I've Been Lied Too...

I have a class called "Living Myths". This is an upper division class... It has to do with religion and its involvement with war and peace. Its an upper division class.. Why take this class if you’re freshmen you ask? Well there are two reasons. One, It was general education and I needed more of those. And Two, it sounded interesting and it is. I like it, it was one of the few classes I was looking forward too. So, after the first 5 weeks of class I sat back and listened to all the Sophomores/Juniors/Seniors argue back and forth their opinion on why people have different religions and how it plays out in the way they view the world. Today in class my “bubble” was bursted…

One of the upper classmen said “I T.A for one of the freshmen history classes. And I watch as their bubbles are bursted when they find out that everything they’ve learned about history in grades k-12 was a lie… They think Christopher Columbus was a great guy but he really wasn’t, he killed thousands of people.”… I paused on this thought… I knew that when people came over from Britain that they killed some people but really? Thanksgiving is a lie… a false story… a myth…

I was confused… I thought everything taught in school was true.. Like math, you cant have anything false because you cant do the problem… But my history class, my favorite class, was all a fairy tale. Before this class I knew that there could be possible other stories but all of it fake? It scares me that I might not know the truth behind our so called “great” nation…

The other students continued to talk about how the puritans came here to get away from the oppression that was over them in Britain. But when they got here, because Native Americans were, “savages” and didn’t believe in what the puritans did they slaughtered them. So when they got away from the oppression they placed it onto other people. It was backwards. They wanted freedom but when other “foreign” people came with different views they oppressed them… Why? Was it the hurt feeling they had and took it out on the Natives?

After class I called my boyfriend and told him I will no longer celebrate Thanksgiving.. Why would I want to celebrate a fake holiday? I don’t want to celebrate the slaughter of thousands of Native Americans. Children are told in elementary school that Columbus met the Native Americans and had a dinner and lived happily ever after. But that’s not how it went. Why do we lie to our youth? … He laughed when I told him how I felt lied too my whole life… He said “yeah everything is fake, too make the country look good.” So what else is a lie about the history of our nation?

Learning that our nation is full of Myths only makes me more excited for my Living Myths class.  I cannot wait to learn more about how religion fuels wars on our planet.

Theres an Elephant in the Room

So the topic I chose to write about in position paper was the abuse of animals in the circus. Mainly Ringling Brothers Circus. There is a lot of coverage on this story and many mixed opinions. I was talking about it with my boyfriend and he was asking why I see animals as more important than humans. I have many reasons, they were here first. Animals were on this earth before we were. We live on their land and have taken over thus killing off species. Another reason is their Helpless. They can’t speak, they usually have no clue what is going on and if they do attack usually it’s because they are scared. People beat them and torture them then take their lives without taking into consideration the feelings and the pain the animal was put through. I believe people who abuse any kind of animal has a terrible self-esteem. They get pleasure and feel “bigger, powerful” when they hurt a helpless being. So why do I think animals and the planet is more important? Well in my opinion, I believe people don’t have the right to live here anymore. We’ve lost touch into what’s important and that keeping this beautiful planet and all its creatures alive and healthy.

We kill and kill this planet for our benefit without thinking of the consequences or how we affect other living beings around us. Millions of species have gone extinct because of our pollution. We speed up the extinction rate with all the crap we pump into the earth. My family makes fun of me and calls me a tree hugger but I really think Mother Nature is so much more important than our self needs for cars, oil and other none essential things. Our ancestors lived perfectly fine without all these electricity, cars, ac/heaters etc. Why cant we do that again?

A movie that I really liked that has to do with pollution was Avatar. We could live the like Navi people. We just choose not too. Their “god” is the earth and all the plants. Their brothers and sisters are the animals that live with them. They only kill when necessary and when they do kill for food they take it all and do it respectfully. All we do is take and take. Of course in Avatar the human population and their greedy wants for the precious “stones” killed everything in the movie. I cried when the tree fell. It was their home and our selfish needs destroyed it. That what we are doing to our planet. We are slowly killing it and its very sad that we let it get to this point. One day Mother Earth will show us whos boss and completely wipe us out. So yeah, I get really worked up about animals and the planet… Ok, well stay tuned for next week!!