Saturday, July 24, 2004
The mouse named Algernon
I'm sitting here, typing away in the small hours of the night again, so I can tell you about this book I've been reading over the past week. There's a good chances you've seen a movie based on it, called Charly, possibly in school.
The book is called Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, and although I'm only half-way through it, I've already been very very touched by it. It's not easy for a guy to say something a soppily sentimental as 'I was touched by it' but there is no other way to describe my incredible feeling for this book. For those of you not familiar, I'll tell you a bit about it.
The book is presented in diary form. We follow the life of Charlie Gordon, a 31 year old retarded man, who is to undergo an experimental surgical procedure that will attempt to enhance his intelligence. The first few chapters are a little hard to read, as Charlie is really just a child in an adult's body, and so the reader must suffer through atrocious spelling and simpleton thoughts.
Before he undergoes the procedure, Charlie races a mouse called Algernon in a maze puzzle (this is all part of the experiment) and loses quite badly. It is revealed that Algernon underwent the same procedure, and now is a lot brighter than the average mouse.
Finally Charlie follows in Algernon's footsteps and has the procedure done. It takes quite a while for the effects to be notice, but bit by bit Charlie actually begins to learn for the first time. As he reaches average intelligence, his writings and thoughts processes get better, and he is excited. As he begins to exceed average intelligence, he begins to realize how much he's been taken advantage over all his life, and how people viewed him as a retarded man. He also begins to remember his childhood, which was far from happy.
As more time passes, Charlie moves from the ranks of the intellectual to the solitude of the genius. He is as alone at the top of the smarts ladder as he was at the bottom. The huge intellectual change conflicts with the emotional change that must follow.
Then, something foreboding happens. Charlie's friend, the mouse Algernon, begins to lose his intelligence, and eventually fades to normality, and dies. Must Charlie be forced to endure the same fate, to watch everything that he has now become crumble to dust?
The book puts you right into the mind of Charlie, and you certainly find yourself feeling for him. For me, it's a personal story I can relate to. I was convinced as a child that I was slow, despite the fact that everyone told me otherwise. I've seen realized that I must be fairly bright if I've lasted this far, but it took a while for me to be completely convinced.
All my life I've felt my intellect growing. As I broke out of middle school into high school, I felt new ideas popping into my head almost every day. They all seemed like grand and amazing epiphanies. This continued until it eventually leveled out sometime within the first year of college. Since then, as I've stopped growing, I no longer feel that open space in the back of my mind, waiting to be filled with more knowledge. I can no longer sit here and say, "I'll understand this eventually, because eventually I'll be older and smarter." I'll definitely be wiser as years pass me, but I'll never be smarter. This plateau that we all his around this age is scary as hell, and I understand how scared Charlie would have been when he realized he couldn't go up any further.
At least I don't have to come back down, right? Well, our family does have a slight history of Alzheimer’s, which, to me, is the scariest disease for an old person to forget. Someday, will I have to sit there and watch my world slowly vanish from my perception? Will I have to watch my mind drain away, as I become a dumbed-down individual? It's scary as hell, although not something I usually think about. Flowers for Algernon brings these questions back to mind.
It really is a lovely story, and although it is classified as science-fiction, it's not at all like a typical sci-fi book. I'm looking forward to renting the movie, Charly, after I've finished this great book.
Friday, July 23, 2004
Why you are the one that led us into war
We are now an angry public. We have been led into a war with false evidence. We know now, amidst all this death and violence, that there was an error. The blame has been assigned: it was the CIA's fault. It wasn't the president's fault. It wasn't our fault. Oh, but it was.
The intelligence that led to the war in Iraq was bogus, but was it ever that convincing? When Colin Powell was sitting there, in front of the United Nations, showing us grainy pictures of what could have been mobile weapons factories, was anyone completely and utterly convinced? I do not believe anyone that paid enough attention was really convinced that Iraq was a real threat in the sense that was being conveyed to us at the time.
So, if the evidence was never really well-presented, or believable, why are a year and several months into a dirty little war that has claimed the lives of a thousand Americans, over 10,000 Iraqi civilians, and god knows how many Iraqi fighters? Why did the American public allow this to happen? Was it because we trusted our leaders to do the right thing? I doubt it.. Bush wasn't really that much more popular then than he is now, but yet, except for minor protests in the US, there was little opposition.
