Why I support Ralph Nader for President

For me, I guess it comes down to moral authority of government. Should government be a source of moral authority? In other words, should citizens be able to look to their government when trying to find some direction or sense of community for their lives?

I believe so.

The separation of church and state does not require the absence of moral authority from government. Our nations most celebrated achievements have a significant moral dimension to them. Civil rights, the end of slavery, and the founding of our country were all at least partly pursued due to the moral claim that “All men ['men' in the universal, un-gendered sense, of course] are created equal.”

In fact, without access to government, morality itself can become impotent, unable to take significant action.


Both the Democrat and Republican parties have become dependent on corporations to:

1. provide media coverage that champions their platform
2. donate an unlimited amount of soft money to the parties, and
3. help pay for political rallies, such as the parties’ national conventions.

[Not to mention the unavoidable dependence politicians will have to corporations threatening to move jobs out of their district.] Hence, both parties have rejected the moral issues that Nader is trying to address: poverty, lack of medical attention, disease caused by pollution/other corporate abuses. Both parties have instead come to embrace a "corporate moral relativism" whose only ideology is that of dollars and markets.


To quote Neil Postman’s book The End of Education:

“Our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through the creation of narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate the present, and give direction to our future…
“The measure of a narrative’s ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ is in its consequences: Does it provide people with a sense of personal identity, a sense of a community life, a basis for moral conduct?"

“Our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through the creation of narratives;” not in our capacity to create dollars.

Corporations, when they are granted too much political influence, demand that our “narratives,” our sense of community life, be rooted within business, within our economic interactions with others. That's why they demand our schools place standardized test-taking above all other concerns, such as civic participation, staying healthy, or pursuing extra-curricular interests. That’s why corporations make sure they have control over the media and the messages we hear on TV, which are often opinions from corporate-funded think-tanks.
Why? To make sure we hear the message that the creation of “wealth” (as defined in terms of monetary exchanges) is the only real way to help people, the only real ideology to build a life around.


And that’s where they get it wrong. It’s NOT money that decides what’s worthwhile; it’s the reasoned judgment of individuals.

Reasoned. As in free from the tyranny of greed, which INEVITABLY will play a role in judgment, when men trying to climb the corporate ladder gain influence over our political institutions. Of course such men will pull political strings to save their business some money; they have their employees (real people they interact with everyday) to think of and all.
Corporate abuse shouldn’t just be pinned on rogue individuals; it is a systematic problem within the structure of our economy.
And it comes at the cost of thousands of deaths and infections caused by air pollution, hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars used to pay corporate bills, and millions of people in our country living in conditions that could be improved by responsible congressional action.


I believe that Ralph Nader understands as well as, if not better than anyone, how to use government to help people, without damaging the capitalist institutions and values that have made our economy great. Equally important to me, he is standing up against the corporate moral relativism that is communicated through the structuring of our educational, industrial, and news-media systems.

Sports and our culture

Read this introduction to White Fang by Jack London.

“A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozenhearted Northland Wild.

“But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. ...

“On wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over—a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man—man, who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.”

Our society takes the wrong approach to sports. We see sports as competition against other people; this is not as it should be. Sports are a competition not against other people but a competition against Nature, against “the Wild”. And don’t for a second believe we have overcome the Wild’s desire to end our movement with technology. Look at a nursing home; we are still “ever in revolt” against a Nature that will “crush into submission man”.

Sports are not about winning. They’re a competition not against other men, but against Nature. Sports are about movement, and not letting old-age or apathy destroy it.

Substitute Teaching

I’ve been substitute teaching for about 3 weeks now; it’s not hard, sometimes kinda fun, and pays $70 a day for about 4 and half hours of actual teaching (you have to be there for 7 hours though, planning periods and lunch and all.) I’ve mainly done middle school math classes, and the teachers usually leave some pretty basic worksheet for the students to work on for the whole period. A few kids wanna actually learn how to do the work and all, about half the class just wants to talk, some kids want to run and throw stuff around, and the rest of the class just sits there bored out of their minds.

Okay, now I ask myself, why are most these kids even here? The ones who actually want to learn, alright yeah makes sense, but the rest? Why can’t they be outside playing or doing that they have an actual interest in? Yeah, there’s the whole you need to know stuff for college, for your future job, etc, but is this really relevant when you’re in middle school? I’m not sure our current education system has a good answer to these questions.

The way I see it, our K-12 education system vastly overemphasizes graded coursework. Before I go any further, let me say what is good about graded coursework, and why it is an important part of our education system. 200 years ago, there was virtually no economic mobility in our society: if your parents were poor, you would also be poor. The poor simply had no access to any sort of economic opportunities. Now, that has changed. Now, everyone goes to school, and everyone is ranked by their grades. Any one who makes mostly A’s in high school can at least go to their state university, and if they do well there, they have access to all types of high-paying salaries. It doesn’t matter what family you are from, who you know, or what “connections” you have; ranking people by their grades gives everyone access to many of the economic opportunities within our society.

