something long term because it doesn’t give you a very rigorous and strong foundation for what you need later on, and what to expect later on. But I also think that it’s great because if it’s for people who are in financial need and they have to save up more before they get into a bigger college, it’s also very nice to have it that way. And usually those people won’t care what school they go to because they’re pretty dedicated anyways. And then they also don’t have dorms, although I can’t really say that that’s a bad thing because I’ve never liked dorms myself.

I: What’s your problem with them?

J: For one, I’ve always had to be in a dorm with a community shower, and I don’t know what it’s like for guys. Caleb says that bathrooms are horrible for guy, but for girls, it’s very- Well, I had some violations of privacy that cannot be avoided because of that situation. And then, you can’t really control the cleanliness of your community bathroom, and you can’t really keep all your stuff there, and even if you just want to get up to go brush your teeth, you have to get all your stuff, walk down the hallway, go into the bathroom, and hope there’s one open, and then brush your teeth, and then walk all the way back. Even if you just wanted to wash your hands because you spilled something in your room.

I: New Hall North and New Hall South have the individual bathrooms per dorm. Would you prefer something more along those lines?

J: Yeah, if they had reasonably priced dorms with bathrooms like that, I think a lot more students would probably live in the dorms. But it’s also cheaper to just split a place with people because costs can be divided up a lot easier. And then, with Tech, I really like Tech because it’s sort of a happy medium. It’s near the city, so it’s not an inconvenience. I know that there’s one college I think, not Belmont, but Bellmarine or something like that? They are so far away from the city that I think it’s like an hour to thirty minute drive just to get somewhere. Yeah, because it’s an agricultural school, and a private school. But I like Tech because everything’s nearby and you have the option of living on-campus or living off-campus. You have the option of a very flexible meal plan, and it covers a lot. At UT, the meal plan, if you were actually buying a meal at a commercial restaurant, you would have $4.25 towards your meal, even though a meal at the community cafeteria, I guess you would call it, you could get a lot more food there and it would just cost one meal. I’m not really sure what I paid for the meals. I know here, you pay about $10.75 for a meal, because that’s what they cost at the- I forget what it’s called. The actual cafeteria.

I: Do they have a name for it?

J: Yeah.

I: Swoops is the restaurants.

J: Yeah, but here, if you had a meal plan, you get six dollars and some change toward your meal, which would just about cover it. And they bring their meal prices down here. So, it’s kind of nicer that way. I personally like it here better because I know more people. At Cleveland State, I knew people. I wasn’t exactly friends with a whole lot of them there, but I saw more familiar faces. And at UT, while I did know some people who were going there, I almost never, ever, ever even crossed paths with them. And at Tech, that’s kind of impossible because I already see the same people from classes.

I: Did you just not see people from UT because it was so big?

J: Yeah, it was so big, and if you had different majors, you wouldn’t even cross paths.

I: So, those are the living conditions, food, but in terms of the education, how do they compare?

J: Okay, for the education, I can’t speak a whole lot for Cleveland State because three or four of my classes were actually online ones, and as far as that goes, I would say that online classes are good if you can keep yourself on track. If not, people can really get lost doing those, because I actually wound up making a B in a class that I should have made like an A++, and it’s simply because there’s a disconnection and I think a lost sense of responsibility that you normally give if you went to class every day. And then, with the community college, the actual physical class that I had was really great. It gave me the sense of a small town high school, which was the high school I went to. It wasn’t very rigorous, it wasn’t very strict. It’s easy to make a good grade if you just put in your effort. You don’t really have to grasp the concept, although it was just a speaking class, so it was mainly just conquering your self-fears and keeping up with the concepts. And then, with UT, my problem academically there was that their classes were very, very big. I had one class where- Actually, it’s more than one class, the auditoriums, the typical amount of students that would be in them was 250. That would be the limit for those classes, and for Chem I, those things would always be entirely full, and people sitting at the back, on the ground. And the only small classes that I had were classes like English and sociology, and I just feel like students learn a lot more in a one-on-one environment, where you got a 15 to 1 ratio, or even a 30 to 1 ratio is a lot better than a 250 to 1 ratio. And I found that professors there, they had a lot lower standards for grading, but the professors there that I had were for science, and they thought that a 60 class average was normal, and that they’d just do a curve at the end of the semester to fix it, because that was normal for chemistry. But I really think it was just that professor. He was a level four chemistry professor, and he was teaching a level one beginners Intro to Chemistry class for the first time ever. But I’ve also heard that science teachers here can be rigorous, like our physics program, where they don’t really- You can have the lower grade and they would also consider that normal. But there was a lot of disconnection between professors and students at UT, whereas here at Tech, I have teachers that will see me out and they’ll be like, “Hey, how’s it going?” And they always remember me, even if they don’t know my name, they’re like, “Ah, I recognize you.” So, I think there’s a huge difference with that, because here at Tech, the biggest class I’ve had was probably in an auditorium, at the bottom of the business building, and I think it was like- I don’t know the actual number, but if I had to guess, I would probably say it was about a hundred people.

I: So, what’s your major?

J: My major is, right now, business management. Well, technically, it’s general business right now, and I’m sort of mixing it because I’m half pre-specification and half into specification, so I’m actually taking some courses for general management right now.

I: Okay, so what interests you about business?

J: Basically, that it’s just straightforward and all I really need is effort and dedication, and it’s all organized. It’s numbers and facts. As long as you try, you can’t really screw it up. In general, when I was in high school, I did a lot of clubs. I did FBLA, which was Future Business Leaders of America, and I did HOSA, which was Health Occupation Students of America, and several other clubs besides that. I mostly focused on community service, but it was the organization of the clubs, and that you had a president, a vice-president, a secretary, you even had committees for doing things. A community service committee, a fundraising committee, and everything just had a job, and it had a place. People get things done, and then you’d meet up. You had competitions where everybody gathered for conferences where you’d learn more. I’ve always liked leadership roles. I did a lot of leadership conferences, and whenever I was at UT, I joined the Massey Hall Council, and Massey Hall is a residence hall, and what we did was we planned programs for the hall that were for the betterment of the students. I think we held move nights, we held culture night, we did lots of things like that. We did a Thanksgiving dinner night, and I really liked that because with that, I actually had to deal, for the first time, with actual problems, like these people don’t get along, because I was the president of the council, and we had an advisor, so I actually had to confer with my advisor once a week before we had our general council meetings. And it got to a point where we had to address the tension in the air and come up with icebreakers. Yeah, it was that bad. And so, I sort of had to mend that, and it was actually working. I actually had to deal with problems with delegation, people not wanting to do stuff and kind of encouraging them. And so that was really interesting because I know that when I applied to do a resident assistant, I didn’t have a whole lot of experience, so whenever they asked me what’s the biggest- I can’t remember, they specified what kind of problems I had run into, but they asked me if I had ever had any problems with people, or if I had ever had to deal with a situation with diversity, and how I’ve handled that if students didn’t like each other. And so, being in the Massey Hall Council really helped me learn more about that, and I like the way that it flows. I like having a job, and it’s like, “Okay, we got to organize this event. Now we got to organize that one. Call those people. Call these people. We need a driver. We need to have a setup.” I just like the way management- You always have a task.

I: Were you always business, or have you changed?

J: No, I’ve pretty much been a doctor, not a doctor, but interested in being a doctor. That’s all I said I was going to be since I was a little kid. It was always either princess or a doctor. It was mostly just because I wanted to help people. So, whenever I was in middle school, I joined the science club and whenever I got into high school, I really started exploring the clubs that they had, and Future Business Leaders of America was the biggest organization at the high school at that time. And so, I joined it just for the heck of it because I also enjoy computer classes, and I did enjoy that in middle school when I learned to type. And then I also took some in high school, so it was sort of a natural flow. And whenever I got into the club, they had so many community service opportunities. We helped with March of Dimes, we had Go Green projects, and there was a list of things that I could do to earn points in my club and rise up the ranks like that, and I was so involved with it, they even wanted me to take up an officer positions. So, it was really great. I just enjoyed it so much. And from there I did Interact, which is a high school version of Rotaract, which is a community service club. And then, I guess, my sophomore year- We had a HOSA my freshmen year, and the teacher who was over it wasn’t very great. All she was concerned about was what competition you wanted to do whenever you go to the conferences, and you’re basically left to study it on your own, and that was it. And I remember the first time I walked into her room for the club meeting, all the lights were turned off and they had some movie playing on the projector, and she was at the back of the room being like, “Okay, these are the competitions we have,” and it was a handful of people, so I was like, “This is not like FBLA.” And so, the next year, we got a new teacher and she was entirely different. The room was entirely lit, and she actually made an effort in her classes, and that was the first year that I started taking my health science classes. Started out with anatomy and physiology. And I wasn’t actually supposed to be in it as a sophomore, but the teacher changed it after that year because anatomy and physiology is more of an advanced science. So, myself and one other girl, we were both in anatomy and physiology, and I actually won the award for it that year, out of all of the juniors and seniors that I was in class with, so that was a big booster for going back into medicine. I mean, I wasn’t going back to it, it was always the goal in my mind, but I did develop a lot of knowledge with computers and how businesses ran whenever I was in FBLA, and I was so involved with it, and it wasn’t until HOSA thrived that I left. I stopped doing more FBLA things, and it also had a lot to do with their main advisor retiring the year that HOSA was developing, and the woman who took over it, she didn’t really want to take over it. She wasn’t ready. It was sort of an unplanned retirement, and so they just weren’t doing as much as they did before and it wasn’t like it used to be. But with Health Occupation Students of America, I was doing very well in all the health science classes. And then I actually ran for president from the end of sophomore year for junior year, I ran to be president of the club. I really didn’t think I was going to get it. The only reason why I did it was because the advisor was like, “Why not go for it?” And there was one other girl, and she was pretty sure that girl would have been president. And I think she was going to be a senior, so she signed up do clinicals, which would have involved going to the hospitals every morning, and the only time our club meetings were held was every Friday morning. And so, if you were in clinicals, you could not be the president. Our advisor didn’t make any exceptions for that, so by default, I became president. And then the year after that, no one wanted to run against me, so I was president again, and it just flowed really well. And while I’ve never been great at competitions, I mean, I might make it through regionals, and FBLA actually- I’m not sure if I placed in state or not, but I always participated and I always did the leadership conferences, and it wasn’t so much the competition as what we did in the club that I enjoyed.

