Sunday, July 25, 2010

Part 2: Money matters

This is the second in a four part series of posts that deal with some of my most significant feels about change in the current world.

As much as I don’t like to admit it, money does make the world go round. For every good act or motion of kindness, at the very least money was needed to make it a possibility.

I just recently was exposed to an idea. This idea is referred to as the Pareto Principle. This principal states that, at least when used as intended, 80 percent of the wealth of a given area is owned by 20 percent of the people. This is fascinating, in that there are many statistics that show that even more of the percentage of wealth is owned by even less people. If so few people are making up so much of the wealth of a nation or of the world, then what is all of the money going towards?

A perfect example is the ever-more popular growth of ridiculous salaries in professional sports. Players are now making $100 million easily over a 6 to 10 year span. Such easy money makes me question why that money isn’t being sent elsewhere. As great as sports are, the bottom line is that they are not life and death situations. Why can’t all the money that one team was going to spend on one player go to one country to feed one population for one year? All of the ones add up.

There are lots of places that this can be seen. Whether it is one nights proceeds in a certain form of entertainment or certain sporting events or a thousand of other areas, if just a few corporations spent even one night giving away everything it raised, then why couldn’t we, as a people, completely annihilate hunger on a global scale.

Apple just released the new iPhone 4G. Thousands and thousands of people flocked to get this phone the instant it hit the market. I have an idea. Goodness knows that there will be SOME form of iPhone 5 (whether it is in the form of a phone or something all the more outlandish). What if every dime that was made by the selling of this item went to solving hunger problems in third world countries? Here is what I see happening: The iPhone 5 sells several thousand items in the first year. All of the money goes to saving starving African villages. Now when Apple releases a new computer the following month, all of the money goes straight to Apple to compensate for the lost money that they suffered (if you can call solving world hunger suffering) by giving the money away. Well, now that Apple has demonstrated a public interest in solving global issues, all of a sudden everyone wants to buy an Apple computer because the image of the company is one of compassion and selflessness. All of a sudden, not only has Apple made back every dime it lost from the iPhone experiment, but has grown their business in the process. Everyone wins.

Now this experiment may seem outrageous, and frankly I don’t know enough about organizations and how much profit certain groups make. Apple may not make enough per unit to make this feasible, let alone realistic. All I am saying is that steps can and should be made to make sure that important issues are taken care of, and if we continue to say things like “that isn’t the way things work,” we will never, ever see results.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Part 1: Picking Fix

This is the first in a four part series of posts that deal with some of my most significant feels about change in the current world.

Over the past several weeks, I have had several conversations with my father, as well as a wide variety of other people about a topic that has always fascinated me as well as haunted me. This idea is that of social change: How do we bring it about, what do we want to bring, and how long will it take are just a few of the questions. With all of the time that I spend in youth group and other similar organizations, the idea of social action is incredibly common to discuss and execute. What interests me is the difference between social action and social justice.

Whenever anyone asks me, I always say that I am much less interested in social action and much more interested in social justice. The primary difference is that social action works to try to ease an issue, whereas social justice works more to completely end an issue in society.

I am constantly thinking of things that bother me about society. My biggest issue deals with our selection of passions. Why is it that so many people are arguing about gay and lesbian rights? Why can’t we just let the homosexuals alone and let them live freely? At the VERY LEAST it doesn’t affect anyone else. It isn’t bothering some snooty heterosexual who before was taking an active stance against gay rights. There are so many more pressing issues: starvation, poverty, disease, and a thousand more life threatening problems. I’m not saying gays shouldn’t have rights. Quite the opposite. I think we should stop questioning and debating their rights and simply give them to them and move on to more pressing issues.

I think it is of vital importance to find the things that are most important to our society that we need to change and to start as soon as possible. The days of being able to sit back and let others fix the world are over. We, each and every one of us, needs to start the work to repair those things that are plaguing our society and make sure that we are going about our lives the right way.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Test mesage

Attention blog followers:

I have just set up my blog to upload on facebook when I post. This is a test to see if it is working.

See you next week.

Louder than words

I was listening to the radio in the car today. I heard a song that I have heard a thousand times. I heard the song "Shots" by LMFAO. I've hummed along to this song many times before, but this time, I stopped to listen to the words for a minute.

