A Brief History of Now

Henry Roland

Hey, everyone. I just got an English assignment back today, and I thought I’d share it with you. It’s not too long, so should be a simple read.

You can download it here, because it looks really bad when formatted inside the post.

Enjoy. (Feel free to post any comments in the comments section)

I Pledge Allegiance To The United States of America

[edit date=may 21, 2009] Hey, everyone. During my daily after-school routine (Ice Tea + IRC Backlogs), a buddy of mine noted that I had a few fallacies and I just wanted to update this post in order set some things straight.[/edit]

If there is anything that I’ve learned from my ripe, old age of 16, it’s that in my youth I was an idiot. I was probably the most stubborn, disobedient, and rude child you had ever met. Along with this came my inherent dose of ignorance, which I used quite effectively.

I used to think I had opinions of my very own. Ideas that I had come up with, and not stolen from one of my elders. I used to think I had experience in this world. I used to think I was always right.

And please don’t misinterpret that; I still have the arrogant, elitist personality. I probably always will. It’s my persona. Just ask any of my friends and the classic response would be something along the lines of: “Julius? He’s a hater.” (This usually gets me pretty angry, however. I’d try to counter the statement, but they would probably just use that as additional evidence so I subdue the temptation.) Anyway, just note that the difference between me now and 5 years ago is that I currently acknowledge my attitude.

I don’t know everything. But I wish I did. I enjoy learning and processing new information. If that includes some minor side-effects then so be it. And I hope that in another 5 years I find this page and read it to myself so that I can continue to understand how I work and continue to improve myself.

With that being said, I just wanted to bring up an old topic of choice: The Pledge of Allegiance.

When I was a young boy floating precariously through middle school I used to come up with opinions on all sorts of controversial topics, be it abortion, the war, and in this particular case, the Pledge of Allegiance.

I know it’s a bit of a early topic from this millennium, but the fact that it seems to have died down is upsetting.

All American schools are required by law to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning (or at some point) in school.

There are two clear reasons while this requirement is ridiculous:

1. It wastes valuable time. On average it takes 12 to 15 seconds to recite the PoA. That’s over a minute per week; 4 minutes per month, and 36 minutes per year. Over the course of the average high school career, a student will spend over 2 and a half hours saying the PoA.
2. It is religiously bias.

I pledge allegiance to the flag

of the United States of America,

and to the republic

for which it stands:

one nation under God,

indivisible,

with Liberty and Justice for all.

Cosmetically, the simple statements seem fine. They just constitute the mood for the day: you are in the US, the greatest country ever. However, our founding fathers, as revolutionary as they were, decided to slip in one very important claim: we are a nation which operates under the protection and/or supervision of God. [fix]The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy. It did not become the national pledge until 1942, 50 years after it was written. The words “under God” were not included until the 1950’s.[/fix]

There are two interesting contradictions here. The first being that the implied existence of a god is against the first amendment. The Bill of Rights was designed to take away the power from the government and give it to the people. Part of this was to allow anyone to choose their own methods—or lack there of—of religious practice. For the first time in a large society, religious freedom was a basic right, unlike the rules in Europe at the time.

The second issue here is that this also counters the separation of Church and State. Public schools, and education all together, are state regulated. They are financed by the taxpayers and ran by state officials. Because of the direct affiliation with the government, public schools should not be exempt from the rules. By reciting the Pledge of Allegiance we are allowing de facto traditions of the US that would otherwise be illegal to continue.

And it’s been like this for many, many years. The Constitution was built with the religious tolerance in mind, but they neglected to see that they cannot favor Christianity just because it is the majority. Besides, who knows how long that will last. With massive influx of immigration and emigration and different cultures intertwining with our own, Christians will have their hands full trying to keep up with the changes. One cannot make decisions based on the expectation of one religion dominating another in the years to come.