I: So, after you graduate college and you’re on your own and you get to make your own business, have you considered combining medicine and business into one thing?

J: I’ve thought about it a little bit, but that problem with that is that what I realized while I was at UT is that I was never in love with medicine. I was in love with the idea of helping people. And so when I leave, like when I graduate and go on, I’m pretty sure that whatever business I get into, because I still haven’t figured that quite out since this has been a relatively new idea for me. I never considered going into business as my future, even though I always loved it. So, I thought about it and I’m pretty sure that I’m just going to get involved with an organization, like Habitat for Humanity or March of Dimes, and then just get into their headquarters and help out from there with community service. Because that’s what I really, really do like doing.

I: This is going to seem like a really stupid question, but what is it about helping people that you like?

J: I really could not tell you. One time, Caleb called me out and said that I was like- I don’t know, I can’t remember what it was, but I told him that helping people and getting- Because I actually won an award for being part of the Governor’s League for Extraordinary Teens, and I got so many kids to sign up for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, so they all got free books. All those kids got lots of free books, and I was so happy to get the award and I really can’t explain it. I just get a very happy feeling with helping people. Caleb claims that I’m just a glutton for acclamations.

I: Well, what if you made your own charity organization?

J: I would absolutely love that. I just haven’t thought of something that nobody else does yet.

I: Alright, well, I mean, what’s something that interests you and that you think people need in the world?

J: Well, basically what I can say is that I really support some of the up-and-coming foundations, like I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Food Recovery Network? It’s an organization that was at UT, and I was getting into it along with Massey Hall Council right when I had to leave for monetary reasons. Also why I don’t like major colleges like that. And what they do is that they- I guess recover’s the word that initially comes to mind. But what they’re doing is they’re going and they’re getting food and putting it in the proper containers and taking care of it the way that they should. And in order to get it to, I guess, a homeless shelter or- What do you call those soup places?

I: Food pantries?

J: Yeah, food pantries. They get them to places like that where they give out food for free, and this is food that would have gone to waste for an event. They have these things called skyboxes for the Thompson-Boling Arena, or the football stadium. I don’t think they have them for the Thompson-Boling Arena. They might. And what the skyboxes are is VIP people go up there and stay and they makes lots of food for them to have up there. And at the end of the night, all that food just goes in the trash. So they go and recover what they can to take to organizations. They can salvage hotdogs or coleslaw or something like that and take it, or bags of chips. And we also had an event at UT through the Living and Learning Community for Leadership and Service and it was the MLK day, Martin Luther King Jr., and we spent the whole day either cleaning up some part of town or- They had several different parts. I was always the cleanup crew, and they gave us sandwiches and chips in these little boxes and they told us at that event, because they introduced us to a lot of organizations that help people around campus, they said that they were going to take everything that we didn’t eat that day and take it to a place. And that’s something that’s always really bothered me. For the two hours that I worked the fry station at McDonald’s, I got so pissed off because fries are only good for seven minutes. Seven minutes and they throw them all into this bucket. And my boss- Not really my boss, but one of the managers there, she saw that I was new and she heard that one of the timers had gone off, and I had just taken out a fresh batch of fries and set it in there. But because that timer went off and I was so new and flustered by all of it, she just took everything and threw it in the trash. The whole new, fresh batch of fries because she just assumed. She didn’t ask me. She just walked up and grabbed the stuff out of there and threw it and was like, “When the beeper goes off, these are bad.”

I: That’s terrible.

J: Yeah, I don’t think I would have handled there for too much longer, even if the management wasn’t awful. And I don’t know what it’s like for the rest of it, but fries are only good for seven minutes. That’s it. Not every McDonald’s employee will do that, but that’s the standard rule. And so I just really hate it when food goes to waste like that, because there are a lot of homeless people who need stuff, and as one of my leadership mentors said to us, a lot of people just give them whatever. They don’t really give them healthy meals that would fill them up better than like, two McDoubles. Because he said he actually lived out of his vehicle for some time. I don’t know if he was doing research or if he legitimately lived out of his vehicle for some time, because he was a UT graduate student. But he told us that a lot of people just come up with McDonald’s bags to give to them, and just have it filled with food, and he said while that is such a very nice thing to do, it would be better if they had just bought them fruit and a solid meal instead of a bag of nothing but empty grease.

I: Well, most food pantries, while they’ll have can drives now and then, but actually a lot of them are saying that while that’s very nice of people to do, it’s not the best way to help them. The best way is to just give money because they actually work with a lot of farmer associations where they buy it in bulk, and a dollar will buy so much food, more than a single can will do. But it feels dishonest and low to just give money to people, I guess. I don’t know the psychology behind it, exactly. Well, I guess there’s the problem that people think that, “Oh, if you give a homeless person money, they’ll just go spend it on alcohol or something frivolous like that,” and I don’t know the numbers behind that. It could be the case that only one in a million people actually do that, but “there’s that chance,” so people are scared.

J: Yeah, I’ve always struggled with that in my life because I know that there are scam artists and I know that there are truly needy people, and it’s always bothered me and I’ve always tried to consider what is the good thing for me to do? Should I just keep the business card for a local homeless shelter in my wallet and be like, “This person, do you want me to call them right now? I will call them and have them come get you”? I’ve always struggled with ideas like that because it’s always bothered me that while I may be perfectly fine and living it up, there’s some poor kid somewhere in a very third world country who is starving to death. And it’s not just one, it’s probably a bunch. Every minute that passes. So that’s just sort of one thing. The other thing is that while I was in my leadership class, we learned that Knoxville actually has a lot of homeless people. There are actually parks and areas where you can go to and there will just be homeless people living there in tents and whatever they have. The other problem is that there are food deserts, which is basically where there’s not really a grocery store or anything that has decent food. It’s just gas stations and Quickie Marts and stuff like that. And so the kids in maybe an impoverished area- Because we actually helped a school where there were lots of impoverished children there and it had a program where after school, they would take them and do fun exercises, they would help them with homework. Some of the kids even stayed there to have dinner and take showers. And this is something that is starting to happen around the world. There’s not really a lot of them, but the fact that even one or five are doing it is pretty great. So we learned about food deserts and one day, they propositioned us to come up with an idea to help Knoxville, and I think one place came up with a women’s shelter. I forget what the others did, but my group, we came up with something kind of inspired by the Food Recovery Network and inspired by what they were telling us. We thought of if they was a way to set up little farmer’s market areas where farmers would sell stuff, and where also they would have classes, teaching them how to have take-home garbage, you know, like in the windowsill or something like that, how to grow them and keep them healthy. Because that’s a rather inexpensive way to just get some fruits or vegetables, and the buses that would go around town would make stops in those areas so that way, somebody could get picked up and taken to those places and get groceries or learn a lesson on how to keep them growing for themselves. And that extra stuff could be bought and given to people who really need them, like care bags. And then they questioned us with holes that they saw in our plan, but they really, really thought it was a great idea. I just don’t know why we don’t have more things like that. My brother, he’s taking the- I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s the scholarship for the community service colleges. He’s going to get two years free at the local community college that I went to, and he’s required to do so many hours of community service, and I remember a few months ago on the radio, when the semester was coming to an end, they were giving a bunch of updates on how people could get their community service in, because apparently it went from twenty hours and now he only has to eight hours, so he’ll be done in no time. But, I mean, I don’t see why community service hours isn’t more of a requirement. Like, why schools don’t have that with scholarships. I thought it was such great idea whenever I found out about it. And the fact that people just don’t do it and couldn’t think of ways to do it? My brother’s already realized he’s going to go back and help an animal shelter that we helped a couple summers ago, and that’s also really, really sad and heartbreaking to see. I mean, these poor little kitties that have breathing problems because the air-conditioning unit wasn’t very dry. It kept getting moisture in there, and so they all had respiratory problems. And while we there cleaning up, they took one cat out and he’s like, “This cat has to be put in the solitary room, so that way he won’t get the others sick.” And that was like a stab in the heart because it’s like, dude, you’re trying not to tell us that you’re going to kill that cat in a couple weeks if he doesn’t get better. And it was so sad and heartbreaking. A lady talked bad about this one cat that was so sweet. I loved on her and I cleaned up her little bloody nose and her food bowl and her little area, because all they have are newspapers and they have some blankets. And this woman came in talking to, I guess, one of the animal shelter guys because apparently she buys some of them and has them in like a pet store or something. And she was talking bad about this one. She was like, “I wouldn’t get that one for anything. The other week I was here, there was a little boy who got scratched by it.” And the way she was talking, this little boy was probably a toddler, and if that cat was sick or anything, and toddlers aren’t very sweet to animals. They could have grabbed him. This woman was just talking so bad about that cat, and it was so sweet whenever I helped it. And, I don’t know, I have a lot of problems with moral and ethical boundaries that people just don’t really care about. That’s one of my big things. I may not follow politics or the military or any of that, but my heart breaks very easily.

