Thoreau

Thoreau writes this piece to inspire people being oppressed by their govrnments to rise up and act to change it, but his ideology seems different than that of Ghandi and MLK. Ghandi and MLK chose to "fight" for what the rights that their govrnments were not giving to their people, but they never actually fought, but practiced "civil disobedence". This idea of protest without violence to invoke change doesnt really seem to be in Thoreau's work, unless im overlooking something. To me, Thoreau is saying that if someone is feeling oppressed by their government on some major issue, that they must rise up and change that government no matter what the cost. Thoreau also talks about the concept of people serving the government, mainly the army, begin to "serve" their government without a conscience, blindly taking orders, this he says, is deconstructive. To make is short, I think the main theme of his work so far is that people need to follow their heart and act to perserve morality, but the problem is that people always have differing views about what is moral/ethical or not.

Thank God its Over

Spending all this time on this one piece of Emerson's, really woke me up to realize that my reading comprehension is not perfect. As I worked at understanding about how a scholar should live his life and how he should contribute his the larger system he is a part of, I began to understand the piece as a whole. The very end stresses the importance of the American scholar to break away from their European influences and create their own ideologies. Creating their own scholarly pieces/works would set America apart and let it grow into the nation of freedom and equality that it was predicted to be.

Gman,JFK, and MLK

These three men were persecute and attacked for doing exactly what Emerson said to do, to act on the knowledge they had collected. Throughout the lives of these men, they faced negative responses from the majority of the demographic they were appealing to, but as Emerson instructed, they continued to spread their messages, and ultimately were permanently removed from their worlds. These men exemplified the concept of putting the fear behind them to tell the world of their knowledge, even though they knew they were putting their lives in direct sights of their enemies. Its hard to believe that men like Ghandi and MLK were both shot trying to promote the message of peace and love to all the man kind; its strange that the people we revere as the greatest of men were not the ones who made the most money or grew their government the most, but its the people who are killed in cold blood like Ghandi and MLK. This makes me rethink about what it means to be a scholar, Bob Marley to many people was an ignorant pot head, but he sang and spread a message of loving everyone and treating everyone with equality (like Ghandi and MLK), a message I take seriously. So what my question is what defines a scholar?

Mind Contorting Syntax

After reading and discussing about Emerson's piece, I feel like the concept is there for us to grap, but Emerson's word choice and writing is too filled with fluff which hides the purpose of the paper. Emerson uses this paper to address the scholarly community, and to explain their purpose in the system called man kind. Man kind is made to work as a system that involves every person and profession, and if one branch fails to work in sync with the others, destroys the whole system. Compared to the human body, Emerson says the scholars of the world act as the brain of the system, collecting and implementing knowledge for the benefit of the rest of the "body". But as the scholars sit around and think and ponder, they stop actual implementing their knowledge and isolate themselves from the rest of the "body", which causes problems. I'm not totally sure what else to blog about, but I'm positive that if we take the rest of this work and try to break it down and word in a way that is more similar to the way we are used to, we can grasp the concepts well

Emerson

Emerson was a poet, intellictual, and man that expressed his mind through his writing. Emerson believed that mankind worked as one large system, that when exposed to personal gain soon deginerated. Comparing the system to a human body, Emerson says that all people must remember they are all part of this body, and that if they forget and start to work only for personal gain, the system will fail. Later in his life, Emerson began to write on a number of subjects, but stressed the topics of balance, nature, and freedom. Having an American write and fight for freedom influenced the majority of the writers and even poets after him.

Occom and Apess

After reading both pieces from each man, I found few similarities. Both Apess and Occom speak in a very formal english style that most have come from their advanced studies, but their tones are very different. Apess is speaking in a tone filled with anger and an attitude condemning the white man, while Occom speaks with sympathy and pity for the "poor Indians" who were all ignorant in a white man's education. I'm not exactly sure how to compare these two men and their ideologies, except that they were similarly educated, but used their educations for totally different purposes. Apess is trying to express the equality of all men and saying that no race is superior, but Occom feels pity for his ignorant "brothers of the flesh", who seem to be inferior to him because he has a white man's education and a job in the white man's world. I feel that these two indian men are grew up similarly, but ended up using their knowledge and beliefs differently.