English TIB Essay

I really liked this essay so I thought I would post this up. It's from english.


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TIB Essay

I believe being selfish is not a bad thing, because humans are instinctively selfish. But for some reason, selfishness has a negative connotation to it. Being selfish is important, it’s what keeps us alive.  Everything we do is motivated by reward. When I say selfish, what do I mean? I mean putting your own priorities over everyone else’s. I’m selfish and I’ll admit it. I’m selfish because I want the best in every situation, I want to ride shotgun when I’m not driving, I want the biggest slice, and I want the better-looking clothes. Is that really so bad? Everyone feels like that despite how much they deny it. How did I come up with this belief? Ironically, at a religious sermon.

A while back as I was waiting for prayer, with the usual large showing of people on Friday, a man was giving a speech. Usually before prayer, the mosque invites guest speakers to talk about Islam and their personal stories. This one speaker got my attention. He was a tall, skinny, African-American man who spoke with a strong and imposing voice; it would be impossible to not listen. He was talking about charity and good deeds. Just the way he spoke made you want to throw your money in the donation box. As the speech went along, he started to talk about generosity, giving charity, helping your fellow man, and all that jazz. Then he told us that God will reward us for our great deeds. Now let’s be clear, I’ve heard that phrase over a million times, it just never stuck with me.  But for some reason I thought to myself “How selfish!”  The only reason we do good things is to be rewarded for them. That’s why religious people give charity, that’s why we are suppose to “love thy neighbor”; because God approves.  I’m not bashing religion in any sense; selfishness exists outside of religion as well.

I still had the conception that being selfish is a bad thing.  I keep thinking to myself what is the point of being generous if you are doing it for the wrong reasons. When people donate money they should do it to help out those in need, not so they have a ticket into heaven. Then, I started branching out of religion. I realized that a lot of things humans do are selfish, even the minor things like cutting someone off in traffic. Everything we do is for something or for ourselves.

I was driving home from the mosque with my mom. She wasn’t thrilled with this new belief. I told her that I was convinced that nearly everything we do is motivated by our own wants. This can be taken from any example, from the suicidal kid to the philanthropist. The philanthropist may donate money because of his religious beliefs. But, my mother brought up a good argument about people who don’t have a religion. “What motivation is there for atheists to help someone?”

In response to her, if you want to do something you do it because you get something out of, whether it is “God’s approval” or something as small as a nice fuzzy feeling inside. That fuzzy feeling will come from anything. Some people donate to feel good about themselves or want to feel better. There is always the argument that people are just nice. Well sure, they like helping people out, but they are still selfish like everyone else. That person will not help someone if helping someone conflicts with his or her own interest. They can help someone, as long as it doesn’t stop them from achieving what they want to.

It’s a complicated idea that being selfish is not bad. It’s a concept that is hard to wrap your head around. Hell, it was difficult for me to try to understand it. But some people won’t admit that humans are instinctively selfish, no matter how many examples I give them. So that’s not what I am going to do. Rather I’m going to explore selfishness even more and also how it may be a good thing for someone else. This can be seen through an experience I had in 11^th grade.

At this point of my life I started to have more and more doubts about religion, and didn’t have the epiphany on selfishness yet. I was on my way home from school and took the usual route. I got off of I-66 and was glad to be out of that traffic-jammed mess. I approached the red light coming off the highway and saw a tall white homeless lady, covered in dirt and in ragged clothes, standing on the corner. Next to her she had a garbage bag and a shopping cart filled with miscellaneous things. She carried a cardboard sign that read “Homeless and Hungry. Please help!”  I drove away. Day after day, I kept seeing the same lady with the same sign, standing there. The sight kept eating away at me because she kept getting sicker and weaker. Then a few weeks later, I approached the same red light. The lady was gone. I don’t know where she went, and haven’t seen her since that day, don’t know what happened to her. I felt terrible because I knew I could have at least tried to help, but did nothing in the end. The next day I saw a black man with a white t-shirt, jeans, and in crutches, wearing a Washington Redskins hat. He was holding a sign in one hand that said “WARTIME VETERAN, ALWAYS LOYAL” and a cup in the other. I dropped a dollar and a couple of cents into his jar. Suddenly, that feeling that was eating away at me got slightly better.