I: Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

J: I don’t really know why, but I’ve always been- I can’t really say empathetic. Most of the time, it’s just sympathetic because I haven’t really been in those situations, but I really, really relate to other people and what they go through. Like, sometimes it’s hard to watch a really sad movie now, and that’s also been a problem with getting older as a woman. Like, those things can’t be avoided. I don’t know, I guess it goes into the whole always wanting to help people. I just feel like it’s the right thing to do. And I know most of the time, the world is very grey, there is no right and wrong most of the time, but I feel like there are lots of rights.

I: Is that what you believe or is that what you think that it is?

J: What do you mean?

I: Well, because you seem to have a very strong sense to help people. So, there’s at least some places with a right and wrong.

J: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying, like, even though I believe a lot of things are grey areas and not everything is certain, I feel like there are boundaries where there is a, “Yes, this is the good thing to do,” and “No, this is the bad thing to do.” I also don’t like when those things get muddled, like whenever people say, “Well, we might- No, oh well.”

I: Would you go so far as to be arrested for something that you feel is right?

J: I can’t tell you because I’ve never been put in that situation.

I: Hypothetically.

J: Hypothetically, I would say it would have to depend because there are, like I said, grey area things where I can’t always know all the details. But I’d say if I knew all the details and I seriously thought that something was bad and going wrong, I’d do my very best to stand up against it because- I don’t know.

I: For example, the food retrieval. If suddenly a law was passed saying, “No, you can’t do this, this food is now considered old and inedible,” would you still go about and retrieve it?

J: Well, that actually is a very good question because there is a law, the Good Samaritan Act, where you have to have food in certain conditions in order to donate it. So, if something has been opened or someone else has touched it with their hands, you cannot give it away. And that was actually a problem that we had at one of our Massey Hall Council events because we had all this food from Olive Garden that we had given them as a Thanksgiving dinner. And when we were done handing it out, because we portioned it out in individual bowls and stuff, we gave it to everybody. And then whenever we were done, some of the students had an idea to go give it to some of the people that they would see out on the street, rather than let it go to waste. And so, while I knew about the Good Samaritan Act, and I knew that it was bad, I told them to be very careful and not talk to anybody and not let it be really known, because there actually were people who would just be sitting on benches, and you could tell that either they had no money or they were living in very, very poor conditions. They would just hang out on the strip for whatever reason. And Massey Hall Council was just one block down from the strip and they went out and actually gave out some of the bowls of lasagna and, I think, the dessert that we had. But we also did not tell our advisor because I knew she’d probably know about that. But there is an ethical problem with that because somebody could just go out and poison someone, thinking that they were doing the right thing. Like, if we had let that food sit out and gone bad, it probably would have been bad to give it to them, so that’s where things get grey. Now if there’s, like, some police officer and he’s like, “Hey, stop giving that homeless man money,” I’d be like, “Hey, go do your job someone else.” Sorry, that got really off topic from college.

I: No, no, I found something that you were interested in.

J: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Besides art.

I: What do you have to say about art?

J: I mostly just love art. Like, DIY, the Do-It-Yourself movement?

I: The only thing that my parents watch.

J: So yeah, I really like the whole Do-It-Yourself projects, especially when it comes to art and I like creating things. I’ve dabbled in painting. I don’t really know how to paint, but one day I will, and I’m pretty decent when it comes to pencils. I won second place at the Roane State college art competition, but it was in a specific category. It wasn’t like second out of everything there. But I’ll have to show you sometime. But the sad part is that I can’t follow art because there are critics and there are a lot of complicated things in my life that prevent me from pursuing that rather than something that would actually make money.

I: That’s always the problem. Do what you love, but unfortunately at the same time, something that will pay you.

J: Yeah, it’s a big struggle for me because, I don’t know why, but my mom went through this phase where she was like, “Oh, you can do anything Jordan!” She told me to draw my cousin on an Etch a Sketch. I don’t know why she did that. I really don’t know, but she did, and in front of our whole family. I was like, “That’s not how that works,” and she’s like, “Jordan, we need to talk about you majoring in art,” even though at the time, I was premed, so I could have majored in whatever. She’s like, “You just need to think about something serious. That way when you’re older, you won’t, you know, you’ll have something to fall back on if it doesn’t work out with premed, where you’ll have a Plan B.” I was like, “You know art is a Plan B for some people?” So there’s just something that I struggle with as life goes on. I get less and less time to do that, and to read, because at one point in my life, I thought maybe I could write a book. A fiction book.

I: There’s still time.

J: Yeah, I don’t know. That’s always just, like, a thought in the back of my mind. It’s like, if I keep creating, could I support myself eventually? Like, if I make enough stuff that people like? That’s pretty much my two major passions in life. Art and helping people. I don’t really get very passionate about much else. Now I do have other hobbies, like reading and watching movies and general stuff like that. I really like movies, I don’t know why. Fiction and movies and pictures. I’m very visual.

I: Movies are huge these days. Not just movies, but people talking about movies. There’s a huge movement of that. Podcasts and videos.

J: I actually got really disappointed over the weekend. I saw this program on TV called The Death of Superman Lives, which was supposed to be a movie, Superman Lives, by Tim Burton with Nicolas Cage as Superman. It was supposed to be, you know, abstract like Tim Burton. But because people saw some of the stuff that got leaked and because it was when critics were beginning to come out, and movie directors didn’t really know to hide their stuff, they just did things for themselves. And so a lot of people saw the beginning stages, like not even the real stages, just, you know, concept ideas and shot it down so hard. And Warner went through money struggles, so they cut back on a lot of things and that was one of the things they cut back on. And I don’t know why they just shut it down and didn’t bring it back. But yeah, that kind of made me sad, because I like Tim Burton.

I: How do you feel about Nicolas Cage?

J: Oh, okay, I know that’s like a sensitive subject but I determined over the weekend that I truly do like Nicolas Cage, because I used to get so excited about his movies. And I know that people don’t in general like Nicolas Cage, especially older generations because they saw him as- He played a lot of goofball roles when he was younger. But I actually do enjoy his acting.

I: I think he has a specific type of acting. Like, he’s not necessarily acting badly. That’s just his style of acting that he does, and that’s sometimes the kind of character that you need.

J: Yeah, I feel that way about a lot of actors, but it always does amaze me whenever I see an actor who plays a lot of dynamic roles.

I: A good example is Gary Oldman. He’s Sirius Black, he’s Commissioner Gordon, he is Dracula. And you don’t recognize him half the time.

J: Nope, you’re like, “What? He was in the movie?” and then you look a second time. I’m always amazed to see actors in some of the movies that I probably wouldn’t have realized it was them, like Gerard Butler. You know how he became popular with PS I Love You and he did a bunch of other things for a while. He was the go to guy for romantic comedies or for a funny voice that you needed. He was there. Or for hardcore humor. He even did this one movie called Gamer which was pretty vulgar, but I never realized that he played a role in Laura Croft: Tomb Raider and he was the guy in the mask in Phantom of the Opera. I had no idea. That really blew my mind when I found that out.

I: And then he did 300, I think that really shot him to fame.

J: Yeah, that was another one. I just think, I don’t know, to be crazy, have you seen James McAvoy in a lot of his stuff?

I: He’s in the X-Men prequels. What else is he in?

J: He was the satyr in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He did this really, really outrageous movie, I forget what it’s called. I think it was like Pigs, or something like that, but it was about these British cops and it was very, very vulgar. The most vulgar I’ve ever seen James McAvoy. And it was actually twisted, like he had mental problems and he had forgotten that he had dressed up like his wife and went out on the street because she left him or there was a horrible accident, or something like that. And so, yeah, it was really weird. And then he goes and plays nice roles like the cuddly little satyr in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And he’s done Wanted. That was-

I: Strange.

J: Yeah, but I really, really like his acting. He’s usually so sincere. Oh, Penelope. That was another that I really liked because he had to show a lot of emotion and complex thought in that one. Because it was sort of a question for society movie.

I: Do you think actors or directors deserve the fame in movies?

