0 And we all have a duty to our country

So sometimes I don't like people. At all. And people are like that. We don't like people. Though that may stem from personal pet peeves, a lot of it comes from society ignoring its civil duty not to be a douchebag.

Now you may be thinking, "Syd, why do you think you can dictate how someone thinks?" And you're right, I can't. If you want to think evil, dark thoughts, go for it. The issue is when you express your thoughts and in the process hurt someone else. You can think whatever you want as beautiful. You can think whatever as not beautiful. The problem starts when you make someone else feel ugly.

And that's what's wrong with the world a lot of the time these days. People try and succeed at making others feel ugly because they don't exactly meet their idea of beautiful. And that's crap. Utter crap.

Civic duties are duties you have to the world and society around you. That's like waiting your turn at stop signs, moving along quickly in lines, being ready at the airport and the like. This also extends to being polite when being served and actually trying to be a good worker. There are some things that I'm really picky about (don't get me started about gum and food in general) but everyone can agree that it all boils down to not being a jerkface.

A lot of the issues come from people being selfish or rude or impolite. You don't have to care about each other but it's not your job to make life worse. Everything would be better if people just was neutral to each other at the very least.

Now you may also be asking, "Syd, why should I be nice to people?" Well for one, I don't mean nice. I mean decent. And why shouldn't you be decent? You don't know these people, why would you have any emotion towards them? Since you don't have a history with them, then you should be neutral. You should be neutral and try to make lines move as fast as possible. You should be neutral and wait your turn at the stop sign. You should be neutral and not be a douchebag.

A reason people are douchebags is because they're sure that others will be douchebags so they as well be one first. And this logic is flawed. It's a continuous destructive circle that is false. This is like pedaling backwards just to be going somewhere. Really, you should assume they are as be in return. This way, the wheels spin forward.

0 Poverty! I choose you!

So we are reading All Souls by Michael MacDonald which is a fascinating and tragic book abut his life growing up in South Boston. It centers around his family of 9 children and his single mother living in poverty and the result of that and his circumstances and the environment that they live in. Throughout the book (I finished it. I cried several times. I can't stand child death of mourning. The last few Harry Potter books killed me and continue to do so whenever I reread them), the family goes between being plagued by their poverty and reveling in it. Several people (the mother, mostly) makes questionable decisions that may have been the cause to their poverty.

This brings up the question of whether or not poverty is a choice. In the apparatus I'm typing this on, poverty is defined as the state of being extremely poor; or the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount.

There is the aged belief that poverty and bad situations are all choices and laziness. Those who still subscribe to that belief think that it is up to that person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work hard, that the only reason you are where you are is because the effort you have put out. These are the same people who still believe in the American Dream.

I believe poverty is something more. I believe that it may be a pit trap, a place where, once you've fallen in, the walls are high and slippery and there's no a to get a grip and climb out. It's a way of thinking that you can't escape even in your dreams. Poverty is a state of being. Regardless of the choices made in the book, as wrong as some of the decisions were, a life of poverty was so engrained in them that it was all they knew and all they could go off of. Of course their choices kept them impoverished because it was all they knew. It's like a virus, or poor dictionary for your spell check. Once you misspell once and you save it into the dictionary once, you'll always spell it wrong because that's the only way you know how to spell it.

In terms of background, I come from a middle class family where we've always had enough to sleep and a bed to sleep in and amenities I probably take for granted. I've never been poor so I'm speaking with the little I know, none from experience.

The question remains that even if poverty is a trap, how does one get themselves trapped in it. I can't answer that question because its different for everyone and I don't have experience with it. The most I can assume is that it's like how I get stuck with homework assignments. You procrastinate once and then again and its fun and you joke about it with friends and then you do it again and it becomes the only thing you know and can do until your grades are in the trash and there's no more light in your life. But I'm just guessing.

0 What do we want? Integration? Are we sure?

Living in chicago, its not hard to see racial differences. I go home, I see african americans. On the way to school I pass by differebt types of people living in differebt types of places. Going to sigh a diverse school as we do, it is easy for us to believe that the entire city is as integreated and mixed as we are.

