Well, I'm back home (but you probably already knew that). I actually got back June 29th (started off from Canberra airport on what was June 28 there, then Sydney/jet engine problems/3 hour flight delay/arrival in LA/9 hour layover at LAX/caught the 11PM flight to Marlyand/arrived 7AM on Monday June 29), but I was only home for a few days before heading off to Maine with my mom, dad, and Kate. Now I'm home again.
Australia. I feel, and I'm sure some expect, that I should have some culminating words to say about my experience abroad. At some point or other, I think I will, but I'm not ready to say those words yet.
Australia. What immediately come to mind are memories. I look back at my experiences in Australia with overwhelming positivity. I enjoyed living/studying/playing in Australia, sometimes immensely.
I won't forget
AustraLearn's killer orientation program in Cairns,
scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef,
ANZAC Day:
(especially the Dawn Service,
freezing cold weather,
and inadequate clothes),
IB!!,
training for IB,
my Div 4 teammates and finishing,
inter-hall field hockey,
watching Bruce basketball,
ANU campus and classes (my introduction to continental philosophy),
Jean-Luc Nancy and The Experience of Freedom,
getting my first HD on an assignment!,
Mooseheads (and the crazy nights that started, or ended, there),
my time spent in Melbourne
(which includes Cirque du Soleil,
Crown Casino,
a real barbecue,
AFL,
but more importantly the top-notch people I spent my time with),
playing soccer with fellow Brucies,
the unofficial weekly soccer sign-up sheet :),
Big Night Out! (Band Night hosted by Bruce!),
learning all sorts of things from my fellow Brucies, like:
the philosophy and practice of NLP;
tips on running, soccer, field hockey, cricket, etc.;
heaps of stuff about nutrition;
the value of a Rolex;
Slagsmålsklubben = popular Swedish "8-bit" pop;
a good (or cheap) bottle of Port can go a long way;
the Dragon Ball series are (secretly) universally enjoyed;
how to say "Come to Fenner!" in a really funny high-pitched voice;
and loads more!
the craziness of ANU semester 1 exam period,
things we said often:
"chin, ciao",
"we are not the (blank) Malaysians",
"are you serious?",
"goodonya!",
"shitonya!",
"tha-ha-ha-hat's right!" (superb!),
"are you a firshyear? or a lashyear?",
"no means no!",
"Americaaaa!",
"H-o-pe!",
"Cha---nge!",
being "Charlie Brown"
as well as Mr. (Bedroom) Philosopher
as well as Mr. just-in-case Paczynski,
whole-foods Bolay,
these-days Hasan,
much of my second-to-last night at Bruce,
and the next day (my last) at Bruce,
Tim Horton's and laughing fits,
that there were some really eye-opening political-
and philosophical discussions,
a great time in Sydney,
my travel buddy from Chicago,
and most especially I will not forget a truly awesome and creative bunch of people with whom I had an uber-great time. Many of you made big impressions on me. Most of all I am glad that I met each and every one of you. For those of you I was able to get to know well, I feel lucky. The best to all of you.
So this is my official "I'm back from Australia and here's a little bit of what Australia was like for me."
I kept thinking, while I was at ANU, that my time in Australia would probably seem like a dream to me when I got back to the States. This is because back home there is no one who shares any common experience with me of Australia, and all I have is memory (oh, and Facebook) to prove what happened to myself. Kind of a weird thought, yeah, but not that weird. Well, now that I'm back I do feel somewhat alienated from "my life" (which isn't so unusual for me). But in this case I am split between feeling, on the one hand, like Australia was an episode of my life that never happened, that I'm picking my real life back up after escaping for a brief while into some weird movie, and, on the other hand, like I am somehow altered, and that the present follows naturally from my time in Australia.
Facebook definitely helps in providing the illusion of continuity. I can look at my pictures and keep in contact with friends, but, in an important way, I am also cut-off from things that happened and friends I had (have) in Australia. I am amazed at how much impact physical closeness can have on psychological closeness. I feel very far away from Australia now, in both senses. Maybe I need to think of the world more as my neighborhood.
In any case, I believe that I am not yet done interpreting my Australian experiences. I can already see how I have changed in 5 months, and, in time, I think I will discover that studying in Australia has impacted me in no small way.
I remember stumbling across an intriguing website on "dialectics" while writing my final paper for Adv Continental Philosophy. (http://home.igc.org/~venceremos/whatheck.htm)
So, if dialectics is "a tool to understand the way things are and the way things change," and, if I truly have changed, then I'm not really "back," I'm somewhere new. To say something is back is to say that it has returned, i.e. "come full circle." But change moves in spirals, not circles. Even for cyclical processes (day/night, breathing in/breathing out, one opposite/then another), "dialectics argues that these cycles do not come back exactly to where they started; they don't make a perfect circle. Instead, change is evolutionary, moving in a spiral." I've spiraled, not circled.
So I'm here but I'm not back. Got it?
Friday, July 10, 2009
Saturday, June 13, 2009
paths
A: Trust me; this is the path to salvation.
B: It's not my path - not if you're leading the way.
B: It's not my path - not if you're leading the way.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Obama and National Security
Even though Obama just spoke this past Thursday in Cairo about relations with people of the Middle East, what I have to say here pertains mostly to Obama's previous speech about U.S. National Security and is a response to the following article from the Washington Times:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/06/obama-derangement-syndrome/
From the article: What might have been a serious debate over interrogation techniques has been mishandled. Instead of trying to balance the need for intelligence on terrorist operations with the desire to respect civil liberties even in the most extreme cases, an attempt has been made to criminalize past policy decisions and demonize those who made them.