Was it because the true voice of opposition was silenced? Many protesters were labeled as terrorists by right-wing personalities like Bill O'Reilly (Spl?). Lynn Cheney, Dick's wife, campaigned within university campuses to counter the liberal professor outcry. But, despite the fact that protesters were labeled as anti-American, and peace was cast aside as an unpatriotic ideal, this is not the real reason there was no grand anti-war movement.
When you eliminat the staunch conservatives who have been waiting to take down Saddam for 15 years, you'll find that there are three large groups of people that led us into this war, and unless you displayed active opposition during some of the 10 months leading up to the war, you fall into one of the categories.
Group 1: Hey, a war sounds like a good idea right now!
I was sitting in the room, watching the twin towers collapse on my 13 inch television/vcr combo. Sitting across from me was my freshman roomate. He is the son of Republican congressman, running for senate. My roomate turned to me and said, "Right now I wish someone could airlift me to a village, give me a gun, and drop me off so I can start blowing people away." The thing is, he was dead serious. He wanted someone to pay. "Nuke the entire fucking Middle-east," I heard someone else say later.
Many people see war as a good thing. Iraq is full of bad guys (or, 'good targets' as Donald Rumsfeld puts it so eloquently). We were attacked 3 years ago, so it's only fitting we attack someone. Oh sure, we already attacked a country, but Afghanistan wasn't favored by the American public for the same reason they don't like foreign movies: it was too slow-paced and didn't have enough action. So, without sitting around to see the end of the first movie, we started our action blockbuster.
The media loved the war, and we loved watching it. Wasn't it exciting to watch all that action on tv? To follow the war day by day, as it was spoon fed to us? Come on, admit it. In each and every one of us there was at least one little part begging for a good war. A good war leaves tales to tell your grandchildren. A good war defines a generation. We loved those first few weeks, when it was all action movie stuff.
Group 2: I don't know enough/care enough to have an opinion, so do whatever.
This is a group of people I have trouble understanding. I've always had the belief that it is a person's duty to stay informed. When I look through history, it is always the unaware that have their rights snatched away from them. Didn't some bearded guy in a dress say one time: "The truth will set you free." How can you be free if you just don't really care about the truth?
But it's so easy to not follow current events! Why, you have religion, relationships, tv, movies, gossip, and so many other things that are way more fun that watching the crummy old news. It's even harder when you don't understand what's going on, or who those foreign people are, or why they want to kill each other, or why they want to kill you.
A few days after 9/11, a girl that lived on my hall stopped me, and said, "Matt... I'm confused, please explain to me what happened, and why there are people out there that want to hurt us." She hadn't a clue, yet it wouldn't have been very hard for her to be aware. American support of Israel is the #1 reason the Middle-east hated us. Now they have all sorts of reasons, but I stray from the point. The fact is, if you choose to remain ignorant, then you will suffer the consequences one day. We were supposed to learn that when 9/11 came. But still so many American choose to change the channel from CNN to some other dumb cable channel.
Please don't try and pretend like you are some how too dumb to understand the news, or that it somehow doesn't apply to you. If you are reading this, then chances are you are a friend of mine, and all of my friends are bright young people who can think for themselves, assuming they are properly informed.
If you are a part of group number 2, then I beg you to try and learn enough to gain some real perspective on the world. I plead with you to read some news. Please, for god's sake, try reading a national newspaper once a week. If you can handle that, step it up to 3 times a week. You don't have to read the whole thing, just try reading the front page. I suggest the internet, as you have a little more freedom in what you read. Be careful with the internet, and stick to the major newspaper sites, as there are lots of screwed up little psyeudo news sites (like the Drudge report). Everything applies to you. So, if not for your sake, then for your children's do it.
Group 3: The war is inevitable, so why bother protesting?
You didn't agree with the war. You told this to people, but you weren't that vocal. You didn't speak up about it in class. You don't counter pro-war claims when you hear them. There's not much you can do, because you know it was going to happen no matter what.