However, that is bot the case. yes, the city is varied as one might say a candy shop is. But it is not integrated fully. Just as with the candy shop, we are separated in where we live. Sour candy is by its own while the rock candy lives in aisle seven and so on. The candy in the shop may be varied but they are not mixed together like a bag of mnns or skittles. The people are the same way. Yes this city has tons of people from different backgrounds, but they are not mixed together in the peanut mnms bag of life. This is not the question, but the set up.

The question is if we actually want it that way. I don't know how many are concious of the fact that they have segregated themselves in blocks and neighborhoods and, consequently, schools.l of a single background. I don't know how much of this was a choice or just not complaining with where we are. Whatever it is, I don't think we have something against integreating our homes as much as us merely not questioning what is already the case.

Once upon a time, we were segregated. Black people weren't allowed to live in certain areas. When they were allowed to live wherever, they moved into neighborhoods which promptly drew white people out those aforementioned areas in the white flight. And then some things happened in the middle and I am writing an opinion piece, not a report. The point is, we had been separated at an early point in history and at this point,I don't think people tralize that they are continuing that separation.

We accept certain things without question. Where you live is one of them. I live in a primarily black neighborhood and I've never really questioned why it is so. My parents moved there because it was nice and affordable and they thought they could raise a daughter there, which they did. I think these are the factors that influence where we move, not who is there, although that is important. Maybe its because I'm black but I don't see people as black people and white people. There's ghetto people and bougee people and there's people who are quiet and obnoxious and fight with their spouses. These are the peoplle that influence where you move and all races have them.

So I don't think we don't want integration. I think we just don't think of what were doing as segregation. If that makes sense.

0 The thing that scares me most is the creature in see reflected in the passing glass.

One thing that has stuck with me, really stuck with me, is something from the beginning. Maybe it's because it's one of the first things you read. Maybe it's because that's the modest alert I'm usually am while reading. Who knows. Whatever it is, Malcolm seeing the woman tell his father that he's, "scaring these white folk."

This is why his father was killed, in such a terrible terrible way. He scared the white people. You would think that the white people wouldn't be afraid of such an "inferior" person but no, he scared them. They saw him as a threat.

There are two parts to this which really have a hold on me. There's the fact that the white man was afraid of the black man here and then there's the fact that words were such a threat.

Starting with the former, in the time that the book is set in, it was basic (wrong) common knowledge that the black man was inferior to the white man in every way. False studies showed that the black race had less brain power and was incapable of intelligent thought. That's how they justified the lower positions black people were forced into.

Yet, these inferiority should have rendered anything the black man said as false, nonsense even. It should be like a baby's prattling or the rambling of someone who hasn't had enough sleep in a very long time. But this was not the case. Instead of ignoring what Malcolm's father was preaching, he was killed. I just find that, if not ironic, something morbidly funny at the very least.

Which brings me to the next point. The power of words. I've always been a big reader and, when I can push myself, a big writer. Words have and still mean a lot to me. Some people think that they're meaningless. For this, I cite the whole 'sticks and stones' saying. However, words can do a lot. They can inspire and uplift. And, with Papa Little's death, they can be a serious threat.

Serious a threat enough, in fact, that it was something worth killing a man (and quite brutally) over. I can't help but marvel at the effect that some strongly spoken words and people hearing them could have. Ip even these obviously inferior people with their menial words had a huge effect.

But I guess that is the dangerous part of then-black America. They were people who heard each other and words are powerful only when someone hears them. This goes with the communication issues that the original slavers tried to impose on their slaves. People are stronger together and to keep them from getting together, you must keep them from communicating. Papa Little's words were imposing one hell of a communication issue for the white people of that time. Unfortunately, his death inspired almost as much as his words during his life did.

These original word and this death and this fear may have started Malcolm the path that his life has taken. This has stuck with me, his beginning coming from people who were afraid of an ant enough that they didn't just stamp on it but throw it in the garbage disposal. Crazy as it is, this just fascinates me.