J: I would probably say both because I mean, you could have some really amazing directors who entirely show an actor which way to go and what to do, and he makes them the better actor. And there are other times where you’ve got Robin Williams or I think even Emma Stone. Like, they improv on the scene and they make the movie better by improving, and it’s beyond what the director would have, you know, foreseen himself. But then there are directors like- I don’t know, it gets complicated when you get into movies, like this last Star Wars where you have actors that portray a lot, and they had new ones and older actors in there. And then you had JJ Abrams. You’re like, “Who is the mastermind behind this?” I also think there’s a lot more to it than just the director, though. While the director may have a lot of vision, I think a lot of the vision also comes from the music directors because their scores and soundtracks can make or break a movie because they do a lot of powerful emotion. And then you also have the set directors who will do things that add the tiniest detail that can make a lot of difference.

I: I think my complaint with movie music is that there are a lot of movies that, especially intense action movies, where I’m sure that during the movie they had intense action music. I couldn’t tell you what it sounded like.

J: Yeah, those movies- I think there are different types of movies. There are extreme quality movies that you can sit and totally enjoy every single aspect that some people just would not sit down to watch to save their lives because all they really want is action and pow and boom and unrealistic, I don’t know, displays of power and credibility that makes them feel better. I think it depends on the person what type of movie is your type of movie. I think what people watch says a lot about them.

I: I can believe that. Alright, that about wraps it up. Fifty minutes. It’s been fun.

[yeswesaythings]

There’s No Place Like Home

I: Okay, hi, tell me about yourself.

C: Have you been recording for a while?

I: No, no.

C: Okay, well, I’m working on my house. I guess that’s the best way to describe it. I’m eighteen and I’m working on building a house to move to New Zealand. No, Hawaii. I’m sorry, we were talking about New Zealand a little bit ago, and I backtracked.

I: So why Hawaii?

C: I have seasonal depression. I didn’t know if you knew that or not, but I’ve just- It’s really only in the winter that I have to deal with this, but my pineal gland is not stimulated by sunshine in the winter as much as it is in the summer. So, overall, I’m very, very unhappy in the winter. And it’s nothing that I can really help.

I: I’m sorry.

C: Other than having a good attitude! But also year round summer and sunshine.

I: Who wouldn’t want that?

C: It is a really- It’s going to be really nice. And I’m really picky about, I want to be as happy as I can possibly be in my entire life, and since I know that winter is awful for me, why plan to live anywhere else other than a warm climate?

I: So, tell me about the house. The plans for it, what all do you have set in stone? What’s all still being written?

C: The plans. The plans for the house. I guess the best way to describe- I’d have to give background on why I wanted to do it in the first place. I’m planning to be a teacher, and as a teacher, you have a very low salary. Well, depending on where you work. But I can tell you off the bat that a school teacher in Hawaii isn’t going to be making a lot of money. Not only that, but the cost of living in Hawaii is expensive because everything, all the goods that you have there, besides produce, is shipped there from the mainland. So you have to account for the cost of oil, and it just drives up the cost of living. So, groceries, what you could get here a dollar is going to be five dollars over there. So it’s expensive to live in Hawaii. But one thing that I’ve learned through living here in Tennessee is that I don’t consume much, and I don’t need a lot of space. I don’t wear a lot of clothes. I don’t own a lot of things. So I really don’t need much space, or much room. That’s why a trailer home would be plenty for me, but I don’t want to live in a trailer home. That to me feels like a temporary living place, and I really want something that’s my own and something that I’ve worked towards. I don’t want to live paycheck to paycheck and I don’t want to pay rent, so I guess my overall reason for wanting to build my own home is so I can own it outright and not have to live paycheck to paycheck and be a slave to society.

I: Stick it to the man.

C: I guess. I can show you my house plans. I mean, this is a rough- This is what I’m going to show my architect.

I: Oh, so you’re doing a tiny home.

C: It is very small. This one is smaller than the one that I’m building on. I guess the main concept for this house is it’s going to be on a trailer, on a flatbed trailer.

I: So you can transport it from place to place.

C: So, it’s eight feet by twenty feet.

I: Might be as big as this room.

C: Oh, this looks more like eight by sixteen?

I: Okay, so slightly bigger.

C: But that’s very similar to this house right here. This is an eight by sixteen. I’ve been looking through lots of plans, and this is by far my favorite. I found this a couple years ago and this is the one that I’ve stuck with. So, that’s the outside. Again, this is only sixteen by eight, and mine would be eight by twenty. So, I’d have another four feet to work with. I had to make a slideshow to show the architect so that he could base the plans off of.

I: Do you mind sending me this?

C: Yeah, sure! This is the entrance. I’m building it to be off-grid. So, I’d be using a composting toilet and using rainwater. But Hilo is a city that I’m looking in buying property in, but just the outskirts of Hilo. It’s the wettest city in the United States, so they get- It rains every day, but it rains in ten minute showers.

I: Okay, so it’s not just monsoons all day, all the time.

C: Yeah, it’s not constantly raining. It’s not like what I hear Seattle’s like. It is very rainy, but it’s tropical rains, so I’d be getting plenty of clean water that’s just coming off the ocean.

I: So, part of this is for self-sustainability, essentially.

C: Well yeah, I mean, independence. I want to be independent, I want to own my own home, minimize costs so that I can extend to a teacher’s salary. I don’t want more room than I need, because I see so many people who have big areas to live in, and then they’re always- They’re constantly trying to upgrade. You know what I mean?

I: Yeah.

C: And I just think that’s so…

I: Wasteful?

C: Wasteful, and kind of like digging a hole for yourself.

I: In what way?

C: You need so little to actually be happy. The big house that I live in, it’s tons of just empty space that’s not used. But you look at the empty space and you’re like, “What am I going to fill this with? What am I going to put in this area?”

I: So if you don’t have any space, you don’t have that feeling to fill it with things.

C: Yeah, and just putting more importance in material things than you actually need. It’s the same kind of, like, you get an iPhone and then the new iPhone comes out, and you want the new iPhone. Do you know what I mean?

I: Yeah, the stuff you have is just fine. But you feel that if you don’t have the latest, biggest, grandest, best thing, that, “Oh, well things could be better.” It’s that whole potential.

C: Yeah, it’s the constant, “How can I make this better”, when in reality, you just need so little. Not only that, but life is so easy, but we make it so hard.

I: Just because you’re told you should care about something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. The iPhone, it’s being commercialized and people are telling you that you need it. But the people who are telling you you need it are the same people who are trying to sell you it. They would benefit from you trying to buy it, so…

C: Yeah, because I mean, you look at advertisements, it’s all bandwagon. It’s also very degrading, at least in my opinion.

I: “You need this to be happy!”

C: Yeah, and I think it’s- I don’t watch TV, I hardly ever watch TV. But when I do, it’s just very insulting. I feel like my intelligence is being insulted. It’s so mind-numbing. And I mean, so many people just sit in front of the TV, and you don’t live and do stuff. So I don’t want to live in a house where I have a TV. I don’t want my house to be- I don’t know how best to explain it. I don’t want to be in my house all the time. I want to actually do things and live outside of my home.

I: Which is another reason for Hawaii. That allows you to be outside, because if it’s winter, it’s kind of hard to be outside.

C: Yeah, you’re inside all the time. And when you’re inside all the time, it’s miserable. Then what’s the point? Also, I want to be able to move it, so having it small is very, very, very useful. And I guess a lot of it is independence, to just be completely honest, and not have to worry about upgrading. Also, being single is one of the best things that I have ever- I love being single and I love the freedom of being single. So, I don’t ever see myself in a position where I will not be single. And because of that, I mean, I won’t have two incomes be coming in. I mean, what I make is mine and what I have to go off of, so living a lifestyle that is really consumer base is just really not practical for me. Not only that, but having a small house like this, if I ever did decide to start a family, it’s not something that you can’t upgrade from. You know what I mean?

I: Yeah, you can always change your mind. This isn’t permanent.

C: I mean, it’s something that I could sell, even though I certainly don’t plan on it.

I: So you, as of now, plan on this being a long time thing?

C: Yeah, and your living situation is, I think, never permanent, especially if you want to own your own home. I mean, having the ability to ship it and move it to different places is really important. Because the job market in Hawaii, it’s not easy to get jobs in Hawaii, especially good paying jobs. So, living a life where you’re not spending a lot of money on things is going to be really important. And I’ll need that.

I: A lot of this seems to come from the whole self-sufficiency, independence part of it. Can you talk more about that?

C: Do you mean along the lines of just supporting myself, or do you mean the off grid-?

I: Yeah, I guess the off grid aspect of it. Are you going full extreme of being completely-?

C: Do you mean like I raise my own cattle and I slaughter my own cattle?

I: Be completely untraceable?

C: Oh, no. No I don’t. That’s not really my reason. I want to be off grid so that I don’t have to be in a neighborhood or a city because, quite frankly, I don’t like being in neighborhoods or cities, and I want it to be as portable as possible. And honestly, living in Hawaii off grid is one of the easiest- That’s one of the best places to do it, depending on where you are in Hawaii. Because solar power isn’t an issue there at all. Water, especially on the Hilo side, is not an issue. Composting toilets are a thing. I’m actually getting a composting toilet for Christmas next year. That’s my Christmas present from my parents, so that when I start building, I’ll be able to put that in. It’s from Sweden and it’s really cool.

I: Merry Christmas, here’s some shit.

C: Here’s some toilet!

I: So this is very much ecological.

