Monday, March 8, 2010

RA 2

A lecture that I did not really enjoy but found interesting nonetheless, was the guest lecture by Dr. Paul Eppinger of the Arizona interfaith movement. The reason I did not enjoy it is that I find it completely anti religious to have multiple faith beliefs. I don’t care if you are a Muslim, Christian or Buddhist if you truly believe in your religion then you would be just as offended as I was that day. To find something as superfluous as a “golden rule” of all religions is blasphemous and ridiculous to all religions. I did not think that it exercises tolerance or you are tolerating anything by doing this. You are hurting the religions and religious people of the world by denigrating their religions so. You are actually exhibiting illiberality by saying that we all need to accept others religions as valid or having some valid points. A true Muslim will not find anything valid about the Christian faith.
This is not the way to get people to love and to tolerate each other. If you want tolerance stop making a huge deal about all these issues. For example, the LGBTQ representative that came in actually was preaching narrow-mindedness by saying that we all have to accept gay people and telling us what words we can and cannot say. You are telling us what to do. Telling me what I can and cannot say. Now I personally have no problem with Gay people but by making a big deal out of this and forcing people to say and not say things you are not allowing people the freedom of expression or thought as was set out by our Forefathers in our constitution.
There is no simple solution to getting everyone to the same level in the worlds eyes but the ways those two lecturers presented are not going to work. Now I do not know the way to get “tolerance” but the ways currently being pursued are clearly not being equal to both sides.

RA 1

I do not have many fears, I have many opinions and I am a very assertive person. One of the things I am fearful of is what I would assume to be a pretty common fear. Fear of failure. In an economy such as the one that we currently live in a college graduate will have a difficult time finding a job in such a rough economy. The areas that I am interested in are also harder to get into. I would like to get involved in sports management via the route of ticket sales. I am scared of not being able to get into the programs and jobs that I want when I graduate and that I will end up doing some menial job and waste time.

Two things from the diversity wheel that intrigued me were age and religion. I am a conservative at heart so I struggle with some of the ideas and ideals that are taught to me in this class. We are all diverse people and that was demonstrated in class the other day when we had volunteers stand in a circle and move in and out depending on the various life experiences that we all had. I am a very accepting person but one thing I do not tolerate is having other peoples viewpoints shoved down my throat. This comes out in religion and religious beliefs. As we all know there are various religions and religious morals that go along with them. I had a problem with the gentleman from the multiple faith church. He has accepted parts of all religions as being valid and that disappoints me because that discredits them all as they all have very contradicting elements to each other.

My age has been a big factor in my life. I am 21 and work for a company where I have risen to a management position over the last three years. Due to the terrible economy a lot of older men lost their jobs and took employment with my company to make ends meet. Now a 50 year old former manager has a very very difficult time taking instruction, correction and even discipline from some one as young as I am. It has been a difficult journey gaining respect from my employees and it is not a complete journey yet but an ongoing process. I also hate people thinking I am not good enough for something because of my age. I have more wits about me than most people out there. It frustrates me to no end to be talked to down and treated like a child because of how young I look.