Week 9

Thursday, October 15th, 2020

At the beginning of class, before the test, we talked about bike riding. Especially in Washington DC. Professor said the hills and the parks in DC are great for riding bikes. It reminded me that I had not ridden a bike in about ten years. I wonder if I can still ride a bike with no problem. After that, we discussed the upcoming election. Early voting was taking place at the time and there was an expected case of voter fraud. There had been wires cute at a voting place which shows they were trying to rig the election. People do not realize that this will only make the election process longer because they will have to count every individual vote just to make sure the results are for sure. After that, we started talking about shows that everyone can enjoy. One of the shows we talked about was The Office. I watched the office from the first episode to the last episode.It is one of the best shows I have watched in a long time, however, I do not see myself watching the whole show over again. I will watch bits and pieces, just like Grey’s Anatomy. Grey’s Anatomy is my favorite show ever. I have seen every episode of that show and it has 17 seasons. I would not watch the show over from the beginning but, I do not mind rewatching a few episodes at a time. After we had us before the class conversation, we started the quiz and went over it again. After this, we talked about the reading and a survey we had taken in the last class. After that we listened to I’ll Take You There by the Staple Singers. That song brought back memories because they played that song at cookouts and at family reunions in my family. We talked about siblings and how they change our lives. Someone mentioned that the younger siblings usually are the favorites or they get treated better than the older siblings. I can agree because I am the youngest child and I was treated better than the rest of the kids. My father has six kids and out of all of them, I was the only child he raised so, I was treated a bit better. After this, we discussed the results of the survey and what they meant. The survey was completely anonymous which made the results even more accurate since my classmates knew they were not going to be featured next to their answers. Going back to Kallion at the end of the lesson. Part one of the questions was focused on becoming better at “knowing how it’s going to go”. The first question is, “What is a problem that you would like to have phronēsis (wisdom, forethought, or “knowing how this is going to go”) in solving? This could be any kind of problem–environmental, economic, societal, political, scientific.” I would like to find the cure for a disease. This would help because instead of waiting for all of the ways through the trials to see if it will work, I will know immediately. This will save years of my time and it will help to get the cure out faster. Right now we are going through the Covid-19 pandemic. They have been trying to find a cure or a vaccine since it started. They now have a vaccine but no one will take it because they do not trust it. The main reason they do not trust it is that the president is backing it up after “having the virus” for three days and claims it helped. The actual experts say the vaccine would not be ready until next year which makes this vaccine seem to be a placebo. I would not have to go through trials that will last months, I will already know. When I get the right formula I will let that go through the trials so the people will actually trust the vaccine/cure. The other question is, “What is your plan for cultivating phronēsis? How will you establish your reputation for phronēsis so that others will take you seriously?” I would start small of course. This is kind of like being “psychic” which people do not always trust. I would work with my community first to make them believe me then I will expand into larger areas. Next, we are working on managing Phthonos. The first part for this is, “Identify three times in your life when your feeling of phthonos interfered with your ability to lead, e.g., on a sports team, a student group, a group of coworkers, or even within your family.” When I go to work and I can tell it is going to be a rough or a busy day I will not work as hard or I do not encourage others to work as hard just because I can tell it will be a rough day. This is not good to do since how I act will motivate everyone else. I could not lead efficiently because I knew the outcome was going to be a rough day. Another time is when I was helping to plan our senior trip for one of my school clubs. I enjoy planning trips so I was excited to be doing it. Halfway through planning, I could tell that it was not going to go anywhere so I started slacking off. I was the main planner so when I started slacking, everyone else got lazy with the planning as well. I am actually happy we did not finish because Corona happened and we would not have been able to get our money back. The last time is more recently. I and a few friends wanted to start a new club in January if we were going to be on campus. Once again, I was in charge of everything happening. A few weeks ago I was thinking if we were going to be back on campus and I decided that it was highly unlikely we were going to be on campus so I start to slack off from the work we did. Now it is almost certain that we will not be going back to campus for the spring semester. So I have pretty much stopped working on the new club until next year.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

We started a new reading today. It was a very short reading, just 4 pages of a speech by Ida B Wells. Ida was born in 1862 and was known for her work on civil rights. She was also a founder of the NAACP. She gave the speech to the American Association of Colored Educators in 1891 on “The Requisites of True Leadership.” The assignment was to think of a person who is a consistent friend to humanity. I think I would choose Beyonce just because she is known for all of the good she has done. After I got my person, I had to answer some questions. The first question is “What behaviors does your subject engage in that suggest they are a friend to humanity? Does this person seem happy/fulfilled in their friendship with humanity? Did this person need to overcome any hardships or hard feelings to be a friend to humanity?” Beyonce is very active in her community. She is especially active in the black community. She will advertise certain charities and events that she is donating to which also makes other people want to do it too. She has a big following. Those people will do almost anything Beyonce says so if she says donate or pay attention to a certain event going on in the world, then they will. She does seem to be happy being in that position. I think she enjoys helping people and helping the world. I am not sure what she had to overcome in order to get to where she is now. The next question is, “What do you imagine informs your subject’s friendliness to humanity? Does it come from a sense of duty? Adherence to a certain religion or philosophy? Or does it seem like a spontaneous/natural impulse?” I think her friendliness comes from a mixture of a sense of duty and she might actually want to help. She is held to a higher standard so people automatically expect her to have a friendliness to humanity. On the other hand, you can not make someone do something that they do not want to do so I imagine that she actually wants to have friendliness to humanity. It might also come from her religion since she is Christian and they are big on community service. The next question is, “Would you describe this person as a philanthropist, a word, originally from ancient Greek, that literally means a “friend to humans”?” I do genuinely think she is a philanthropist. She loves her fans and she treats everyone with kindness and respect. She does everything in her power to help humans at all times. The last question is, “Can you think of people today who are referred to as “philanthropists” but who are not exactly friends to humanity?” I think Trump might be the perfect example of this. Some people see him as a philanthropist but, He is the exact opposite. He does not help people just because, he only does it if it benefits him.