Having said that, I believe our society vastly overemphasizes graded coursework. Education could and should be about so much more than the allocation of economic opportunities. Yet students spend 6 hours a day in classrooms, grades K-12, in order to be ranked, sorted, and inserted into the economic position that they “earned.” Like I said earlier, I think there is value in this process, but I believe we should spend maybe 3 years, grades 10-12 on it, rather than the 13 years we currently spend on grading coursework and analyzing standardized test scores.

Seriously, is anyone else tired of being told what to study, what to do with all your time? I mean, it’s not so bad if you have a clear idea of what career you want, and are doing the work to get the degree that allows you to have that career. But do we really need to shut fifth and sixth-graders in classrooms for 6 hours a day forcing them to study triangles, governments in Asia, how to classify rocks, literature that they have no interest in, etc? And then we give them an hour or two of homework a night, on top of all that? Come on! We don’t need to spend 13 years on all this crap in order to get kids to the minimum level of proficiency at reading, writing, and manipulating numbers that our economy requires.

From grades K-8 or 9, there is no good reason to pressure kids into learning. School at this level should rather be a supportive community where kids are allowed to freely pursue their interests. (A couple of them might even be interested in those triangles, rocks, or literature.) I’m reading a book about a school in Massachusetts called Sudbury Valley that has no set courses for students to attend. If students are interested in something, they find others who are interested and talk to them or they read books about it; they design their own courses of study, if they choose to have any courses at all. The idea behind this approach is that we’re now in a post-Industrial economy that needs innovative workers, while our country’s current educational system is based on an Industrial economy that requires workers who can easily learn to do specific repetitive tasks. Here are a couple excerpts from some articles about the school that help explain the school’s philosophy.

“People come to SVS and see it as being in "perpetual recess," and it gives them a little twinge and perhaps they start worrying. But just remember this: these schools that we all grew up in, with their classes, their curricula, their SAT's and Achievement Tests and Placement Tests, their grade levels and exams, these schools are relative newcomers to the scene! They're only about one-hundred-fifty years old. They were started by people who sat down and thought about education and said, "This is the kind of school we need to create a great industrial society." And do you know what happened? People in the 19th century used to walk into those "newfangled schools" and experience culture shock! They'd say, "This is a school? My kids could be spending their time productively out in the fields on the farm. They could be apprenticing as tradesmen, or as craftsmen, or doing all sorts of useful things. You mean to tell us that taking kids and sitting them at desks and having them write on chalkboards, that's a school? You're calling that education?" They had just as weird a feeling then as people have today looking at Sudbury Valley! It took many, many years for people to get used to the industrial-age schools which are so accepted now!” – from http://www.sudval.com/05_underlyingideas.html#08

“I always get into arguments about “the basics,” especially with academicians. They always come back to me with math. I love it when people discuss math, because I cannot imagine a subject that more people hate than math. It is universally hated, but nevertheless everybody comes back with, “How are they going to make it in life if they don’t all know math?” My answer is always, “As far as I know, nobody ever uses math, really, unless they’re in a math-related field, like engineering.” The truth is, if a kid wants to become an engineer he’s going to figure out pretty early on that if he doesn’t know math he’s not going to be an engineer, and he’ll learn math quickly and easily, which is our experience. There’s nothing to it when you want to learn it. But I don’t even try to teach anybody who isn’t invested in learning math. I keep asking people: if they walked into a supermarket and went to the cash register, and had a cashier there with a piece of paper who started putting down a long column of all the prices on the things in their carriage, and then started adding it up the way they were taught in school, would they ever shop in that supermarket again? And would they trust the addition? It’s ridiculous!” - from http://www.sudval.com/05_underlyingideas.html#05

I do believe in the ideas behind universal education, that knowing how society works is something everyone can benefit from. However, I disagree with the idea of pressuring and coercing students to learn, especially to the extent that our current educational system does. As a teacher I will do my best to encourage without pressuring, requiring, or coercing my students.

Corporations vs. Capitalism

So, I've been thinking about like the economy lately. And, umm, here are my conclusions:

Okay, Corporations vs. Capitalism. I'm gonna start with some simple observations, I guess.

Corporations want the most capable person working for them. To make sure they get the most capable, corporations encourage people to ask themselves “What already existing job is my resume competitive enough for me get?” Capitalism, however, encourages people to ask “What’s a job that our society needs more of?” because capitalism rewards people who provide the goods/services that society most needs. That’s always been the strength of capitalism: it encourages creativity and innovation within the economy. Corporations, however, seem to reward optimization (think Walmart), but also sleek presentation (think car manufacturers, alcohol or fast food).