How the Supreme Court does not understand this is beyond me. If we want this country to get back to its prime we need to take baby steps. One fix at a time; one goal per day. Attempting to go the easy way out will almost always end in failure. Reforming our laws is the way to start. By disabling the Pledge we would just be one step closer to the image of the country we were supposed to be and farther and farther away from the monster we are becoming.

So, I just want encourage you to consider skipping the Pledge of Allegiance the next time your are in school. You are legally allowed to sit out during the Pledge and I want you to do so. The fastest way to make a point is a public, tangible expression of opinion.

Save our country. Skip the Pledge.

Have a good one.

-Julius Parishy

Education and Personal Rights

I was born in the United States. I have a birth certificate, a social security number, and I’ve eaten at McDonalds on several occasions. I am a United States citizen. Therefore I should be protected by the Bill of Rights, correct? I thought so, too. However, sixteen years into this game of Life I’ve come to realize that my rights as an underage citizen are built on fabrication.

My school has one principal, and 3 assistant principals. Each one is in charge of different aspects of our day-to-day lives at school. Let me break this down for you:

• The Principal is responsible for walking around my school with a tough, scary facial expression. His purpose is to randomly stop in the hallways to give the random pat on the back and disrupt 15 meters worth of hallway traffic. He makes sure that stupid rules are enforced such as making sure the middle stairwell is up-only, so that I have to walk to the end of the hallway to go downstairs. He hands out pencils to students labeled, “My principal believes in me.” Some times he even likes to be sneaky and put them in your pocket when you aren’t looking. What a great guy.
• Assistant principal one is in charge of handing out detentions to various students every morning. When he isn’t giving a kid a detention or an ISS (In School Suspension), he likes to spend his time telling people to take their headphones out of their ears.
• Assistant principal two has the hardest job of all. Not only does he have to be a disciplinary figure at my school, he also has to take care of his ridiculous moustache, reminiscent of a walrus. When he isn’t combing his upper-lip’s hair, he spends his time collecting cell phones from students and being upright annoying (I’ll get to that later).
• Finally, assistant principal three is the only female on the staff, probably there for that very reason. Her job involves starting our days off by being insanely annoying on the morning announcements and then enforcing the dress code while wearing clothes that no one wants to see an old lady in.

Now that you have an idea of who runs my school, you can see where I am coming from. My principals exist to piss me off by taking away my otherwise basic rights. Here are some of the rules they like to enforce:

• No cell phones, ever. The consequences range from keeping it for a school day to receiving a Saturday detention. Oh, and the student’s parents have to drive to the school to pick it up. Students cannot pick up their phones themselves, no exceptions.
• No iPods. We aren’t allowed to have iPods in school. Their newest addition to the rule is that even if headphones are visible, in your ears or not, then it constitutes a confiscation.
• Teachers cannot let you go to the bathroom in the first and last five minutes of class.

The school seems to run on assumptions. They assume that everyone is cheating. They assume that everyone is doing something illegal or “wrong” in one or another. Where is the trust that we deserve?

The question on my mind is simple: Why are things we normally do outlawed in school on the basis of stereotyping?

Not all teenagers are out getting drunk, doing drugs, and knocking up their underage girlfriends. Not everyone is the evil, maniacal teenage demon that society has decided we are.

For example, two weeks ago during lunch three of us had our phones out, but I was the only one who had headphones attached to my phone. Assistant principal number two noticed us while groping the cafeteria (instead of doing something more useful) and decided to try and take my two friends’ phones, and leave me alone. I was immediately angered and told him if you are going to take their phones, you are going to have to take mine, too. An act of deviance was all it took to piss the beast off and he decided to take us all into his office. Oh, so scary. This is where the fun began. The conversation went something like this:

• Assistant Principal One: Why did you have phones out?
• Me: Because we were using them. It’s lunch, not class.
• APO: Do you know the cell phone policy?
• Me: Yes. It’s stupid.
• *APO then proceeded to spend a minute or two looking for a rule book to make my friend read the cell phone policy instead of simply telling us what it was, even though I had said I knew the policy.*
• APO: Blah, blah. How do I know you aren’t taking pictures of girls under the table and putting them on the internet? (Yeah, becuase that’s the primary use for cell phones) All you are doing is creating more work for me. If you lose your expensive cell phone where are you going to go? You are going to come and bitch to me about it. But if someone stole your stash of marijuana, you wouldn’t come to me, would you? (This infuriated me. What kind of fucking asshole assumes that everyone is a druggie?)
• Me: Really? …Really?