C: Yeah, I mean, my reasons are for independence, but it would be very, I guess, green. That’s the way to say it. These are the plans and this is- I’d be changing it up quite a bit from what you see here, but…

I: Explain. What would you do?

C: Gosh, this is weird. I’m not very good at being taped and talking at the same time. This is a view from the front door. You walk in and you’ve got living space. This isn’t furnished. You’re seeing the sleeping loft, and the kitchen, and the living room. I really like the windows on this side because I want the house to be as open as possible. I don’t like really closed in areas. I like seeing outside and I like being outside more than anything else. So, having an outside feel to it is going to be really nice. I’d be sleeping in the loft. I guess what I like so much about this design, as opposed to the other ones, is that it has stairs.

I: Wait, so, are stairs not usually commonplace?

C: In small houses, no, they really aren’t because they take up space. But what I really like about this house is that there’s storage inside the stairs. Also, I going to have dogs and my dogs will sleep with me.

I: Dogs can’t climb ladders too well.

C: Yeah, so having stairs would be important. But I love all the storage. I mean, underneath those stairs, that’s all storage space. So that’s for your vacuum. I guess those would be my dressers, too. This is the loft. One thing that you can’t see in this picture but I’d have set up is: This is a skylight, a sunroof-type thing, and my solar panel would be on the wall, on the roof right beside it. And you lose around 20 or 30% of your energy by having dirty solar panels. And while most people have to get on their roof in order to clean their solar panels, all I’d have to do is open my skylight, and then lean out and clean it every day. So I would be having very little energy loss with dust and stuff like that. Also, it rains every day in Hilo, so I’d be able to just open the window after it rains and the solar panel’s already wet, so that I don’t have to use distilled water on it.

I: Wait, so you have to wet solar panels?

C: You have to clean them. Because if you don’t clean them, you lose a lot of energy that you could be using for your house. This is a view of the kitchen. This one’s a lot smaller than the one that I have planned. It’s an eighteen inch sink that’s used in RVs. So that’s the same type of sink that you’d have in an RV. This house does not have a stove, but I will have a stove. So, two burners, no oven, but a fridge. I guess you can see where I’d have the solar panel, right out here on the outdoor siding. Another thing that I’d have different in this house is: You see how the bathtub- This one has a bathtub, and that’s really weird for small houses because bathtubs take up a lot of space. What I would have is, it’s a tub, but it’d be more of a shower. So I wouldn’t be using that to take baths. It wouldn’t be the same size. It’d be smaller, so like, this wide by- Like, a small-

I: You wouldn’t be able to lay stretched out in it.

C: Yeah, it’s not like a regular bathtub. It’s like a basin and I’d have the shower go into the basin. But I’d be using that to wash things, like bigger things. I won’t have a washing machine. I won’t have a regular washer and dryer like most houses do. Mine’s hand-crank.

I: Those still exist?

C: Yeah, yeah, Amish people. But it’s like a five gallon container that you put the clothes in, you put your soap and water in there, and you just crank it for about five minutes, and it washes all your clothes. And then you take that out, you fill up the basin in the shower in order to rinse them, and hang dry it.

I: Based on what you’ve told me, I don’t think you’d have any problem going Amish, I would guess.

C: Well, we’ve been- I was really fortunate to grow up with my parents, because we haven’t used heating, like the heater in our house, I think my whole life. We use a wood stove. So, all of our heat comes from wood that falls off of trees after there’s a storm in town. We have a network of people who just call us whenever they have limbs fall off their trees, and we’ll go and cut off the limb and take it to our house and cut it up and use it for wood in our stove. So, that’s part of it. We don’t have a dryer at our house. We dry our clothes on a line. We make our own soap. We use lye soap that my mom makes.

I: So you’re already fairly self-sufficient.

C: Yeah, the only two differences would be substantial, I guess. I would have to regulate how much water that I use, because we are hooked up to the water grid. And I’ve never had to limit how much water I use. Does that make sense?

I: I mean, have you ever tried keeping track of it?

C: You know what, I was supposed to for an APES project back in high school, but I kind of BSed that. Now I kind of wished that I had taken that seriously.

I: Why don’t you do it now?

C: Yeah, actually, I think I will.

I: Because, I mean, that’s going to be a thing if, “Oh no, I used the entirety of my water supply in five minutes of a shower,” it’s going to be a bit of a problem.

C: No, that’s big. I’ll be having a cistern, in a way. Do you know what a cistern is?

I: No.

C: It’s a big jug of water. It’s for runoff water that comes off your roof.

I: Okay, so it’s a rainwater-

C: It’s a rainwater container. Yeah, so it fills up and you use the water. I doubt that will be an issue in Hilo, but in other parts of the country, yeah, that’s going to be big. Also, though, I’m planning to be able to make it on-grid compatible. Because all you really have to do is just add an out spout, and you’re going to have that either way with a cistern. So, I will be able to put it in a water grid if I wanted to. But if I don’t have to, then that’d be awesome. I guess another difference is I’ve never had to really hand wash clothes. I have a washing machine at home, but I don’t think that an extra five minutes of my day is going to be a make or break for me, you know? And also, I’ve got- Before my brother came back from New Zealand and brought me a sweatshirt, I only had fourteen shirts in my wardrobe, and like, four pairs of pants. So, how much clothes I have is just…

I: Token.

C: Yeah, small. So, I won’t be doing a load of twenty item washes. I’m excited about the composting toilet I’m going to get. I’m really, really, really excited about it. There’s different types, but here, I’m going to show- Well, I’ll show you the others. Like, this is from the loft. This is from the outside. And this is where all your solar batteries are and your hookup tank, so your water heater. That’s it for the slideshow. It’ll be different. My house will be different from this one. But the main plans for it, that’s going to be kind of the same. Let me show you my toilet though. It’s called the Separett toilet, and it’s a urine diverting system. So, in most composting toilets, I mean, the solid waste and your pee goes to the same area, goes to the same place, and it ferments. And that’s why lots of composting toilets are less than desirable.

I: Yum.

C: Well, yeah, but this is a classy composting toilet. This is high class. I am so thrilled to get this toilet! You have no idea how excited I am. It’s so cool. The way it works is: Your pee goes to one holding tank that you can choose, you can use different ways of getting rid of it. You can keep it in like, a septic tank. I’m finding the one that I’m getting.

I: Villa 9000.

C: Isn’t it cool? The urine diverting system, you can get rid of your pee in any way. Basically, you know, you have a septic tank, or you can make it into fertilizer and just add 10:1 part water to it, and then use it to water your lawn, which is really freaking weird, but it makes a lot of sense because there’s a lot of nitrogen in pee.

I: I did not know that.

C: There is! And then the solid waste compartment, there’s a fan inside the toilet, and what the fan does is that vents to the outside- You’re making a face, but it’s really cool.

I: I thought it was going to like, bzzzzz, cut it up.

C: Nope, there’s a fan outside, and what the fan does, it’s a three volt or three watt, I don’t know the difference, it’s one of the two. But it goes constantly and what it does is it dries out your shit. It dries it out to a powder, okay? So, the volume goes down and it has no odor because it’s fluff. And then it vents to the outside, so there’s no odor in your house, whereas other composting toilets, it heats it up to evaporate everything, but it’s evaporating the pee and the shit in the same compartment, so it ferments and it smells atrocious. Which really isn’t a good idea. Also, it uses a lot of energy for a heating element, but this just dries it out so a family of four would be changing the solid compartment like, once a month, which is incredible, I feel like. But I’d be switching this out maybe three times a year if there’s only one person living in the house. Oh, and it’s really cool. There’s a trapdoor so that the weight- Okay, you have to sit down on the seat. It’s pressure sensitive, so the flap opens up and then you poop. So, it’s airtight.

I: Oh, so that’s how it tells the difference between what you’re depositing.

C: Yeah, it’s so cool. It’s weird, but it’s so cool. And then I won’t have to be set up to a sewer system.

I: Down with sewage.

C: But this toilet’s a thousand dollars. So, it’s expensive but it’s so luxury. It’s a luxury toilet.

I: High class.

C: I’m really looking forward to it.

I: So, this is sort of related. You said earlier that you prefer dogs over people. Why don’t you like people too much?

C: Where do I start?

I: Rant. Rant to me!

C: Where do I start? Oh my gosh, I grew up with dogs and my dogs are honestly my best friends. I hang out with them more than anyone else. Unconditional love is so- I mean, it’s something you have to earn with them, but they’re just the most nonjudgmental, wonderful animals in the world that I don’t even feel are animals. They’re more like people to me. They’re like the living things that humans don’t deserve. They’re so wonderful. There’s just so many reasons why dogs are better than people, I don’t even know where to start. Did you have dogs growing up?

I: No, I think we had a couple cats that “ran away” around the time that I was born. Turns out my parents couldn’t handle cats and kids at the same time. I’ve had guinea pigs. But those aren’t the same thing as dogs. I have a lot of friends that have dogs.

