Comments Online

People often feel that the veil of invisibility on the internet allows them to say whatever they want, no matter how mean, ridiculous, or shitty. Often it’s things people wouldn’t even say in real life.

And on a slightly different note, the divide between “liberals” and “conservatives,” between “republicans” and “democrats” is so outrageously exaggerated that our country will never make any real progress towards improving our schools, tax system, immigration, or healthcare until people begin to have real discussions. Why must you subscribe to “this” or “that” school of thought? It doesn’t make sense, there are many ways of thinking. The government cannot work for the good of the people because there is a power struggle based on chauvinistic and masculine structural inequality that has been pervading the Western world for hundreds of years. It’s a struggle between two sides of the same coin (ie, Republicans promise a “whale fight” no matter who Obama puts up for Supreme Court Justice). This struggle only slows down the progress of the people and diverts attention from really important issues that affect our daily lives and the health of people and the planet. Most of this has had a history of benefiting and increasing the profits of large corporations. All of this seems to succeed through extremely convincing propaganda in the media.

We all should do our own research, looking at all sides of biases, read the arguments of what you don’t agree with with an open mind. Listen to people and ask questions. Abiding strictly to one way of thinking because someone told you to is not effective and it doesn’t do anyone justice. I find that the most frustrating thing about political arguments, why don’t we listen to the voice not represented by the forced majority? I say forced majority because perhaps if it there was more choice people wouldn’t abide so strongly to being either heads or tails on one coin. People too easily believe anything they read or hear, why not do research if you feel affected by it? Even on Facebook when people repost Amber Alerts, why not look up to see if that Amber Alert is real? Often it’s a hoax. As soon as you start doing that you start to see what you really believe and how you really feel about issues. What’s more important to you, really? What issue actually affect you and what laws are either hurting or helping you? And I don’t mean what they news says, I mean what you think and what research you’ve done into what’s really happening. Always remember the news is a business and no matter how much journalistic integrity a news station might have, they can’t and don’t tell you everything. So never stop wondering, researching, reading, listening, and asking questions.

For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. – Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed

We too are ethnocentric and we often forget that we represent not the absolute wave of history but merely a worldview, and that modernity — whether you identify it by the monikers Westernization, globalization, or free trade — is but an expression of our cultural values. It is not some objective force removed from the constraints of culture. And it is certainly not the true and only wave of history. It is merely a constellation of beliefs, convictions, economic paradigms that represent one way of doing things, of going about the complex process of organizing human activities. – Wade Davis

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. – Buddha