A Great Man.

   We all affect each other.  That goes without saying.  A question that came to me as I listened to the sermon of High holiday services was how much do we affect each other. 
   I was listening to arguably one of the most influential men of the civil rights movement and undoubtedly the most powerful Jew of the civil rights movement;  Rabbi Robert Marx. Watch a short documentary of him here.
   Besides having been a collaborator of many chicago marches, Marx was a friend of Martin Luther King.  A man who undoubtedly had a huge affect on every American's life.
   Rabbi Marx, the founder of my congregation, has a rather famous story about his involvement in the march on Washington.  He was invited to stand next to King at the speech, and that was his plan until about five minutes before he arrived. On the walk between his hotel and the mall, he saw a man crying on the street.  Marx asked him what the problem was.  The man responded that he had lost all of his money, his family and his friends.  He lamented that there was nothing left to live for.
   Marx treated the man to breakfast as they listened to the I Have A Dream Speech speech on the radio.
   I'm willing to bet that Rabbi Marx had a greater affect on this one man than he would have had o anyone had he been on the stage that day.  This brings me to my point, everyone always says that everyone can make a difference.  If this is true, why don't we all.  Surely the Martin Luther King's are important, but I would choose a good friend over a great man any day.

An American Soundtrack

    Last weekend I attended a Styx concert with some friends.  Held at a county fair in Wisconsin,  yards from prized pigs and hens waiting to be judged, I couldn't help but think what is more USA than this.
    Of course there was a lot of ridiculously fun 70's moments, power stances and rotating keyboards were used liberally. What I found odd was that I can't think of any band in modern pop culture that I can say represents America. 
    I didn't have to look through my iPod before the name popped into my head: Joe Pug.  He has a similar quality to Styx; he is inexplicably yet undeniably American.  He only has two EP's out but on his first, the song Nation Of Heat seems to reflect his
views and his ideas of America so well.
     Not only is his music catchy, but the lyrics are great.  I really don't want to explicate lyrics for you, so I will just list off some lines that really spoke to me.

"I cook my dinner on the blacktop street, I come from the nation of heat"
"We got the loudest explosions you ever heard.  We got two dollar soldiers and ten dollar words."
"If I didn't own boots I wouldn't need feet, I come from the nation of heat." 
"So swift and so vicious are the carnival rides, and the carnival barker yell your name for a bribe."
"We got billboards for love and Japanese cars.  It ain't rare to hear the street lights call themselves stars.  The more that I learn, The more that I cheat.  I come from the nation of heat."
"Blacken borders with smiles, our immigrant sons, we measure loneliness in miles and misery in tons.  There's a straw-hatted man rowin' away from the shore, who says its a shame they don't let you have slaves here anymore."
 
   On top of his very American lyrics tunes, he represents a new culture in America.  He's one of those new artists who has gained a following on the "myface."  The fan created music video below really sums up not just the Patriotism behind his music, but also the new America that he represents.



    I'm a big believer that one can never fully appreciate a song unless heard three times, so don't be afraid to replay the video.  If you like his music I can assure you that all his songs are this good.  Just ask for a copy of his EP in class and I will be more than happy to burn it.

Do I Make Decisions?

   Today in class we talked about what makes a person, where there personality comes from and what makes them themselves.

   Freud would describe a personality as the combination of the Id, the basic impulses or drives of the brain and human organism, the ego, which seeks the goals of the id with a long term perspective, and the super-ego, which is a self regulator, a conscience.  He would look at the way that the three interact and then say, there you have a person as a whole.  He would probably also blame a patients mother for something, but that's beyond the point.
   However, In class today, what came to mind was not Civilization and its Discontents, but rather a very different psychological study.  About a year ago, I read an article about a man who, after suffering from seizures had his corpus callosum severed as a cure.  The corpus callosum is the tissue that connects the left and right hemispheres and a seizure is basically a domino effect of too many chemicals receptors being set off in the brain, cutting the hemispheres prevents the chemical overflow from spreading.
   Most people know that the left and right hemisphere can do different things.  The left, for instance, works well with speaking, while the right hemisphere works well with pictures.
   What is more important about this distinction is how it allows researchers to look into the workers of decision making.  For example, a subject with a cut corpus callosum was shown the word music to his speaking left hemisphere and the word bell to his non speaking, but pictorial right hemisphere.  After this, a screen displayed a church with a steeple and bell, a music note, a guitar, and a drum set.  The subject was told to point to the word he had just seen.  He pointed at the church tower and said, "Music."  When asked why he chose the church as apposed to another one of the more music related objects, he said that the last music he could remember was a church bell.
What this proves is that the brain is merely taking in chemical stimuli and responding to them.  Then, your brain convinces you that you actually made the decision.  In an MRI, it becomes apparent that the reasoning section of the brain actually lights up milliseconds after the decision making section of the brain.
   After I read this article, it changed my life, made me depressed and existential.  I read some Camus and sulked.  Then I realized that it doesn't make a difference if I actually choose anything in my life. 
I may know, or at least strongly believe, that free will doesn't exist.  I do, however, believe that people should be held accountable for their actions, if we don't society would collapse.
   However, these findings lead me to believe that Freud was partially correct. He said the the super-ego was created from a fear of a loss of love, i.e. you wont hit your mother because she will become angry.  Humans are pack animals and, if you believe in evolution, it makes sense that those who had a chemical disposition to this fear of losing love would survive.  We are chemically predisposed to be afraid of losing the approval of the group, society, and we explain this as the human desire to analyze our actions and act morally.  Truthfully, it is the human ability to think we are thinking.
   This explains hereditary mental disorders as well; they aren't "disorders" but ill-formed super-egos.  Maybe I should feel bad for a psychopath the same way I do for someone born with a crippling illness.  They were just unlucky enough to get the short end of the gene pool.