C: It might just be something that you have to experience to understand? But I’ve never lived a day without a dog in my life. So that might have something to with it. At least two dogs, I’ve never lived a day without two dogs in my life. One things that’s really cool, whenever I’m crying upstairs in my bedroom- I mean, when you’re crying, you don’t want to be at home. You don’t want people to know, you don’t want your family to know. At least I don’t. But I have a two-story house and my bedroom is on the top story and facing the backyard. And my dogs stay in the backyard. Every time that I’m crying up in my bedroom, my dog knows. I don’t know if he can hear me. I don’t know how he knows that I’m upstairs crying, but whenever I’m crying, he knows, and he’ll go up to the siding underneath my bedroom window and he will scratch the siding until I come down and outside. So, there’s so many reasons why dogs are better than people that I really don’t know where to start.

I: I mean, you’ve talked a lot about the dog aspect of it, but why are people so bad?

C: I don’t think that people are necessarily bad.

I: They’re just not necessarily good, either? Is it less that dogs are good, people are bad and more that dogs are good, people are neutral?

C: I just think that a lot of the negative things that you encounter through relationships with people, it’s just not a thing with dogs! Dogs don’t care what you wear. Dogs don’t care that you’ve succeeded in something, and other people haven’t. I don’t think that they give a shit about stuff that doesn’t matter, and I really appreciate that in a dog. And I think that there’s a lot that we can learn from dogs.

I: You should write a book. “Everything I Learned, I Learned From My Dog.”

C: I should.

I: That’s what you do. You mix your teaching with dog training, essentially. You look at dog behavior and see how they act and work, and you bring that to the classroom. And essentially, you have the philosophy of dogs. Dogma. And you teach people that we should be more like dogs instead of people.

C: Honestly, I feel like a dog should be the professor for that. I promise you, if I had a dog as a professor, I would show up to class every single day, sick or not.

I: With his dog-torate?

C: I think one of the funniest things about the plans for the house that I picked out is that the lady who actually designed that floorplan is a dog trainer.

I: So she designed it with dogs in mind?

C: Yeah, she designed it be like a mobile kiosk that she both lived in and worked out of, to hang out with dogs all the time. I just think that’s funny because it’s going to be me and my two dogs in that house, and we’re going to be the happiest motherfuckers ever. It’s going to be great.

I: I feel like there’s something that you just want to rant about. Get angry. Get mad. It’s cathartic.

C: You can’t start me off with dogs and then try to piss me off. That’s just not going to roll like that. But I mean, these are just my plans. They’re kind of weird, but I think it’ll work for me. I meet with an architect in a couple weeks. It’s a friend of my mom’s, and he’s helping me design the floor plan. And my parents are planning on moving to Hawaii once I do, so I have four years to build, since I’ll be in college here in the states, well, here in the mainland. A friend of my mom’s has a big plot of land that she’s letting us build on. I’ve been volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, so I know a lot of people who know how to build things, and they’ve offered to help build, and essentially teach me how to do this. So, things are really just falling into place. Also, when we’ll be shipping it over to Hawaii, and since my parents are moving later on, what we’ll do is we’ll use the house as a shipping container for the furniture, and just possessions that they want to bring over. And ultimately, they’ll be- I mean, that’ll go into a storage place in Hawaii. And then they’ll either be building their own home in Hawaii, or buying and then moving their furniture to the new house.

I: I feel it. Well, I’m excited for you. It sounds like a really cool thing. I mean, everyone else is like, “I just want to get a job.” But you’ve got the most unique plan I’ve heard of anyone that I know of.

C: I guess.

I: You sound scared.

C: I’m not, but I also recognize how weird it is. Do you know what I mean? And I think it’s really interesting how flaky people think you are when you tell them, because what I have planned is definitely different than what most people do. And it’s really interesting how much opposition you encounter whenever your ideas are different about-

I: Have you told people about this, and they’ve told you, “No, don’t do this”?

C: Oh, yeah.

I: What are their reasons?

C: Well, I’ve heard reasons like, “Well, you’re going to start a family,” which is a possibility. I could start a family, but of course, that’s something that, you know, you can change. I mean, if it doesn’t and you have to upgrade, you upgrade. Life is constantly changing, so…

I: You’re not stuck in one way of life.

C: I think a lot of people understand my reasoning for wanting to not have to live by a paycheck. But, I mean, when you have a conversation, and you tell somebody that you don’t want a husband, usually they just immediately think you’re weird. You know? Or not together. Do you know what I mean?

I: Sort of. Yeah, it’s against social norms.

C: Yeah, I think anything that’s different for other people is just- You’re going to get people who don’t think it’s a good idea, which is…

I: I know my sister, for example, she’s like, “Oh, I’m not having kids. I’m having cats instead.” And it’s one of those things where you’re early on in life. You can’t declare something right now and know for certain that it’s going to be true in the future.

C: And you can only accommodate for the time being in the present, so…

I: Don’t burn your bridges. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Don’t burn your chickens. All very important lessons, kids.

C: Please don’t burn your chickens.

I: Don’t count your bridges before they’ve hatched.

C: But the people who’ve known about it for the longest, because it’s been a good five years of looking into this, and planning, and talking to different shipping companies, and finding out which trailers are the best, and which toilets are best, and practicing how to make lye soap, and not using a dryer, and things like that. I mean, the people who know that I’ve been working on this for a long time thinks it’s-

I: This isn’t just some whim.

C: Yeah, the people who know that I’ve been working on it for quite a while know that I’m serious about it and think that it’ll work for me. And of course, if I didn’t have the support of my mom, it would not go through, I think, because she’s just, aside from my dogs, she is my best friend. And just having her connections through work and just knowing people who have done similar things, and that’s through having the opportunity in talking to them about this and working out the nitty-gritty of everything. It’s helped a lot.

I: I guess that’s something we didn’t touch on too much, but your parents are totally down with it and everything?

C: My dad thinks I’m crazy, but my dad is also non-supportive in anyway. And so his opinion on it doesn’t matter to me?

I: In a way, you’re used to him not really supporting you, so this is just another thing.

C: Yeah, essentially. But my mom’s 100% on board, and she’s helping me through it all.

I: Well, if they’re moving to Hawaii after you do, I mean, I guess your dad has a bit of say in it?

C: Oh, he want to move to Hawaii. He definitely wants to move to Hawaii. So does my mom. But my individual plans for my house, that’s the stuff that he just doesn’t understand. But he’s knows I’m capable of it, and he knows that I’ve been working towards it for a while, so I guess the first couple of years, he was like, “You’re an idiot. You’re an idiot for even thinking that’ll work,” and now he just doesn’t say anything. You know what I mean? But my mom is just- She’s an angel. And then aside from that, I really don’t talk to friends about it because there’s no reason to, I guess.

I: They’re not going to change your mind.

C: Yeah, for me, I think it makes so much sense. Also, I don’t have to be paying rent, so my bills are going to be low, and I’m going to like that. Certainly worrying about money isn’t something that I want to do.

[yeswesaythings]

Institutions Upon Institutions

I: Tell me about life, the universe, everything.

C: Well Ian, the universe is pretty small right now, seeing as it’s finals week. How are you feeling, Ian?

I: I’m alright.

C: Do you feel like changing your major to EXPW?

I: No…

C: Do you feel like people who change their major to EXPW are better or worse? Well, see, someone just told me that they could not change- Well, actually, I think they were referring to the final, as far as changing their major to EXPW.

I: What is your major?

C: My major’s mechanical engineering, Ian.

I: So what do you plan on doing with it?

C: Space! I like airplanes! Most mechanical engineering majors like cars, but I like airplanes! Oh man, that is very odd though, isn’t it? Like, a majority of mechanical engineering majors are people who like cars, but it’s not just cars. It’s like factory stuff, airplanes, spaceships, anything that can be powered by electronics. It’s fascinating, really.

I: So then, what do electrical engineers do?

C: You know, I really don’t. I think their whole thing is understanding how electricity works and, you know, how to manipulate mechanical things with it.

I: So, if you weren’t a mechanical engineer, what would you be?

C: Electrical engineering major. What would you be, Ian, if you weren’t a math major? EXPW?

I: No. Something related with the arts, so probably like music composer.

C: Music composer? That’s cool, Ian.

I: Music’s cool.

C: Music is cool. You know what else is cool, Ian? Space.

I: Talk to me about space.

C: Talk to you about space?

I: Why is it so cool?

C: Because, it is the final frontier. Can’t really get much farther than space, can you? I suppose that is unless you can figure out how to go to another dimension but, you know, you need space travel before you can do that, I guess. Warp factor eight, Mr. Sulu. What do you feel about SEDS, Ian?

I: I mean, we’re only in the beginning parts of it, so there’s not much to get an opinion on.

C: Isn’t it exciting?

I: I mean, there’s the potential for it to be exciting. Like, once we actually start the projects.

C: I’m going to be really disappointed if it goes downhill.

I: Not everything can be a success.

C: True, but it’d be really disappointing if the only space-related thing that we have on campus, I guess, excluding the moon rover, or whatever, is a crash and burn failure. They need to bring aerospace engineering here to Tech.

I: Would you change your major to that?

C: Hell yeah! Neil Armstrong was an aerospace engineering major, or actually, degree. Has a degree. Had a degree. I think, or maybe his is astronautical engineering.

I: He was EXPW?