After a few more minutes of meaningless dialogue (during which I stared him straight in the eye, which I could tell was pissing him off) he told my two friends to leave, with the cell phones. My original intent had been satisfied, I was happy. However, there was more in store for me.

Unfortunately, this requires a bit of explanation. All of the computers are linked to a network where each student has a login identifier and some space on the servers to keep their files. The computers only come with Internet Explorer 6 installed, which totally pissed me off. So I installed Firefox on my personal space. A few days later I noticed it was gone, so I reinstalled it. Another day passed and it was gone again, only this time one of the tech guys left me a message. It was along the lines of “SORRY NO FIREFOX.” Yuck, all-caps. So for the next few weeks we proceeded to leave each other messages as I continously reinstalled Firefox. Eventually I got pissed off enough to leave a message that was both “rude” and “disrespectful”, as assistant principal two ejoyed telling me. So, anyway, the tech guy forwarded my messages to the dictators, er principals. After the cell phone incident he made me stay to talk about this. As expected, he was computer retarded and had no idea how any of the computer security worked. The conversation we had was pointless, as my position had not curved in the slightest. I was not punished further than having my account disabled, which I had reversed a few days later.

The premise of the situation came down to this: students are given space on computers for their personal files, but are not given any clear rules or regulations as to what can stay on the server. It also showed me that it is impossible to reason with any adult in my school. They automatically assume you are wrong, quite the ignorant stance to take as someone who is supposed to be educating the future generations.

I just don’t understand why being in school can limit my rights as an American Citizen. I did not sign an agreement to any terms. I was forced into this school by law. How can it abridge my freedoms? Why can a school regulate content available to me but any where else in the country I can read whatever I want. How can they get away with content blockers that simply block metatags for the word ‘game’, when all I want to do is read a goddamn Slashdot article.

High School is no longer about getting an education. It’s more of an experiment. A test for how far the adults who run this world can control its youth. How much power can they gain over students without realizing they are pompous assholes who need to let up the tough-guy routine and allow students to do the things that make them happy and make them work as efficiently as possible.

All the schools are doing with their ridiculous rules is making students unhappy. Unhappy workers are not efficient workers. And if the country really cares for it’s future units of profit as much as they seem to, they would want us to be as happy as possible.

Threatening isn’t the way to go about this. We are not animals; we are not lost causes. But if people continue to treat us like that then they will continue to receive the same unhelpful, negative responses they have been getting for years.

Students are people, too. They deserve to be able to do what they want without the fascist principals assuming we are all potheads who want to cheat. If they treat us poorly, the chances are I am going to be rude right back, regardless of whether or not they think I’m being respectful.

-Julius Parishy

Bastardization of Education

When I was younger I always believed that growing up would be a great experience. I was eager to become an adult, to explore the perfect world seen in all the movies and T.V. shows I had seen. I wanted to go to work, to make money, to get started on life as early as I possibly could. Little did I know that when you are twelve-years-old you do not know know everything in the entire world. 

I’ve had the dream of finishing high school with a 4.0 GPA and going on to a fancy, expensive university for a very long time. I’ve always wanted to go on to do better things than the the rest of family, which mostly consists of factory workers and and other small-time jobs. When I was very young I aspired to be a fireman, just like any seven-year-old boy should. After that I wanted to be a writer, then a teacher, and finally a lawyer. My most recent venture into Careerland has been game development, a choice I’ve stuck with for the past three or so years. I like playing games and I like making them even more.