This is the rhetoric of Dick Cheney – in fact, what is said here closely mirrors Cheney’s May 22, 2009 response to Obama’s National Security speech of the same day. Obama has, in my opinion, rightfully taken a firm stance against water-boarding and other interrogation techniques that are, without doubt, forms of torture. Cheney apparently felt that it was important to point out that water-boarding was only ever used on a small number of prisoners at Guantanamo. But if water-boarding is torture (and I assume you oppose the use of torture), then the number of instances of U.S. government application of water-boarding becomes irrelevant; the torture of human beings, in all its forms, wherever it is used, and whoever uses it, is wrong. Obama was right to criticize former policy. We must recognize past mistakes. Obama demonized no one. To see Obama’s condemnation of torture as a demonization of past policy makers is to expose one’s own unwillingness to admit to past mistakes. This kind of outlook seems like nothing more than defensive quibbling to me. As a general rule, however difficult it is for each of us to accept our own errors, it is the only way we will learn to do better.
From the article: Meanwhile, al Qaeda operatives now sleep more soundly, secure in the knowledge that, if captured, the worst that will happen is that some CIA agent of Satan will attempt to establish a "trusting" relationship with them.
This is more borrowed rhetoric. Cheney said the exact same thing in his speech. The fact that the U.S. government makes an official pronouncement against the use of torture is not likely to embolden Radical Islam. Those who do violence in the name of Radical Islam are already unafraid of the consequences of their actions because they are emotionally charged and believe that their actions are justified. And it only fuels their hatred, strengthens their convictions and, in their eyes, further justifies their violence if the U.S. uses or supports the use of torture. There is a common but mistaken response to this point that goes: “If one criticizes the U.S. in any way regarding terrorism, then one is blaming the U.S. for the terrorist atrocities committed against the U.S.” No. Violent attacks on innocent people are wrong. The wrongs done by the U.S. government under no circumstances justify such attacks, but our wrongs are still wrong, and we ought to learn from and correct our own mistakes.
From the article: Finally, it is becoming apparent that Mr. Obama's diplomatic ‘surge’ to stop the nuclear weapons and missile development programs of Iran and North Korea is proving unproductive. Still, Mr. Obama is not yet pressing Congress to give him the tools he would need to squeeze Iran's rulers by cutting off their gasoline supplies - the most promising of possible economic sanctions.
Maybe, and I am skeptical about this one in light of the U.S. government’s recent history, just maybe the U.S. will step back from or even reverse its practice of using military force and coercion to stop nuclear weapon proliferation. The U.S. ought to lead by example, not by force and coercion. Hopefully Obama was thinking along similar lines when he quoted Thomas Jefferson in his speech in Cairo: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/06/obama-derangement-syndrome/
From the article: What might have been a serious debate over interrogation techniques has been mishandled. Instead of trying to balance the need for intelligence on terrorist operations with the desire to respect civil liberties even in the most extreme cases, an attempt has been made to criminalize past policy decisions and demonize those who made them.
This is the rhetoric of Dick Cheney – in fact, what is said here closely mirrors Cheney’s May 22, 2009 response to Obama’s National Security speech of the same day. Obama has, in my opinion, rightfully taken a firm stance against water-boarding and other interrogation techniques that are, without doubt, forms of torture. Cheney apparently felt that it was important to point out that water-boarding was only ever used on a small number of prisoners at Guantanamo. But if water-boarding is torture (and I assume you oppose the use of torture), then the number of instances of U.S. government application of water-boarding becomes irrelevant; the torture of human beings, in all its forms, wherever it is used, and whoever uses it, is wrong. Obama was right to criticize former policy. We must recognize past mistakes. Obama demonized no one. To see Obama’s condemnation of torture as a demonization of past policy makers is to expose one’s own unwillingness to admit to past mistakes. This kind of outlook seems like nothing more than defensive quibbling to me. As a general rule, however difficult it is for each of us to accept our own errors, it is the only way we will learn to do better.
From the article: Meanwhile, al Qaeda operatives now sleep more soundly, secure in the knowledge that, if captured, the worst that will happen is that some CIA agent of Satan will attempt to establish a "trusting" relationship with them.
This is more borrowed rhetoric. Cheney said the exact same thing in his speech. The fact that the U.S. government makes an official pronouncement against the use of torture is not likely to embolden Radical Islam. Those who do violence in the name of Radical Islam are already unafraid of the consequences of their actions because they are emotionally charged and believe that their actions are justified. And it only fuels their hatred, strengthens their convictions and, in their eyes, further justifies their violence if the U.S. uses or supports the use of torture. There is a common but mistaken response to this point that goes: “If one criticizes the U.S. in any way regarding terrorism, then one is blaming the U.S. for the terrorist atrocities committed against the U.S.” No. Violent attacks on innocent people are wrong. The wrongs done by the U.S. government under no circumstances justify such attacks, but our wrongs are still wrong, and we ought to learn from and correct our own mistakes.
From the article: Finally, it is becoming apparent that Mr. Obama's diplomatic ‘surge’ to stop the nuclear weapons and missile development programs of Iran and North Korea is proving unproductive. Still, Mr. Obama is not yet pressing Congress to give him the tools he would need to squeeze Iran's rulers by cutting off their gasoline supplies - the most promising of possible economic sanctions.
Maybe, and I am skeptical about this one in light of the U.S. government’s recent history, just maybe the U.S. will step back from or even reverse its practice of using military force and coercion to stop nuclear weapon proliferation. The U.S. ought to lead by example, not by force and coercion. Hopefully Obama was thinking along similar lines when he quoted Thomas Jefferson in his speech in Cairo: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
Friday, May 29, 2009
Concert!
I can't contain my excitement in anticipation of U2 and MUSE together in concert this September.
Observe:
Epic:
Observe:
Epic:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
