forgiveness

            It’s’ important to provide restitutions as a repayment to an injustice that was not the fault of those who suffered. It’s the same principal as if something were to happen to us personally now, and then not only would we suffer and lose, but it would be pushed under the carpet. It’s important to acknowledge the troubles and problems of the past and not just acknowledge the joys and triumphs that we respect and enjoy. Although it’s logical not to want to pay reparations for something you weren’t a part of, by coming into American culture you’re agreeing to abide by and live with our principles. (I.e. liberty, justice, etc…) If we want to meet the equality and justice that we preach so fiercely it’s important to make sacrifices and stand up to our own standards. It’s impossible to make immigrants agree with our values if we ourselves can’t make ourselves agree on the same principles. Our society must be made to look back and examine the past before we are able to make decisions on what is acceptable and what must be forgiven and apologized. I think the difficulty is drawing a line between what is worthy of apology and what is futile to the point of any reparations going to waste and being unable to exact change. 

selfless vs selfish

            Cora Tucker is a women who strives to level the playing field for all around her. She lives for the success and rise of equality for minorities and the underprivileged of her community. In this regard, she is much like Willie Loman. Loman lived for his sons and sought to see their successes and fame rise out of the lessons and personality he had instilled in them. The difference in these ideas of living to help other people is their attitude. While Loman was shunned and allowed himself to slip into nothingness and fade, Tucker never lost hope. She persevered and dealt with multiple levels of confrontation on many different fronts. Loman’s family life fell a part in a way while his job no longer provided a mean to live in his attempt to get them to achieve perfection. What he lost, Tucker gave up for the benefit of others. He tried to make his kids champions and she merely wanted to give everyone as equal and fair a chance at life as possible. This selfless sacrifice and determination allowed her to weather the obstacles that arose, even her own family turning its back on her, while Loman couldn’t take it.

seeking individual opportunity may cause car accidents leading to death

Willie Loman thinks individual opportunity is there to be had by the gifted. He particularly believes this of himself and his family. He has established such a strong sense of pride and self accomplishment that he believes himself well established and deservedly above others around him. You can look at Biff as his shining example. Biff was the arrogant football star who could steal what he wanted because he was well liked, and he could turn his back on academics and ‘know’ that he’d still get in college, while others, Bernard, worked hard, but wouldn’t amount to much based off of who they were. Through Bernard, Arthur Miller must think that it is possible through perseverance and humbleness. Bernard was walked on by others and used in their attempts to climb beyond him, but in the end through his own work ethic and sweat he was able to reach beyond those that attempted to go above him. He ended up working cases in the Supreme Court while Biff became a clepto and his life fell apart. I think his whole argument throughout the play was showing the right attitude and way to go about achieving new heights and wealth and what paths will condemn you.

My own discussion with Patty

            What part did Willie Loman’s pride and self confidence play in setting himself up to completely have his values and accomplishments swept out from under him?  I think Willie lived in a world completely shut of the perception of others. He was unable to escape his own views even when everything in his life fell apart. In a way this is untrue since he was finally able to escape his own false reality in an eventually successful suicide attempt. He wasn’t able to cope and function in a world that forced him to open his eyes and see that his sons were failures and his dreams had been shattered. Loman had once existed with the thought that he had and could have everything he could ever want. The single turning point in this philosophy, although arguably unrelated to uncontrollable events, was Biff’s discovery of his cheating. From that moment on his family life seemed to come undone starting with Biff’s flight to the West and followed by his career’s downfall into nothingness. In a way Willie had inflated himself full of hot air thinking his life perfect, but by the time this revealed itself to be untrue he clung to the remnants of that air inside of him. Only when he found himself no longer able to cling to the past did he attempt to take his own life. 

who gets my moneeey

I think overall today was a lot more of the same stuff from yesterday. My only problems with people were either their lack of paying attention to the class and reading from a paper making it boring or their over the top attempts to grab attention. I think these two were the most common point to lose me because I can easily get over and forget a stumble or pause around certain words, but when you neglect your audience by staring off into space or at a paper I lose interest. The worst for me was having to listen to people try to pool in crazy hypothetical situations, theatrically drawn out stories, or just flat out lame attention grabbers. I think there’s a difference between making attempts to interest your listener and overwhelming them with unnecessary thoughts or notions that remove you from your point. Apart from this as far as choosing people went, I just decided to go with whatever seemed the best balance of important organization and interesting presentation. I was surprised to see Maggie’s cup not get as many “bucks” because I thought out of all the talk of stories and being related to your organization, she had the best point for point presentation and tie to something very serious and dear to her family. 