But the important thing is to be aware of the question that corporations and capitalism get people to ask when deciding their careers. Corporations encourage “What’s a stable job that provides the highest salary?” while Capitalism gets people to ask “What do people need more of? What business has the most long-term growth potential?” It’s a difference of “What can I get” vs. “What do people need?”

One concern is that instead of getting people to think about what goods/services society needs, people are just concerned about getting people to choose their particular good/service. Like fast food. I’m not like anti-McDonalds; fast food has its place and all; but I think it’s safe to say that it’s fairly overrated in our society. But, despite it being way overrated (or maybe because it is overrated), people get paid lots of money for coming up with ways to get people to choose fast food over the cheaper, healthier options at the supermarket. (And cooking vegetables or pasta at home isn’t necessarily ‘slower’ than going out for ‘fast’ food, either.)

But it’s not just about advertising, I don’t think. It’s about who gets what jobs. Jobs are a method of allocating money, something that businesses often have a lot of. There’s some people who really need a reliable source of income, and would work hard to keep that opportunity. But other people are used to reliable source of income, and might be more happy if they have a job that makes them feel like they are helping people, even if it’s for a little less money than they would otherwise be making.

I’m concerned that we are over-encouraging people to enter the already-established business world, rather than pursuing jobs that society needs more of. There is something within high school and college, some “corporate force” I guess, that is over-encouraging us to ask “What already existing job is my resume competitive enough for me get?” and under-encouraging us to ask “What’s a job that our society needs more of?” Corporations vs. Capitalism. “What can I get” vs. “What do people need?”

I’m not saying it’s wrong to pursue “what can I get.” Pursuing “What can I get” will probably provide people with a better starting income, and some people need that and would be grateful to get that opportunity. But I think a lot of people would be better off pursuing “What do people need?” Pursuing that question with your career is likely to be more psychologically rewarding, because you’ll believe you are helping people, could be more stable, and could be more financially rewarding over time, because it requires you to be innovative/creative so you might come up with something people really actually want, and have a successful business. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work, right?

So then, why are we being over-encouraged to ask the corporation question? Hmm, something to do with systems and control, maybe? I dunno, basically I think I need to watch The Matrix again. : )

11th grade Enlgish essay

It cracks me up to look back at the essays I have written for various classes throughout high school and college. Not necessarily because I think they’re silly or something now, but more because of the whole idea of assigning specific topics and then assigning grades to those essays. How exactly do teachers give out these grades? Actually, I understand how they give out the grades; it’s whether the essay meets their expectations or not. I can understand writing comments on an essay and giving plenty of your opinions and feedback to the student, but the idea of assigning a grade to it still cracks me up. Remember, this is not like Ebert giving a movie 2 stars, or 4 stars. With movies, the directors want to make the movie. They are the ones claiming that their movie is worth seeing. With the typical high school or college essay, however, the teacher tells students what to write about, and then criticizes or praises it on whether it meets his or her expectations. The analogy would be Ebert requiring Steven Spielberg to make a movie about “how Tolkien weaves historical themes into The Lord of the Rings” or some such nonsense, and then praising or criticizing the job that Spielberg does. That’s what cracks me up. If its “historical themes of The Lord of the Rings" that Ebert cares about, why doesn’t he make the movie about it.

In all my literature classes and history classes, I don’t ever remember the teacher writing and sharing an essay that they wrote with the class. Thinking back on this now, I actually find this kind of odd. Why did none of my teachers share an essay that they wrote with the class? It’s like they were more interested in doing stuff to students instead of with students, is all I can figure.

Anyway, back to the papers I wrote, I basically took the same approach to every essay assignment I ever had: that is, write about what interests me within the general subject we are studying and then force those thoughts into the requirements the teacher asked for. This same approach usually resulted in approximately the same grade, also: usually about a C (I’ve gotten anywhere from a B+ to a D, I think, but C has probably been my average), but I had actually fun writing the essays about ideas that interest me, so I don’t regret it. I haven’t really read enough of other students essays to really know whether or not I have missed something about “writing clearly” or “giving convincing examples” had I actually tried to meet my teachers’ expectations, but I would suspect the answer to be “I haven’t.”

Here’s an essay I wrote in 11^th grade about one of my favorite books, Brave New World. I used to actually care about my grades enough to get frustrated when I got below an A-/B+ on anything (though not enough to change the way I wrote essays, apparently), so I threw out most of the graded copies of my essays. But I’ve still got’em on my comp. I think I got a C- on this particular essay, maybe a C+ or something though, but I actually like some of my ideas. And you can actually see how I forced those ideas into the requirements of the assignment (apparently some sort of compare and contrast assignment in this case), so like I said at first, it kinda makes me laugh.

