Holiday Spirit

Just the other day, I heard a Christmas song on the radio that I absolutely love.  It is called “Do They Know It’s Christmas” by Band Aid.  I think that it fits in very well with our Hope, Humanity, and the Human Spirit unit and I invite all of you to listen to it.

Ubuntu….What is it?

When I first heard this word, I thought of the Linux based operating system.  Of course this is because I am quite the nerd.  However, now that I have read on it, Ubuntu is quite an interesting concept.

A literal translation of Ubuntu is, "I am what I am because of who we all are."  This means that everyone and everything is related.  This includes humans, other animals, plants, and our ecosystem.

This concept can relate to the idea of an Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin.  While it is not exactly the same, it is very close.  In an Empathic Civilization, we extend our ability to empathize with others to the entire planet and by doing this, have a better understanding and care for humans, other animals, and the environment.  Really, the only difference between these two ideas is that

Ubuntu says that we are directly related to everyone and everything else, unlike the Empathic Civilization which simply says that we should show empathy to everyone and everything around us.
To me, this means that as well as caring for other humans, we should treat the rest of our planet just as nice.  I do not know how easy this will be considering that we can still treat our fellow humans so badly.  Plus, many people resist ways to help our environment like recycling, cleaner energy and fuel, and conserving resources.  So, in my opinion, I really do not know if we can achieve Ubuntu anytime in the near future.

These ideas really fit in well with what I thought we were going to do with this unit.  I thought that we should be able to do something real with this class, and I believe that we could, at the least, do something to better a small group of people, like our school population for instance.  As for what I would like to learn for this unit, I believe that we should learn about different ways to make the Earth a better place, not only for ourselves, but for future humans.

You can view the Jeremy Rifkin Empathic Civilization video here:

Loneliness: Something to Bring Us Together

After reading two posts of Roger Ebert's online journal about loneliness, we were given an assignment to make a blog post on it.  When I was first ready to write something, I found myself stuck.  I could think of only three things to write, an elaboration on the definition of loneliness, a recycling of Ebert's comments, or a combination of the two.

Later, when I thought about it again, a new, better idea popped into my head.  Since there are so many lonely people, then isn't loneliness something that these people have in common and could potentially bring them together?  Perhaps I am over-analyzing this, but I believe that it is a sound idea.

These people that do not want to be alone, could ideally, have very compatible chemistry for both friendship and/or companionship.  Not only would it solve the problem of loneliness for the two now friends, it could help and/or even encourage them to go out into the world and make more friends.  In turn, they would then participate more in society.  So, in their own way, loneliness could be the catalyst for these people to have a successful and good life.

A song that comes to my mind is Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles:


To read the Roger Ebert's post about loneliness click here and to read his continuation post click here.

To go to Roger Ebert's Journal click here.

Roger Ebert

The Roger Ebert article we read in class is quite powerful.  Not only does it show a strong will to live, but it shows how even when things go wrong, it does not mean that you should give up.  Roger lives his life to the fullest and does not spend every day complaining about what has happened to him.  He simply continues to live his life the way he wants to.  He continues to watch movies, write reviews, and tell his life story on his blog.

I wish everyone had the will that Roger Ebert has.  If we did, there would be a lot less complaining in the world.  We should be thankful for what we have, and concentrate on having a great life.

To view the article click here.

Our current issue...

Currently in class, we are talking about humanity, hope, and the human spirit.  When I think about this topic, the first thing I think of is death, destruction, and how we as a species cannot come to peace with one-another.  If we look to history, we see that humans continually do things that are against being united as one people.

My hope for this chapter is that we will not only explore how things how we do things wrong and how others recover because of those events, but that we can do things to make a difference in the world.  Even if it means helping out a small group of people, we will know that we have made a constructive effort instead of just studying something as we students always do in school.

Preface

Hello.  My name is Eric and I am a junior at Northern Burlington High School in New Jersey.  I am creating this blog as a part of my Gifted and Talented 2 class.  Our class is creating blogs to update each other on what we are studying and and so that we can comment each other.  Hopefully my blog will give you a perspective into what we are doing in class and thank you for and comments you can give.