C: He was not EXPW. Let’s see, let’s look at Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong, Wikipedia. Okay, wow, he has a really cool signature. So, let’s see, yeah, aerospace engineer, which that’s what I was going to study at UT, but I cannot afford UT, unfortunately. Tech’s pretty cool though.

I: I’m trying to find something ideal to talk about.

C: We’re talking about a lot here, Ian!

I: We’re talking about nothing.

C: How do you feel about these riots?

I: I think they’re justified.

C: So, your call to action is, “Oh, somebody got shot. Let’s burn down our city!”

I: But no one got shot in this case.

C: I honestly don’t even know what happened.

I: So, what happened is that Freddie Gray, I don’t know exactly what the crime he was committing, but he got arrested and then he was in the back of one of the armored police vehicles or whatnot in handcuffs and everything, but he didn’t have a seatbelt on or anything, which they’re supposed to do. And so, basically, he’s in the back of this giant armored truck without a seatbelt, and he’s basically jostled everywhere, and it breaks his spine. And he dies. And people are mad because it’s another case of-

C: Police brutality?

I: Black person that is killed, and it just seems like nothing’s going to happen as a result.

C: That’s pretty impressive that they managed to kill someone by just simply putting them in the back of an armored vehicle. I mean, an armored vehicle really isn’t that big. It’s kind of like, you had an ambulance, which I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the inside of an ambulance. It’s pretty small. But you clear out all the medical crap and you put seats in. It’s basically an armored truck. And you’d figure- I’ve been in handcuffs before, because I did that mock wreck, where I was arrested, and I’m pretty sure you could stabilize yourself enough. So, I don’t know. But I mean, yeah, if that person died in the back of a cop car, that’s pretty bad.

I: It is. It’s the same thing as Ferguson all over again. The same people that were for the riots are for the riots still. The people that were against the riots are still against the riots. Nothing’s changed. The same arguments, that this guy had a long list of arrests in his past, has come up. It’s irrelevant to this situation.

C: Didn’t they claim in the Ferguson thing though that the kid went for the gun, or something like that?

I: It’s all-

C: It’s all a mystery.

I: But the thing with the Ferguson case, it was all a mystery, but the thing was that case, that wasn’t even a case of- That was deciding whether or not there should be a case in the first place for it. They decided to not grant an indictment or anything, where that would go into more of those mysteries and things that we aren’t sure about. That’s the thing. That’s what people were mad about. The thing is not so much that someone died. That is important. But you get the statistics that people throw out, “Oh, well, look at this. Many more white people died than black people by police. So, you know, black people are just rioting for no reason!” Well, the thing is, they’re rioting because they’re afraid that nothing’s going to happen as a result of all of this.

C: Does stuff happen to the people that shoot white people, kill white people?

I: I personally don’t know.

C: So, maybe it’s the fact that the African-American community will stand up against all that. It’s kind of interesting, like, you see pictures of African-Americans burning down the city. Then you’ll see them guarding the police, too, so it’s kind of odd, isn’t it.

I: Because, like any other group, you can’t put them all into one category.

C: Oh yeah, of course, but you’d think if it was a white or black issue, then all the blacks would be against all the whites and stuff like that.

I: But it’s not always like that. Because if it’s a white against black issue-

C: Isn’t that what people are making it, isn’t that what they want it to be? Pointing out the fact that the white cop killed the black criminal? But then the black citizens defend the white cops, while the other black citizens and some white citizens-

I: The problem is, everyone goes and looks back and they’re saying, “Look at Martin Luther King Jr. when he did his protests. They were peaceful.”

C: Yeah, and they bombed his house. He didn’t start a riot.

I: He was also arrested, too, doing peaceful protests. And here’s the thing they’re trying to declare: Martin Luther King Jr. did peaceful protests and he succeeded by giving the African Americans equal rights. But these people here are basically saying he didn’t succeed in the first place! They’re still being oppressed! That’s their standpoint of it.

C: Have you ever talked to a police officer, Ian? Not really?

I: I’m sure with, like, the DARE officer?

C: Like, whenever I talk to a police officer, I personally feel like they’re trying to be intimidating. Not because I’m white, black, but because I’m just another person to them, so they got to watch their back and all that.

I: I don’t see how that’s relevant, though.

C: It’s just a thing. I don’t think that people can say that Martin Luther King didn’t achieve any form of success.

I: Well, yeah, I don’t think you can say that, “Oh, he achieved nothing.” But it’s-

C: All I’m suggesting is that regular people- Not regular people, everybody suffers from police officers feeling superior. It’s not just African Americans. However, it does seem at this time that it is safer to commit acts of violence against an African American person.

I: You have all these people that commit kind of minor crimes, and wind up dead. And the thing that’s always pointed is that the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter was completely armed to the teeth, was apprehended alive. How did that work?

C: Do you know what he did? Did you read that at all? I followed it because I found it utterly- Well, disgustingly fascinating. So, he walked in the back door, shot everyone in the movie theater- Well, most of the people in the movie theater. And some of the bullets went into other movie theaters. He went back to his car and he stood there and waited. And they were afraid that he put a bomb in his house, but he lived in an apartment. So they were trying to figure out does he have a bomb in there? I guess, the whole thing is, the people that committed these minor crimes, even though some of these claim that they had heavy narcotics, which is a major, federal crime, so I don’t understand why they’re not in federal prison, but whatever. I don’t care about law. So they were trying to figure out if he was a terrorist, not a petty drug dealer. Drug dealer, yeah, you kill one, okay, there will be another one. But terrorists? Terrorists are-

I: These other crimes aren’t even drug dealing. Like, you look in the past? For example, the Trayvon Martin case or whatnot.

C: Oh yeah, Trayvon Martin’s a bit different than what they’re arguing about this Freddie Gray.

I: He didn’t do anything. Okay, next thing. Michael Brown.

C: I don’t know. Michael Brown’s different.

I: At the time, what the officer actually knew, he didn’t know that he had actually stolen anything. To him, this was just another person, not any alleged criminal or anything. Eric Garner is accused of selling contraband cigarettes. These aren’t heavy drug dealers.

C: That’s what they’re claiming for this Freddie Gray person. But nevertheless, they’re more worried about terrorism than they were about these minor criminals or whatever. Because if you kill a terrorist, well shit, you may have something somewhere where you don’t know where it is. Say he planted a bomb in a hospital. Well, you have no idea that it’s there if he’s dead, do you?

I: But so that makes it better that the-

C: I’m just giving you probably some logic as to why they kept him alive. I don’t understand why they’re shooting African Americans. I don’t understand why they shoot white people. I don’t understand why they shoot anyone. I personally don’t think that cops should have guns at all. Well, I take that back. How should I put this?

I: Their access to guns should only be in the same way that everyone else has access to guns?

C: Well, I mean, you can kill someone with a handgun. I don’t know, really, whenever a situation is escalated to gun needs, you really know when that is. You don’t just walk into a situation, and go, “Oh shit, I need a gun.” You typically know, “Okay, there’s probably some hostile threat here.” You don’t just see a citizen and then just whip out an AK-47 or whatever. So, I just don’t know, Tasers and stun guns, although they can probably figure out how to weaponize those, too. Well, technically they are weapons.

I: I was talking to someone. They put it like this: Police shooting and killing people are basically acting as the judge, jury and executioner all at the same time.

C: Oh yeah, completely. That’s wrong. That’s what this country was founded against. Doesn’t England have strict gun laws, and only cops are allowed to carry around guns, like, at major events?

I: I don’t know if they have guns, even? It was just bobby sticks?

C: At major events, they have them. Like, you know, celebrations.

I: I know we have some of the worst gun violence issues.

C: I don’t know, people are tricky with guns. I mean, yeah, we have the right to bear arms, but I don’t know.

I: It’s like the Constitution isn’t a perfect document, or something, and couldn’t be changed, or something.

C: People will never get rid of their right to bear arms. I don’t see why they should have to. Of course, you know, my feelings on guns are: Yes, I will own one to protect myself, but only because a majority of the people around me are fucking crazy. You know, I personally am not black, obviously, but I also do everything in my power to stay away from police officers because I simply do not like them. I do not trust them. I don’t really think that they’re good individuals. I don’t think I’ve ever met a cop that I thought was a good person. And that’s sad to say, and I know that people will listen to this, eventually, and they’ll think, “Oh, my dad, mom, auntie, they’re great! They’re just amazing people, and they’re cops!” Well, yeah, sure, they’re probably great to you. They probably treat some people like shit. You know, it’s like whenever you talk about cops on cops, you’re talking to a cop about cops, they’re just like, “Oh, well, they obviously had a reason to just gun someone down.” It’s like, I don’t think so. Again, I believe that you can pick your target. Obviously, don’t walk into an area that is considered dangerous, unarmed. That’s not a good idea. However, don’t whip it out and shoot it, especially if you have someone handcuffed, Jesus Christ. I don’t know, I think police come too privileged. That’s why I will never be a police officer. I completely disagree with it, which is ironic since I’m doing military. They’re like super cops. But then again, military’s a bit different, isn’t it? You’re going against “trained combatants” that are trying to kill you. I suppose that’s a bit different, aye? Let’s see.

I: I want to hear what you have to say.

C: About what? I mean, that’s all I have. I just don’t trust police officers. There are also military people that I don’t trust because of what they know how to do to people.