There was one reason to give that man money. I was on the verge of throwing away religion from my life completely, so religion wasn’t the reason. The reason I did it was because watching that lady deteriorate in front of me daily made me feel so guilty, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something to get that pressure off of me. Giving to that man lightened the load and it help me deal with it. I felt sorry for that man and it made me feel better.  This is applicable to everyone, not only me. How many times have you seen something on the news about kids in Africa starving or the destruction of Haiti? Unless you’re an emotionless human, you will get some emotional response from it. Being selfish is not bad; we are selfish whether we like it or not, and sometimes our selfish actions can help others out. Even though I was thinking purely for myself, I helped that homeless man. Giving to others, or helping others is what keeps the world moving. We learn sharing in kindergarten, and we still need to be using those values today. We don’t share always because we want to; we share sometimes because we have to. In a broader sense, if we do not give to each other, the world will go to shit.

Hopefully you don’t view this as consent to be assholes. This is not what this essay is about. Look at this essay as a different perspective on selfishness. It’s not bad to be selfish, because we are all selfish. We all do things for ourselves or for something. I’m a selfish person. Nearly everything I do is for myself in someway, even if I don’t know it.  Sometimes that can be a good thing. We are all selfish, and this is what I believe.

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I got an A on this paper, and it was actually really interesting to write. 

 

Religious Tone of the posts

****Assignment*******

I've been reading "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin and just finished reading the Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. If something is not done to stop the irrational fear of Islam, we are heading straight down the same shitstorm that we faced 60 years ago.

 So about the religious Overtone of my posts...



This is not my fault... entirely. Most people don't like religion or want to hear about religion from an 18 year old, but that is part of my communications work. I am suppose to elaborate on what I believe. Most of my beliefs come from religion and that is what I feel I have to write about.


I hate talking about religion.  Absolutely hate it. Not because I hate religion, but just because of the shit that religion is getting these days. Especially Islam. More and more people are becoming afraid of Islam without rationale, and honestly it's just going to get worse.I'm fearing for Muslims not only in America, but around the world. The ones who aren't blowing themselves up, or the ones are trying to live their lives peacefully and practice their faith.

There is an estimated 1.57 billion Muslims in the world.  That is a lot of people and people who are not the same. It's not only Arabs, but it's Africans, Chinese, English, American, and others. The core beliefs are the same, but the extremities of individuals is so different, that it would be a crime to classify all Muslims as one.

People get tired of hearing this, but the people you see on TV's that are the "Muslims" that supposedly represent Islam, do not represent the Majority. I don't even think they represent 1% of those who think. And those who think like that, are just viruses to the religion and the Islamic community. Those people only represent themselves and their ideas. They don't represent mine. I don't want to kill the Infidels, I want to help people understand our religion without imposing my religion upon you.

But, just like those extremists who don't represent all Muslims, I don't represent moderate Muslims or anyone except for me. These are my beliefs and if someone shares those belief, well that's great. But the point is that I can't speak for him/her.


(If you know me personally, I never talk about religion. So this is kind of new for me, but it is something very dear to my heart as of recentley. I'm worrying more and more of the consequences of being a Muslim in America, and as a citizen of the World. It is fine as of now, but it will get worse. Something needs to be done.)



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TC

Haven't been posting that much

I've been busy with midterms. My teacher is completely fine with it. I just need to reach a certain quoto by the end of the semester so I'm not that worried about it. Will be posting more after this week is done.

Islam in the Middle East is in a shit-storm

*********Assignment*************


Just because a country is 99% muslim, does not mean you can implement Sharia law.  It's not an Islamic state if everyone there is not following Islam. It's a country where a vast majority is Muslim. That's what I think the Islamic states don't see.You are throwing away that 1% of the population's basic human rights to believe what they want to believe. That is wrong.

First off,  when we think of Shariah Law, we think of the killings, and the stonings, etc. That is not all of it. There are a lot of attributes that you could in fact apply to modern day society which could make it better.

A Shariah government would work great if it was in a country where the population was 100% Muslim and understood the reasonings of Shariah Law. If you acknowledge their is an afterlife and believe in Islam, then and only then does Shariah Law make sense and is applicable.

That is in an ideal world, where people are perfect. In the real world, some countries will never be 100% Muslim.

That is the problem. And those who are 100% currentley, are either a collapsed state (Somalia) or under a tyrannic regime. We see these heinous news stories about women being killed for showing their ankles, or something completely miniscule. That is not Islam. That is the tyranny that has plagued the Middle East and Asia for the last 50 years. That is the tyrants abusing Islam for their own personal gains.

That being said, just because you don't follow Islam, it's not a free pass to do whatever you please. Which is why there is the secular system. It's a universal punishment system that applies to everyone. The problem that many religious extremists(of all religions) see is that the punishments are getting less and less harsh. But that is arbitrary. Someone's idea of harsh may be different than my idea of harsh.

