Catch up

Busy busy week it's been since I last posted. First week of winter semester and the stress has already begun. to be totally honest though, I sort of enjoy it. I really don't like feeling stagnant and I think it's really important to keep learning all your life. The moment you think you know everything is, I think, the moment when you close your mind to any growth or self-realization. I love learning about anything and everything I can because I love knowing things... if that makes sense. Anyway, enough of that rant.

I'm taking some very interesting classes this semester as electives. Literature of the Americas, which is basically a standard lit course but we're dealing with the different perspectives of the colonization of the "New World", namely, the Europeans (brave new world AND political and social power), the Africans (Captivity and slavery) and the indigenous people to whom this world was not new at all. I'm also taking an Anthropology 101 course which is also really interesting. I suppose these two classes have really made e think about the way people treat each other. The way people can somehow just put blinders on a situation and only see that which will provide the must material gain. I think the idea of entitlement probably sprouts from this ability. I hate that mentality. That people are born better than others or that they have the right to act in any way they see fit. ugh, anyway, if you let me, I could go on about this for days.

I think, for me, the important message to get out of studies like these is not to stand by and watch injustice happen. I say that if you see or hear about anything you disagree with speak out, even on some little tiny level. Don't just stand by and watch it happen. It all boils down to the idea of treating others as you wish to be treated doesn't it? If you don't speak out because it isn't happening to you isn't it quite possible that you will be alone when you are being persecuted? I read something about a week ago, that I'm sure you might have heard before but I thought it was really inspiring so I'm posting it now.

"First They Came" by Martin Niemöller. 

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me."