World Wide Web

While trying to figure out what I should write my post on today, I visited the usual sites like Yahoo! AOL, CNN, FOX, etc.  But I couldn't find anything I wanted to blog about.  Then I tried looking at some classmates blogs, commenting on a few, but I felt like a comment was sufficient in most cases and I didn't need to make a whole post on it.  Then I saw the "Next Blog" button in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, and I clicked it.  It took me to a random blog, which I would link but something made me think twice about it.
I understand that the internet is the world wide web and that blogs can be viewed anywhere, but I felt like some of the blogs I viewed should have been more private.  There were family pictures and details of how and where Thanksgivings were spent, and there were teachers posting pictures of their students who were in second grade.  I wonder if those students parents know that there children's pictures are on the internet... Seeing that made me realize how people really do have to be careful about what they post on the internet.  I found this picture and it made me laugh, but it is also pretty accurate.

Lies to Protect

Why do people to lie?  It's a simple question with many answers.  To cover something up, to protect someone, or even just for the heck of it.  In The Crucible, Elizabeth Proctor lies in order to protect her husband and his reputation, because she doesn't know that he has admitted to lechery. We talked a little bit about why people lie about a month ago in class, but it's not really a topic that goes away.  In the book, Elizabeth is the image of purity and a saint.  She forgave her husband for cheating on her, she knows the 10 Commandments perfectly, and, according to her husband, she can't tell a lie.  But then she does.  And her whole image of being a saint should shatter, but when I read about her lying, it made me think of her as an even better person.  She was willing to protect her husband over telling the truth and hurting him.  The truth hurts, it's true, but a good person isn't necessarily someone who always tells the truth.  I think the lie that Elizabeth told was a noble one because of the way that she put her husband first.  But then again, had she told the truth and said she had known of her husband's lechery, then the whole plot of book would have changed.  Her solid no-lying status wouldn't have changed, her husband had already admitted the lechery, and the court's ruling would have most likely changed.  So maybe the lie wasn't a good idea...

Yale's Elect

The other day, while we were going over some background information on the Puritans in a Power Point, we talked about predestination.  The Puritans believed in this concept created by John Calvin which claimed that it was determined whether a person would end up in heaven or not before birth.  The way it was made known to the people on Earth if a person was part of "God's Elect", or one predestined to go to heaven, was known as the conversion experience.  A person would literally get up in front of the congregation, or the people who were already chosen as part of God's Elect, and present an enlightenment experience.  Then the congregation would vote on whether the person's experience represented the person proving to be a saint, thus joining God's Elect.

DocOC brought up a very interesting point in the middle of this, he compared the conversion experience to the college application process.  And after thinking about it for a few days, it makes complete sense.  In every single college essay, a person is writing a story about themselves, trying to explain what separates them and makes them unique.  If their essay is "good enough" (as well as other things like grades and standardized test scores) then a person is accepted into the college.  It's much the same with the Puritans conversion experience.  The Puritans would tell a story, hoping it would spark something in the minds of God's Elect, in order to allow them to be "accepted" as an additional member of God's Elect.

It seems that today a majority of students I talk to have been told that it's necessary to get into the "right" or "best" college because that's what is going to make their lives easier as they get older.  I think that people also seem to think that a person who graduates from Yale is much more respected than a person who graduates from a community college.  This is probably very similar to what the Puritans were told, or what they saw: that the lives of people who were part of "God's Elect" were superior to those who weren't, and that they were given more social privileges, like sitting in the front pews at church.  The fact of the matter is that there is more than one "right" college so one college's admissions board shouldn't determine your future, and "God's Elect" was a group of people judging another human being to determine his or her fate.