The problem that Islamic states have currently(because we don't know how well or how poor they were in the past or the future) is that they think people cannot think for themselves. Well this is true when people are not educated. Which can be blamed on these states that don't prioritize education first, and have terrible school systems. But, when people are educated they make educated decisions, surprising I know. When you don't educate your people, you end up with uneducated leaders for the future. Additionally, people base everything off of emotion, rather than rationality, and our only voice of reasoning is our common sense(which isn't that reliable). That is the predicament that the Islamic states are currently in.

This is why no one with half a brain who is Muslim, and if by some miracle got elected president; would  implement Shariah law in America. Because rationally it does not make sense. When you force someone to follow your religious code, you are taking away that person's right to make his or her own choices. It's going against everything America stands for.Why haven't we gone back to the guillotine like good ol' medieval England? It's the same rationale. Just because we could have a Muslim leader in the future, does not mean we will be stoning every criminal. Hopefully, we still have the secular system.
 
When you implement Shariah law where everyone is not Muslim, you are throwing away human rights. The most essential part of human rights is the luxury to believe what you believe, do what you want, and think what you think. You can do anything as long as it does not harm others. I can't stress this enough.

Hopefully the situation in the Islamic world works out because it is definitively a system that can work. But the only place it can work is in an Islamic state where everyone is a Muslim. All you need to do is educate everyone. Educate your women, educate your children, and educate your leaders. But for the time being, secular law does work.

The Social Network Review

*****ASSIGNMENT********

Alright, part of my communications homework was to watch The Social Network, a movie about the thing that changed the way we communicate with others. Right off the bat, this isn't that much about Facebook. It plays a key role in it, but the movie is not about Facebook. It's about the character Mark Zuckerberg and the lawsuits against him. The movie is seen through three different viewpoints. Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), Eduardo Saverin(Andrew Garfield), and the Winklevoss Twins(Armie Hammer).

The movie starts off with Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) in a bar talking. The audience gets to see what kind of person Zuckerberg is in the opening minutes during their conversation and the opening credits. Zuckerberg talks about how he is wanting to get into a Final Club, and spouting off about random stuff as well. Erica tries to keep up with him, and then things get a little tense, in a humorous way for the audience. The banter between the two of them was hysterical and then the following scene is literally a minute of him just running through the streets all the way to the Kirkland house(his dorm). The way David Fincher executed these two scenes made me feel a little more comfortable sitting in the theater. The opening sequence could have gone wrong, but it was fresh and executed in a timely manner.

I'm not going to say much about the plot because I don't want to spoil it. Zuckerberg gets dumped by his girlfriend in the first minute, he runs back to his dorm, starts blogging and says some things that shouldn't be said, and then he starts working on a site called facemash.com, not facebook. A site where people can rank two girls side by side. He crashes the server and gets his name spread around the Harvard campus. That's all I can say really before the movie starts getting deeper and deeper. The movie moves pretty quick, talking too much about it will take the freshness out of the movie.


The casting was absolutely perfect. David Fincher, the director, hit the nail right on the head with the casting. No one did terrible at all and all put up magnificent performances. When I came into the movie, I thought it was going to be Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake making witty cracks at each other. It's not. Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer steal the show. Not to take away from Eisenberg's or Timberlake's stellar performances.

Speaking of Eisenberg, I can't stress how well he did. His portrayal of Zuckerberg was Oscar-worthy. I've always liked Eisenberg. I loved him in The Squid and the Whale, and I liked him in Adventureland and Zombieland, although he played basically the same character. But, he is not that character in this movie.

Zuckerberg is a guy stuck in his own world. You are going to hate him at times, you are going to laugh with him at times, and you will feel sorry for him at times. He is self-centered, egotistical, and is a very jealous person. He screws a lot of people over. He is basically an anti-hero. You love it when he is a dick, because that is who he is, but wonder if he is wrong when he gets too out of hand. Yet the audience knows that he is troubled, because he has that lifeless look on his face. He is regretful about some of the things he has done, and feels terrible for some of the things he did. You really question his true motives at times. Did he do this, or did he mean to screw him over. Zuckerberg is a tragic anti-hero and the ending really shows you what I mean.

The script is incredible. If Aaron Sorkin doesn't win Best Screenplay in the Oscars, I'll be dissapointed. The timing was nearly perfect throughout the movie. It was smart, witty, charming, and fresh. It was such a great idea and it worked out so well.

This is going to be a big Award winner, I can feel it. 4/4. It was a great movie. The acting was superb, the writing was flawless, and the direcion of the movie was executed perfectly. This isn't so much a movie about Facebook, as it is a movie about the development of a troubled guy and his rise to the top.  I loved this movie and would watch it again if I had the time.


WATCH THIS MOVIE!!!!!

I hate talking about religion

It hurts my head so much.