TURNKEY

I watched this TED talk in our feminist studies class, and I'm telling you, I'm not giving birth unless and until my partner legitimately pays me to do so, along with when I do the household chores and whatever else. I also am a big proponent of adoption, anyway, so perhaps I will never give birth in my life. I'm not sure, it's too early to tell. I am only 31, and in my first year of college. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My head has been wrapped up around billionaires and the redistribution of wealth for the past week. It may be because a lot of what I study invariably revolves around giving back and ensuring justice for marginalised communities. It might be because I've been veering toward such issues for the past couple of years. It might be the latter leading up to the former, and now I have a constant headache because the lack of light makes it really hard for me to stay up when I'm supposed to stay up, compounded by the fact that my brain never, never, never stops working, and sometimes my eyes glaze over when you're talking to me, because I'm thinking about something else, which is rude, and I'm sorry. I try very hard to be present and attentive, but I don't succeed at everything I do.

Joey says billionaires are like toddlers, because toddlers get what they ask for, and they don't take no for an answer. Actually, Joey spoke of specifically one billionaire, who is Elon Musk. It's interesting to have a tenuous connection to Elon Musk like this, it's a name I say often, and most people know who he is and have said his name. My school counsellor (I go to one because I thought I had adult ADHD but I haven't seen a nurse to get diagnosed, and I like just speaking to counsellors and getting therapy, anyway) said Elon Musk made a dick move, with the world hunger thing, and then I spoke to my favorite professor, my love and light, Kaia, and then she said Elon Musk is a dick, so basically Elon and dick get said in the same sentence pretty frequently.

It is strange to think of him as a person, through the eyes of someone who's worked with him and gone into the same building as he has for pretty much eight years (I think). I told Joey, when I was in LA in 2016, I'd asked him whether he thought Elon deserved what he had, and Joey had said Elon works hard. So this time, to hear him being slightly more critical of Elon, I said I was proud of him, but then Joey said, again, "he does work hard, he just refuses to take no for an answer."

There is a.... mismatch of worldviews here. As a person, perhaps the man Elon Musk works hard, yes, perhaps he stays long hours at SpaceX and Tesla and doesn't go off gallivanting on Saint-Tropez (although, does he? I do not know). Then there is the rest of the world, the proletariat who hold the factual view that you physically cannot and do not earn billions of dollars through sheer hard work, and he did not. People are working for him, and other people are creating his wealth, and people contributed to his wealth, long before he started working, so it is not only due to him that he's a billionaire.

And there's the issue of world hunger at stake. If you had not encountered it for some reason, Elon Musk offered money to help with world hunger if someone could come up with a provable viable solution. Then, someone from the UN came up with a plan! It remains to be seen whether he'll actually do it. 

The fact of the matter, though, is why did he offer in the first place? What was the point? What was he trying to do? The entire thing just screams dick move. Is he an actual toddler? Are there behavioural experts who have studied toddlers and can explain how we can get a toddler to cooperate if the toddler knew that they could alleviate the hunger of a portion of the world population?  

My head is aching all the time. I can go to school, day in and day out, talk about taxing the rich, or eating them, all the time, and then I can go home, shoot the breeze with Joey, but nothing is going to change, and the plight of the world weighs heavy, on the world. Sometimes I am paralysed from the lack of change. The system is going to have to be reformed, or we will be going through a revolution. So I sit at home, have my dinner, and think about why people are the way they are, and how we can coax them to think about other people.

SO CASUALLY CRUELIN THE NAME OF BEING HONEST

just between us

did the love affair 

maim you too?

I want to tell you about falling in love through mutual friends, by reading someone's Tweets. I want to tell you about waking up from a nap with someone else and his cat, and having him pack leftover food in your little tin container. I want to tell you about the clash of personalities and how love can sometimes not be enough to overcome differences in compatibility, in living spaces and in hobbies. I want to tell you about the resentment I feel when I have hyped someone up in my head and they tell you they're not in the right headspace. I want to tell you many things, but that would be casually cruel in the name of being honest. So I don't say anything. I spoke to Joey last night, it's amazing the things you can find out when you're too depressed to be naughty. He makes Mexican food?! What the fuck, the man has layers?? Yesterday was the first time he tried to draw a line between himself and billionaires, which I appreciated, even though he does work for Elon Musk, and if my calculations are correct, I think he's in the top 10% of the world in terms of wealth. Still, I appreciate his input on my incessant need to improve the world and come up with some viable solutions to world hunger. 