who gets my money

            I think the most interesting/difficult aspect of evaluating and thinking about the various presentations is holding two different notions in your head at the same time. I think it’s important to hold your values into consideration with the actual organizations, but at the same time we need to at least take into account the manner in which it is being presented to you. Sometimes you don’t necessarily want to agree with someone’s organization, but the presentation was better than most so you can’t just eliminate it. It works both ways in the sense that you may think an organization has a good point, but be completely dulled by a speech. I think overall though the most difficult thing is trying to split your vote into different categories and then again do it for multiple people. You have to judge everyone against one another as well. That’s three different criteria to judge from, making this a little bit more than I anticipated. Everyone has done reasonably well though, my only problem has been with people over dramatizing their arguments and losing themselves in trying to use every single one of Mrs. Webster’s attention grabbers simultaneously. 

Goodwill take 2

            Today I attempted to apply the Toulmin system to my organization: Goodwill. As far as it goes, I think everything went relatively straight forward, but the only thing I wasn’t expecting to have to do was looking about statistics and information based on counter arguments. As far as it goes, you can go to your organization’s actual site and find all of the pro arguments and actions of what it does. What I found you had to do for a good argument was find the average amount of donations actually applied to the cause (which I couldn’t.) What I was able to find however was the annual amount of income dispensed on apparel and clothing per year in an urban environment. For me this was very beneficial to help argue why cheap clothing at Goodwill is beneficial and it also shows that over time you should accumulatively have much more than you actually need. This helps me present the argument that Goodwill is unique in a sense that money and volunteer work isn’t the only way to provide opportunities and help for others. By small donations of clothing and things you probably consider out of date rags, you have the chance to benefit others. 

Goodwill <-- It's in the name

At first, I couldn’t think of a single organization off the top of my head, and google wasn’t as helpful as you may think. What hit me surprisingly was something I drive by fairly often and see at multiple locations across Indiana. Goodwill is an organization that does many things in local communities and provides an easy center to pick up used items and money to benefit others. This works for me, because I have a Goodwill literally a mile away and I used to go in their with my mom and to this day I still drop things off their from old clothes to old furniture. After looking up their website I also found out what else Goodwill does apart from provide cheap clothes and money to benefit the poor and homeless. Their mission statement is literally to help the impoverished and welfare users of local communities find jobs and improve their lifestyles and social standings through the benefits and progress of work. Last year local Goodwills provided 1.1 million people with job opportunities or aided them in some way. To me this is something you can easily over look and don’t expect to see from a chain of stores spread across the US. When I think “helps the unfortunate” I don’t think, “Oh yeah that huge store next to Sears across from Target.”

hm...

It is not that easy; Emerson speaks like a labyrinth. What I would have to say he thinks generates success would be the virtues and self reliant personality required to be independent of outside influence and guidance. It is important not to be swayed and molded by your society and attempt to model yourself after others. You are not them, and you should look to live your life accordingly. In the event you fail to meet the same outcome or standards set before you, your life crumbles and you must start over from scratch only now you are disheartened and broken. I would agree with Emerson that it requires a great deal of independence and fortitude to pursue whatever roads are opened up to you. You mustn’t be instilled with the notion of becoming something great like those before you, for you will not feel great accomplishment should you reach success, but if you leave leniency in your path you may yet find satisfaction. I think it’s not necessarily bad to model yourself after the successes of others, you just must know their path might not be right for you and don’t burn all of your bridges. You may find that other doors are opened along the way that you may want to follow and see where they take you.

ouch

            It does not make the case that the wealthy are exploiting the poor. To me that would be more of Cruz’s essay. This is more the facts that people will try to get ahead in a system where things are either weighted against them or they don’t have to try very hard and have success handed to them. The wealthy don’t take advantage of others per say, they merely accept that they’ve been given privileges and fortune in their attempts to build their own proud mini empire. Everyone is cast into an unbalanced society with limits capped on them based off of where they begin. It’s essentially starting a board game with the end goal being millions of dollars and having tons of spots that set players back. This seems and would be fair if only 1/100 players weren’t allowed to start in a position that bypasses many of the most difficult issues. The rest are left in the middle of poverty and have nothing to build off of or improve upon. Generally speaking they must learn to live with what they’ve got because unless they can swim really well and see a billionaire drowning, they’ve got a rough road ahead of them.