The 17 year old brother of one of my English friends spend an hour with me in a pub, trying to convince me that the protests were pointless because war could never have been avoided.
All I can do is shrug. Any of you that know me know I hate to lose an argument. I'll continue stubbornly, long after my last hope of winning has disappeared. Why do I do it? I do it because I believe it is the right thing to do. When my dad and I argue about whether or not we should have protested, he always says, "At least we saved our souls." This is pretty strong stuff coming from a fellow atheist.
You must stand up for what is right, even when there is no hope. Even when it will be a wasted ounce of energy on your part. You must save your soul, so you then have the right to make your point when the time is right, like I am now.
You see, the reason I have the right to talk down to the masses of people that fall into these three categories.. the reason I have the nerve to lecture like I've lectured countless times, is because I opposed the war from the very begining, and when it was time to protest, by god I got out there in the fucking rain, with a sign, and I protested. I held up a sign and I shouted what I believed in. That gives me the right to write this massive "I told you so." That gives me the right to point my finger at you, the people that either willingly or unwillingly, passively or actively supported this war.
Unless you are a part of a small minority, you helped lead us into war just as much as that despicable man in office did. It was your fault, so what are you going to do to fix it?
The intelligence that led to the war in Iraq was bogus, but was it ever that convincing? When Colin Powell was sitting there, in front of the United Nations, showing us grainy pictures of what could have been mobile weapons factories, was anyone completely and utterly convinced? I do not believe anyone that paid enough attention was really convinced that Iraq was a real threat in the sense that was being conveyed to us at the time.
So, if the evidence was never really well-presented, or believable, why are a year and several months into a dirty little war that has claimed the lives of a thousand Americans, over 10,000 Iraqi civilians, and god knows how many Iraqi fighters? Why did the American public allow this to happen? Was it because we trusted our leaders to do the right thing? I doubt it.. Bush wasn't really that much more popular then than he is now, but yet, except for minor protests in the US, there was little opposition.
Was it because the true voice of opposition was silenced? Many protesters were labeled as terrorists by right-wing personalities like Bill O'Reilly (Spl?). Lynn Cheney, Dick's wife, campaigned within university campuses to counter the liberal professor outcry. But, despite the fact that protesters were labeled as anti-American, and peace was cast aside as an unpatriotic ideal, this is not the real reason there was no grand anti-war movement.
When you eliminat the staunch conservatives who have been waiting to take down Saddam for 15 years, you'll find that there are three large groups of people that led us into this war, and unless you displayed active opposition during some of the 10 months leading up to the war, you fall into one of the categories.
Group 1: Hey, a war sounds like a good idea right now!
I was sitting in the room, watching the twin towers collapse on my 13 inch television/vcr combo. Sitting across from me was my freshman roomate. He is the son of Republican congressman, running for senate. My roomate turned to me and said, "Right now I wish someone could airlift me to a village, give me a gun, and drop me off so I can start blowing people away." The thing is, he was dead serious. He wanted someone to pay. "Nuke the entire fucking Middle-east," I heard someone else say later.
Many people see war as a good thing. Iraq is full of bad guys (or, 'good targets' as Donald Rumsfeld puts it so eloquently). We were attacked 3 years ago, so it's only fitting we attack someone. Oh sure, we already attacked a country, but Afghanistan wasn't favored by the American public for the same reason they don't like foreign movies: it was too slow-paced and didn't have enough action. So, without sitting around to see the end of the first movie, we started our action blockbuster.
The media loved the war, and we loved watching it. Wasn't it exciting to watch all that action on tv? To follow the war day by day, as it was spoon fed to us? Come on, admit it. In each and every one of us there was at least one little part begging for a good war. A good war leaves tales to tell your grandchildren. A good war defines a generation. We loved those first few weeks, when it was all action movie stuff.
Group 2: I don't know enough/care enough to have an opinion, so do whatever.
This is a group of people I have trouble understanding. I've always had the belief that it is a person's duty to stay informed. When I look through history, it is always the unaware that have their rights snatched away from them. Didn't some bearded guy in a dress say one time: "The truth will set you free." How can you be free if you just don't really care about the truth?