MONTEREY

I'm quite a socialist, and I believe in sharing resources. I also pay an exorbitant amount for my education, so to make things worth it, I like sharing everything I learn, on social media or on this here platform. I have the texts for my Liberal Studies course, whether in print or virtually, so if you'd like to read the texts, let me know. The range includes but isn't limited to The Epic of Gilgamesh, Vita Nuova, Symposium, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. We recently received the mid-term test papers back, so here were my essays. Again, if you read the texts themselves, all this information would make more sense. 

    In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes says that love is a wound and a want to be reunited with our other half, but Diotima says that "a lover does not seek the half or the whole, unless. . . it turns out to be good as well" (205e). Who is right? Why?

According to the speech that Aristophanes gives in Plato's Symposium, people who are in love are seeking to be rejoined with their perfectly-matched other half in order to heal a wound that was created when Zeus separated them from each other. In the stanza of 192C, Aristophanes proclaims, "And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment."

From Diotima's viewpoint, people in love seek only that which is good for themselves, or a person who would inspire them to create something which will attain a form of immortality, for they want what is good for them, and they want it to last, forever. From 208E, "I believe that anyone will do anything for the sake of immortal virtue and the glorious fame that follows; and the better the people, the more they will do, for they are all in love with immortality."

I veer more toward the stance that Diotima is right. Whilst there are people in love who are definitely always in search of their "one true soulmate", more often than not, this ideal creates unrealistic expectations for a person to have. A romantic relationship is unhealthy when the two parties involved do not want to leave each other's sides and have no sense of independence — this is what is currently known as enmeshment, which is when a relationship has a lack of boundaries. Additionally, with the idea that there is a "one true love" or "better half" in the world, it can lead to two things. First, people already in relationships constantly question if they have found the "right partner", instead of trying to build on the foundation of the relationship they are in. Secondly, it leads to people without romantic partners feeling a sense of lacking in themselves, when they could very well be fulfilled as a single person. 

In contrast, Diotima's idea of love is a healthier and more fulfilling one, so in that sense, I believe she is more "right" than Aristophanes is. From 211B and 211C: "it is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself, it is always in one form; and all the other beautiful things share in that, in such a way that when these others come to be or pass away, this does not become the least bit smaller or greater nor suffer any change... This is what it is to go aright, or be led by another, into the mystery of Love: one goes always upwards for the sake of this Beauty. . . he arrives in the end at this lesson, which is learning of this very Beauty, so that in the end he comes to know just what it is to be beautiful."

Correspondingly, I believe people in love do pursue love for the sake of beauty, and for the sake of creation. Love causes an attraction toward the things that a person deems as good, and if a person loves the good in another, they would love the Good in every and all others, without discrimination. At least, I do believe that should be the standard in society, that everyone adopts an agape love, which treats everyone equally, regardless of whether they are your partner or not.

    — Nicely argued. Very clear summaries of their positions at the beginning.

 

    The Renaissance pop star Dante might agree with the contemporary pop star Dua Lipa that "Love is Religion." Explain using details from Dante's text.

Dante might agree with Dua Lipa that "Love is Religion" for several reasons. Followers of a religion are dedicated and steadfast in their rituals. Dante spent all his time in pursuit of Beatrice and in thinking of her. He also spent all his time writing, so he was religious about Beatrice and about writing, whether independently of each other or not. Followers of a religion may also be obedient without skepticism, and we see this in the following examples. In Chapter II, Dante writes, "Here is a god stronger than I, who shall come to rule over me" and in Chapter III, he writes "Love said 'I am your master.'" Both times, Dante simply submits without even questioning this force of Love. Dante is so fervent that he frequently makes supplications such as when he says "Love, help your faithful one" in Chapter XII. 

To Dante, love is also transformative, just like how religion is supposed to help one grow and be a better person. Chapter XVI: "I grieved when my memory excited my imagination to think of the transformations that Love worked in me" and "Love, many times without warning, attacked me so violently that no part of me remained alive." In his pursuit of Beatrice, his love also transforms as he moves his bliss from pursuit of her greeting to that of praising her. His writing also transforms at the same time as it moves from one movement to another with different writing styles, from the Provençal to dolce stil novo, until he feels in the last movement that he has transcended even all extant writing styles and successfully made his own. Thus, it shows that in both writing and his subject of Beatrice, he was both steadfast and allowed love to be transformative, as with a religion.

    — Very nice description of Dante's transformation and commitment to love/poetry.