Okay. I need to figure out what exactly it is I'm going to be doing with this project. Obviously the direction phrase is way too broad. Do I want to examine Democracy as a whole, or do I want to critique certain aspects of it- which aspects- I want to examine whether or not our current system protects the strong from the weak, whether it prevents it's people from resolving their disputes through violence, whether the decisions of our government are truly mandated by the people, whether *brokered means resolved through an agent, similar to outsourcing but on a lesser scale, as far as I understand it.* by... institutions... democracy administered by institutions - which ones? The corporations? The political parties? As I see it, everyone has a slice of the pie. No. All I really want to do is complain about how our system works and does not work, I wish to order my thoughts and make them legible, so that we - I - may see - *How dare the government back out of the Tokyo agreement! Do they not care about the environment!? Now I HAVE to vote so I can NOT vote for them! Where did this political diligence come from? I certainly never believed that politics could actually *gasp* do everything right for a change. But the way I see it, we can go by elimination. Liberals suck? Then how about Conservatives... No wait, they suck too, they don't like small businesses, they're into MNC's. What about the NDP? I'm sure they're just as bad, but hey, everyone gets a turn. Failure again? Green Party's next. We could go through all of them if we did that. "You've got *however many years* to prove that you're worth something before we shoo you out and give your power to the underdog. Get real, real fast, bitch.*
Anyway back to the point. So that I may see what it is exactly what it is I think our government is lacking, thus establishing my political stance in a way, and writing down what it is I think we should be like as a country. These would be ideas, far removed from reality and the concept of "affordability" which grown men seem to love so much. But I'm not a grow man, so I'm mercifully exempt from needing to reason conservatively and have no faith. Ooh that's good. Grown men have no faith. Haha. Bashing, in a sense, but of a sensible sort. Finally, the establishing of a wish list, or in fancy, decorative words, a real New World Manifesto. Mine.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Navigation [On]
This Final will function in the same way as my previous, Yukon Art School blog, If You Rise From The Ashes. I will write everything I think is worthy of note, thus this place will function both as my notebook and as the rough draft and as the final, and all of these intermingled. So, to make it readable, I will use a variety of styles, codewords and other such things; these will differenciate the different sections. This concept emerges from my artistic style, which makes sparing use of erasers the same way as I do not like to delete my sentences when composing e-mail; I let the words flow from my mind to the computer, to make the conversation more seamless, and perhaps allow me to use sarcasm more overtly.
[Edit: sections added to a finished post to rectify or add information will be bracketed, bolded and preceded by the code Edit:]
Post Titles followed by the bracketed [On] - such as this one - are ongoing and will contain information compiled over time.. These posts do not follow my usual blog writing style, which is all-inclusive and time stamped. The point is so that readers know that these posts change over time and the ideas represented within them are a resume of other posts and not a part of the essay writing narrative that I want to address.
Small, Italic text represents forethought, the internal preparatory thought process that goes before the writing of my actual points. Similar to the way I dislike erasers, and deleting, this is the nebula of often meaningless or irrelevant data that feeds through my cortex, prepping me to write. I plug in to the blog, writing down thoughts as I think them, and from that raw data, the text emerges. In If You Rise From The Ashes I did not delimit this text, which resulted in huge single-font blocks often pages long, and nigh impossible to wade through. Now I give the reader the option to skip through this text by making it small and unimportant looking. NB: Not wanting to pry is noble, but not caring enough to let others talk when they wish to do so is not.
"Quotes": will always be marked, underlined, and linked to the source article, if such was found online, and will additionally either be indicated as such in context, or will be followed by (author, page) if it is a print article. I may decide, If there are a lot of online notes, to only write down the important ones in the bibliography, and simply link the mundane ones that were found and quoted in a hurry. This I did in my last essay, and it was quite handy for me. In the case of print publications, they will ALWAYS be sourced in the bibliography.
Bibliographies will use MLA formatting style, to the best of my understanding. This is not a particularly important attribute in my books, but is a great source of clarity. Also, I will not refrain from accessing and taking information from online user-edited sources like wikipedia, though these will be traced back to the source article used by the wikipedia user, and both will be sourced. Or, if Karen so desires, only the original article will be present. Bibliographies will be written down in their own posts, labelled as such: " Bibliography; Week X [On] " Each week from now to the end will have the sources used in the respective weeks, with possible overlap.
Also, Entries will be classified weekly. This one is from week one.
-Just So You Know:
Use Of Caps To Demarcate Important Statements is a reference to tvtropes, compiled by basement dwellers everywhere to provide humourous deconstruction of virtually every piece of fiction that exists. (Though I've only looked at tv shows, video games and movies) It's quite fun to zoom through. I suppose that when I do this I'm trying to suggest that whatever is demarcated in this way is an Established Concept, that is, an entry in their website. I may, of course, be using sarcasm, satirizing a pre-established concept, acutally referencing a trope... Teacher's Nightmare apparently, or Maybe Not.
[Edit: sections added to a finished post to rectify or add information will be bracketed, bolded and preceded by the code Edit:]
Post Titles followed by the bracketed [On] - such as this one - are ongoing and will contain information compiled over time.. These posts do not follow my usual blog writing style, which is all-inclusive and time stamped. The point is so that readers know that these posts change over time and the ideas represented within them are a resume of other posts and not a part of the essay writing narrative that I want to address.
Small, Italic text represents forethought, the internal preparatory thought process that goes before the writing of my actual points. Similar to the way I dislike erasers, and deleting, this is the nebula of often meaningless or irrelevant data that feeds through my cortex, prepping me to write. I plug in to the blog, writing down thoughts as I think them, and from that raw data, the text emerges. In If You Rise From The Ashes I did not delimit this text, which resulted in huge single-font blocks often pages long, and nigh impossible to wade through. Now I give the reader the option to skip through this text by making it small and unimportant looking. NB: Not wanting to pry is noble, but not caring enough to let others talk when they wish to do so is not.