I: What would you do to improve police officers? Fix the system?

C: There’s not really a way to, unfortunately, because people that become police officers are- Let me put this in perspective. The police academy where I live is through a community college. Let me say this again, a community college! Come on, now. Like, the guy that’s police chief or whatever- No, he’s the sheriff. I forget what his degree is in, like business management or something. Yeah, it’s really weird. He’s been the same sheriff as long as I’ve lived there, and to be honest, he’s the only one that people vote for as far as I can tell because everyone knows him. Hell, I know him. I’ve spent a day with him. I didn’t think he was that great. I don’t know, cops in general are just dirty, dirty people. Not all of them. Just a majority. I think it’s because they have a gun. I honestly think they would not pick on so many people if they didn’t have a gun. People will always have guns, though. I believe in carrying one. I believe lots of people should carry them. In fact, I believe everyone should carry one, just for the sheer fact that if you know how to defend yourself, maybe so many bad things wouldn’t happen. That’s also the thing, you know, that guy, armed to the teeth, walked into a movie theater. A movie theater, not a military base, not- What else is heavily armed? That’s about it, really. I guess you have banks with that one police guard. It’s not even really a police guard, it’s just kind of a guy with a white shirt and a shotgun in the back that’s never been touched. Yeah, basically, the overall point is they attack civilians. They don’t attack soldiers. They attack those who are easy. It’s like terrorism, you attack people who are easy. Sure, they kill some military every once and a while. Now, that’s unfortunate. But just bombing the shit out of civilians, shooting civilians, it’s unfortunate, but I personally think that everybody should have to go through basic training and serve at least two years in at least reserve or guard. I also think it’d do the world, or at least the country some good. Just think about it. You wouldn’t have any homelessness, right, because if you’re homeless, shit, you can be in the military. Three hot, a cot, chilling under the base. Or at least you’d have some money to go pay your rent. You’d have basic skills so you could do a job. Or you could go active, because we’d be in a military society, so everyone would be in, so all the funding would pretty much be for that. It’s not like now where there’s a sequester, where- I personally think that military schools should be a thing. Well, at least a bigger thing. I don’t feel that people are disciplined enough. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sitting here, like two-hundred pounds, I barely exercise. I’m probably not very disciplined. But I digress. I think it would help people. And then some people are like, “No, the military’s evil!” It’s like, is it evil? Is it an institution that scares people because there’s a prospect that you may or may not die? Is that such a bad thing? I’m always fascinated by warrior societies. Spartans. I mean, technically the Athenians were, because they whipped the shit out of the Spartans. Who else? The Romans, Rome was pretty good. Greeks, they were wonderful warriors, we already talked about that. I don’t know.

I: What makes a good warrior society?

C: Shit, you ever seen the Spartan baby examination or whatever? Ha ha, I’m just kidding. That would be awful. Like I said, I personally think everyone should have to serve. I don’t think cripples, people who are in poor health, you know, stuff like that, I don’t think they should get off. Now, I don’t think you should train them the same way, you know? Somebody that has, let’s see, let’s think of someone. Like, a guy I went to school with. He only has one leg. Just don’t make him run. He can still work his arm muscles, figure out how to shoot a gun, and learn basic skills. Not every soldier has to be put in a situation where they have to run. That’s just a fact of life. And really, with the mobilization of our military at this point- And usually in firefights, they don’t really run and gun. I mean, of course you duck for cover. It’s not like, “Oh, we need to go out a mile out to get away from this.” No, they have to kind of sit there and wait. I personally think they should just give the UN custody of the world. Just send all the soldiers to the UN, and if you don’t send your soldiers to the UN, you just crush it. That’d be good, wouldn’t it? Well, tell me why it wouldn’t be good, Ian. We haven’t heard from you in a little while.

I: I don’t want to hear from me.

C: You don’t want to hear from you? I thought you were showing this to other people. You’re the talk show host. Juicy Ian.

I: It’s not my ideas that I want to hear. I want to hear other people’s ideas.

C: Well Ian, what could possibly go wrong with a world government? Other than the fact that it would be much too big to control everything.

I: Whose laws would we follow?

C: You know, I always think that. You know it seems kind of like, what is it, the European Union, they got a good thing going on, don’t they? I wonder if Europe, like the European countries, have a lot of the same laws? I’d say so, because travelling to different countries in Europe is basically the same thing as travelling to different states here. And really, states have different laws, so would it really matter whose laws we follow, just as long as there were federal laws?

I: You would never be able to convince America to join it.

C: Maybe?

I: You have a large portion of the population that hates the government as it is.

C: Yeah, that’s true.

I: To say, let’s make it even bigger and more powerful, you’d have so many people against you.

C: Wouldn’t it technically be weaker, though? If you’re presiding over the entire world, well shit, you can’t get the same benefits that the United States gives to other people.

I: Well, if it’s weaker, then isn’t that, in itself, dangerous?

C: Maybe.

I: Or at least not dangerous, but susceptible to revolt and revolution?

C: Probably.

I: In history, the bigger an empire got, the more susceptible it was farther away from the capital. You have the entire world under one thing, wherever the headquarters of the UN is. The furthest place away from there would be the most likely to revolt because it would take the longest to actually get to it.

C: Yeah, it probably would have to be like a- Not a confederation, but a- What’s it called? Yeah, I guess it is a confederation in Star Trek, isn’t it? You’d probably have to establish state heads in every continent. You’d have to crush any form of rebellion as it came, which is unfortunate to think about, but I don’t know. The main thing is whenever we eventually get to space, and I don’t mean low Earth orbit, I don’t mean the moon, I don’t even mean Mars. Unless we go to Mars and a drill pops out and aliens are like, “Get the out of here.” We can’t go into space as the United States. We can’t go into space as Europe. We can’t go into space as Russia, Africa, Nigeria, whatever. You just can’t do it. Like, what is it? How many countries are there in the world? Isn’t it like 125 now?

I: 207. Or is that how many bones there are in the body?

C: Really?

I: Well, there’s 216. I think there’s 207 countries.

C: How many countries in the world?

I: Actually, that itself is a tricky question because not-

C: So there are 193 members of the United Nations. That’s a pretty good size. The United States Department recognizes 195 independent countries, which reflects a political agenda. Well, that’s nice. So, yeah, I’d say around 200 probably. Well, anyway, you can’t have 200 countries running around in space because that’d just be retarded. Sorry, no PC. No PC on this interview here, bro.

I: You’re anonymous, surprise.

C: I don’t give a shit if they know who I am. But anyway, you can’t traverse deep space as X, Y and Z country. Because if you keep all that bullshit up, what happens if you do come across something? If it’s hostile, well shit, you’re going to want help, aren’t you? If we’re X, Y, and Z, well, you won’t get that help, will you? Because knowing America, we’ll be spread over, like, a hundred different fucking planets, fighting thirty-four different wars with ten different types of aliens.

I: You make it sound like a world government will change how America acts.

C: No. However, if a world government were established, at least it would be under a single banner. Because if the state had an America- Well, how do I put this? Because if you had a world banner, it wouldn’t really matter. America’s government wouldn’t really matter, right, because you’d have your confederation going on, so everything that went into space would be under the world confederation, under the world banner. It would have to be approved through that. So, at least if you started a war with X, Y, and Z, you’d have a home to go back to. Until this religion war, Jihad, crusades, whatever, because that’s really what it is, isn’t it? Until that finished up, we’re not going to be able to go very far. Which, unfortunately, probably won’t be solved in our lifetime. It’s kind of interesting, I think it’s that pilot episode of Star Trek Enterprise, which the background is: We had just discovered warp, or we had just figured it out, rather. And they had somehow managed to, I guess, create a world government, eradicate war and poverty and all that within a short amount of time. Because the closest things to humans, I guess, the Vulcans, they reached out to the humans as soon as they were able to travel at warp speed. Which is something many people believe will happen to us, if we ever can figure out how to traverse space well enough, which I can see that. I hope that’ll happen. That would be awesome. But there are too many people on this Earth that absolutely hate the idea of going into space, going away from Earth. They’re too attached to things like religion and sentimentality and stuff like that. Of course, don’t get me wrong. Earth’s great. It’s not that great. And really, if you had an omniscient being, right, wouldn’t it be everywhere? So, going to other planets, it’d still be there, if you believe in that. So, you don’t really have to fight your wars for the Holy Land and all that. I’m surprised they have- Well, technically, they had, but people want to still fight over it. I don’t understand why they don’t just neutralize- Not neutralize, that’s simply killing, but create a neutral zone, I guess, around- What is it? What is that place called? I can’t believe I can’t think of it. The Holy Land. Calvary Hill.

I: Jerusalem?

C: Yeah! There it is. Jerusalem. I don’t understand why they don’t just neutral zone that shit. Make it so that nobody can lay claim on it. If they tried to, it would be crushed. Because, you know, a nation, nations will respect that. Or at least, they’ll abide by it until such time that they feel they can overthrow that. You know, little groups or whatever will be like, “No, this is ours!” You can rout that out pretty quick. Wow, we have surpassed your timer I think.

I: No, it’s still going.

C: Oh, one says it’s at 1154, 55.

I: I think that’s good.