Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Objectionable Symbols

Something caught my attention real well today but sadly it was not in a good way. How can one still have these thoughts and publicly display them like nothing's wrong? It's rather sad to see how there are still signs like these floating around. And also I've come to realize that only the major, diverse cities would be inclusive to different cultures and backgrounds but other suburban places aren't so accepting towards others. This made me reflect on the systems we have in California versus the other states. It has a drastic difference in terms of governing what is right and wrong in the community. This is one of the many I saw today as I was walking down the streets of Philadelphia.
Can they really legally put that in public space?
I got to class early to get a nice shady spot to do Qi Gong. We met at the lawn at 9:00AM and John started his usual routine of calming breathes and explaining a philosophical quote each day. He introduced a new set of Qi Gong while combining the first two we learned in order to link all three of them together. This exercise stimulated my brain to power it on fully in order to give my undivided attention later on in class. I really like the Qi Gong part of class to start off the day; it can be a little longer, though.

Our morning session consisted of lectures about famous philosophers such as Emmanuel Kant and Hegel. I was especially familiar with Kant as I learned about him in my philosophy class back home. Kant's ethics and introductory to philosophy was widely intertwined in today's topic about capitalism and land ownership. We also viewed John Locke first as a wonderful man who introduced, "the property of ourselves to others". He was a classical liberalism philosopher and thinker of the 17th century. Many people viewed positively of him because of his suggestion that everyone should have equal access to owning land and plantations. What we failed to realize is that a page after his declaration of this theory, he suggests that if one is to own land and have others work on his land, the labor plus workers will also be owned by him. This made me furious as I have not learned this at all in my regular history textbook. Just why is that the most important facts are commonly left out from our high school studies? Is it intentional? Do they (the publishers) not want us to get exposed to the "other" parts of history? We ended discussion at 12PM and I tried Chinese Philly Style Food truck. Not the best. The teriyaki was overcooked with little to no sauce but at least the rice was nice and fluffy. Next time I'll try the Indian food truck for more varieties. 

The afternoon session started at 1:30PM, thirty minutes earlier than usual times. This is because tonight's session begins at 4:30PM and so we'll need to end class early. Our topics that were discussed were interesting as Michael tied economics and sustainability in living to social justice and how you can never know how many things are subconsciously connected with each other. One classmate's example stuck strongly onto my brain; large corporations develop waste and dump it into the ocean because of low cost purposes. It then affects the wildlife within the oceans that is being contaminated. Algaes aborb the toxic chemicals and thus affects the fishes which are dependent upon algaes to get oxygen. Now there's a dead spot within the ocean which one would rarely go and explore as to why it is a dead spot. It's sad how profit over environment is the only equation corporations want to do their math in. We ended a little after 4:30PM and headed to "Bitter Homes and Gardens" by Bearded Ladies Cabarets.
Centered in South Phillly
It was one of the most unique style of play I have ever gone to. There were humanized vegetables running around throughout the show and crazy interpretations of songs and puns on drug usage. The play ended at 8:30PM and we took the subway back onto University City. Elexis, Chiamaka, Joanne, and I decided to not stay near the stage to eat cheesesteak because we had mandatory floor meetings at 9:30-11:00PM. On our way back, we bought yummy Wawa hoagies and boy they were so delicious! Honey mustard is a must on EVERYTHING!!!

Today has been a jam-packed day full of adventures indoors and out! Really excited to learn more throughout the three weeks and enhance my knowledge along the way.

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