"Quotes": will always be marked, underlined, and linked to the source article, if such was found online, and will additionally either be indicated as such in context, or will be followed by (author, page) if it is a print article. I may decide, If there are a lot of online notes, to only write down the important ones in the bibliography, and simply link the mundane ones that were found and quoted in a hurry. This I did in my last essay, and it was quite handy for me. In the case of print publications, they will ALWAYS be sourced in the bibliography.
Bibliographies will use MLA formatting style, to the best of my understanding. This is not a particularly important attribute in my books, but is a great source of clarity. Also, I will not refrain from accessing and taking information from online user-edited sources like wikipedia, though these will be traced back to the source article used by the wikipedia user, and both will be sourced. Or, if Karen so desires, only the original article will be present. Bibliographies will be written down in their own posts, labelled as such: " Bibliography; Week X [On] " Each week from now to the end will have the sources used in the respective weeks, with possible overlap.
Also, Entries will be classified weekly. This one is from week one.
-Just So You Know:
Use Of Caps To Demarcate Important Statements is a reference to tvtropes, compiled by basement dwellers everywhere to provide humourous deconstruction of virtually every piece of fiction that exists. (Though I've only looked at tv shows, video games and movies) It's quite fun to zoom through. I suppose that when I do this I'm trying to suggest that whatever is demarcated in this way is an Established Concept, that is, an entry in their website. I may, of course, be using sarcasm, satirizing a pre-established concept, acutally referencing a trope... Teacher's Nightmare apparently, or Maybe Not.
An Idea is Born
Yesterday I talked for an hour with this girl from the Jewellery department about the state of the country, of education, of our political system. We deplored the inefficiency of high school education, which does nothing to prepare you to the real world, on a religious, psychological, philosophical and ideological level - all big words. We deplored the class differences that occur as a result of this gradated educational system - high school diploma, Bachelor's, Masters and Doctorates, as well as gradated weight that an individual at each level can carry. We talked about revolutionaries, complained about poor governance and compared capitalist systems with communist systems. We discussed the dissonance between the beliefs and values of VIPs in their personal life and experiences, and those values that they take on when they represent the interests of financial and political bodies. - again, big words, but they almost must be used since I mean to include more than just corporations and governments. In brief, this got me thinking back to a thought I had last week, about each individual's political responsibility: How can a government hope to steer a population that is mostly reactionary? We would instead have to tell the government what we expect from them, what our values are, and then tell them to represent and act upon our values, in a way "commissioning" our governments, rather than simply choosing a template from a choice of three or four. In paralell to this thought, I disagree with the notion that political ideology can be represented on a 1D scale. There is light, dark, shades of gray, but also colors - all of which intermingle with each other and the various base light and base dark.
On to the meat of this post; An Idea That Was Born. Today I meandered along this concept, thinking of what I would be doing for my proposal - which is due tomorrow, and for the essay. I had of course, failed to realize that Karen Is Awesome and that the final essay need not be in final essay format. Thinking back to the conversation from yesterday, I typed the words "New World Manifesto" in the google search bar, and sure enough, found a review of a text entitled "MANIFESTO FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER" which appears to discuss ideas such as the establishing of a Fair Trade Organization, an International Clearing Union to regulate the balance of trade - and the establishing of a directly elected world parliament. His audience is the anti-globalization movement, which he renames the global justice movement. I may have to find that book and read it.
Anyway, one sentence is of particular interest:
"Democracy is unattainable unless it is brokered by institutions, mandated by the people and made accountable to them, whose primary purpose is to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak and to prevent people of all stations from resolving their differences by means of violence. The collective noun for such institutions is government."
I struggle to make sense of that statement. Regardless, I wondered about the accuracy of that statement, out of context; is our democracy accountable to the people? Does it prevent the strong from oppressing the weak? In other words; is this system functional? What are the fallacies that I have observed? This I have chosen because I realized that writing an effective Manifesto for a new system, ideological or whatnot, is more of a thesis project than a 2nd year final.
Thus, this is my idea. An assessment of our current political system, structured around the sentence described above.
On to the meat of this post; An Idea That Was Born. Today I meandered along this concept, thinking of what I would be doing for my proposal - which is due tomorrow, and for the essay. I had of course, failed to realize that Karen Is Awesome and that the final essay need not be in final essay format. Thinking back to the conversation from yesterday, I typed the words "New World Manifesto" in the google search bar, and sure enough, found a review of a text entitled "MANIFESTO FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER" which appears to discuss ideas such as the establishing of a Fair Trade Organization, an International Clearing Union to regulate the balance of trade - and the establishing of a directly elected world parliament. His audience is the anti-globalization movement, which he renames the global justice movement. I may have to find that book and read it.
Anyway, one sentence is of particular interest:
"Democracy is unattainable unless it is brokered by institutions, mandated by the people and made accountable to them, whose primary purpose is to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak and to prevent people of all stations from resolving their differences by means of violence. The collective noun for such institutions is government."
I struggle to make sense of that statement. Regardless, I wondered about the accuracy of that statement, out of context; is our democracy accountable to the people? Does it prevent the strong from oppressing the weak? In other words; is this system functional? What are the fallacies that I have observed? This I have chosen because I realized that writing an effective Manifesto for a new system, ideological or whatnot, is more of a thesis project than a 2nd year final.
Thus, this is my idea. An assessment of our current political system, structured around the sentence described above.
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