What a mistake that was. I have never heard a song quite like it. The language was so intense I'm not even comfortable putting it on my blog post right here. This was the type of radio station that my 12 year old brother would listen to, and that I would have on in the car while he is with me. Yet talking about women in a demeaning way, inappropriate language as if it were cool, and alcohol as if it were a glorified substance to be abused.

As I arrived at my destination, I shut off the radio and exited my car at the mall. At the mall, the song and its teaching kept running through my mind. Suddenly, I passed several stores that sold all sorts of products: clothing, makeup, jewelry, and more. What I found interesting was that almost everyone I saw had a bag of some kind. Everyone.

I'm a big fan of the saying "actions speak louder than words". But what is even louder than that is that money. What we as a society spend our money on is what defines us as a culture. The fact that LMFAO has sold thousands (if not millions) of songs on iTunes. The fact that so many people are willing to spend their money on this inappropriate type of "art" is, at first, somewhat surprising. What is not surprising is that most of the purchasing is done by ignorance. Many people do not take the time to listen to the words of each song, to understand what it is that we are endorsing with our credit cards and checks.

The same can be said at the mall. I'm sure that many people have purchased products that have been suspected of atrocities to either human or animal ways of life. Both the companies Nike and Ugg boots have been proven at some point in their histories to use sweatshop work and animal cruelty respectively. Whether they still do this I will not claim to know, but I am not buying Ugg boots. I know too many girls who are avid animal rights activists, enthusiastic defenders of ethical treatment of animals who wear these boots out of the ignorance for the process by which they are made.

Does this mean that you should research every object that you purchase? Not necessarily. But I find it to be important that if a person is to take a stand on a particular issue, to make sure that he or she is not talking out of both sides of their mouth. How can someone say that they find demeaning women to be offensive, and yet have paid money for LMFAO to make a profit from doing so? How can someone speak out against animal rights when such animals suffered for the production of the boots on their feet?

I have the song "Shots" on my iPod. I don't intend on taking it off because I heard the words today. I don't intend to petition iTunes to take it off of their website. But I am saying that I am conscious of what is being said in the songs I listen to and that I have an understanding of what I'm endorsing. I do not endorse this song; I do, however, like the rhythm and beat that is used in it. But I am aware of the content and DO NOT IN ANY WAY SUPPORT IT. I encourage everyone to be mindful of what is going on around them and make sure that they are representing they type of people they want to be.

Monday, July 5, 2010

All-star Selection

I am a huge baseball fan. I watch as many games as I can. I check all of the box scores online the day after. I follow almost every player and every stat.

One of the most fun things about baseball is the All-star game. Voting for the players that perform each and every day simply excites me. I love logging on and voting over and over again for my favorites. This year, I was an avid fan of my favorite player, Josh Hamilton. I voted the 25 vote maximum for him, as well as many of his peers.

Selection Sunday brings two very different emotions. The first is excitement. I can't wait to hear which players won the vote, and which were selected by their peers. The second emotion, though, is often one of confusion. People don't understand why player A got in and player B got "snubbed".

I can understand when people are strong advocates for certain players who SHOULD have made the team but didn't. What I don't like is when TV shows, editorial articles, and fans question why certain players DID make the team.

Case in point: Omar Infante is a utility player for the Atlanta Braves. He was selected to the All-Star team for the first time. When he was called by the General Manager of the Braves to be told he was selected, he thought he had been traded and thought that it was a cruel joke to have made the team. Once he believed it though, he was thrilled. Why is it, then, that ESPN should take that joy away from him by telling him he really isn't good enough to have made the team? Why is it acceptable to tell a man that all the work he has done has finally payed off and now it is called into quesiton?

Let the guy have his day. Don't take away one man's excitement just because there may have been a better candidate. Joey Votto, the Reds' first baseman was really snubbed. He should have made the team. He didn't. And although it is great to chatter over who should have gotten the nod, it isn't right to take away someone's pride just because of a game. Let's not forget that baseball, and really all sports, are just that, a game. This game is supposed to be for fun, not for tearing each other apart.

During the game and Home Run Derby beforehand, I hope everybody, fan, player, and even Umpire, simply enjoys the festivities,rather than wasting the fun by slamming certain players.