But it's so easy to not follow current events! Why, you have religion, relationships, tv, movies, gossip, and so many other things that are way more fun that watching the crummy old news. It's even harder when you don't understand what's going on, or who those foreign people are, or why they want to kill each other, or why they want to kill you.
A few days after 9/11, a girl that lived on my hall stopped me, and said, "Matt... I'm confused, please explain to me what happened, and why there are people out there that want to hurt us." She hadn't a clue, yet it wouldn't have been very hard for her to be aware. American support of Israel is the #1 reason the Middle-east hated us. Now they have all sorts of reasons, but I stray from the point. The fact is, if you choose to remain ignorant, then you will suffer the consequences one day. We were supposed to learn that when 9/11 came. But still so many American choose to change the channel from CNN to some other dumb cable channel.
Please don't try and pretend like you are some how too dumb to understand the news, or that it somehow doesn't apply to you. If you are reading this, then chances are you are a friend of mine, and all of my friends are bright young people who can think for themselves, assuming they are properly informed.
If you are a part of group number 2, then I beg you to try and learn enough to gain some real perspective on the world. I plead with you to read some news. Please, for god's sake, try reading a national newspaper once a week. If you can handle that, step it up to 3 times a week. You don't have to read the whole thing, just try reading the front page. I suggest the internet, as you have a little more freedom in what you read. Be careful with the internet, and stick to the major newspaper sites, as there are lots of screwed up little psyeudo news sites (like the Drudge report). Everything applies to you. So, if not for your sake, then for your children's do it.
Group 3: The war is inevitable, so why bother protesting?
You didn't agree with the war. You told this to people, but you weren't that vocal. You didn't speak up about it in class. You don't counter pro-war claims when you hear them. There's not much you can do, because you know it was going to happen no matter what.
The 17 year old brother of one of my English friends spend an hour with me in a pub, trying to convince me that the protests were pointless because war could never have been avoided.
All I can do is shrug. Any of you that know me know I hate to lose an argument. I'll continue stubbornly, long after my last hope of winning has disappeared. Why do I do it? I do it because I believe it is the right thing to do. When my dad and I argue about whether or not we should have protested, he always says, "At least we saved our souls." This is pretty strong stuff coming from a fellow atheist.
You must stand up for what is right, even when there is no hope. Even when it will be a wasted ounce of energy on your part. You must save your soul, so you then have the right to make your point when the time is right, like I am now.
You see, the reason I have the right to talk down to the masses of people that fall into these three categories.. the reason I have the nerve to lecture like I've lectured countless times, is because I opposed the war from the very begining, and when it was time to protest, by god I got out there in the fucking rain, with a sign, and I protested. I held up a sign and I shouted what I believed in. That gives me the right to write this massive "I told you so." That gives me the right to point my finger at you, the people that either willingly or unwillingly, passively or actively supported this war.
Unless you are a part of a small minority, you helped lead us into war just as much as that despicable man in office did. It was your fault, so what are you going to do to fix it?
How do you stop us from doing it again?
Are you going to go back to your house, play your console, and forget about the world again? Are you going to shake your head and go "The world is such a horrible place, there isn't anything I can do, oh well." Are you going to do that? Or are you going to shout? Are you going to thrash around? Are you going to realize you've been numb all this time, and you can feel the nerves in you begining to activate. Are you going to get out there and let people know what you think? Are you going to become a member of this world community, so you have the right to let your opinion be heard when the time is right? Is that what you are going to do?
Let me know.
If you read this far, notify me next semester and I'll give you a free tootsi-roll pop for your time.
Are you going to go back to your house, play your console, and forget about the world again? Are you going to shake your head and go "The world is such a horrible place, there isn't anything I can do, oh well." Are you going to do that? Or are you going to shout? Are you going to thrash around? Are you going to realize you've been numb all this time, and you can feel the nerves in you begining to activate. Are you going to get out there and let people know what you think? Are you going to become a member of this world community, so you have the right to let your opinion be heard when the time is right? Is that what you are going to do?
Let me know.
If you read this far, notify me next semester and I'll give you a free tootsi-roll pop for your time.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Sorry, but it was my moral obligation
I thought about filling this out, but then I realized how inane and pointless a task it would have been.