The be a successful game programmer there are a vast amount of topics one must fully understand. They range from problem solving to calculus and from logic to wizardry. Typically, these attributes are the result of a major in Computer Science. So recently I’ve been rummaging through propaganda from various no-name colleges and universities and googling several others. On this voyage I am to an amazing realization that I was completely unaware of until now: getting an education sucks.

Now, let’s clarify. Education itself is a wonderful thing. Knowledge is power and it is important that one soaks in every drop of information he or she is exposed to. There is no point in life if you don’t take advantage of everything this world has to offer. Without knowledge and experience, our lives would be meaningless.

Of course, that’s why colleges and universities exist: to educate the future generations of the world. And I think that as the first schools were created they honored this intent. However, at this point in time I feel that their current motives are much less pure.

So here are list of things that the process of getting an education has showed me.

• Schools only care about money — In this world money controls everything. The rich are the powerful and the rich are never fair. Schools look for candidates that will make them the most money. The schools who cater to the rich will only ever cater to the rich. Schools like MIT and Harvard charge insane amount of money for a “better” education. If education is so important, why make a better learning environment available only to the people that can afford it, rather than the people who deserve it? Surely enough, the phrase “you get what you pay for” comes to mind in situations like this. But how can you put a price on knowledge? How can education be sacrificed to our material value systems? How can a dollar be traded for facts?
• The government only cares about money — As an underage citizen my purpose can be summed up very easily: learn enough to be able to pay your taxes in order to protect the country’s income. It doesn’t matter what I learn, what major I proceed with, or what title I carry. If I am not making any money, I am worthless to the government, and essentially the world.
• Schools are superficial — My guidance councilor has stressed on multiple occasions that I need extracurricular activities. She thinks that I should join a sports team or a club. She has even tried to list a bunch of them that she thought I would like. The list was long, but a few of my favorites were: computer club, writing club, football, or DECA. First off, I don’t like playing organized sports, for various reasons. Second, school clubs are a joke. Clubs exist to appease colleges’ and universities’ requirement for the oh so important extracurricular activities. I’ve flirted with the idea of joining a club several times. However, my final verdict remains unchanged. Clubs are made for superficial people who want have the club on their resume for a superficial school to look at. The way I see it, if I don’t like something and it doesn’t appeal to me then the sole fact that a school will like it is not enough for me to join a club I have no interest in.
• Standardized tests suck — The idea that a single aptitude test is enough to determine the fate of someone’s academic career is preposterous. This world is comprised of so many different, unique people that it is pure insanity to think that a single test is enough to decide if someone should be accepted into a school. Some people aren’t very good test takers and judging there potential based on a score on a test could be detrimental to their future. If a single test is enough to disqualify me as a candidate to my preferred school than maybe that school isn’t for me. Standards are great things, they allow a single way for similar things to be represented, analyzed, and interpreted. Unfortunately, the human mind is not a data protocol and shouldn’t be treated as such.

I’m sure as my search continues I will run into even more issues with my future that I can scrutinize, but I guess that only time will tell.

-Julius Parishy

Environment and Behavior

I live in New Jersey, a predominantly White state, albeit a growing “minority” population. I’ve lived here my entire life. In fact, I’ve never lived outside of the current county I where I reside. When I was younger, I lived in a very, very poor area on the outskirts of Princeton. My mother, sister, brother, and I all lived in a 2 bedroom apartment. It had a single bathroom, and a kitchen that was more like a closet than anything else. The dining room and living room were combined with the kitchen. We had one couch and T.V. roughly resembling this. The majority of the families that lived in the apartment complexes spanning roughly 50 acres were either Black or White, with a few others mixed in here or there. I didn’t have any video games or a computer, and this was a few years before my first gameboy. I spent most of my time collecting and playing with Pokémon cards (Or Pokéman, as my parents called it). My dad was living in a halfway house in Trenton; I saw him on weekends.