Tom Burwell

Society Exposed

Conditioning is an addiction; perpetuated by societal pressures and the comfort we take from the stability conditioned behavior offers, it tears away our individuality. Both A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley address this issue through the conformity of the societies within the books. Conditioning affects both how people think and what behaviors feel comfortable to us. These two effects work together to deceive us by making us find comfort and stability within certain assumptions and ways of thinking. However, if we resist settling for what is comfortable to us and confront our assumptions with logic, we can break free from conditioning.

Conditioning affects the way we think by making us oblivious to other ways of thinking. When a person is conditioned all of his life to live in a certain way, he often may continue to live in this way, simply because he does not know any other. For example, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, a farmer helps hunt down his neighbors who had been falsely accused of killing a lord. He and the other farmers “seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their won class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil’s whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him” (180). They had been conditioned to think in this way all their lives. However, when Hank talks reasonably with him, he is glad to speak of rebellion against the lord, but is also cautious to deviate from conditioned way of thinking. “He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the same time” (182). The apprehension comes from his conditioned way of thinking. The farmer’s loyalty to the lord is formed around the fact that he never thought of another way to behave. When Hank presented an alternate, more reasonable way to think, the farmer, although a little cautious at first, was glad to side with reason.

While one whose community is treated so harshly would be happy to find a new of thinking, in many situations it is not so easy to side with reason. This is because conditioning also determines what we find to be comfortable and what “the line of least resistance,” (222) as Mustapha Mond calls it in Brave New World, is for us. Although people may not find their current life perfect at all times, they have still grown accustomed to it. Many resist change because it disrupts the stability of the system they know. I believe a more complete view of this conflict within man is given in the description of Bernard Marx, who is often miserable within the society in Brave New World. He asks “what would it be like… if I were free—not enslaved by my conditioning?” (91), as if he wished he lived in a different situation. However, when an opportunity to change arises, he is very resistant to it and even cries “Send me to an island?…You can’t send me. I haven’t done anything” (226). The conflict we see in Bernard is the same conflict that arises later in the discussion between Mustapha Mond and John. Which is more important: truth or comfort? John asks the controller “isn’t it natural to feel there’s a God?” (234). The Controller responds saying it is no longer natural because what a person naturally believes is dependant on conditioning. “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them” (234,235). The civilization in Brave New World has redefined what is natural for man by altering the laws of nature. However, in doing so, they lose what is really most wonderful about life. They lack all that is actually meaningful in life.

Twain writes

“We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be covered up by the point of a cambric needle… And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me: the rest may land in Sheol and welcome for all I care” (91).

Although at first Twain seemingly agrees with Mustapha Mond, (that man believes what he believes because he is conditioned to do so), Twain also speaks of a speck of meaningfulness within people. This, which civilization has eliminated in Brave New World, also is the only thing worth saving.

What exactly is this speck of individuality of which Twain speaks? When I am trying to make a judgment about something, I usually think of situations that I have experienced in order to determine what is right or wrong. However, to “humbly live a pure and high and blameless life” suggests that there is an absolute ideal out there; right and wrong are not dependent on my experiences. There is also a truth that I can learn through reason, and, while my experiences may be helpful in discovering this truth, they are not necessary.

When Mustapha Mond asks John if he claims the right to be unhappy, it is the controller who is at last held back by conditioning and John who is finally under control of reason and not reliant upon Shakespeare for his answers. It is the controller who has been so conditioned his life to detest the “necessary” tears and pains of unhappiness, that he automatically rejects the notion that unhappiness would be worth the good that accompanies it. He sees happiness and truth as equal ideals between which man must choose. John, however, understands the true difference. He realizes that, in the end, the smallest truth, although it comes with “the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind,” (240) is better than even the absolute happiness offered by the society in Brave New World.

Truth is all that can have real meaning. Stability and comfort use pleasure to create an instantaneous sense of fulfillment. This is where the civilization in Brave New World has its flaw. Citizens are conditioned to believe that their purpose is to be a proper part of the “social body” to ensure its stability. However, while most of the citizens will be fooled by the sense of fulfillment from the pleasures available in their society, one such as Helmholtz or Bernard, who do not have the pleasures, may discover the lack of fulfillment within this purpose.

Conditioning controls us through our ignorance of other ways of things and the deception of comfort. However, when we stand up against it with logic, truth will win every time. Of course, this leaves us with the problem of knowing what truth is. It is important to know the difference between being conditioned and using experiences to help discover truth. We must always look for the beauty that lies in understanding. Truth has a certain “thunder” that awakens that speck of individuality within us and allows us to see the beauty of reality that is inherent in all that is true. It is through this beauty that we can realize that the pains and sufferings in life are necessary. The choice of sin, including all the pain and discomfort that comes with it, must be available to us in order for the selection of virtue to possess the beauty and goodness that lets us know it is right.