The tough issue when it comes to comparing the quality of life is determining who it is fair to compare to. In my current area, an upper-middle class town, many might consider my childhood deprived. However, I’m sure for a considerable amount of others in the country, my past was full of luxary. Stability is what we are all after, right? Well what’s wrong with a semi-stable life, just without all perks of living in an environment were money is generally a nonissue?

What’s even more interesting is how exposure to a community of “superior” people, financially, can build an immense amount of jealousy. When I was under 10-years-old, the only time I had ever used a computer was in school, because I was able to partake in the Princeton public school system. They had the money to afford several original eMacs, including the all too popular Oregon Trail. However, because I didn’t have a computer at home, it didn’t phase me. My limited exposure to the technology was negligable in my preadolecent mind. When I look at myself now and realize how completely dependent I am on my computer it is incredible to see how the change happened over a timeline of just about 8 years. In my 16 years on Earth, I’ve evolved from poverty into a young adult with many luxories that I wouldn’t even have known existed 10 years ago.

However, my situation is not of the utmost important for this though. Instead, it’s more about the people around. If I had to estimate, I would say 95% of the people around me are composed of entirely, or mostly, bullshit.

When I lived in Princeton I was exposed to a wide array of different people, some who could possibly be declared clincally insane (had they been able to afford to) and some who were perfectly contempt with their lives. Many of those perfectly contempt people had known nothing else, so why shouldn’t they be happy with what they have?

Since I’ve moved into an upper-middle class environment I’ve become very disappointed with the actions of the people around me. People whose families make enough money to support them and a stable home. People who take every single thing around them completely for granted. One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed about high school is that if you were to line up every kid in the school, just about every other one of them were abusing drugs. I’ve always been morally against drugs and alcohol. I don’t smoke, nor do I drink. But that is besides the point, because for the sake of fairness, my motives are bias. However, that’s a story for another day. Now, back in the 7th grade when the D.A.R.E. program visited my school in regular intervals, I thought it was a waste of my time. I thought we had all heard this enough before and that me and my classmates were most definitely going to “stay above the influence.” I see now why they make such an issue of the problem. What used to be merely a ridiculous stereotype of my generation has mutated into fact. Everyone around me is on drugs.

However, that still isn’t the problem! People will do drugs, and the chances are won’t be able to stop them. What’s far, far more interesting are the reasons doings drugs:

• “Because it’s cool.” This doesn’t really hold up as much as parents would like it to. There are few stupid people out there who will respond with this crude statement, but it sure isn’t the most popular.
• “I do it for the high.” A slightly more intriguing answer. This is the one I hear the majority of the time. What I don’t quite understand is what is so wrong with your life that you are dependent on a drug to make you feel good. There is a lot to life. And if you take out all of the opinionated issues, such as religion and similar associations, life comes down to one thing: experience. The more you test life the more satisfying it is. Everything you do and everything that happens as a result is built into a manifest of human experience. That is the meaning to life. And it’s true that drugs are just another experience, and I accept that as a valid point. But in the end, what really matters is that you make it through life experiencing everything you can. And for a lot of people, drugs will only hold them back. You don’t need drugs to be happy. If that were so, we would be living quite the pointless, uneventful life, no?
• “What else are you going to do on a Saturday night?” This one is my absolute favorite. I don’t even want to go into the insanity of this quote (Yes, this is taken word for word from a classmate).

The biggest part of this is that the people in my school who do regularly do drugs don’t have defining reason, trama-wise. In many movies and books, the people that abuse substances, be it alcohol or whatnot, are usually portrayed as troubled, helpless individuals using drugs as a way of screaming out for help. What may seem like a noble cause is not what is in the real world, from what I’ve seen. Instead most people seem to do smoke or drink just because they can.

Where in Hell is the satisfaction in doing something just because you can.

Additionally, drugs aren’t the only abuse I’ve seen more so in schools in my area. Education seems to be failing, and it’s doing so quite fast. However, I think that the adults have missed the bar when it comes to the cause. Teachers and funding are not the issue!

The reason that education rates are declining is because kids generally don’t care. Obviously, the number of students who do have this attitude are limited, but from my experience in public schooling, the number is gaining power every year. Schools need to step up and find ways to motivate students. Without proper motivation and reasoning, many kids will find no reason to “waste” their time with mandatory education.

I don’t believe that the attitude could be attributed to laziness, either. Laziness is myth. At the ripe age of 12-18, people are in their prime for physical and mental activity. Motivation is the key to success, no matter how cliché that may sound.

I honestly wish I could say I like my high school, but the unfortunate truth is that when I go to school, I don’t feel like I am being educated. It’s more along the line of a dictatorship. If schools really want their kids to succeed, they will have to understand how kids really learn, and not how they want them to learn. Education needs to be versatile, changing for the needs of different generations. A happy worker is an efficient worker, so if they want people to do well, they aren’t going to have to kick the fascist attitude out the window, and start working with the kids, not against them.

Have a good one.

-Julius Parishy

P.S. Honestly, this was not intended to target anyone. I wouldn’t try to do that. I simply wouldn’t to convey my thoughts. These issues are important to me, and I hope you will see where I am coming from.

Perspective

We live in a rather unpredictable world. Everything that we endure on a day-to-day basis has the potential to disappear at any given moment. Anything and everything can and will change in one way or another, regardless of any countermeasures. But what can one expect? Stability doesn’t exist. It’s a myth of the human experience to give people a goal. It provides a goal, a source of motivation.

I live in a world where my sole existence as a member of society is to be educated, get and maintain a job, provide as much money as humanly possible for the government, and die. That’s basically what it comes down to. I am just a number. Not your traditional identifier, no. Rather I am a quantity, a monetary unit. The more money I make the better off I am, the better off the World is.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always heard our leaders talking about “the next generation,” their children and grandchildren. The ones who they will be leaving the decisions to when their reign ends. My generation. As a minor, I am used to being forced to accept the decisions being made for me. However, it seems that with a case as large as the World, it would make more sense to get the opinions of some of the so-called “future leaders” of the World.

I live in a world being molded for me, and yet I have no say, no influence over anything around me.

Our current leaders are in need of some desperate help. Fresh, “hip” help, if you will.

Our world is in a state of mass confusion and hysteria. We know what we want to do (for the most part), but don’t know how to do it. We want to “go green” but don’t want to spend the money to finance the project. We want to end the war, but keep sending troops into Iraq (and soon to be Afghanistan). We want to create jobs, but are laying off workers by the thousands.

Change is in the air. With Obama in a unique position, it seemed like change was a viable solution to our problems. In the last 3 months, since January 21st 2009, Obama has shown us that his commitment was only halfhearted.

The 2-Party system we currently have has failed us. And it is time. Time to start over.

If we really want change, we can’t make empty promises. We can’t build on to a failing system, either. True change will require starting from the ground up.

Instead of building a foundation for the future, let us start the future now. Stop the corruption of the current legal system. Stop letting people make decisions that we don’t want. Stop letting the current generation dictate how things are without considering the future. Our systems are out to help the presently rich and happy parties stay rich and happy. If we want a successful country, a successful economy, and a successful world, we need to strip away the petty differences that are holding us back.

Let’s get a new perspective. A perspective that matters.

Hello. I am Julius. This is my blog. I am a hobbyist/future game developer. A enjoy politics and Call of Duty: WaW. I like reading and watching South Park. I like living a life that matters to me, and disregarding social taboo. I like being me.

I’m going to use this blog to get my opinions across. I’ve tried blogging before, and it never worked out. But I’m confident I can do it this time.

Enjoy.